It’s February, the month I traditionally miss the BayLISA meeting (OpenLDAP backend with Howard Chu, and SSL with Heather Stern, if you’re interested, btw). Do you follow me on Twitter? If not, go ahead and do it! But if/when you do already…

This weekend will be pretty quiet. I’m moving stuff into my store’s warehouse, which I will write about soon.

First things first, but not necessarily in that order…

Next weekend is Gallifrey One’s Network 23, 20,000 Years Into The Future. The largest and longest-running (I think) Doctor Who fan convention in the world takes over Los Angeles with over 2000 fans from around the world, and cast and crew and writers and famous fans of the longest running television show (with continuity) in history. It will be my fourth year, and we’re expecting the entire primary cast of the 1996 television movie (including the TARDIS console), and guests from Waris Hussein and William Russell who were in on the first episode in 1963, to people who were involved in the most recent series in 2011.

I probably will not live-tweet a lot of it, partly because cellular reception in the bowels of the LAX Marriott is epicly bad. But if you see anything from me on Twitter, it will likely be Doctor Who-related. New to the good Doctor? Head to Netflix (or iTunes or Amazon) and watch yourself some.

Virtually the next week…

And just before the following weekend is Virtualization Field Day 2, a production of Gestalt IT which brings together thought leaders and truly interesting vendors for an intense two-day conference on IT technology (sometimes focused, as this session is, on a narrow area like virtualization or wireless networking).

I’m very honored to have been chosen as a delegate this time, so I’ll be camping with several other tech prognosticators and making the rounds of some of the most interesting virtualization players in Silicon Valley. You’ll likely see a blog post or two, and quite a few tweets, about what I find interesting, abominable, intriguing, or totally whiskey-tango-foxtrot.

Tech Field Day, and its WFD/VFD brethren, are interesting in that the sponsors pay to bring the thinkers together, covering the travel and living costs of the delegates for the duration of the event. Some of them choose to give freebies to the delegates, like typical vendor schwag or a sample of the company’s product.

However, there’s no requirement or expectation that delegates write about everything, agree with the sponsoring companies’ pitches and perspectives, or paint an unduly rosy picture of the sponsor or its products/services/roadmap/choice of tie. You’ll see what I think about the presenters (and my co-delegates, who I don’t believe are subject to the FTC disclosure rule but might give me cool stuff too), from an independent and personal viewpoint.

For example, if the fine folks at Xangati, who I saw at TFD5 as an evening guest, pitch their new iPhone-based VM monitor software, you will probably see me forget the </yawn> tag. But (hypothetical example only) if VMware shows up and announces the return of the VMTN (which is just a pipe dream, I know they’re thinking about bringing it back but I doubt they’ll present or announce it), that’s something that affects me and my team/company/world, so I’ll make some noise. And if Eva Longoria, Eva Mendes, and Leonard Nimoy show up for the party on Thursday, I will probably be posting pictures.

You think you’re funny?

The week after VFD2, I’ll be back on stage at Rooster T Feathers in Sunnyvale for the first round of the 10th Annual New Talent Comedy Contest. This will be my second contest appearance, and my fifth time on stage. I may get a chance to go on stage at Plan B in Sunnyvale the following weekend, for any local readers who want to see the backwaters of Sunnyvale. I don’t really expect to win the contest, but at least this year I don’t have a Disney World trip planned for finals week so, if it happens… it happens.

And so fourth…

I’ve started writing up my VMware lab configuration (with the Shuttle SH67H3 and a HP N40L Microserver), and got the Microserver installed last night. Now to find a place other than the living room floor to set them up, take a couple of pictures, and make it slightly more interesting reading.