May
1

Last week I attended the MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara. I came away with attaining my Certified MySQL 5.0 Developer designation, a relief once the testing was over. I was MySQL Core certified years ago, and now I'm upgraded.

Overall, the sessions got me thinking outside of the little box I work in - the office - to explore all the great things people are doing that I don't get to see everyday. Some things I really enjoyed hearing about:

  • Memcached
  • Gearman
  • The giving of the "MySQL Acquirer of the Year" award to Oracle, from the previous year's recipient Sun
  • Drizzle
  • RightScale presentation about automation of load balancing in Amazon EC2, to pay an "average" use rate, and not get out of bed to launch new servers
  • Michael "Monty" Widenius' presentation of MariaDB, including opinionated barbs about the new Sun acquision and release announcement of MySQL 5.4 (very entertaining)

Aside from technology, I was in the right place at the right time later in the week in Berkeley to see a documentary film: Anvil! The Story of Anvil (trailer). I was blown away by how good it was, and the trailer does not do it justice. I, and the other thirty or forty viewers in the small theatre, was fortunate the director Sacha Gervasi answered questions after the "sneak preview". He conveyed some stories about his history with Anvil, about the filming, and Dustin Hoffman at the Los Angeles premiere, etc. The trailer portrays it like a real-life Spinal Tap (a good way to get people in the door), but it is funny and serious. I think anyone would enjoy it, so go and see it if you can (i.e. you do not need to be a big heavy metal music fan).

What was so inspiring was to see how Steve 'Lips' Kudlow and Robb Reiner had not given up after so many decades. I wish I was in the Bay area this weekend, because on Sunday (May 3rd), the showing at the Bridge Theatre in San Francisco will conclude with a live Anvil performance! The film is now opening on more screens now, you can check out the web site to find where to see it if you don't live in the select theatres.

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