My Next Challenge: Are You Working to Your Strengths?

Last night on Twitter the bomb dropped.  Yesterday was my last day of employment with VCE and shortly I will start as the Senior Director of Technical Marketing for Cloud at Citrix. I wanted to take some time to tell everyone about my journey to this role and how I believe my path could affect your career as well.

While the response was overwhelming and positive (I mean that, thank you everyone! I was floored at the response last evening on Twitter!), the number one question was “Why?”.  The answer to this question lies in knowing your strengths and constantly working outside your comfort zone to challenge yourself to do better things in our industry.

Over the last 16 years (has it really been that long?!) my career path has been mainly trial and error, with sometimes mixed results.  My “light bulb” moment actually came while I was recently doing some consulting for a company.  The entire company is based around the Strengths Finder 2.0 book and exam.  Everyone in the company is required to take it and their top 5 strengths are listed on the back of their badge.  As part of my time there, I took the test and learned a good bit about myself.  For those that are curious, my top 5 are Input – I love to gather input, Learner – I’m always learning, Achievement - I live by checklists and goals, Communication – I love to communicate, and Woo – Winning Others Over – I love to bring you to my side.

When I stepped back and thought about the portions of my role within VCE I really enjoyed I realized they often fit into one or more of my top 5 strengths.  From there it was a matter of trying to find a role that would allow me to utilize these strengths as much as possible.

By accepting this new position at Citrix I have found a role that I believe firmly fits all of my strengths and I’m very excited for the next phase of my career.  I challenge you to do the same.  Are you working to your strengths?  Do you naturally enjoy your core job functions?

In summary, go learn what makes you tick. Don’t wander around waiting for the next job to find you.  I suggest taking the Strengths Finder 2.0 test.  With that information, ask yourself are in the right role in your organization?  If not, Fix it!

NOTE: I bet you didn’t expect this article to go there, did you? For those looking for gossip/dirt on why I left VCE or would like to read more into my departure, please don’t.  VCE has treated me awesome over the last two years and we parted on very good terms.  VCE is doing just fine and I believe will continue to lead the converged infrastructure market for years to come.

Taking Back Your Privacy on Facebook

Facebook has become a great social networking tool but sometimes it can make you feel like a piece of personal information meat pimped out for Facebook profits.  Facebook's default privacy settings are wide open but after a bit of research and playing around, I found the following combination of settings that achieves the right balance between privacy and a public profile I am comfortable with.

By following the settings in this post you will have a Facebook Timeline that is set to Friends only viewing for both past and future posts.  In addition, you will have the power to approve when you are tagged before an item is posted, limit the information your friends' applications will be able to access, and lastly, disable people from subscribing to your public page.

Let's start by setting your Privacy Settings.

To access your Privacy Settings, click the down arrow next to Home in the upper right corner of your Facebook page and then click Privacy Settings.

• 1. Control Your Default Privacy - The first thing I would recommend is to modify the Control Your Default Privacy setting in the middle of the page to Friends if it isn't set already.  With this setting, all future posts will be viewable by Friends only unless you specify otherwise.

• 2. Limit the Audience for Past Posts - Next, skip a few down to the Limit the Audience for Past Posts setting.  I recommend limiting all past posts to Friends Only as well.  You never know what was set a few years back so it is better to be safe than sorry.  Click Manage Past Post Visibility on the right.

On the pop up screen click the Limit Old Posts button.  After that click Confirm on the next pop up and finally click Close on the last pop up.

• 3. Enable Timeline - If you already have Timeline for your profile, skip to the next step, How You Connect.  Now that you have set all past and future posts to Friends only, let's enable Timeline.  To enable Timeline, go to the Timeline page and click the big green Get Timeline button in the bottom right corner.

You can play around with what will be displayed in your Timeline and when you are ready, click Publish. Don't worry about getting your Timeline perfect right now, I'm going to write a post on how to control your Timeline soon.

• 4. How You Connect - If you enabled Timeline, return to your Privacy Settings (top right corner, click the down arrow, click Privacy Settings).  Click Edit Settings for How You Connect.  I'm OK with people getting in touch with me so I set mine to the following.  You may want to set your's differently.  Click Done when you are satisfied:

• 5. Timeline and Tagging - Next up we have Timeline and Tagging.  Click Edit Settings.  

