As I sat in front of my computer Sunday evening, after the Cowboys flat out destroyed the Eagles in reality, just about to go play a few of my favorite Facebook games, I noticed a link to an article that I knew I had to read. I will give the writer his due at the end of the blog so you can read it for yourself and form your own opinion; but, I must say it was quite humorous.

Its title alone can be answered in one word I believe, and; the tag line under the picture in the article is simply amazing.

The title is “What does Farmville Mean for Farmers?” Wait for it… Wait for my one word answer… Nothing! The lone picture in the article is of some crop squares looking freshly plowed with no crops growing and a small avatar frowning instead of smiling with a single tear rolling down his cheek. The line under the picture states, “Stop caring about your virtual farm and start caring about real ones.” To quote the younger generation all I have to say is, “Really? Really?”

At first, I am thinking that farmers worldwide are neglecting their crops and prices are going up on wheat, corn, fruit, etc. I decided to read further. “The Sun Always Shines. Pink cows produce strawberry milk. Soybeans take two days to grow and ripen. Something is not right. It’s too clean. Nothing smells. Coffee beans grows next to squash.” Ok. At this point, I am having a hard time trying to correlate this to “actual” farming. By the way, it hasn’t gotten any clearer.

The author then goes on to discuss how virtual farming can be relaxing and give you a virtual country calm . It can transport you “somewhere else for a minute or an hour.” I can’t decide if the author thinks this is a good thing or not. I personally do. Sometimes it’s nice to just sit and click and not think about everything else going on in the world. Carpel tunnel or no carpel tunnel, it is just harmless mindless, clicking; oh and, you might make a new friend in a new state at the same time. I have a few myself. I have never met them in person, but they are nice folks and we have fun playing the games.

Then it takes a turn for the worse; the author suddenly switches from a social game to reality. He describes the trials of a person and her homesteading experience. After trying to live off the land, her marriage crumbed and she was forced to move back to the city. I am not making lite of the hardship of farmers with this blog—as I know this is a very hard lifestyle. In my neck of the woods, I see rows of corn never produce because of a lack of rain and end up baled for hay. I see winter wheat turn to dust. As it will this week when we have 3 days of freezing temperatures; and, the plants just aren’t big enough to make it through it yet. There are forces of nature that farmers just have to deal with and hope for the best; but, let’s not blame a Facebook application for their trials.

The final sentence in the article states, “It’s time to support actual small farmers and stop playing around.” I can agree with that statement. Maybe the makers of Farmville could start a fund for small farmers that are deserving of help, maybe. But the folks that actually play the game have no business driving the modern equipment used by farmers. So, please don’t ask them to show up at local farms and ask to help. That would be a huge social reality mess!

Normally this is the place where I would try to somehow tie this into SoftLayer, but in this one I am just drawing a blank.

For your reading and commenting pleasure http://www.good.is/post/What-Does-Farmville-Mean-for-Farmers/?GT1=48001.

The show about nothing that took over NBC years ago is being lived out at SoftLayer. In case you haven’t been keeping up, SoftLayer has a team called STAT and without making you sit through the gory details we use ninja tactics in our efforts to keep the churn rate low. Much like the show Seinfeld which was about everything and nothing at the same time, the STAT group does everything and nothing as well.

It has been said that the team does simply enough to stay employed and we get a little grief from just about everyone in the company but I just blame the stealthy ninja tactics for all that. We haven’t built a bed under our desks just yet but a prototype is being designed as we speak. When the products, support, and culture are so cool why would customers want to leave?

The STAT group has been around since the dawn of time (2008 to be exact!) and have many years of tradition handed down which we must use daily to complete our mission. Some of the traditions have gone away over the long journey since our inception like a loud and proud bell ring when a customer was saved. It seemed to annoy some of our non SLeinfeld co-workers. Those crazy developers said “No bell for you!” There are other traditions that have gone away over time but we continue to make more as often as possible.

