This summer is going to be a busy one

This entry was posted in Family LOPSA PICC '10 Work Stuff on by
Wow it’s almost July.  I am working on getting things ready at the house for the 4th of July picnic.  After that picnic I have to get into La Vigna Picnic mode.

My uncle and I are meeting on Monday for a quick breakfast and picnic planning.  We have some new ideas for this year for the kids that should make things fun and exciting.  I am looking forward to this years picnic more than usual since we have a few more people helping with the planning and work this year.  I am still going to run the 50/50 and the seed spitting contest. I love seeing my family and hanging out and just taking it easy.

In the last few weeks I have been made the committee chair of the LOPSA Education Committee.  We are in the middle of getting the training schedule and trainers together for OLF and OLFu.  I also LOPSA-button 1stepped up and volunteered for one of the empty board seats on the LOPSA board.  Last night I had my first board meeting.  I have gotten the feel of how things work on the call and got some ideas that I need to flesh out to help fix some of the issues that are plaguing LOPSA.  It also looks like I will be going to a face to face board meeting in August.

As well as the picnic and LOPSA, work, LUG/IP, LOPSA-NJ and PICC I have been working on a new web site with my friend John LeMasney.  It’s going to be a food based web site that will explore the making, buying, cooking and eating of the food of Central New Jersey. We want to be the premier destination for those interested in Central New Jersey food.  I hope to go live in the next few weeks.  We are looking for writers who have a passion for food in Central New Jersey. So if you want to write for us send me an example of your writing and a little bit about yourself to wbilancio@centraljerseygoodfood.com. 

So some family news Avery is now a senior in high school and has her drivers license. This is great I don’t have to drive her all over the place to her friends and dance or back to school, the down side is I don’t get to spend as much time with my daughter.  Otherwise every thing is going great and I am looking forward to a hot humid summer.

Birthday gift idea from Google and Gmail

This entry was posted in Fun Stuff on by

If you were wondering what to get me for my birthday (July 19th) this year.  This idea just came across my desk this morning from Google.

When Gmail came out of beta, we embroidered the Gmail logo onto sweatshirts for the team. Any given day in the office, a couple of people are wearing them. When other people asked us where they too could get their very own Gmail sweatshirt, we didn’t like replying with "Oh…they’re not really available, it was just something we did for the team," so we made them available in the Google Store.

gmail_sweatshirt

After six months and a ton of e-mail it’s over

This entry was posted in LOPSA PICC '10 Technology on by

img_1625 After six months of planning and tons of e-mail the Professional IT Community Conference 2010 is done.  We had over 80 registrants and everyone seemed to enjoy the conference.  Now that the it’s over I took a long look at my e-mail and realized that I had over 250 e-mails in my inbox.  As the planning of the conference moved forward I was real good at labeling and filing all conference e-mails, but in the first few weeks I wasn’t that good at it and a bunch of the first ones sat at the bottom of the pile.  So this morning I decided to start organizing and replying to and trashing all the email in my inbox.  After two hours of this I am down to two e-mails in my inbox… Yea me.

As I make the final payments to my people and hotel and get things finished for this years conference, I am going to take about two months off before starting the planning of next years conference.  I am looking for a conference chair to take over the running of the 2011 conference so I can focus on the back end planning (dealing with AH, the hotel, LOPSA board) and the training track for next year.

This conference couldn’t have come together without the great group of volunteers who came together and worked hard to make this a local and community building conference that was a great success.  I couldn’t have done it without you so thank you for all you guys did.

Getting a NJ System Administrator conference up and running

This entry was posted in Fun Stuff PICC '10 Technology on by

I have been busy working on a project that has taken up a lot of my time in the past few weeks, the LOPSA-NJ Professional IT Community Conference 2010.

Back at LISA ‘09 in Baltimore, I had a sit down with one of the other NJ System Administrators and we discussed what was the problem with the system administrators group that we belonged to an how to help fix it.  The problem we saw that the League of Professional System Administrators (LOPSA) had was getting there name out and getting new members.  So out of this conversation over a few beers as well as pulling in another fellow NJ SA we came up with the LOPSA-NJ Professional IT Community Conference 2010 (PICC ‘10) to be held in New Brunswick, NJ on May 7th and 8th. 

