Well its the start of my trip to Las Vegas for the MMS 2008 conference. This is my second time going to the conference. I went to last years MMS 2007 conference in San Diego. I lived in San Diego once, so it wasn't like I was never been there before. But I can say that I stayed in one of the nicest hotel there the Hilton. How cool is that? I'll post the pictures I took then later. But this post is about MMS 2008.
Of course I had to check my gear and make sure I had all the necessities. <See picture below...> 
After making sure I had everything, I took off for the airport. After checking in and stopped at the local airport bar. <Yes, that's me in the picture below...> As some of you know, I don't like airplanes, so I had to fuel up before the airplane does. 
To start this off. I will be flying out of Seattle on Sunday. And wouldn't you know it, I missed my flight. It was at 10:25 AM on April 27th, and here I am thinking my flight leaves at 12:10 AM. How did I do that you may ask? I originally had my flight to fly into Vegas on Monday, but my peers at work talked me into flying on Sunday so we all can fly together. Well, that didn't work. After making the flight changes, I kept the wrong time of the flight in my head from my previous schedule. I even said the flight three times to my self all morning while getting ready. And I didn't think that it may have changed. 
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I went back home to wait for the next flight that was scheduled at 8:25 PM that night. I had a stand-by ticket, but didn't make it either. There were many other people waiting for stand-by as well. I also had a 3:20 PM stand-by. but I didn't want to stand around the airport till then and maybe miss it too. So I went back home to relax till the flight that night. I just got finished driving from Los Angeles after being on vacation a couple days ago, so sitting in an airport just won't do this time. 
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I try to add some humor to my post by talking about the good and funny times with my peers. I make them laugh all the time. I'm not sure if it's how I look or I'm really funny. Here's one. I meet up with Jason and his girl at the air port. They're going to MMS too. Jason was a manager of mine once. and his girl. I also meet up with a few other people from Microsoft, one was Tom, (he's a ski buddy of mine). I will add some ski pictures later to show that I can ski . Oh, back to the funny stuff... Jason asked me about my flight and I said I missed the 10:25 AM and I'm on the stand-by list for the next two flights, if I don't get on either one of those, I have a confirmed flight for 8:25 PM that night. "Bummer", Jason says. His girl says', "Well hopefully you'll get on this flight coming up." Quietly in my mind I say "Like that's going to happen..." I then told Jason, I have the list of people on stand-by, I'm just waiting for one of them to go to the rest room so I can tie them up, then I can get there seat. grins, giggles and laughter slowly starts up. We hung around for a few minutes talking then they started broadening the plan. At the last moment I asked Jason a friendly reminder question, "You sure you don't have to go to the rest room?" I said, Jason replied with, "Not anymore, I'm way a head of you bro".
Well, they got on the plane, and of course I didn't. So I believe I'll go home and wait for the 8:25 PM flight and post this for starts.
By the way, I sent my bags ahead, we'll see how that works out. 
Well, I finally made it to Las Vegas, and I checked my bags in at the front desk of the Venetian Hotel. The above pictures are from the entrance of the Venetian Hotel and let me tell you it is super-doper nice. Like J.J. say's "IT'S DYNOMITE!!!". The picture below is the first hall way I walked down headed towards my room.
Well, today is Monday the first day of my 2nd MMS event. Today was mostly to meeting people, networking and ensuring I get into all the major parties 
. I met up with Nathan. Nathan use to work at the Redmond location, now he is at the DC location now. I met with Paul Thompsen to have breakfast. I started my breakfast out with dropping my cup of ice. It seem like the cup just had to fall over.
An hour later we had lunch with the MyITforum.com group. We just had a simple lunch and discussions of community direction. Below is a picture of Rob Trent on the left, me in the middle and ahh! ahh! He's going to kill me for this. When I remember his name I'll add it here {his name} 
The Ketchup Story
After kicking my feet up in the room for a while after un-packing, I left the room to meet with Nate for breakfast. I was to meet him and one of his friends, Mike, in the patio area of the restaurant. I noticed ketchup all over Nate’s napkin and the floor. I didn’t think anything of it and just continued to sit down. I ordered my food then Nate told me the Ketchup Story.
