The Sphere 001: Bringing the Noise from the Indy VMUG

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All right, you thought you were listening to the CTO advisor, but this is actually the spear. We are a spoof of the Q, where they bring, they filter the signal from the noise. We are the noise. We are actually the noise. So this is the end of the day at the VMUG Indie User Con, and you know what, we've just flat run out of topics. We have my normal co-host, Mark May, howdy, howdy. We have Chris. How's it going?

And we have Rolison. You better believe it. So we definitely have the noise. So we definitely have the noise. He is loud. And we're just going to, this is, I think the value of this is that it's not technology necessarily. This is about community. This is why we do VMUGs, this is why we drive. Some of us drive a few hours down or fly in, present, and then after the presentations, after the day is wrapped up, we all just chill and just chat.

Mohit lent me his jet just so that I can come here. So I didn't do either one of those. What type of jet is that? He's got like a G6. Oh, that's, what color? White. Yeah, it's not green? No, he didn't go that far. The money green, money green G6? They probably just got money green with a Sofus in it for the next version, I'll ask for that. Well, after, if Cohesity continues this climb, man, I wouldn't doubt that that's definitely a possibility.

You know, this is- It's the last thing we need to feed his ego. I thought we were trying to make the noise, not filter the noise. This is kind of the noise. What is it? How many startups has he done? This is the first thing? No, dude. As far as I know, he was early days at Google, but there was another two adventures he had, but the super duper big ones have been Nutanix and Cohesity. Nice. It's good work if you can find it.

Anybody thinking about taking that Uber CEO job? You know, I don't think they need one. I think they're just going to put some AI in, it's going to be just as good to you. Yeah, I don't know. What they've put together, I mean, I remember, so funny Uber story. When was the first time you ever used Uber? Vegas? VMworld? San Francisco? C. C. for me, it was Mike Legend. Forever ago. He was walking me around the city and we finally got to the end of the night and I'm like, dude, where's my hotel?

He's like, well, it doesn't matter. , they only had, when it first started, there was no Uber X, right? It was only the black cars. Right. , you don't know if you can jump into it or not. Yeah. You better be careful with that. And he said that, he's like, we've got to make sure it's the right license plate. I said, why? C. there's a million black SUVs and they're all diplomats and people don't get shot.

That was the first time I ever used it. I think it's just that whole thing. I think the guys from Lyft are going to put a CEO of Uber. They're just going to call Lyft to get a CEO, he'll just come over, tip them, get out. So yeah, he shows up in a Lyft, he just leaves. You never know. Maybe Pat Gelsinger will be the CEO of Uber since Uber is on VMware Campus. I didn't know that. Is it?

Is it? Yeah. So VMware, either loan or some kind of situation where Uber- It was Creekside. The Creekside building. They have a couple of buildings at the VMware Campus. I drove in there. Do they have a warning sign for the female employees to- Stay away. Stay away. Do not cross this line. It's weird because before I left VMware, one of the last trips I made out there, everybody I knew was in Creekside. So I go, muscle memory, you go driving in.

I see the Uber sign. I'm like, what? And I go in the parking garage and I see all these parking spots say for Uber only. It was like, what happened here? Why do they need cars? Couldn't they just take an Uber to work? You'd think. Yeah. I mean- That's a paradox. Yeah. We really encourage our Uber employees- To drive to work. To drive to work. Yeah. They drive to work. So what's the next share thing?

You have ride share. What do you- Wow. That's a good question. What's the next big share? Oh, what's the strangest share thing you've seen? Strangest share. Bow tie. Bow tie share? Bow tie share? I don't know. I mean, that's common. So I actually- How many bow ties do you share? There's actually an RV share. I'm on that site. That you can rent your travel trailers and stuff. I'm more in the share nothing kind of place.

Well, you've never been shareable. Share everything. Come on. Well, you're shareable. Absolutely. He's not shareable. He's shared. Absolutely. He's shared. He's already shared. You're already a shared resource. Absolutely. 100%. You know, as I think through some of the things that are luxuries to have, the thought of Airbnb is a cool idea. I'm using Airbnb for the first time in Miami at the end of August for a family deal. I don't have a lot of stuff that I think is excess that I wouldn't- Well, you know how they have these indie blue cars out here?

So like the car share kind of thing. Yeah. It's a community car share. So that's kind of cool, I guess. Well, you swipe a card. Yeah. Hop in, take a car, and maybe turn it back in. They have the bicycle share thing. I'll never use that because I don't ride bicycles. I'm an avid cyclist. Good idea. I'm an avid cyclist. Here's one thing they should have. They should have like a share Lamborghini kind of thing.

