Category: Errata

Microsoft OEM Lic and Legally Imaging.

So one of my guys came to me today and indicated that since all of our Video Call Center systems were OEM lic from Microsoft we had a big problem with Imaging.  In my old out of date head this made little sense because we used to do this to systems by the hundreds back in the Windows XP days.  Well as we talked and I started being a geek and not a manager again it  clicked that in Vista they implemented the whole limited activation thing to eliminate piracy.  Fair enough.

But here I am with quite a few legal systems and the prospect of having to spend about $10,000 to get them all added to my select agreement.  That just stupid.  Now let me be clear after working through a BSA suit and then building a large portion of our new back-end platform on Microsoft Products I am very used to stupid licensing issues generated by lawyers and other asshats inside Microsoft to make sure they can screw their clients out of every possible penny.  Luckily there is a legal and pretty fair solution to the issue.  It lies in the term “Reimaging Rights”.  What this allows is any holder of a MS Volume Agreement to purchase a single copy of a Volume Lic of the any OEM product you have legal rights to.  you then create the image for that system using the Volume Lic CD/DVD.  DO NOT TRUST ME ON THIS!  See THIS LINK.  Furthermore I plan on having this validated with a MS rep not my LAR who as usual has not a clue about MS lic that they sell me.

Hope this helps someone out.

Cloud oh sorry I mean….Clown Vendors.

VMWorld 2012 Disclosure Statement

So VMWorld 2012 is my first true IT convention.  I have done regional education conferences, industry conferences like HIMMS and some trade show type stuff to promote my company.  But for a true IT convention this is it.  I am going to start by saying there is a lot of amazing stuff going on here and I mean A LOT.  But I am going to cover that in another post or twelve.

My focus for this post is the number of people who are not here for the right reasons and this includes the vendors.  I am going to go way out of my way to not name anyone by name but if your here your going to associate quickly.  When I think about these conferences these should be really cool venues to put your best foot forward.  This is for vendors, partners, clients, press and anyone else who bothers to show up.  Since I have been here I have seen quite a few people doing just that.  But sadly I think there are quite a few people who are here to waste their employers money.

So let me say if your trying to sell me a product don’t start with a gimmick!  If I have never heard of you then a chance at an new sports car might get me to let you scan my badge but it wont help you sell me a product.  I WANT Substance!  Ask me about my company, ask me about what problems we solve or need solved.  Engage your technical staff and have them available.  DO NOT put F’ing magicians, mind readers, jugglers, pro skate boarders, unicyclists  and booth babes in your booth.  If you do I wont talk to you and neither should anyone else.  By doing these thing you tell me how little confidence you have in your product to begin with.  If you think you need to entertain me to stick around for the real reason your here in the first place then you really have nothing to show me.  Just to wrap this up its cool if you want to give cool stuff out to help spread the word or say thanks for  someone get put into your lead generation system.  But do so respecting yourself, your product and the intelligence of your prospective clients!

Now on to you Ass Hats who call your self IT professionals.  If you just spent $3000 to $8000 or so of your company’s training budget to come to an IT conference to get vendors to give you cheap plastic toys, get 100 tshirts, grope booth babes and in general act like a drunk assholes please quit coming.  There is a huge segment of the IT professional population that fights every year for time and budget to attend events like this and you half wit punks make it harder for them to get here so just stop!  And for crying out loud have some self respect.  You have no idea if you could go from making $50,000 a year to making $250,000 a year by making the right contacts at an event like this and elevating yourself.  Don’t get me wrong if a vendor wants to say thank you for a purchase or wine you and dine you once you have showed interest in their product great but when you leave don’t be so trashed that the homeless people on the way back to the hotel are appalled by your behavior!

I know I am a buzzkill.  But I don’t care.  Some of the behavior I have seen this week would prompt me to fire people if it was my staff acting this way on our employers dime.

 

VMWorld 2012 Full Disclosure Statement

VMWorld 2012 Full Disclosure Statement

This year I was asked by Nutanix, who is my storage and compute vendor to be in their booth as a customer of reference.  Nutanix was gracious enough to pay for my Conference pass, my hotel and my airfare to get here.  However Nutanix did not pay me for my time nor did they compensate my employer for that time.  I accepted this invitation because I strongly believe that their ideas and their products are the way forward in virtulalization for me and many other clients.

This Statement will be referenced in any post here on StaticNAT.  I am in no way obligated to talk or not talk about Nutanix and their products.  My statements and opinions are my own and are not endorsed by and/or moderated by Nutanix.  Quite possibly I will write about competing products now or in the future and in no way should any such commentary be linked back to Nutanix.

So in other words I write for me and only me and if you don’t like it take it up with me.

Vendors Beware

Simply put I am not going to target a specific vendor in this post but if you work for an IT vendor (Telco, SP, MSP, Hardware/Software maker, VAR, LAR, distributor, consultant) this list is a warning of the things you can do to really piss me off. It is not just me it is all of us. We have way to much to do on a daily basis to have to babysit the people who we pay to help us. So read, pay attention and don’t do this stuff!

1. Lie – Tell me what you can or can’t do and stick to it. This includes what your products can or can’t do.
2. Have a messy house – If your provisioning team does not talk to your sales team and no one talks to support you’ll piss me off.
3. Wing it – If I wanted to you to wing it on my project I would not have paid your your stupidly high rate. My 7 year old can wing it.
4. When you are getting it wrong ask me to not be me – Piss Off I am the customer I am right because I pay you monies.
5. Cover up your lie/mistake/bug/whatever else your covering up – Be honest with me I may not fire you.
6. Presume you know me by watching my twitter feed – I am more than 128 characters.
7. Blame your contractors – You hired them you fix it. I have to do that when you mess up!
8. Get me in trouble – If your stupidity makes me eat a bullet for you the world will know!
9. Lead with List price – We all know its BS. Give me the best deal you can and we’ll each do better by wasting less time.
10. Take a social or political stand corporately that makes me have to hate you – Really an Internet company siding with SOPA….

I am sure I have like 1000 more and I encourage my readers to jump on board and add them to the comments. In the end we all have jobs to do please don’t make me regret engaging you by making mine harder.

Fresh Coat of Paint

Not going to be a crazy long post here.  Just wanted anyone who is returning to my humble site to know that ownership has not changed, just some new paint and and a really cool framework in the background.  After being at Network Field Day 3 I wanted to clean some things up.  Talking with Greg Ferro of Packetpushers about some of the thing he as done with his sites to optimize them for SEO and for functionality.  Outside of the normal web opt stuff Greg recommended the Genesis Framework and the Themes that go with them.  So I bit the bullet and purchased their Pro Plus pack since I have a few other blogs that I run as well.

So far I really like it.  I have disabled all of my pre-existing plugins to help clean things up.  Plus in the background I have been deleting lots of stuff that was tied to ideas that never really took off.  In the end I expect these changes to help me focus on the core product of the site and offer more content in the near future.  So many cool thing to write about might as well have a nice clean place to publish it all.

I would love feedback from anyone about what other info you would like to see on the site.  I look forward to hearing form you.