Erik has an uncanny accuracy.  Traveled over with Tim Clark, wookie and Matt White.  We are all just at our rooms and will surely meet up again pretty soon.  Keep an eye on twitter for where/when.

Before my travel to the Dolphin Hotel beings.  Up at 5.30am followed by the first flight to Gatwick at 6.50am.  I am on the 11.40BA flight tomorrow, hoping to arrive in Orlando approx 4.30 local time.  After that, the audition to enter the US begins.  ETA hotel =  unknown.

Stopwatch starts when I leave my house.  Closest guess to journey time taken to get to my room wins a prize.  See you all tomorrow.

Ben Poole’s post made me think of my most important technical tool

It’s very strange to see people tweeting their arrival already at the Dolphin Hotel, Orlando (Andrew Pollack and Chris Reckling have touched down).  Yesterday was a blur, dealing with customer issues and on-site / off-site work.   Today was spent with more of the same, but also getting my GSX Presentation (real world approach to the product) ready.  This evening was “get new glasses as the current pair fell off your motorbike” task and tonight is “clean up the adminblast presentation” time.

From a Business Partner / sole consultant mode in the Lotus world that is involved in Lotusphere, January is a financial black hole with ridiculous hours required to keep up.

Saturday and Sunday are the only days I will be out of the hotel, so this is going to be fun.

A few weeks ago (through Gab and Carl) I started to use Logmein Hamachi for personal VPN software.  Hamachi attempts to make VPN creation, management and connectivity simple, with a personal product (up to 16 machines, free) or small-fee professional subscription product (256 machines).

After registering, you have the option of creating what type of VPN suits you most.  For my needs an “everything can connect to everything” mesh model suited best.   One quick registration later and the client software is available to download.  Your “network” is given a number, and you can allow other machines to join your network to create your vpn.   Of course, you can setup passwords and approval systems before anybody joins.   Software is available on Mac and Windows.  Your machine can be a member of multiple VPN’s simultaneously.  All management is completed through the logmein site.

Over the years I have come to ingest great cynicism over “it.just.works” but to fit my vpn purposes, Hamachi does the job very well.  Before I knew it, I had various workstations and servers on my VPN for Lotusphere demos and Gab and I found it most useful for our SNT demo setup.   It has become my first “must have” software product of 2011.

Recommended.

3 days left before the geekfest begins.  Today’s todo list included:

• Organising my GSX presentation and trying to make server monitoring interesting  (that’s a challenge at the best of times)
• Finalising some quotes for customers
• Sending more emails to customers with the general theme of “next week is pretty much the only week we are hard to get hold of.. please forgive”
• Attending some lotusphere related conference calls
• Doing my tech good deed for the day

Tomorrow is my last day onsite (i.e. billable) before Lotusphere.  Wednesday/Thursday is final prep, then were off.

Four days until my Lotusphere begins.  For the second time I am heading over on the Friday, as opposed to the Saturday/Sunday.  So much to do…  Typically I recieve 4-5 questions a week from readers of this site.  Usually I respond.  I have not been able to do so recently due to to workload.   The biggest event (in my trade) of the year is catching up on us all.  But I do try to give short answers if I can.  I apologise if I have not got back to you, but sending me a follow up email with

You didn’t respond to my question.  This is  unacceptable.

Seriously?  Do you think I will respond now?

If you are an admin, and are going to Lotusphere, this is a session that may one day, save your life (or at least your employment).  Gab and I have discussed this session with RIM for months and we have both put in a lot of work.  Consider it a SNT session but sponsor driven.

At Lotusphere, Gab and I will setup clustered SQL servers and a High-availability installation of BES… live.  We start with a single BES server running on SQL and will setup everything on screen, and talk you though it.  In an 1hour 45mins.  What could possibly go wrong?

Well.  Everything really.   So it should be fun for you to watch.  We are using our besdemo.com addresses just like last year. (paul.mooney@besdemo.com and gab.davis@besdemo.com).

So come to Europe5 in the Dolphin at 8.45am on Tuesday.  It will be fun.

Onto another note.  When you meet Gab Davis at Lotusphere, just say thank you.  There is nobody I know that puts in more work to session creation, or vetting other people’s sessions then Gab.   Don’t guess the amount of hours input on Lotusphere work from November/January.  You don’t want to know.