Share luxury car. Okay, so that's the next thing. Car as a service. Luxury share. I don't want to own a car. I just want to use a car, and I want to be able to change it to any car that I want. That's what that indie blue thing is, but it's the same car. Yeah, but I want my car. But, you know, it's summertime. I want a convertible. It's wintertime. I want an SUV. Car as a service.

Yeah. Car as a service. So, Cadillac actually has a deal where you pay like, I don't know, it's like $600, $700 a month. You can get whatever Cadillac you want. For $600, $700 a month? Well, something like that. I don't know if it's $600, $700 a month. How often can you change it? You can change it once a month. Oh, wow. So it's like super short term. Cadillac as a service. Yeah, Cadillac as a service.

Really? They have that? Yeah. I need to come up on that. Yeah, I thought about it. I'm like, that's pretty good. Somebody came up with a Cadillac. He already missed it. But it's still kind of steep a month, but whatever. You know what I mean? CEO as a service. CEO. CEO. That's what Uber needs. Uber needs CEO as a service. Field CTO as a service. I mean, field CTO. I can beat that also, you know, totally.

So, you know, we joke at that, but I've been trying to figure out how to make CTO advisor as a service. I think every company needs kind of like that forward thinking, enterprise architect type guy, but not everyone can afford it. And it's not really a bar thing. Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know. I've been just one of those things. How do you take, because, you know, we had a podcast with Val a couple weeks ago, and he talked about AI experts as a service.

So, I don't know. I'm trying to figure out how to make money without selling time. Keith as a service. Keith, that's... I think that was a TV show on HBO, wasn't it? I think the total addressable market for that is really, really big. I think you got that mixed up. I think the show you're thinking about was on Showtime, and it was called Hung. Oh, yeah, you're right. That was on Showtime. You got my reference at least.

Whenever somebody says it was a show on somewhere, my first question is now, how many seasons was it? Because can I binge watch and drive on a plane or something? Because if it's like 15 seasons, I can't do it. Oh, my God, Mark. Game of Thrones has gotten to that point where... I can't even start it. I can't deal. You can't start it. It's too much to bear. It's too much now. It's just too awesome.

You know what? I almost didn't even want to start watching it because episode one of that thing was like, what? Of the very first season? Yeah, I'm like, I can't deal with this. Yeah, I haven't gotten into it. The very first season, I think my wife and I ever binge watched when somebody told us it was Breaking Bad. It was the first one we watched episode after episode after episode. No, it was good. We literally binge watched it.

I got it. I just binge watched the shooter. That was pretty good. It was pretty good. Back up again. Yeah. Here's an interesting question. So when did this whole binge watching started? When did that even come? Ready? To me? Netflix killed it. Right. Because we all wish, oh, damn, this show is so good. Oh, 30 minutes, an hour. Another week. Then Netflix drops in with this whole season one, here's 20 episodes.

You're like, oh, man. I got the box set of Friends. And people would watch the box set of Friends when they got it. Wait, let's go back. Not me. Not me. I've actually never seen it. I was like, turn your man card in right now. Oh, you know you love Friends. Hi, Joey. Joey, where are you? One of my best friends is in Friends. Whatever. So I don't return my man card in for that.

I watch it all the time. You don't have Friends. It's fine. I love Jennifer Aniston. So the – No, but their whole – you think about it, though. So they took what TV was, right, with Wait in a Week, and then they did. But now they changed it again. Did you notice? So some of the episodes they drop all 13, but some of them on the half hour ones, they drop them in like two parts. They drop six at a time.

So they'll do half the season, and then they'll do the second half of the season. But it's – I don't know if it's better or worse because now you get so far behind because you're like, well, I got this 13, I got that 13, I got – Well, but I think there's a difference between old shows, right, that, you know, Breaking Bad – Yeah, I'm talking about their originals. And then their original content. I actually think they killed out their original content because the people – All the Adam Sandler stuff is so awesome.

All the Marvel stuff they're doing. Oh, yeah, I love Marvel stuff. Boys, are you ready? I just caught this new Castlevania thing the other day. Yeah, that's pretty good. Which pretty upset me because I'm like – There's only six, though. How do you do – There's only six episodes. No, but that's the first half. That's part one. That means they dropped part one of it. There's only six. It's part one. I haven't gotten too far into it yet.

I was just waiting for Simon Belmont to show up. Stranger Things was the same way. That was weird. I saw six, and I'm like – I tried to – I thought it was only like 20. – close that Marvel show, the Iron Fist or the fist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That show was horrible. I got to – I'm still – I can't finish it. People loved that. But I – Really? It was fine. The first couple episodes – All right, this is pretty good.

