Last night I got together with some friends at De Lorenzo’s Tomato Pies.  in Robbinsville NJ for tomato pie and a nice choice of beer.  I was the first to arrive, the restaurant was a little crowded but not so bad we were going to have to wait a long time for a table. Since I was the first one there I opted to hang out and wait for one of the others to arrive before getting the table.  Greg Wilson showed up a little while later and he and I got talking about work and how things were going.  We got seated at a one of the big booths along the wall and hung out waiting for the rest to show up.  The next to show up was John LeMasney (who was the only one of us not to have ever been to De Lorenzo’s so he was the De Lorenzo’s virgin of the night) followed by John Martinetti and Brian Jones arriving a few minutes later. 

This was the first time that the five of us have all been out to eat and just sit back and talk in a long time.   The topics ranged of course from work related topics to the kids and everything in between.  The beauty of the five of us getting together is that we are all lovers of good beer so when we do get together the place must be BYOB or have a good choice of beer at the bar.  Last night both Johns brought a six-pack of Sierra Nevada.  John LeMasney brought the Sierra Nevada Celebration Fresh Hop Ale and John Martinetti brought the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Brian Jones brought a random selection from his fridge that all I remember was in there was Guinness.

The Tomato Pies were mouth-watering and so tasty.  We ended up getting two pies, a garlic and a sweet pepper pie.  When they came to the table, it was commented that the pies are never cut in the normal way of even shaped triangular slices, there were long ones, short ones, small ones…but they were all good ones.  We took our time enjoying and savoring each bite of pie and sip of beer, but still made time to discuss the use of Drupal over WordPress and vice versa. After the first two pies were done and we had sat digesting them and talking about what I don’t remember…we ordered our third pie..a sausage, garlic and sweet peppers pie….another winner.

While we were all conversing and eating I sat back and thought how much I was enjoying this evening.  I was just out with the guys, I wasn’t worrying about work, PICC or LOPSA.  I wasn’t worried about getting ready for LISA or all the stuff I have to do while I am there.  I was just out with the guys and we were all having fun.  As the last of the beer was finished and the last crumb of tomato pie was eaten I felt that all was good with my world and I was glad I have friends like these.

Thanks guys for coming out on a rainy Tuesday Night……

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.

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.

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 end of July always has the La Vigna Family picnic and that always means a lot of work for most of my family, getting the games together for the kids and getting the property cleaned up and ready. This year was no different…well yea it was…it rained most of the week before the picnic so most of the work was compressed into Friday. Thursday was the worst of the rain and of course that was the night most of my cousins and I went to see a concert at the Blueclaws Stadium in Lakewood, NJ.

The bill consisted of Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Bob Dylan. It was an interesting show. My cousins Tim & his wife Meghan, Henry and Ira all enjoyed the show in the rain. Henry, Ira and I spent all of the night down on the field just talking through Willie Nelsons set and then rocked through John Mellencamp. Bob Dylan came out and totally confused me. The band he has is great and sounded tight, but then Bob starts singing and I couldn’t understand a word he said, but that is the mystery that is Bob Dylan. We enjoyed the whole night rain and all. It was good to be at a concert with my cousin Ira who we don’t see enough of and when we do it’s not long enough.

The day of the picnic turned out great even though it was a little bit hot, but the people that made it had a good time. I shared the announcing and running the games with my 2 uncles, Dean and Fran. It was fun running the water balloon toss and of course the watermelon seed spitting contest. We raised some good money selling this years calendar and Dean and I caused some controversy in the family with the 50/50 this year. So I say that the 2009 La Vigna Picnic was a success and we are already planing the 2010.

Carolyn has had the surgery on her foot so they could get some samples of the bone to see if there is any infection in the bone. We haven’t heard yet back about the lab reports. We have been back to the doctors many times so they can change the dressing. So we hope to get a negative report back about the infections so they can close up the wound and we can move on to the fall without any more foot issues.

Avery is driving now…..with a licensed driver in the car of course. She is getting better each time we go out, so I think if we keep her schlepping Carolyn all over the place while she is not allowed to drive.

Well that’s it for now…not much going on with me other then work and more work and Karma.

Photograph from Noface2

Murder Burger in Auckland, New Zealand, may have the best “Staff Wanted” sign ever. Student teachers, yes! P (methamphetamine) addicts, no! Here’s the transcript of the ad:

STAFF NEEDED FOR GOURMET BURGER BAR THAT NEEDS STAFF

Right Oh, Murder Burger is opening up on Ponsonby Road in Ronsonby and we need a bunch of people to hang out with, make burgers and talk shit. No previous experiences is needed as we teach you everything you need to know and we kind of factor in you buggering something up along the way.

The sorts of people we think will be good for the job are:

Arts, Architecture and Humanities students: No real reason for this, well actually I suppose there is, it’s just that if we’re going to be working with somebody for hours on end it’s quite nice to talk about stuff we’re interested in as well.

Student nurses and student teachers. I’ve gone out with two nurses and two teachers in my short life and they were all awesome. More awesome than me as it turns out which is why I’m not going out with them anymore.

The sorts of people we think won’t be good for us:

Politics students: Nothing personal, we just don’t understand you.

P addicts: Again, nothing personal, it’s just that the benefit of you being able to work 7 shifts in a row is pretty much outweighted by the probability that you will one day flip, grab a knife and become Mr Stabby.

So if working with us sounds like something you might quite like to do instead of staying home watching telly then send an email to Geordie at

Nice one.

[Logo featuring an intimidating kitten]

I am starting to use it for planing nights out with my wife to find new places to eat and try. I am also using it to plan where I want to eat on our next vacation to the Keys.

So when you go out and eat, how about taking the time to then write a review for the restaurant. If the restaurant isn’t listed click on the “add restaurant” link on the upper right menu and fill out the form as best you can and then leave a review and the editor for the area will ok it and post it.

So please check out ChefMoz.org and help us out getting more restaurans and more reviews and help spread the word about ChefMoz dining guide.

On Saturday Carolyn and I worked on organizing the kitchen a bit. We also decided to convert the junk closet in the laundry room to the pantry and get all the canned and dry goods out of the kitchen cabinets and moved to the new pantry. I still have to clean out the big pot cabinet and get it reorganized so I can find things in my kitchen when I am cooking.

I have also added a recipe section on the site so you can see my recent cooking projects. You can find it here.

The big gift this year went to my wife Carolyn. I gave her a romantic getaway vacation to the Florida Keys for both of us. We still have to pick where we are going to stay but I have booked the air fair and car rental. We will be going sometime in May. I know I am looking forward to just sitting by the ocean or pool relaxing for a week with a few day trips to Key West and other sites in the Keys.

The family started showing up promptly at 4:30 and dinner was served around 5:30. All the food was great and we all had a great time enjoying each others company. Things started breaking up around 8:30 – 9:00.

Hope everyone had a great holiday and is looking forward to the new year.