It turned out the reason for the ketchup being all over the place Nate had picked up the Ketchup and tightened the cap (or so he thought) and shook up the ketchup. Next Nate pointed the ketchup bottle away from his self and started hitting the bottom of the bottle with the palm of him hand. Well upon doing so, the cap quickly popped off in Mike’s direction, and the next time Nate hit that bottle, Mike was completely covered with Ketchup. The whole front area on Mike’s shirt was full with ketchup. A couple of portions of the ketchup missed him and flew right by and near a couple other tables.
The next thing you heard in the background by a lady that was almost knocked out by some of the flying ketchup said “Woo, that was like in the movies” half the restaurant joined in with the laughter. I guess the question is, why hit the bottom if you have already up shaken the ketchup.
One of a Kind Hat
As some of you know, I have to wear my hat-backwards. It’s my trade-mark. So I started my even out where the hat shown below. Some people and people from Microsoft were asking where they can get one of these hats. Or which booth did I get it from. On a many occasions I had to say I made the hat. Or at least designed it and had embroiled with the letters I wanted on the hat.
After lunch with MyITfourm guys and gals, I met up with Nathan at the Expo. I looked at a few of the products and services displayed today. The first one that interested me the most is Special Operations Software. What interested me most about this product was the option to run script via Group Policies other that being limited to running scripts at boot up and logon time. An example would be something like executing scripts during every group Policy interval. Scheduling script execution, real-time feedback on execution results, I see some benefits to client health with the techniques that are able to be used from this production.
It’s been noticed that MyITforum is starting to get allot of NAP questions, but not many people are answering those questions. Since being on the NAP project for the last 32 months, I offered to start answering the NAP questions on MyITforum. So you should be seeing some answers to NAP questions as it relates to ConfigMgr on MyITforum posted by Richard Dixon.
Networking
I gave out over 288 business cards, and received in return 28 business cards. Not many people had cards to give out. But I will report how many contacts I made from returned communication. Below is a list of the companies I had direct communication with:
· Penco Financial
· Hewless-Packkard
· MyITforum
· Dudeworks
· Washington Mutual
· Sanofi Aventis
· 1E
· Tricerat
· SecureVantage
· EminentWare
· Splunk
· EMC
· Dilegnet
· Berbee
· RedFly
· CA
· Intel
I started my Tuesday morning with the keynote by Bob Muglia, and then on to one of my sessions. I then made my way on to the Expo. I first stopped at the Dudeworks both which is a friend and X co-worker of mine. Rob Olson, Rob works at Wells Fargo and I work for Wells Fargo along with Rob back in 2003 and 2004 on a 12 month contact. I worked on a team of 6 SMS Engineers. Rob and I worked on the West Coast in Riverside California and the other 4 engineers worked in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As well as my boss worked in Minneapolis too. So I never even met my manager or the other engineers. Below is a picture of the dudeworks team I worked with at Wells Fargo Rob Olson is on the left, Dang, I forgot the guys name on the right.
Peer Re-Union
The below two pictures are of two of the engineers I worked with at Wells Fargo that I never met while working at Wells. Brian Mason in the light blue shirt and JD Rickard on the left. After working on this team for 12 months, my contract ended. During the last 4 months, the company/team tried to get funding to bring me on as a FTE. But that didn’t happen in time.
After 4 months since leaving that company, I was then working for a chip manufacturing company named KLA Tencor. Some of you may know of this company, but it is the company that builds the chips, and CPU’s that goes in Compaq, Dell and IBM computers. JD Rickard from Wells Fargo had called me back while I was working here indicating that they now have a opening as a FTE position if I want it. But by the time Wells Fargo called with an offer for a FTE position back on the Wells Fargo SMS Engineering team, I had already previously accepted a position with Microsoft and was about a week away from starting. So you know I had to run it down.
The funny part of this story if you haven’t caught on yet, I worked for Wells Fargo in 2003 and 2004, this is the MMS 2008 Event and here at the 2008 MMS event with When Brian Mason, JD Rickard and I first met ever in our life. All three of us were really happy to see one another. I mean you could not explain the excitement we had when we notice who each other was. It was a great meeting.