Luke Cage. What's the other – Luke Cage. That was pretty good. See, I didn't watch – I only watched a couple episodes. It was the same thing with Daredevil. The first Daredevil was kind of slow, but then when they did the second one, it was all Punisher. See, that was one of my favorite series, was Punisher. And the guy they brought in from The Walking Dead, he did Punisher. Like, the subtle – just the way they wrote the stories.

Like, one of my favorite scenes in that was when he's getting dragged through the prison, and he first sees, like, the skull and the blood on the floor. And that was, like, how it came to mind. Like, they wrote – they were writing some really cool stuff. See, my wife just binge-watches the same stuff over and over again. Oh, god, man. Oh, like, repetitive, like, binge-watch? She'll get ready to go to bed. She'll put on John and Kate Plus 8 or some other stuff like that, and she'll just watch it.

And then the next night, she'll go back in, and when the series is done, she'll either find the next series, but she'll make her way back to the office or Parks and Rec, but then she'll just start over. I got too much new stuff to do that. Right, but no, no, no. She just likes the same stuff over and over again. Nah, I'm one of those people that – She listens to this podcast, so I should probably just shut up. I'm one of those people that if I'm binge-watching something, I feel guilty because I should be doing something else.

So if I'm going to binge-watch something, it's got to be awesome. Well, and I think that's actually her rationale. If it's something stupid that she doesn't really care about, she's already seen, she doesn't have to pay attention. She can fall asleep to it or whatever. I do think about that, but I think we all hit that time in like a month or a week. It was porn buckets in Tennessee on Saturday or something. So you couldn't go out. You couldn't mow the lawn.

There was no chores to do. So it was like, man, it's a rainy Saturday. I really don't want to be in front of the computer. So I'm literally going to sit here and veg out and let the dogs run around and watch a couple episodes of something or it's good to have it when you're on the planes and stuff because if you're on a long flight, you can catch up on some – I have a super long commute and it's one of those things that I wish we had the self-driving cars now so that I could just veg out.

You just got to get that Tesla 3. I got a buddy who's on that list. Just wait until he gets it. In Tennessee. He's going to be the only guy in East Tennessee with a Tesla. I said to him, where are you going to charge it? What's his address? What's that? What's his address? He wants to have it for a month. No, he won't have it for a month. Let's go get it. There's no charging stations in East Tennessee.

He's like, well, I'll charge it at home. I said, but then what? When you drive it from home, where are you going to get to? Back home. There's a couple of spots where, while my job doesn't have a charging station in the parking lot, there's Kohl's two miles away that has a charging port. My coworkers actually have – they'll drop their car off to the charging station and then just catch a ride in the rest of the way. I don't know.

There's something about just having an engine that purrs. You're way too American blooded. Yeah, you can get – What are you? True, I'm Dominican, but still. I don't mind the electricity. He doesn't need an engine. He just needs wheels. You can just buy a CD. No, man. See, I don't subscribe to that. I don't mind the electricity. Plus, it's easy in the pocket. I want to get to where I'm going. I don't care how it does it.

Up front, is it easy in the pocket? I mean, dude, your car, like, it scares people, dude. I don't have it anymore. It only scared you because you rode in the trunk. Well, that's another thing, too, probably. But that thing that says that you drive it, like, I'm going to kill you, basically. Like, if you get in the way. You shove it in the trunk with a jawbreaker in your mouth? You know, it's like totally like, come on.

I don't know. But I grew up with like, medadded cars. Muscle cars. American muscle cars. They're all muscle cars. But I just think that, I don't know. Something to be said to that. I'm down with that Tesla. Yeah, I don't know. It's not my... Let's say, where are the noise? We have been bringing the noise. We have been bringing the noise. It's gone everywhere. Completely random. Any vacation plans? Any time soon?

Anybody going anywhere? That's interesting. That's not a conference or a show? No, those don't even count. But, you know, the fact that we go to so many different countries and places, it's hard to vacation. Actually, I was talking to Rolison about this. My wife and I, the one thing we do every year is we always take a cruise. Because one, we like being on the ocean. Two, there's nothing to do but relax. But that's what we do every day.

We go on a cruise and just sip... I order drinks by color. Give me the blue one. Give me the blue one. You know what? I'm surprised. You can only get blue drinks on vacation. No, you can get them at my house too. But that's the one. Because we've started paying for the internet. Because the internet used to be ridiculous. It was like $10 a minute or something on a cruise. Oh, wow. But we won't even do it now because we want to get out and just go with friends.

Has anyone figured out why is it that none of these conferences, or anyone's decided to take one of those on a super hot cruise somewhere with a destination? Because you've got to take the boat for at least three days. Oh, like VMworld and all these things? I've been on cruise trips with companies before. Not a company. A conference. A conference at the sea. It's got to be like a three-day... Well, conferences are like a weekday. All right.

