I had lamented that IBM was late to the party for meetups, but bragged that we were having a meetup at RSDC on Tuesday June 6th from 6-8 at the bar by the escalator at the Dolphin Hotel.

Well, the egg is on my face as blogger compatriot, Ed Brill let me know they’d already done it at Lotusphere. Way to go guys, you flew the flag for us.
So the good news is that IBM is not as behind as I described, and we’re still having ours hosted by Danny Sabbah, with the first round of drinks on IBM. I hope to see you there as there will be plenty to discuss from the first two days of the show and our blogging escapades.

And Steve O’grady, I hope to have fishing pictures by then as I’m going out on Friday to chase Redfish in Titusville with one of my best friends over the years.  Here’s what we’re after.
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Today is Memorial day here in the states. It is the day that we remember the 800,000+ who gave their lives, paying the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom of America and other countries. Although this is an American remembrance, many from other counties also died for our freedom.

I shed a tear in church yesterday, the first since my fathers funeral. They called up the soldiers who were in either the Army, Navy, Airforce, Coast Guard or Marines and played their theme song. I was very proud to be an American and thought of the many they served with who couldn’t make the walk to the front of the church. It was a wake up call that we live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. We were also reminded that another paid the ultimate sacrifice for us 2000 years ago on the cross for our freedom.

But today is the day we stop to recognize that freedom is not free. It is defended by those who are brave. Many went to serve their country and didn’t return so that we can think and say what we want without a cruel dictator or regime censoring it, and many have tried over the years. I for one am grateful.

I’m also lucky as two generations of soldiers before me served and lived so that I can type this. My Grandfather who was in the Calvary in WWI….

and my Father who served in WWII.

I was going through some old clippings and found one from the AP that documented my Dad’s efforts..

Today at 3 PM, there will be a moment of silence to honor and to remember these who didn’t ask to be chosen, but went anyway. Here is the text:

The White House Commission on Remembrance is an independent government agency whose missions include:

• Promoting the spirit of unity and remembrance through observance of The National Moment of Remembrance at 3 PM local time on Memorial Day;
• Ensuring the nation remembers the sacrifices of America’s fallen from the Revolutionary War to the present;
• Recognizing those who served and those who continue to serve our great nation and reminding all Americans of their common heritage.

So while we splash in the pool, eat at a cook out and enjoy our activities, let us not forget that it was paid for with a heavy price.

I was watching qualifying for the Coca Cola 600 and the first car that came out had, no kidding, CatDaddy Carolina Moonshine as the sponsor. What a great combination.

Recalling history, during prohibition, moonshine was run through the backwoods of North Wilksboro, North Carolina by the forerunners of Nascar. They souped up their cars to beat the cops, then boys being boys had to see who was the baddest…

As it turns out, the company only has 3 employees, but the town turns out to help when it’s time to bottle up this years batch.

A good sponsor and a way cool name.

All attention for me from now till June 4th is on RSDC in Orlando. We have the next edition of the show blog by execs and analysts (we were the first IBM group to try this last year), we have podcasts. We’ll have the first IBM blogger meetup (see below). So it’s heads down and get the work done which includes all the announcement prep and analyst briefing.

Except that it’s memorial day and I’m going fishing . There is the Monaco Grand Prix, the Indy 500, the Coca Cola 600, all which have to be watched. I’m also going down early to see my Mom for the first time since my Dad’s funeral and I get to fish with a good friend on the Indian River Lagoon.

I also have a ton of followups from analyst briefings, reports and other IBM issues that have to be handled before I leave.

So I’m laser focused on all things RSDC right now with no distractions

This weekend is the Grand Prix of Monaco. A principality barely a mile long, but a tax free haven that sports more millionaires per square inch than perhaps anywhere in the world. It also has fantastic history and equally good names for corners. Nothing against Nascar 3 or Indy 1, but Mirabeau, Beau Rivage and Sainte Devote exude emotion from a race fan that has seen decades of mano-a-mano on this course.  Nancy, there is better shopping here than anywhere you’ve been

Most F1 courses have 100 kilometers of run off at turns for screw-ups or crashes. One wrong move here and it’s into the concrete wall, roughly a few hundred thousand to a few million dollars per wreck.

