Miscellaneous
Farewell Mrs. Speck. My life is better because of you.
Oct 20th
I’m in New Orleans. This is arguably one of the funnest cities on earth (or so I’m told, this is my first time here). But despite the crazy night life and all the energy outside, I type this blog post sitting in a dark hotel room with a stiff drink in my hand. I’m not in the mood to venture outside right now. The vodka tonic helps blur a reality I keep avoiding.
Just a few short hours ago, while sitting in one of the sessions at the SpringOne 2GX event, I received an email from one of my oldest and dearest friends. His mother, Martha Speck, lost her battle with cancer. A battle that began a mere two weeks ago and frankly, a battle that I didn’t even know was being fought until today. While reading his message, I found myself trying not to break down in tears in front of 50 of my peers in the session. And my emotional response came as somewhat of a surprise to me because it had been a number of years since I’ve spoken to Mrs. Speck. But when someone touches your heart and life, time is irrelevant.
Do you have a teacher that you identify as the one person who really inspired you? I do. It was Mrs. Speck. She was my English and Creative Writing teacher in high school. Anyone who had Mrs. Speck for Creative Writing at Liberty High School knows what an incredible teacher she was. Steve and I actually had her class together at the same time. I’m sure that must’ve been a bit strange for her. Can you imagine? Her son and her son’s best friend sitting in the back of the classroom thinking they could get away with murder. Oh and we tried! We were young and stupid and tried to take advantage of the situation with all sorts of crazy nonsense. But she handled our antics with the perfect blend of class, humor and discipline. We got away with more than we probably should have, but not nearly as much as we wanted to! And somehow, through it all, I came out of her class with a passion for writing … something I certainly didn’t have going in to her class. She exposed and cultivated a latent passion within me and therefore she, in no small way, had a hand in shaping my future. If you think about it, this very blog is the result of her inspirational teaching.
But her inspirational teaching, in and of itself, wouldn’t make me well up with tears. You see, Mrs. Speck was once known to me as my “second mom.” During my high school years, her son Steve and I were the best of friends and we shared most of our free time together. This, of course, means that I had the fortuitous opportunity to spend a lot of time with Steve’s family. His mother, father and sister became my second family as I shared countless evenings and weekends with them. It was a great time in my life filled with so many wonderful memories.
But despite the wonderful memories I have of my time with Steve and his family, right now as I sit here in this dark hotel room, I am overwhelmed with deep sadness and regret. Deep sadness because an amazing, brilliant woman who played a significant role in shaping my future, and more importantly, a woman who I once called “mom,” is gone. And I feel deep regret because as my life has taken me all over the world, it has been years since I’ve seen or spoken to her … something I will never be able to rectify.
At the end of the day, I believe the only thing we can hope for (as far as this earthly life is concerned) is to leave the world a little bit better than we found it. In fact, I believe there is no higher compliment than to simply say, “my life is better because of you.” This is a compliment I would pay to more than one person in my life for sure, but also to be sure, the list would be extremely short. So let me say, with a tear on my cheek and with all the sincerity and love in my heart …
Farewell Mrs. Speck. My life is better because of you.
New home for the blog (and me)
Aug 20th
I’m not sure if anyone noticed (or cared), but the blog was down over the weekend. The reason is that I run my blog server out of my house and on Saturday we moved to a new neighborhood in Cincinnati. And while virtualization can do wonders for server availability, it can’t do much when your servers are sitting in the back of a moving truck! 
Man, what an ordeal. Moving is such a pain in the butt!! Now, I’ve moved plenty of times in my life, but it’s been as a bachelor and I didn’t have a lot of stuff. Now that I have a wife, son and two dogs … holy cow!! I think I said the phrase “how in the world did we get so much crap?!” about 400 times over the past three for four days. But now we’re all settled in to our new home in Hyde Park, I got my Time Warner Internet set up and I got my servers unpacked and powered on in the basement.
My wife and I are excited about this new area. Hyde Park is a very cool place to be. The picture above is of Hyde Park square and was taken in 1901. Here’s a quick blurb from a Hyde Park website …
Hyde Park was named after Hyde Park in New York and is one of the 52 neighborhoods that make up Cincinnati located on the east side of the city accessible via I-71. It was once a suburb before being annexed by Cincinnati and is the wealthiest neighborhood in the city. It is home to stately, well-maintained homes with manicured lawns and tree-lined streets. The business district is called Hyde Park Square and offers an array of upscale restaurants, boutiques and galleries.
This morning I walked down to the Hyde Park square, which is about three blocks away from our new house, and got some coffee for my wife and I. Last night, we walked to Beluga, my wife’s favorite sushi restaurant. This was NOT possible in our old house because we were way out in the country. Of course, this kind of convenience could be dangerous for the waistline, and the wallet!