In the pop up window, I accepted the defaults except for the third setting, Review Posts Friends Tag You In.  If you enable this setting, you will have the ability to approve any item before it appears on your Timeline.  It will still appear on their page but it won't show up on your's until you approve it.  I changed this setting to Enabled, Clicked Back, and then Done to return to the Privacy Settings Page

• 6. Apps and Websites - Next, on the Privacy Settings page we have the Apps and Websites setting.  Click Edit Settings.  

• 7. How people bring your info to apps they use - This is the second one down on the list.  Click Edit Settings.

The next setting is tricky and I took my settings from this article.  Even the title of the setting is confusing: How people bring your info to the apps they use.  Basically, if you are friends with somebody they can use an app to pull your information into that app (and that company has your information).  I just don't think this is cool.  I also don't really use a lot of apps or play games on Facebook. It just isn't my thing.  I would recommend that you just disable everything.  Click Save Changes.

• 8. Apps you use - The top setting is Apps you use, click Edit Settings.

The App Settings page will show all the applications you have given access to your data.  Do you really want all of these applications (and the company that makes them) to have access to your data?  If you are like me you will have a long list of applications (What 80's song are you, Pieces of Flair, etc.) you used once and haven't used since.  Click the x next to any applications that you don't use anymore.  You will get a pop up window asking you to confirm, click Remove.

• 9. Subscribers - OK, last setting for today, I swear.  Click on Subscribers on the left hand side.  By default, subscribers are enabled.  If you do not want this feature, uncheck the allow subscribers box.  I allow subscribers to my page but that is only so I can post blog announcements there.

By using all of the above settings you'll be safe from Mr. Zuckerberg's prying eyes, at least for now.  I plan to post about how to further secure individual posts on your Timeline as well as customize your news feed to your liking.  Look for those articles soon.  Thanks for coming by!

Posts used to create this article:

• http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_5_facebook_privacy_tips.php

• http://netsecurity.about.com/od/securityadvisorie1/a/How-To-Secure-Your-Facebook-Timeline.htm

• http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9223862/5_ways_to_secure_your_Facebook_profile_in_a_post_Timeline_world?taxonomyId=84&pageNumber=1

Let's Get This Party Started - P90X Day 1

This should be interesting.  Today I begin a journey that will involve a lot of pain but hopefully some great results.  With the assistance of VMware's Chris Colotti I'm committed to a P90X 90 Day Challenge. Today was Day One.  I just completed my first workout and the pain hasn't settled in yet, but I know it will.  I'm not going to turn the blog into a fitness blog but I will be posting my progress from time to time as well as the tools I'm using.

I'm also going to try to continue to run.  I've signed up for a ten mile race in April and a half marathon in May.  Right now I'm running 5-8 miles 3x a week.  I'll probably reduce that to start but I will do my best to continue my running in addition to the program.

Below is a breakdown of the tools, there are links to most everything from Chris' website.

• Standard P90X videos (they're hard enough!) - Right now I'm recording my workouts on the paper sheets instead of in the iPhone P90X app. I like to take a lot of notes and I use the bands instead of the pull up bar for now and the iPhone app doesn't seem as flexible for recording this information.
• Shakeology meal replacement once a day
• P90X pre-workout drink and post workout drink
• P90X protein bars for snacks (I bought a box but mainly to test them out and see the nutrition content. I really want to just buy something similar at the grocery store, time will tell if I can make this happen)
• P90X diet and website.  I signed up, took the pictures and measurements (that was embarrassing!) and I will be tracking my workouts there.
• I'm going to track my diet at Fat Secret per Chris' recommendation.  Seems like a great and easy to use website and has an iPhone app for food tracking

Wish me luck!

2012: It's Time To Say Something Different

I brought up this idea on our most recent episode of the Cloudcast (.net). Lately, I keep getting the feeling that we're stuck in a bit of a Cloud Time Warp.  It could be January 2011, not 2012 the way many conversations in the industry have gone recently.

Here are some questions to think about in 2012:

• Where are the new reference customers?
• Where is the new content?
• Where are the new things to talk about? 

It's time for the industry to bring something different to the table. Let's move beyond defining "the cloud" and providing a list of the same AWS reference customers that have already been used over and over again.

This is where my blog and our podcast will hopefully provide benefits in 2012. We have some great things coming! Happy New Year and I look forward to 2012!

