Greetings, and welcome to rsts11.com. You’re probably here because I’ve requested a meeting with you at Interop or you’ve found me on the press list and done a Google search. Either way, I want to disclose a few things so you can make an informed decision to meet with me.

The Day Job

My day job, which is not connected to any of my personal blogs, is as a Technical Systems Architect for datacenter technology in the Americas Partner Organization at Cisco. That’s the networking company, not the foodservice supplier or the Thong Song singer. My focus and range of influence there is supporting sellers in datacenter technologies, especially focused around Cisco UCS, Nexus, HyperFlex, and ACI.

The Blog Sidelights

However, I have written about technology independently of my day job for many years, as a practitioner, influencer, blogger, and observer of interesting things.

Thus, my presence at Interop and my blogging are not connected to, or representative of, my day job employment (my work blogging lives at blogs.cisco.com/author/robertnovak or a Cisco partner’s site). I take vacation time to cover Interop, and I enjoy it.

My primary sites are rsts11.com (here, since 2011) and rsts11travel.com (over there, since NYE 2016/2017).

rsts11 covers technology, home lab and budget infrastructure topics, soft topics around technology, and occasional sidetracks. One of the core focuses is on what I call POHO, or Psycho Overkill Home Office. This idea considers that technologists and small companies/startups may want to take advantage of enterprise-grade technology without necessarily having enterprise-scale budgets (think one comma rather than two).

rsts11travel is an offshoot of rsts11 focusing on travel-induced technology, finding deals and benefits and status for travel providers, and other slightly less geeky topics of interest to people who do not obsess over travel but still want some of the benefits.

Both sites use affiliate links to generate an extremely modest amount of revenue, which is generally poured back into funding further experiments, research, and travel. The total annual revenue from the two sites is less than I spend on Nespresso coffee capsules, and even as a heavy consumer of coffee, that’s not a whole lot. I also accept, and fully disclose, grants or loans of hardware (or software) to evaluate and report on.

The business names

You may also see references to Indyramp Consulting (since 1995) and the Andromedary Instinct (since 2001-02).

Indyramp Consulting is a technology and communication consulting entity I launched in 1994 (in name) to serve as an alternative ISP for the Indianapolis, Indiana community. The ISP project was dropped, and I went to work for IQuest Internet instead, but for my own webmaster/mailing list/presence consulting, I retained the name and provided services from mid-1995 to the present. Today, Indyramp Consulting does not provide for-profit services, but some resources are provided to friends and colleagues.

Andromedary Instinct was originally launched in the early 21st Century as a side project to eventually become a retail and consulting organization. In 2012, this became reality, as Andromedary Instinct was registered as a resale business in Sunnyvale, California, with the usual necessities to formalize eBay, flea market, and retail sales and services in used computer and electronic equipment markets.

The Andromedary Instinct has a retail-permitted storefront in Sunnyvale, although it is not generally open to the public. It also provided contracted consulting services to startups prior to my joining Cisco, although such services are no longer offered.

If you have any questions about our entities or any connections (real or perceived) please reach out to RNovak at Indyramp dot com.