We came back from Baltimore and jumped right in by finding a location and picking a date and forming the committee to work on getting the conference off the ground.  We have gotten 2 sponsors so far, 10 trainers and training classes, 3 keynote speakers and are now working on getting the Invited Talks and submitted papers together.

The training classes range from how to write better documentation, how to better manage your time, disk virtualization, automation with Perl as well as a class on automation with Powershell, as well as IT Policy writing and the tools to move from being a junior system administer to a senior administrator and more. 

The 3 keynotes we have scheduled are David N. Blank-Edelman on Friday night giving his "Through the Lens Geekly: How SysAdmins are Portrayed in Pop Culture?", Tom Limoncelli on Saturday morning and Eden Haber closing out the conference on Saturday afternoon with his “System Administrators in the Wild, What We’ve Learned from Watching You!” talk. 

The conference schedule is made up of 8 Training class on Friday and 2 on Saturday.  On Friday night will be the Conference Dinner and then the opening keynote followed by a movie. We haven’t gotten the movie figured out yet.  Saturday will also have the invited talks and submitted papers as well as a room set up for unconference topics.

Saturday will start with another keynote and then followed by the papers, invited talks and unconference tracks.  It’s shaping up to be a great conference.  We are hoping to get at least 150 local system administrators to attend.  If you are a NJ/PA/NY System Administrator and are interested then check out the website http://www.picconf.org and save the dates May 7th – 8th 2010.  Oh yea registration for PICC ‘10 opened up yesterday so to register go here.

Merry Christmas

This entry was posted in Personal on by

As I sit in my living room watching the Powder Puff Girls Christmas special with my 16 year old daughter I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas.  I hope that you all have a great day and that you all get what you ask for and get to spend time with the ones you love.

Wow What A Thanksgiving Weekend we had this year

This entry was posted in Family Food/Cooking Fun Stuff on by

It all started on Wednesday night at my Aunt Bea’s house with my Aunt Bea and Clora, my parents and Avery while we waited for Fran and Family to arrive from Michigan.  The food of the night was going to be Blue Fish that I got from my co worker Tim Szwedo caught on one of his fishing trips.  My dad had marinated the fish for a bit and then grilled them on the grill.  Fran and family arrived right at 6:30 in time to sit down and eat.  We sat around for a bit and talked and laughed.  Avery and I headed out around 8:30 to hit Acme and then to crash out a bit for a bit.

Thanksgiving started for me at around 8:30 in the morning while I got the smoker ready for the big bird cook.  I actually used The Minion Method for the Charcoal burn.  Using this method kept the temp at a constant of 250 degrees for the whole 5 hour cook.  The turkey had been marinating in a red wine marinade sine Monday.  It came out of the marinade a nice dark purple color.  After the smoker had leveled out to a steady temp the Turkey was put on the grate at 9:00am.  I then moved back inside to start work on the Rye Bread Stuffing.  This turned out to be a great stuffing.  After getting that in the oven, it was time to start on another new recipe for Smoked Sausage Jambalaya another recipe that was a hit for dinner.  While working on all of these new recipes I had a pot of Cranberry BBQ Sauce cooking up, which was talked about a lot last year and was requested to be made again.  Other then making gravy and un canning the canned jelled cranberry sauce onto a plate I was really done cooking by 1:30.  My cousin Tim and family showed up around 1:45 and then it was a constant flow of family arriving till about 2:15.  I took the turkey off the smoker at about 2:15 and let it rest till about 2:45 and handed it over to my dad to carve while I got the rest of the food on to the table.   We finally sat down by 3:00 and the food was passed till about 4:30 as well as the great conversation.  The turkey was perfect and moist and had a great smoke ring around it.  The last person left around 8:00 and I was finally able to sit down and relax and to start thinking about Christmas dinner.