2011 By The Numbers and a Change for 2012

A Quick Look Back on 2011

Wow - What an awesome year!  I can't thank everyone enough for taking the time to come by the site!!  I'm still amazed that anyone reads my articles.  Thank you again for all your time and I have some big plans for 2012.  Here are some stats for 2011:

• The total page views for my site as of today for the year will be: 209,139!!!
• I currently average around 20,000 page views per month
• Here's a screenshot from my stats page:

• I also hover somewhere between 700-900 RSS subscribers.
• Feedburner won't let me pull stats for the last year but lifetime I'm at 120,264 views and 20,566 clicks on links in my articles.
• Here's a screenshot from my RSS stats page:

If you combine the total page counts along with the 100,000 I had from my previousWord Press setup for 2007-2009 I'm sitting at somewhere around 425,000 views on my sites since starting blogging in January 2007.  If you would have told me almost half a million people will look at my site, I would have never believed you!

Lastly, Brian Gracely and I started a podcast (the Cloudcast) in February of this year and we have seen explosive growth over the last 9 months.  When I looked at the stats the other day over 20% of our total downloads were in the last 30 days!  We look forward to expanding the content and hopefully providing quality information to everyone!

What's in Store for 2012?

I recently changed roles within VCE.  I'll be leading a team that will specialize in management, orchestration, and automation products from our partners and parents.  The truth is I really don't do much with the underlying components anymore.  I plan to shift the focus of the blog going forward around these products and I also plan to go dabble in "cloud" products (AWS, OpenStack, CloudStack, etc.).  I'm really excited for 2012 and I hope you join me for the ride.

Thank You! Thank you! & Thank you again to everyone for coming by!!

vExpert 2011!

First of all, Congratulations to all of the VMware vExperts for 2011!

Yesterday I received the exciting news that I have been selected again as a VMware vExpert for this year.  I wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude to VMware for the excellent community program they have established.  The work they do and the organization of the program is truly amazing!  They have made many improvements to the program that I think will really add value to VMware and this site.

Everything I said in last year's post still stands, I'm still speechless.

How Do You Consume Virtualization News?

Quick open question for everyone: How do you consume your virtualization news?  How are you staying on top of the day to day happenings in the virtualization community?

The reason I ask is because I'm always wondering if there are ways to more efficiently consume the "fire hose" that is the virtualization community.  Here are my top ways:

1. Google Reader - I have RSS feeds for probably a hundred or so feeds (by the way the link to my RSS feed is here). I use Reeder on the iPhone to view Google Reader on the road.
2. Twitter - I watch Twitter constantly and favorite articles that I want to review later
3. Instapaper - I don't use it as much as I thought I would but I add articles to Instapaper for reading on the iPhone
4. VMware Communities Podcast - I listed this one out as a separate item because if you listen to nothing else, listen to this one podcast to stay on top of the industry.
5. Podcasts (& Stitcher Radio) - Check my Virtualization Podcast Directory.  I listen to as many as I can but I'm always behind.  I used to consume all podcasts through iTunes and direct downloads but more and more I'm using Stitcher Radio to stream podcasts so I can save the download times and bandwidth

There you have it, my top 5 ways to consume the news.  How do you consume your virtualization news?

A Traveler's Dream: New Trent Power Packs

This weekend I traveled to Pennsylvania with my family and one single device saved our sanity for the weekend; the New Trent 5000mAh Power Pack.  As we have made the switch from a Nintendo DS family to an iPod/iPhone Family (don't get me started on Nintendo and cost of games and keeping up with the cartridges) the only problem was keeping all the iPod's and iPhone's charged for the 8-10 hours in the car!

The power pack is just a big battery with a USB jack in the top and it will accept anything that charges from USB.  We could keep one device charging at any given time and the family was happy.  Add some brand new kids headphones that Santa brought the girls at Christmas and the drive was actually pleasant until the last few hours each way.

When I travel alone I carry it with me and the charge will last for days.  With the kids and multiple devices I had to recharge the pack every night but I was able to power all the devices for the day on a single charge.  They do make other models and even larger batteries if you have that need.  Very cool!

New Look to the Site

Sorry I haven't posted much in the last few weeks.  I've been catching up and sipping from the fire hose of information with the new position.  I took some time this weekend to catch up and clean up this site as well as an update to the design that will hopefully be a little cleaner and easier to read.  Please let me know what you think.  I've posted and replied to outstanding comments as well.