SOFTWARE SUPREME

There are also more computers in this cramped place and more lines of software code and specialty chips than most data centers. They can monitor a sixteenth of a pound of tire pressure from across the city as it inflates due to stress of improper setup. Budgets approach $1 billion including full computer car design, wind tunnel testing at 1/4 scale, aerodynamics and communications capability that rival all but a few countries.

So I wonder, how is it that when they hit a bump between Casino and Mirabeau at over 100 MPH that would knock your fillings out, these cars which are moving software machines don’t miss a beat. For sure they’re not powered by Window’s because there is no Ctrl-Alt-Del in the cockpit.  I wonder if the teams consider uploading viruses to the launch control of their competitors?  Symantec? Norton?  no way.

I also wonder if there is a PHP script that monitors the traction control preventing wheel spin at 19,000 RPM’s? Is there a Perl script that handles shifting at close to a millionth of a second which is the reality of a F1 gearbox? Are the software programmers actually more valuable than mechanics, or are they the mechanics of the future?  It’s likely the Unix center of the universe.
If you think I’m going to be worrying about software while cars scream through the streets of Monte Carlo, with scenery like million Euro yachts and beautiful women in the harbor….

get a life.

I went from 7 days a week to almost cold turkey on the newspaper, and don’t seem to miss it much. I got the Raleigh News and Observer.
There are a number of reasons why:

• The news was 24 hours late
• I already knew most of it from the internet
• I couldn’t believe what they wrote due to poor research or point of view
• The weather prediction is a crap shoot
• I couldn’t believe what was written
• I’ve boycotted all the pro sports that boycotted me because they weren’t getting enough millions and were complaining
• I get better news and points of views from the blogs or podcasts
• I couldn’t trust whether it was true or not
• If there was something I needed from the local paper, I got it the day of off the net rather than the next morning

I know I repeated myself in about 3 of the above points, on purpose.

I now take it on the weekends mainly because they have the coupons for saving money. It makes the subscription about free.

What do I miss?

The daily cartoons that I follow, but even they are on the internet if I really cared. Also, it was handy when I needed to take something to the reading room.

I have followed the decline of the subscription renewal rates for most of the written publications and they are going down faster than a truck without brakes on a mountain. Mostly from the reasons I stated above. My unscientific research looks like it’s a toss up between lack of timeliness and lack of believability now. I’ve followed this trend with the network news and most of the cable news also.

Update:  here is how the blogs discover the truth, and the MSM doesn’t do proper jounalistic research:

To those who put themselves in harm’s way to protect our freedom.

Yes we are still having the meetup at the same time and same place, but our host will be Danny Sabbah due to the untimely surgery that Grady is having.

I hope you’ll all wish him good luck and keep him in your thoughts and prayers, and pay your respects at the meetup in his honor.

IBM will be having it’s first ever meetup at RSDC in the Dolphin Hotel at Disney from 6-8 on Tuesday June 6th during the Rational Software Development Conference.

This is somewhat significant as we’re doing a meetup, but you’d expect a blogging company to do these things.   Well, we weren’t the first company to blog either, but we’re in that game now.  I’m just glad I had something do to with something that is a first, which at a company the size of IBM, is tough to do.  In all fairness, Steve O’Grady helped us with it so we didn’t screw it up, thanks Steve - you were a big help.

Additionally, we’ll be hosting a blog during the show for executives and analysts and webcasts with the Rational and developerWorks Executives.

See you there, either in person or in the blogosphere.

….on last night’s episode. 107 on a Russian went down to centox nerve gas (a hidden container not previously accounted for), one American officer on the same sub and 12 special forces agents.

Next week is the 2 hour finale, and since the bad guys have 12 multiple warhead missles and are terrorists, Jack will have to save the world from wmd’s and terrorism in 120 minutes….

I’m betting on Jack. JUST DO IT….