Our latest episode is a pretty cool one so we will not be “jumping the shark” just yet. It is one that the industry may have never seen. If so, it is very rare and this makes the STAT team very proud. In the on-demand virtual datacenter industry, churn is defined as, “when a customer doesn’t want your services anymore!” That being said we have designated churn as a bad thing (like Elaine dancing!). A higher churn percentage is not as good as a lower one. Get the picture? From this day forward let it be said that in October 2009 the STAT team and every other person involved with SoftLayer including every employee in every department and our resellers and customers have achieved a monumental goal! The year over year churn numbers are equal in raw numbers and LOWER in percentage for the month of October. When you incorporate the sales growth into that equation this is an impressive accomplishment because typically when you add servers month after month the churn rate grows due to sheer volume. So I say to everyone involved, take a few hours today and go hit some golf balls into the ocean (except Jones), you deserve a break!

Just know that the next time the hair on the back of your neck stands up and you feel like someone is watching you or their might be someone or something lurking in the shadows and Kramer doesn’t burst through your door, don’t be frightened it is most likely just a STAT team member waiting to help you in a time of need or maybe just goofing off in a relatively close proximity to you and creating yet another day in SLeinfeld land.

RIP Seinfeld!

American cars aren’t reliable. That is what the 70’s and 80’s taught me. Up until then it was about the only choice. Enter the Datsun’s, Toyota’s and Mazda’s they were lower priced and didn’t break down as often and it wasn’t like breaking a chicken bone to turn on the blinker. Today, American cars are much more reliable and the 3 or 4 I have had in the last 10 years have had few or no problems at all. But ask anyone my age and you got it; America cars aren’t reliable. You know what they say, “perception is 9/10th’s of the law” or is that possession. Oh well.

Would you rather have an RCA Small Wonder or Flip Video device? I bet that due to the great marketing minds of the world and the type of folks that read blogs you want the Flip Video and you are now on Google trying to find out what the heck an RCA Small Wonder is. This is probably more related to marketing but even now that you have searched and you know what the Small Wonder is, which would you buy? It’s the perception that RCA is old and wasn’t and still isn’t very reliable. It’s also why Radio Shack is now just The Shack, it was time to rebrand because Radio Shack was for the “Bolt-On” generation and The Shack is for the “integrated” generation. Where is all this leading?

In a recent meeting I was asked why we sell more LAMP stack operating systems (RedHat, CentOS, Debian, Etc.) than we do Microsoft Servers and the point was made that there is still the perception that Windows in insecure and has lots of bugs. I believe Microsoft has a huge mountain to climb to rid the world of this perception whether it is true or not, much like the American auto industry. Even if they release a secure and stable product today, and they have, it would still take many years for our society to realize it. Why? Because much like RCA, Microsoft was around when technology was just starting to become cool. As Lance (our CEO) would say, “RCA and Windows NT Server came out in a time period when the people using them were in a bolt-on mentality and today’s users are fully integrated into the technological lifestyle.” What does that mean? The bolt-on generation saw things happen and had do adapt: knobs on TV’s became remotes, rotary phones became push button became cordless became bag became cellular phones, arcade games became pong became Atari became Nintendo became Wii video games, Commodore became IBM XT became clones (running Windows 3.1) became Dell (running Windows 95) became servers (running NT4.0) became the Internet (running LAMP stacks and Windows servers), and this list could go on and on. I think I need a t-shirt that says “I’m a Bolt-on”. My kids however, are fully integrated into this lifestyle and don’t realize how bad some things were in technology to get to where we are today. They wake up every day and technology is everywhere they turn. Of course technology still changes quickly and people have to adapt, but the changes aren’t as life changing as they were when technology was young. The bolt-on society is much more forgiving of mistakes with technological advances where the integrated society wants perfection. They hear on TV and the radio that Windows is insecure and had/has bugs and they want instant gratification and perfect technology. Some of the bad stigma Windows has is due to the bolt-on generation using Windows desktop software and applying those bad memories to the new Server products from Microsoft. If Vista is unstable and insecure then Server 2008 must be as well, right? Linux, on the other hand, was a server OS first and then became a desktop tool. It just didn’t get scrutinized like the Windows OS’s and since it’s desktop product isn’t as mainstream its issues are mainly low key and under the radar.