Now that I'm caught up you will see new content in the near future.  As always, thanks for coming by!

My New Role at Acadia - Forget What You Know About Acadia

Today is my first day in my new position at Acadia.  I will be managing a team under Jonathan Donaldson here in Raleigh at a new office we will be opening very shortly.  The office will be amazing!  My team (and other peer teams under Jonathan) will be responsible for integrating and certifying vertical solutions on the Vblock architecture.  In addition to this testing, we will be performing many customer facing engagements both in Raleigh as well as at major industry events throughout the year.

The mission of our team is new to Acadia.  This brings me to my next point: Forget what you may know about Acadia and the VCE Coalition today.  Things are about to change.  As noted by Chad's posting, Acadia is ramping up in a serious way.  We will be adding people to teams in a all areas including field technical, lab and solution integration, customer demonstration, and engineering & development.

I personally have two open positions right now but slots are filling up fast.  You will need to be in the Raleigh area or be willing to relocate (no, I can't offer relocation at this time).  I also have a few peer teams that need people as well.  Take a look at Chad's posting above and figure out what my new e-mail will be (hopefully it gets turned on later today) and shoot me your resume.  If it bounces, give it a day or two and try again until my mailbox is set up.  I can't promise to get back to you but I promise I will evaluate every one.

Will the focus of this blog change?


Honestly, it might.  I blog about what I get my hands on.  I hope to get some competitive gear in my lab at some point but for now I will have access to EMC, VMware, and Cisco.

What kind of gear will we be getting in the lab?


We need to go shopping.  We will order all types of Vblock hardware shortly and I'm sure I'll post more as we set it all up.  I plan to blog about the good (and honestly the challenges) that we face setting up this environment and learn how to make the Vblock a better product.

Will this become an Acadia Blog?


No it will not.  I plan to keep doing what I'm doing and Acadia will not be reviewing my content.  The disclaimer on the side of the page doesn't change.  I have a LOT of research I want to do around 10GB and FCoE solutions and I actually see this site turning into more of a resource for that than anything else in the near term.

Thank you for coming by!

Thank You to ePlus!

It's time to let the cat out of the bag...

This Friday will be my last day with ePlus Technology.  It wasn't an easy decision.  As a matter of fact, it is probably one of the hardest decisions of my career.  I was very happy in my position and I think ePlus is one of the best solutions integration companies out there, period.  I wish them the best, recommend them to anyone, and thank them for the last three and a half years!

I'm not ready to announce where I'm going but I do have something already lined up.  More on that another day but right now is a time for reflection and thanks.  Many out there have my ePlus contact information, if you don't already know another way to contact me, time is running out!

Thank you again to ePlus!!

Voting for Top 25 Virtualization Blogs is Still Open!

Just a reminder that voting for Eric Siebert's Top 25 Virtualization Blogs is open until this Friday the 24th.  Let's be honest with each other, I'm lucky I made the list.  If you feel like throwing a dog a bone, I would appreciate it!  Here are a few of my more popular articles from the past year.

• Virtualization Podcast Directory
• Cisco UCS Just Made VMware VMmark Very Interesting
• Cisco UCS QoS vs. HP Flex-10 NICs in VMware
• My #1 Issue with VMware ESXi Today
• Comparing NetApp SMT and VCE Vblock

Geek Love: NetGear RangeMax WNDR3700 Wireless Router

This is the first in a few posts on some of the gadgets & products that I find crucial to my "geek life".  I have never had much luck with wireless routers.  My previous router was dropping connections, couldn't copy large files, and suffered from poor bandwidth.  You name a feature, it sucked at it.  That's what I get for picking up a $60 router at Sam's club without reading reviews.

Fast forward a few months later, I decided it was time to put down some serious money on a good quality router.  After a good bit of research I found the NetGear RangeMax WNDR3700.  Here's the one word review of the product in case you are skimming: AWESOME!


Why do I love the product so much?  I have been using it for about a month now and I haven't touched it since the day I set it up.  No reboots, no dropped connections, and super fast wireless speeds for transferring large files.  The install went very well and the product doesn't include any crapware to load on your PC during the setup.  It also features auto firmware download from the management interface, very cool feature.

