Huzzah – another Tech Blast for you to enjoy! I’m beginning to measure time by when the next volume is due on my calendar. Weird, eh? Enough rambling … I hope you’re hungry for some delicious brain food (available in nacho flavor).

Brain Food

• For all the home lab junkies out there (myself included), AnandTech has a review of the latest Intel NUC (Next Unit of Computing) – specifically, model D54250WYK featuring a Haswell proc. This falls under the UCFF or Ultra-Compact Form Factor, a size down from SFF or Small Form Factor. If you can handle the limitation of size and modular expansion, these little guys might be perfect for you.
• The holidays are already a distance memory, yet I found this post on IT professionals working during the holiday season engaging. Being on call sucks (I spent close to a decade on call), especially when you’re not allowed to be a key stakeholder in the technology design and configuration, resulting in having to be called frequently. Traditionally, this has been one of the single most powerful motivators to rise in the ranks of IT – more decision making authority (hopefully) and less on call work (also hopefully). 🙂
• I found an interesting article written by Shanon Olsson that walks through an unsupported method of enabling LLDP on a standard vSwitch. Even though it’s a bit of a hack, I was surprised to see that it’s even possible.
• The Geek Whisperers have produced an outstanding episode entitled “Unicorn Husbandry, or working with employee evangelists” – I found the discussion refreshing, insightful, and filled with many clues on how the modern evangelist is perceived and approached from both sides of the aisle.
• Speaking of a geek who whispers, the legendary Stephen Foskett has crafted a masterful post on software defined storage. Much of the conversation addresses the software defined data center and scale-out challenges. He also has a nifty Lego Data Center infographic on display.
• In the Great Ideas department, Frank Denneman posted a discussion entitled “VCDX defend clinic: Choosing between Multi-NIC vMotion and LBT” that addresses some of the mind walks you should expect when preparing for a VCDX defense. Being a design “expert” is never fully about the answer, as much of the importance should be placed on how one arrives at any particular answer. (Hint: saying “best practice” isn’t a valid reply unless you know why something is a “best practice.”)
• Don’t worry about ordering anything from Amazon. According to their new patent, they already have a pretty good idea when you’re going to click the buy button, and acquired a patent on Anticipatory Shipping. It sounds a bit more romantic than it really is – based on a computer’s guess, they will ship items to a local distribution center and wait for you to actually click buy, but that should shorten the delivery time dramatically. Perhaps the first step needed to fire up Amazon Prime Air? 🙂
• John Troyer’s VMware Community Roundtable podcast #260, entitled “Technical Influencer/Analyst/Writer Careers“, provides a fountain of great advice from Howard Marks, a well known analyst at DeepStorage, and Stephen Foskett (how did he get into my Tech Blast twice?). Although I ended up being involved a tad, skip over my parts and focus on what these two industry giants are saying – they have some superb insight.
• Blogger Marek Zdrojewski at Default Reasoning has a sharp quick start guide for vSphere Auto Deploy. Short, concise, and to the point – me like!
• Another blogger by the name of  Joe Utter wrote a really motivational post on why he tackled the VCAP5-DCA exam. I really enjoyed his story, the fire in his belly, and the exam results. Congrats, Joe!

Chris’ Thinking Cap

EMC Elect has announced their 2014 members (congrats to those selected), and the GeekFluent blog has a snazzy analysis on the numbers for your reading pleasure. It seems that more and more vendors are choosing to call out those who evangelize their ecosystem / solution / products, further empowering those who go the extra mile. These programs typically come with some nice perks: early access to release information, ability to influence product managers, and priority access at events. But I’ve also seen some raised eyebrows on social media around bias and the impacts of how people discuss and represents a particular technology when they belong to an evangelism program. Keep in mind that I’m not picking on EMC, they are just the latest program to select individuals. (Disclosure: I belong to vExpert, Cisco Champion, and PernixPro).

[symple_highlight color=”blue”]How do you treat information coming from a member of an evangelism program? Are their views and opinions biased beyond value, or positively enhanced by their “insider” knowledge and passion?[/symple_highlight]