When I first noticed Brian Mason, I was participating on the “Ask the Experts Panel” at MMS and I noticed a camera flash out the side of my left eye. I decided to look to the left to see who that was, maybe some MMS camera man or something like that. I then noticed his name tag displaying “Brian Mason/Wells Fargo” I immediately knew who it was. These guys are some real true good friends. I would go back to working for Wells just to hang with these guys. But Microsoft’s benefits are better. J
Followed
Oh yes, I was followed in a souvenir shop. I was looking at some gifts for the family and some friends. After about 5 minutes of being in the store. I noticed a lady standing next to me kind of moving with my every move. So I walked to another part of the store, and sure enough she made her way to the other side of the store where I was located. I then stopped, turned around to face her and said “you don’t have to follow me” she responded with “I’m not following you, this is my job” I asked, what is your job? She wouldn’t speak any more after that. So I simply left.
I noticed that virtualization seems to be on the top of the list this year. It was thought by the product group that this would be the year of NAP. But it seems like the year of virtualization. So I changed some of my sessions to some virtualization topics. I really didn’t need SMS / SCCM Reporting and Demystifying the Configuration Manager SQL Database, so those two was fairly easy to change. Reporting and SQL is actually one of my stronger skill sets.
Secure This
I stopped by the SecureVantage booth to check things out and to see what they had to offer. Their tool is really graphical. Looks nice. What they have to offer is a centralized security management and auditing tool, with pretty bells and whistles. It seems to me more like a auditing tool and alerting on given configuration and or conditions. I see it as a good analysis tool to enable viewing group policy settings and configurations, logon failures and success. View malware threats in the environment as well as report on group policy deployments.
The shirt’s this booth was ware is very interesting. So I’m not sure if I’ll ware it or not. I think not. See below.
Centralizing WSUS management
The next booth I went to was EminentWare. EminentWare has created a tool that centralizes the management of WSUS servers.
This product has some really nice out of box reports. As well as roll up reports from each WSUS instance. It also allows you to report and filter on other properties like AD OUs and Security Groups that is automatically pulled from Active Directory or other grouping properties.
Below are some of the additional noticeable features:
· Squeeze updates into your maintenance windows by downloading only a subset of updates to selected computers
· Avoid Zero Day exploits by installing out of band Critical/Security updates on an escalated basis
· Talk control and shutdown, reboot or wake up one or more computers
· Protect against vulnerabilities by verifying which machines have approved updates and software installed.
· Reporting to provide accurate auditing for configuration change control
· An intuitive report building , (this I actually liked)
· View and report on client and server configuration, update history and status.
Below is a picture of me and David from the EminentWare booth…
After hanging around at the Expo for a while, Nate, Mike, I and one other guy decided to go eat at the Hooters casino. We took one picture below, not a very good shot. But I also added a picture from MMS 2007 visit to Hooters in San Diego last year.
MMS 2008 visit to Hooters Casino
MMS 2007 visit to Hooters
I decided to leave earlier that the others I came with. So I left about a half hour before Nate and the other left. But surprisingly when Nate and Mike showed up outside where the taxies are. I was still out there waiting for a taxi to give me a ride. The pictures below are of the first and only two taxies setting out front waiting for passengers or customers. These two taxies would not give me a ride. I first went to the first taxi 4404 and ask for a ride. The taxi driver just shook his head and said “No”. It’s known that only the Desert Taxi Company accept credit cards, so that is kind of the first reason for me wanting to use this taxi initially.
After the first attempt I tried the next taxi 7843, I asked for a ride thru the window of this cab. His window’s was up when he waved his hand back and forward, not looking at me. He did this while he continued to stay on the cell phone. When the other guys came out side nearly 30 minutes later, I told them what happen. And mentioned the second guy wouldn’t even speak to me and just waved his hand.
The Casino security must have over heard us talking about the incident and decide to go over and talk to the drivers. The cab driver of 4404 decided to leave. Cab 7843 ended up in a little heated conversation. While Nate, Mike and I were talking, the conversation between the security and the guy in the cab got heater and rather load. By the time we looked over at the situation going on with the casino security and the guy in the cab. Security indicated that the guy will give you a ride now. Well, the party I was with decided not to ride in this cab and wait for the next one. The guy in the cab started yelling at us from across 3 to 4 lanes where taxi’s drive up to pick up passengers. He was yelling “I DON’T TALK TO PEOPLE, I DON’T TALK TO PEOPLE” referring back to the incident when he originally would give me a ride.
As you will notice I had time to take these pictures when both taxi was still sitting there waiting on passengers. At one time these two taxi’s was the only taxi’s available and I was the only one waiting for a taxi. Shame on some people...