What didn't I like about the product?  So far the only thing I didn't like about the product is that it includes a guest network that is wide open as part of the default install.  I disabled that feature.  I would like to use it again someday for visitors but just haven't had the time to set it up with some security.

In the future I will post an update as I play with the advanced features (QoS, NAS drive sharing, Guest Network) but if you are looking for a high quality wireless router, you won't be disappointed.

Speechless: vExpert 2010

It has been awhile since I've been speechless (seriously, ask anyone who knows me).  Late Friday evening I received a e-mail from John Troyer confirming my inclusion into the VMware vExpert ranks for 2010!

In case you aren't familiar, VMware presents this award to individuals that have contributed to the greater VMware community in the last year.  I think of this as an Ambassador Program and I'm truly honored to be included.  I'm hoping 2010 will bring great things for VMware and the VMware Community and I will do everything I can to participate and to continue to produce content that is relevant to the community.

Congratulations to all the other vExperts out there this year and all I can really say is Wow - Thank You!!

My Next Step

Well, I can finally talk about it.  Last week at ePlus' National Sales Meeting in Orlando my new position in the company was formally announced.  We will be making some changes to the structure of our Engineering practice and I have been asked to help lead this transition.  Going forward I will serve as the National Practice Lead of Data Center.  My initial responsibilities will include the standardization of both our pre-sales and post-sales Data Center Practice as well as over sight of our National Data Center Lab facilities.  I will be covering servers, virtualization, storage, and layer 2 networking products.  I am very excited about this role and I believe this will produce very effective results!

Site Statistics

A few months back I applied Google Analytics to my site to get a better feel for the traffic coming to my site.  This in addition to FeedBurner for the RSS stats provides a very accurate insight into the popular trends and directions of the site.  Here are some of the highlights:

Site Traffic over the last 3 months:

• I average around 7,000 page views a month from 5600 unique visitors
• 54% of my traffic came from Google: popular searches included: netapp volume autogrow, aaron delp, netapp cheat sheet, netapp command line cheat sheet, cisco ucs, and vmware update manager
• My top referring sites include Scott Lowe's Blog (thank you Scott!), Tech Republic Blogs, NetApp Communities, FeedBurner, and Twitter
• Google Searches outnumber Bing Searches 70 to 1
• My top 5 posts in order
• Cisco UCS vs. IBM and HP: Where are the Brains
• NetApp Cheat Sheet
• It's Now All About the IOP's
• NetApp mbrscan and mbralign In-Depth
• Cisco UCS: How Many FEX Uplinks Do I Need?

RSS/FeedBurner Traffic

• I average 1k views a day on days that I post articles
• My feed is syndicated  VMware's Planet v12n
• Over the last 6 months my top 3 posts
• Cisco UCS Just Made VMware VMmark Very Interesting
• Cisco UCS QoS vs. HP's Flex-10 NICs in VMware
• Virtualization Podcast Directory

What did I learn?  I already suspected all the interest in the Cisco UCS articles but the NetApp Cheat Sheet surprised me.  I threw that up over a year ago as a brain dump for me when I was doing installs.  It doesn't get a lot of comments any more but it appears to be popular.  Based on this, I will try to give it a little more attention in the future!

Thank you to everyone for coming by!

Just Breathe

This post will not be technical in nature but I'm hoping you will take a minute to read it or at least skim it.  My life has been crazy the last few months.  As many others in our industry (Heck, almost everyone I know!), I've been pulling 10+ hour days and it just isn't enough to keep up anymore.  With the trend towards consolidation in the Data Center, many of us have been asked to cross into fields that we weren't experts in before.  We have had a very steep learning curve over the last year to "evolve to survive" in the industry.

But, I also need to keep the idea of work/life balance in mind at all times.  For those that don't know I've been married for going on 13 years now to a wonderful women and I have two daughters, ages 8 and 4.  To say my life is "fully booked" is an understatement.  The problem with life on the edge like this is there isn't a lot of margin for error.  I need every second (or at least it feels that way). 

Take this morning for instance.  I had to pick up my car from the shop.  My 4 year old was with me.  I took one look at the bill and it was all wrong, not all of the work was complete.  My head immediately went into over drive.  The work wasn't complete, How could they have missed this, I needed it done, I'm travelling next week, I don't have time to leave it now, need to go home and clean before the sitter comes, etc... Help!!