Anyway, the blog is back online. BUT, if you’ve been trying to email me at my sweemer.com or virtualinsanity.com email address, then I have not been getting your messages. See, I *thought* I had ordered business grade Internet service from Time Warner which would allow me to run a mail server. But evidently I got the consumer grade service, which blocks port 25. I corrected the problem yesterday, but it will take a few days for the service to get upgraded. So for the next few days, email still won’t work. Until then, I can be reached at asweemer [at] gmail [dot] com.
A New Look for Virtual Insanity
Dec 27th
I have not been completely happy with the look and feel of our little blog, so I’m tinkering around with a couple differnt themes that catch my eye. But whatever I settle on will only be a temporary change. The reason is I’ve decided to employ the services of a talented web designer. So for the short term, I’ve installed a new WordPress theme. And I may change it again over the next few weeks and (or months). But in the background, a more permanent web design is in the works and when it’s ready, I’ll make a final change to blog. Wish us luck as we begin the creative process
Merry Christmas!!
Dec 25th
I hope that in the midst of all the gift giving and feasting, you take a moment to remember the real reason for the season. May your generosity this season extend throughout the entire year, and may it return to you ten fold. May you have an attitude of forgiveness for those who have wronged you, and compassion for those less fortunate. We live in extraordinary times and I know I often find it hard to see much good in the world. But I’m a believer, and I believe that ultimately everything can, and will, be used for a greater good. And for the next few days, I will rest and try to focus my thoughts on what I’m grateful for. I hope you’ll be able to do the same. So with that, I’m going to go re-join my family in the other room and turn off the computer. Here’s wishing you and your family a Merry Christmas, and a very prosperous 2009.
–The Sweemer Family
Welcome To Myself
Oct 30th
Hello all,
My name is Rick Westrate. Aaron Sweemer has been gracious enough to invite me to contribute some I (hopefully) insightful content to his snazzy new site. Now what in the world would qualify me to comment on the world of virtualization you ask? Let’s set the record straight. I certainly do not claim to be the authority on the subject. However, I do believe my 11 years of experience in the enterprise IT industry and my position with my employer, VMware, provides me with an occasional unique perspective on the virtualization industry. Before joining VMware, I worked as a consultant focused on a wide array of datacenter technologies ranging from VMware virtualization, large Citrix PS implementations, (woops, it’s called XenApp these days), and storage arrays implementations (primarily EMC). These days, I work as a Systems Engineer in West Michigan, focused on large Enterprise Accounts. I travel around spending time with customers, listening to their problems, concerns, and needs. I then work with them on walking through and understanding the many game-changing solutions VMware provides. It’s certainly an exciting time to be in the virtualization industry. The pace of innovation, and change is amazing. SO, hello to you all! Hang on tight and stay tuned. I will be publishing some additional content soon. I look forward to interacting with everyone and hearing what you have to say!
VirtualInsanity.com update
Oct 20th
Well, it’s taken about two weeks, but I finally got the VirtualInsanity.com domain transfered to me. And this morning I reconfigured my webserver to accept the new domain. So at last, this blog can officially be accessed via VirtualInsanity.com!!
Now that the new domain is in place, I expect posts from the new authors to arrive shortly. Also, “Aaron’s Calendar” is removed from the top navigation and I’ll be adding at as a link to the sidebar.
Finally, I’ll leave Sweemer.com alone for now, but please be sure to update your RSS feeds because sometime in the near future I’ll be using Sweemer.com for a personal website.
That’s it for now. Have a great day!
VirtualInsanity.com
Oct 7th
Well after much internal debate, I decided to bite the bullet and buy the VirtualInsanity.com domain. We’re in the process of transferring the ownership of the name right now, so it will be a few more days before it goes live. But my guess is that within the next week, this site will move away from Sweemer.com to VirtualInsanity.com.
So for those of you that have this blog on an RSS feed or check here on a semi-regular basis, make sure you update your bookmarks accordingly.
Oh, and it looks like I’ve got a few more authors who will be joing me here at Virtual Insanity. Keep an eye out for some posts from authors other than myself!
And so it begins
May 31st
Well here we go. I’ve completely changed the direction and focus of this blog. This used to be a place where I would post little bits of information and humor about my family and my life. But I’ve decided that, at least for now, I want to focus on a blog about my professional life. And if you can’t tell by the title of the blog, I’ll be talking about virtualization and other next generation technologies. I’m not sure how long this journey will last or where it will take me. But I know that it’s a journey that I want to take. So, here we go, let the journey begin …