Friday was a day of working at some side jobs and going into work for a bit……but dinner was a treat, we did another pizza off at my Aunt Bea’s house, but with a twist…we did white pies only.  We got pies from Top Road Tavern & Pizza, Fedelos Family Pizzeria, Abruzzi Pizza & Cafe, Kings Pizzarama, Palermo’s III(Ewing), Limoncello’s Pizza.  The winner for the second year in a row for the Bilancio Pizza Off was Palermo’s, it now holds the title in both the Tomato Pie division and now the White Pie Division.  It was a fun night just hanging out talking to everyone. Dean brought some beer he had just bottled that day.  It had a great taste but it will be better after it sits for a few weeks in the bottles.  It was an early night because I ate so much pizza that it just made me tired.

Saturday morning started with me heading to my Aunt Bea’s to hang out with my Uncle Fran for a bit, so since I go there early enough I got a home cooked breakfast which was nice.  We all headed our separate ways for a bit to meet back at the house for dinner.  Which consisted of leftovers brought over from my house from Thanksgiving as well ham from Bath Packing.  Dinner was great and of course the conversation was good to.

It was great seeing my uncle Fran and family since it’s rare that we see them much since they are up in Michigan..tried to talk them into coming back for Christmas but since the snow will be flying by then I doubt we will see them till the La Vigna Picnic in July.

Well time to go and see about Christmas dinner now….

To see all the photos from the weekend head over to here.

The great food experience I found in what looked like a hole in the wall.

This entry was posted in Food/Cooking on by

On Tuesday I headed down to Baltimore for LISA ‘09.  The first night I was there I caught up with a bunch of friends I hadn’t seen in person for over 3 years as well as a few others that I now consider friends.  We ended up at a little Italian place, the prices were a little steep but the food was good. This article isn’t about the Italian place I will write about that one soon though.  Because the price was so high the first night in town made Wednesday nights meal had to be under $50.00 and wow did we find the best hole in the wall burger place.  I have found that these little whole in the walls always seem the right choice..so as they say you can never tell a book by it’s cover.   

We found Elevation Burger at Harbor East, 1006 Aliceanna Street, Baltimore, MD.  They are a chain but there food was out of this world.  What caught my attention right off was that they clamed that the fries were cooked in 100% Olive Oil.  I had just had a discussion that afternoon with Jesse Trucks about how he couldn’t eat at the other burger place because they cook there fries in Peanut Oil, so I knew I was coming back again before I left with Jesse. They also claim that there ingredients are fresh, sustainable, and local when practical,  Nothing on there menu contains trans-fat, and that each restaurant grinds its beef on premises to ensure freshness and quality. 

The menu was small but it was hit.  They featured 3 meat burgers and 3 veggie burgers and one called the “Half The Guilt Burger” 1 beef patty and 1 veggie patty.  They also had a salad and a grilled cheese sandwich on the menu.  The burger that caught my attention was “The Elevation Burger”, double meet, and double cheese (real cheddar).  all there meet is 100% USDA-CERTIFIED organic, grass-fed, free-range beef.   You get to pick the toppings you want so I picked lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and raw onions. I also got a side of fries with my burger. 

My name was called and I was handed a 9×3 cake pan with my fries in what I call the little fries boat and the burger wrapped in wax paper and in a little wax bag.  I took the burger out of it’s little bag and took that first bite and knew we had made the right decision for dinner.  The meat was juicy and flavorful and the toppings were crisp and fresh and added to the flavor of the burger. 

The fries were typical shoe string fries and they were crispy and light and flavorful.  I had never had fries that were cooked in olive oil and I have had tons of fries in my life.  When cooking fries in olive oil it gives the fries a golden brown color, and the taste is unbelievable, I will be changing the way I make fries from now on…they were out of this world. 

So Elevation Burger was the right choice for a low cost, taste satisfying, good time meal for a group of conference goers on a budget.  For the burger, fries and a Stewarts Root beer + tax the total cost came out to $12.00 for lunch. 

Now if they would just open a location here in Lawrence Township.