Then I did something I don't normally do.  I took a deep breath.  I looked at my 4 year old over in the corner playing with the toys.  I asked them what we can do to fix this.  They said they would fix it right now and it would take 30 minutes.  Normally I would have blown a gasket by now but I didn't.

My daughter and I went over to the grocery store and bought a few things so I could at least get that out of the way.  I played with her in the kid's area and we bought some cupcakes and had a little party.  Yeah, my entire day is now off and I'm behind the rest of the weekend.  Yes, I had 2-3 more blog posts I wanted to get out before EMC World and my company's sales meeting next week.  Yes, I still have 2 presentations to put together this weekend and about 30-40 e-mails to answer before Monday morning.  But, I also have a wife that I love more than anything and two wonderful daughters to show for it.  Sometimes you just have to take a step back and breathe...

Happy Mother's Day Kim!!  I Love You!!  Oh, and I didn't have a chance to get you a card this year so this will have to do.

My Frist 10k Race and a Bit of Catch-Up

This post will be a bit of catching up for me.  My life has been crazy the last few weeks, but crazy in a good way.  I ran my first 10k race in Charleston a few weeks back, it was my oldest daughter's birthday, Easter, a new job at ePlus (more on that later), and lots of travel to see family and just a bunch of real life things that have kept me away.

For those of you that follow running I wanted to tell you a little bit about the experience of my first 10k race.  Last August a neighbor and friend convinced me that I need to get myself in better shape and that I needed to give running a try.  Up until then I hadn't exercised on a regular basis in over ten years.  After a few weeks of running, I needed a big goal to keep me motivated.  I set my sights on a 10k race.  This seemed almost impossible considering I couldn't even run half a mile my first time out without stopping.

I set my sights on the Copper River Bridge Run in Charleston, SC.  My wife and I lived in Charleston for a year and this is THE EVENT of the year.  The Bridge Run is listed as one of the top 10k races in the world with around 40,000 runners.  Besides that, Charleston is a beautiful city and I knew I could convince others to make the trip with us.  The final total was 23 people from seven different families in our neighborhood.  We rented a house on the beach for four days and had a blast!  It was a vacation with a race in the middle of it.  Below are some pictures to give you an idea of what 40,000 people looks like (and our view of the beach!)


In closing, this wasn't the easiest thing I've ever done, as a matter of fact it was one of the hardest.  Getting up and running wasn't always fun but in the end it is worth it and now I'm addicted.  It is amazing how much better I feel on a daily basis now that I'm active again.

I'm proud to say that 8 months and a ton of dedication later, I'm 14 pounds lighter and I was able to achieve the goal of my first 10k race!  In case anybody is curious I finished the race in 64:40.  I'm hoping to crack 60 minutes for my next race.  I also wanted to take a moment to thank my lovely wife for allowing me the time to pursue this and encouraging me when I needed it.  I couldn't have done it without you!

My First Race (with Dougnuts)!!

Today I ran my first race!  I am very excited but this race also requires an explanation and some pictures.  A few years ago some NC State University college students started a challenge.  You had to race from the Bell Tower on campus to the local Krispy Kreme (about 2.2miles), eat a dozen doughnuts, keep them down, and run back, all in an hour.

I am training for my first 10k coming up at the end of March in Chrleston, SC so I thought this would be a good warm up for me.  The event is local, it was the right distance, and it is a little crazy and different so I was in.  I registered just in time because registration was cut off the day after I signed up at 6,000 runners.  Krispy Kreme's from all over the state made over 72,000 doughnuts and trucked them in for the race.  I signed up for the casual group meaning that I didn't have to eat the full dozen.  I ended up eating three.  I ran the race in 1:14 but that really doesn't matter because you stop half way through the race and hang out, eat doughnuts, drink water, and just enjoy the atmosphere.  Some highlights of the race to prove it is a little different:

• Mother and Daughter with KK T-shirts and the words "Family Bondin Southern Style" written on them
• The quote "3 hours sleep, 9 beers, 12 doughnuts, I'm starting to feel bad"
• We had the "privilege" off seeing two challengers "lose" their dozen doughnuts
• Got to see Fat Bastard, Elvis, Superman, Wonder Woman (it was a buy), Elmo, Cookie Monster and many people running in just shorts or underwear in 30-40 degree weather
• The famous quote "I'm never eating another doughnut again" more than once

Here are some pics: