So how was VCF Midwest?

This report will be terse, only because I can't keep my eyes open any more tonight.... Evan wrote... VCF/Midwest v2.0 was a BLAST.... this year had a fair amount more floorspace in active use than last year, a good sign. VCF/M is alive and growing :) Friday night a large group of us met for some awesome Indian food at a buffet, then got a tour of the Purdue datacenter. The IBM pSeries 1600 supercomputer cluster was the high point of my own walk through (even though it runs AIX ;) ). I have to admit, I think most of the million+ dollar pricetag is for that cute gold stripe down the front ;) Watching the Adic tape library robot come screaming down the racks and stopping about 8 inches I was rather disappointed in that I couldn't find a single "emergency pull" button to hit *sigh*. Although... there was this rabbit trap on the wall with a wooden stick holding up the.... (Pat, someone should write on the front of that panel "shhhhh be vewy vewy quiet... I'm hunting wabbits"). After the tour we attempted to go see Pat's own personal datacenter in downtown Lafayette, but the police who cordoned off a couple block radius around his datacenter had other ideas. They weren't talking, but we were able to come back the next day. I did get pictures of some of the datacenter (Purdue's) which I'll post if Pat says it's ok. Saturday it took quite a few hours to get everyones stuff from the loading docs to the exhibit room. There were around five flattrucks and many people working them continuously for a few hours. I liked all the displays, but I think my own favorite was the "Geek Museum" due to the gamer in me. I did manage to take a lot of pictures of the exhibit hall during the show. I know there was some concern about if there would be any speakers lined up for the show. Let me tell you - it was worth anyones plane ticket price and then some to see/hear the two speakers (George Goble and Mike Marsh) talk about their creation of the dual processor Vax 11/780. That was pure, unadulterated Classic Computer heaven. I think they went slightly over the time allowed, and I was hoping they'd still keep right on going. I am hoping that Pat can make that tape available for purchase - if so, I will be buying a copy and I'd strongly encourage others to as well. It was chock full of exactly the type of fascinating tidbits that we all love, like why they had to set the drives to seek when idle to avoid a headcrash. Or how to tell of an impending "drives gone critical" (no relation to the late night video advertisement) by the strobe pattern effect of the top surface. There was also some fascinating discussion of some of the problems they had with certain instructions failing when they resided in the last few bytes of a page. For the next "speaker", several of us (myself, Tom Uban, and Dan Cohoe) were recruited to sit on a discussion panel with Jack Rubin just a couple hours before it was to start. It was hard to tell for sure from my view, but I think this actually came off fairly good - mainly due to great points by Tom, Dan, and Jack rather than myself :) After the show we spent many hours carting off everyones gear to the loading doc (you should see the pictures of it all stacked up waiting for loading). Then a large group of us went to the same Italian restraunt as last year and it was just as good again (by the way, George Goble went with us and was still fascinating to listen to). Good food and beer was enjoyed :) After leaving the restraunt we headed to see Pats own "slightly crowded" datacenter. Let's just say that it's a good thing his building doesn't have a basement. Anything other than cement slab over bedrock would surely give way at the plethora of mainframe gear. Pat, that microwave looks sorely out of place. Actually, it looks very scared.... Of course I enjoyed this part of the evening as at this point I consumated a trade with pat that allowed me to put some new (to me) DEC gear on my trailer. Yup, my trailer was present. As was a fire extinguisher (J/K). My favorite part of the trip - assisting around five other guys with loading Dan C's newest acquisition in to his minivan. An IBM RS/6000. And not just "any" RS/6000. It was an SP machine. Think Cray (as to appearance {and size/weight}). Yes, I did say minivan. I don't think I've ever laughed quite so hard as seeing the precise way that the forklift moving forward and van moving backward was choreographed to get the machine, base pedestal, and two of the four processing nodes in that minivan. Along with a lawn mower (don't ask). I don't recall what time we started loading this machine, I am guessing around 10:30 or so. I do know that it took until around 2am. I have lots of pictures of this operation, including a side view of the minivan's wheel well (or lack thereof). I belive I did hear a leafspring cry out. Thank god CarFax doesn't track that kind of information or Dan may have trouble selling the vehicle some day ;) The next morning a few various groups met at separate places for breakfast or to complete personal trades. I myself left around 10am to head back to St. Louis. Oh, by the way.... folks looking for DEC gear that didn't show up to VCF/M missed out - Paul Anderson was there with a large amount of great gear for sale. I was like a kid in a candy store with the M module card inventory, printsets, documentation, tapes, and even a nice RK05 drive. Overall, I think VCF/M v2.0 was a great success. That being said, I humbly submit that we can still grow it further and be better still next year. I want to publicly thank (and commend) Pat for pulling the event together and making it happen. He deserves a round of applause and thanks! I (and I know for sure others) are already really looking forward to VCF/M v3.0. Jay West PS - Pat, I really did like the new VCF/Midwest v2.0 T-shirt. Don't forget to send me an "L". Where do I sent the money?