So if South Florida's listening, they could do it because out of Florida and Daytona, they do day cruise. No, I think like a VMworld on the sea. VMworld. The biggest ship on the ocean right now is 3,000 crew, 10,000 passengers. That's plenty. That's what Nutanix is next. I don't like 10,000 people. You don't even see them on a cruise ship. That's good because I don't like 10,000 people. They don't have to be 20,000. We can just do 10.

I like 12 people. That's about it. But you do that for a week? How much would that be? Well, let's see. VMworld. You do cruises. How much to go on a cruise? Per person? Average? Are you talking like suite or regular? Regular. Like an ocean viewer? Maybe 2,500, 3,000 bucks a week. That's VMworld, dude. That's right. Between hotel and conference. When you charter the ship. VMworld is better than your crappy conference.

It's actually good food. We might be on to something. We should just open up an event company. I'm telling you. Then there's entertainment on the ship. Yeah, you got the shows. You got the podcasts live. Yeah, you get all the pools. Episodes of home. Then you probably stop at some random port in some other country and you're like, break time. I don't know why they haven't done that. I like it. That's an idea.

I mean, it would be awesome. Let's do it. I'm not a big fan of the thought of a cruise, though. Why? I'm not a big water on the big open ocean water type of guy. Then after a couple of events a couple of years ago with the cruise ships getting stuck at sea, I'm good. That's kind of crazy. How does in today's world a ship get stuck at sea? The thing that scared the hell out of me, we did a tour.

My dad was in the Navy, so the last time I went on a cruise with my parents, we did the back. A couple of years ago, they started them back up. After 9-11, you couldn't do the bridge doors and stuff. So I said, well, pop, let's go do it. You had to pay for it and whatnot. But when you went down and saw the systems that run those things, it's like Windows 7, Windows 95. Brand new ships, but the software is so old.

From a technology perspective, it was some of the coolest stuff I'd ever seen because they're so self-sustaining. All of the garbage is incinerated. All the water is desalinized. It's all just taken out of the ocean, put back into the ocean, water treatment plants on board. It's literally you could have it out there for months, weeks, as long as it was diesel fuel, I think. Well, we know Windows is software defined, right? We established that in Vegas. Windows is software defined.

They wouldn't let me see the data center, though. I actually asked the chief engineer. I'm like, can we go check out the data center? He's like, no. Have you guys heard of some sort of potato sack race they have here? What? Here? Just in Indy or at the VEMO? It's going on right now. Right now, where? Let's go. The race is starting now. Who said that? Is that in the app? One of the Cohesity guys is running.

Is that guy the winner right there that just rolled by? I mean, in an actual potato sack. But, you know. No, that's weird. Yeah. But listen, I think we're onto something here. I'd just like a little change. I wouldn't mind. You front it. I'll show up. No problem. Me front it? I don't know. We'll need some people. Hey, Mr. Field CTO. Come on. My expenses have limits. That's not what you said last night.

I don't know what they are yet, but I don't think I can just come up with the cruise line and say, let's get on this and let's go talk to them. Let's get our nerd on. Honestly, it can't be that much because I have been on chartered trips where a company buys out the whole boat. So, if a corporation can do it for a company outing for a week. Let's do it. It's got to be less than that. I know.

I know for a fact VMware spends more than that just in lunch. So, they could do it. That'd be cool. You could even do two. I think you could have one leave one week and one leave another week. Oh, could they fight? And cross. No, they could fight. So, the different tracks, you've got to go across the different ships. That could be a little bit dangerous liability. No, they fight. We can talk about how that crossing is going to happen.

You can't even swim, can you? Of course I can. I swam to the United States. Oh, my goodness. He took it. See, but that was Alex Jones' good setup. I was setting that up for myself and he took it right away. All right. Well. That's noise, Floyd. Now that we have successfully created all of the noise, do you want to wrap this up? Let's wrap this up. Yeah. All right. So, I don't know if we want people to know where we can find everyone.

Yeah. I don't know. Who are you people and what do you do? My name is Marlo Brando. So, you can find me at the nearest Blimpy store anywhere around New York City. All right, guys. On that note, we're just going to wrap it and call it a day. Marlo's got to get some Chick-fil-A. Booyah. All right. I wonder why you keep gaining weight. No, I'm slim now. I'm sorry. He's just, I don't know.

I've never seen him like this. He's done. He's tired now. Are you driving back tonight? I am driving back tonight. You better have some caffeine. I might play this on the way back. I was going to say that. This will keep you up. This will keep you up. He may not post it. All right, guys. The spear, out.