There was a small event preceding several 0ther events, so we took our time, got to the local library convention, then had dinner with our friends, we ended the night at Glendale Glitters and had some fun there.
Several months ago, I bought us tickets to Jake Shimabukuro’s Christmas Special. This time, he was playing at a different venue. At the Scottsdale Center for Performing Arts, a place I haven’t been to in many years.
We had front row seats and it was just a great time watching Jake play. He was joined with his friends Jackson and Justin for a few and they did fantastic too. I was really impressed with Jake’s ability to make his ukulele sound like a marching band’s drum. So cool and it morphed into the Little Drummer Boy song.
After the concert, we of course got in line to meet with him again! This will be the third time I’ve gotten to get a photo with him.
One of my good friends, Sona, held a happy hour for my birthday. It was really good to catch up with everyone.
Almost a year planning this trip, for Christmas last year, Jaime and I asked my brother and sister-in-law if we could bring them and their kids to Disney World for my 50th birthday. They were awed, amazed, and accepting of our proposal. We extended the invite to the family because sometimes it takes a village to help care for our nephew and niece.
We flew out bright and early on November 6th with our kids.
As you can imagine we took hundreds, if not about a thousand pictures. Here are just some of them in a random order, lol!
It was the best birthday I’ve had so far, and I guess turning 50 isn’t a bad as I thought it would be. It definitely helps having a lot of friends and family that have a lot of love to give.
I went to the Cybersecurity Summit at the Phoenician, which is in Scottsdale. It’s not my first time at this venue. It’s pretty snazzy. The thing is though, that to get there “on time” I had to sit in about an hour and half of traffic. I’m so glad that I work remotely because if I had to go into the office daily at 8 AM, I would really hate it.
I haven’t had to drive on the freeway for morning commute in over 10 years, and believe me, I don’t miss it at all!
The conference was okay. I met some friends there who were in it for the CPEs and I was more there just to hang out (and also collect additional CPEs). For what it was, it was okay. They fed us, and caffeinated us, so we could be attentive. And I got some more free vendor shit that I don’t really need.
Yesterday, my friend Mariah and I went to the AZ Bao Festival and we ate! LOL
It’s been over 20 years, give or take since we all worked together. It’s so good to see them all. We were such an awesome IT team at Alltel. We did everything there! Desktops, Servers (windows, netware, linux), routers, switches, and firewalls, all applications deployment, all printers. We even took care of call centers, storefronts, and kiosks. We literally did it all!
Nick had some extra passes that came with our contract and we tried to get our teams to go, and only a few actually wanted to, so I accompanied them.
It’s a long drive to Vegas, about 5 hours long, but I drive the speed limit and listen to podcasts on cybersecurity. I’m really into the CISO Series right now… I just recently connected with David Spark and have had some light conversation with him. Good dude.
I got to meet with Tyler, whom I haven’t met in person before, but reconnected with my peer and one of the guys on my team, who I have met several times. The conference was nice, smaller than I am used to (that’s what she said), and I learned a bit. It was nice to get some learning in and also earn some credits. I also had a lot of work to do, so when I could, I got away, went to my room, and busted out some work, checked emails, sent and replied to chats, and kept a project I’m on, on track.
It was really neat that part of the ‘thanks’ for coming to fal.con and being a customer, we got to see the Chainsmokers at the Omnia nightclub. We got amazing seats and met some cool people. I have a video on my Facebook, I think I got the embed codes right for the bottom of this post, but sometimes older videos disappear due to privacy changes, so if they aren’t down at the bottom of this post, then…
Here are some of my photos.
Wipro/Edgile/ServiceNow me out to Silicon Valley to have a discussion on my project associated with my Vulnerability Governance program and we ended up being the headliner! It was pretty cool and I got to hang out with a coworker and an old friend! Our conversation was shared over New York, Plano Texas, and Kirkland Washington. I got to have some expensive whiskey and other fancy drinks.
The night I got there, I met up with Nikhil.
I had trouble finding my room.
The next day was the event
Here’s the post on LinkedIn
For labor day, again, we went to Tucson for Comic Con. It was a lot of fun, and oddly enough, we didn’t dress for it this year. I guess we just weren’t feeling it. We more or less “bounded” kind of like Disney-Bounding, where you wear an outfit that is more casual but is in the style or color of a character, without actually dressing as them.
Our first day there, where we ran into our friends, Allysen and Brian, was at a bit where people were painting mini D&D models and it was a lot of fun! I’ve always wanted to do that, but didn’t have the big collection of paints and I also never really played D&D, I played an offshoot when TMNT had their own. I remember it was in 1984 or 1985 when it came out and a friend down the street was into it and I was just into the ninja stories.
I chose a sorceress as I still play Diablo 2 and she’s my character that I got through Hell with. RESPECT!
We attended several panels that our friends happen to be presenting at and took photos with many we knew. Its a good time to do the fun nerdy and geeky things! I didn’t get photos with everyone, I’ll have to do better next year!
![CarmeloWalsh[.]com](https://www.carmelowalsh.com/wp-content/themes/twentyten/images/headers/sunset.jpg)