The Allman Brothers & Widespred Panic in Camden for a night of great music

This entry was posted in Concerts Reviews on by
So last night The Allman Brothers and Widespread Panic played at the Susquehanna Bank Center (formerly the Twitter Center) in Camden, NJ. Widespread Panic came on stage promptly at 7:00pm. I had forgotten that Jimmy Hearing was playing guitar for them. He use to play with The Allman Brothers, Jazz is Dead, Phil and Friends and The Dead. The whole band sounded great and I was glad to finally see them. Jimmy was working it and his playing was outstanding. They played 2 hours and it was packed full of great music. I was very impressed with them, and since I have only heard a few things of there’s and I think this show has made me a fan. I will be downloading some other shows to get a better feel of them.

Here is the Widespread Panic playlist from last night:

Lil Kin >
Radio Child
Up All Night
Can’t Get High >
Fishwater >
Christmas Katie >
Travelin’ Light
Diner >
Space Wrangler
Blackout Blues
Junior >
You Should Be Glad
Tall Boy
Climb To Safety

The Allman Brothers took the stage around 9:50pm and hit the ground running with Statesboro Blues. Even though the weather was hot and humid the band sounded great. I haven’t seen the brothers in about 2 years and I was very impressed at how well Derick Trucks has grown into the band. Greg sounded great and he hasn’t lost his grove, he pounded on the keys and never sounded better. Of course Warren Haynes sounded great so not much to say there. A few of the members of Widespread Panic joined the band for a few songs. I thought Jimmy playing with band was good, it was one of the best Dreams and One Ways Out I have heard in a long time.

Here is The Allman Brothers playlist from last night:

Statesboro Blues
Les Brers In A Minor
Come and Go Blues
The Sky Is Crying
Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’
I Walk On Gilded Splinters
with John Bell, guitar & vocals; Sonny Ortiz, percussion
Trouble No More
Good Morning Little School Girl
with Jo Jo Hermann, piano; James van de Bogert, drums
Revival
The Weight
with Jo Jo Hermann, piano
Dreams
with Jimmy Herring, guitar; James van de Bogert, drums
One Way Out
with Jimmy Herring, guitar

Encore
Whipping Post

Now to the down side of the night. At this show there were 2 different types of fans. The we are going to get so drunk and wasted that we will look and act stupid all night and the we come to a show to actually see the show and have a good time and actually remember the show the next night.

I see these types of fans at most shows I go to. The first type get so drunk and stoned that they weave all over the place and act like fools, then they usually pass out and miss the show. We had a whole row of them in front of us last night. They enjoyed the whole two hours of Widespread Panic and the whole break before the Brothers then when the Brothers hit the stage they droped like flies and were asleep by the end of the second song.

It just doesn’t make sense to me why you would pay good money to see a show and then get so wasted you miss most of it and then feel sick the next day.

I also don’t understand those who leave the show in the middle of it to go home? But that’s a whole different post.

Self Portrate……why?

This entry was posted in Personal on by
2756

Why is it when you have a camera in your hand you always take a picture of your self? I had to wait for one of the employees to get ready so I could take a photo of him for something here at work so I turned the camera around and took a self portrait. I do this with the cell phone to when I am bored or I take a photo of my foot. It’s a William thing my daughter thinks it’s funny and I am nuts 🙂

Cool picture and the need for a small good camera

This entry was posted in Personal Technology Work Stuff on by
2744

So this morning I had to take some photos for work for a proposal. I had to use my bosses camera, a Canon A2000 IS. It was easy to use and had a good size LCD display and the pictures came out well (because we all know it’s all about the camera, not the photographer). The one thing I didn’t like about it was that the SD card was in the battery compartment on the bottom of the camera, so I dropped the batteries out when I need to take the card out. I took this photo of the stuff on one of the admins desk. It turned out real well and the color was great and it just looked good.

I have a Pentax digital SLR that I got as barter payment for a mail server build job I did. I love taking pictures with it, but the problem with it is..it’s to big and not easy to just carry around and have with me in my bag to take a quick shot when one presents itself. I try to take my daughters camera out with me once in a while but she doesn’t like to give it up without a fight. So the next time I have a little extra money I am thinking of getting a Cannon PowerShot SD1100 IS. I like that they are small, light and have a quick write speed. Now my birthday is right around the corner on the 19th, so if one of you fine readers want to get me one as a present that would be great.

Till next time…..