The 1E Dinner
The pictures below is of the dinner 1E provided for a few of the Microsoft employee's. The first picture below suppose to have Rehan in it. I'm not sure why he didn't show up. I wondering if he can see his self in a mirror. 
Cool Statue
This was a cool statue I saw in the hotel just as you enter the elevator area. I just had to take a picture of it. It looks like Eric Orman when he discovers something new he can learn.
The start of the Wednesday night parting... Nate and I gets started by filling up first... 
SCCM Expert Party
Below are pictures from the SCCM Expert Party.
Below is a guy from SCCM Expert, Adaptiva, Me, and Shitanshu
Below is Michael S. and his wife, Me and Rob Olson and his Wife.
Below is a co-worker of Rob Olson, Connie and friend of the Dudeworks crew. The lady with the gold hair, is toasted. "Drunk" if you didn't understand that. 
Well it look like i am to, but the camera caught my eyes wrong .
Below is Shitanshu finally taking down Richard with the help of Star Trek crew.
1E Party
Below are pictures from the 1E Party.
Below is a picture of the DMS and Manage Desktop 2.0 crew hanging out. Oh and that the lady that was toasted. and still toasted.
Below is a picture of a cool dude and gal.Yeah, they was toasted too.
Below is a picture of my x-manager Jason, and a few other dudes. The guy on the right in the right picture was really toasted. You couldn't even get him to speak.
Below is a picture of Ben Shy and Me. The two best 1E Nomad Pilot Test Evaluators at Microsoft. The picture on the right of the Business Online Services Team from Microsoft.
Below is just a couple of pictures of a statue that was in the lounge area where the 1E Party was held.
Below is a picture of Brian Mason in the first picture on the left, a guy I worked with for 12 months at Wells Fargo and never met during the time I worked there. We just met here at MMS 2008. And the guy on the right J.D. Rickard in the same picture I also worked with along with Brian Mason as Wells Fargo whom I also just met during the MMS 2008 conference. The second picture is on Me, Jason, Ben Shy and a guy from SCCM 1E, I think.
Below is a picture of me, Paul Thomson and Mayank Malik in the first picture. And me and Ed Alrich in the second picture.
Below is a picture of Paul Thomson and Seriman and some more of the crew hanging out.
More of the crew with someone tying to stick his head in the picture. These pictures was taken at the closing of the party.
And the below picture is the last picture taken at the 1E party.
Rock Paper Scissors
Below is a picture of Shitanshu playing Rock Paper Scissors. Yeah, he lost...
Below are a few pictures of some cars parked out front of the Venetian hotel. I just wanted to take some picture of them.
And below is me. The closing party wasn't that much of a hit for showing of your threads, because it was too dark. So I just took a picture of the famous suit Jason keep saying is purple. Its Blue, "Royal Blue!"
Yeah, I keep the hat on all the time...
The Rooms of the Venetian
Below are the pictures of the rooms and as I walked thru the room. I took pictures of every aspect of the room to give you a feel for the room. The picture below is of the view as you walk in the room.
The picture below is of the restroom just to the right as you walk in the room. As you can see in the upper left hand corner, there is a flat panel TV on the wall. Yeah, I watched Bugs Bunny in style the next morning.
The pictures below is of the bath and shower on the right side of the rest room.
The pictures below is of the rest room on the lest side and as you walk out of the rest room.
The picture below shows the living room area just as you completely pass the rest room entering the room.
The pictures below are the bedding area. As you can see I just arrived and threw my gear on the bed.
The picture below is the view of the flat TV on the wall directly in front of the bed. This is the 2nd TV.
The pictures below is a shot taken from the bed. I felt like a king even in the bed, for once in my life.
The picture below shows the little office area that is provided with the room. Fax machine and all. WI-FI and RJ-45 jack. The living room area with wrap around couch is right in front of the Office desk,
The picture below is TV area directly in front of the wrap around couch. This is the 3rd flat panel TV in the room. And just below is a refrigerator full of refreshments. The hotel didn't tell me that if you just pick up a item, "you bought it." The purchasing of the refreshments is calculated by if its removed from the tray or not. So don't knock it over if you don't want it.
Below are pictures of the view from my room. Really nice. I can see and count eight pools.
Below are some more pictures of the interior of the hotel.
Sight Seeing
Below are pictures I took during a little walk down the strip.
The' The' The, That's All Folks...