Microsoft has some challenges in the coming years and may need to take a few lessons from the American car manufacturers and “The Shack”. I believe a large separation of the desktop OS’s and the Server OS’s is needed and it all starts with rebranding the server choices. Maybe the desktop OS keeps the Windows name but change the Server Operating System to “Insert cool trendy name here” and drop Windows from it completely. This is just my opinion and I could be wrong.

This was a long read so I think I will go get in my unreliable American truck and hit the road, I am just 33,000 miles from hitting 300K!

Ok, I admit it. I am addicted to Facebook games. For those of you who are a bit “long in the tooth” you might remember a series of games from a certain era where all you did was walk around and try to figure “it” out, but you really didn’t know what “it” was. Zork for instance was my favorite. In Zork you simply walked around and talked to people, touched walls and things rumbled, and picked up and dropped items. etc. Now don’t misunderstand, you didn’t see this happen, it was all in your head because the only thing on the screen was text. Think of it like the hit TV show LOST in text and you were John Locke. Are you LOST yet? Here is an example:

Facebook has taken us back to the world of Zork but now you can almost see what is going on. Let’s use the early on Mobster style games as example number one. They were sleek and simple; do a job, fight someone, whack someone on the hitlist, write a script, find a bot to do it all for you and become a “made man”. Now, the main idea in these games is ad generation and page views, so when the techies of the world figured out how to cheat, um I mean make the game more efficient, it was time to add some new ideas to the games to keep you more in tune to your monitor and the ads on the page instead of your bot! Enter the flash games, they are shiny and I like shiny things! Maybe the word should be polished. There are a few farm simulation games that are very popular. A couple of them have over 18 million monthly active users. Who would have thought that everyone in the world wanted to move to Texas and become a veggie farmer, or berries, or raise animals and fruit trees? I have to say that the new games are to carpel tunnel as Krispy Kreme is to clogged arteries. You have to click and then click a little more and then even a little more. You have to do tasks, so you can do jobs, so you can move up in levels so you can do more tasks to do even more jobs to make more money and it just keeps getting more involved. Maybe there is a flash automation system out there I can find to do it for me!

I am going back to the farm idea for a minute. When I started out I had a couple of small plots and I would plant different crops. I had a few animals walking around and a fruit tree or two, some fences, some green space in between and flowers. I began to notice that some of the extra shiny things got in the way and made my farm very inefficient. I began to streamline, one crop, no green space because that is just wasted, no animals, just plant the whole screen, harvest and plow, rinse and repeat. It is now very profitable, easy to manage and I don’t have to worry about this crop will be ready in 2 hours, that crop will be ready in 2 days, etc. It just works!

So I have just described SoftLayer to you in a nutshell. At first we tried many things, streamlined it, got it down to a very efficient science automated “it” and then wrapped products around “it”. Our products are shiny, we don’t waste space, we have one crop, and it just works!

So here I sit cramped in a seat built for a 10 year old on American flight 1492 from New Orleans to Dallas. There isn’t enough room left for a marshmallow I bet. Yep, I am thankful I just left the site of the Microsoft WPC 2009 where I had to do a little booth duty and mingle with some folks that run the coolest companies out there. The show seemed a little different this year. Last year the recession was just getting going and gaining some steam. The big companies still had previously budgeted money to burn and were doing just that. They had very large booths and better swag and Microsoft rented Minute Maid Park in Houston and threw quite the party. This year was noticeably different. I would bet that over 50% of the people that came by our booth were international which tells me that US companies are still cutting back. One very large US Company wasn’t even at the show and they were a flagship last year. One of our much larger competitors was barely existent, a flyer here a business card there and most other companies had much smaller booths and the swag was just not quite as enticing. Thankfully my kids like anything so they will still be extremely happy with the 3 bags of stuff I was able to round up. I am thankful that SoftLayer was able to hand out just over 1000 cool SoftLayer Frisbees (boomers to our international friends) and 200 cooler bags. The boomers were a great hit at the show and as far as I know no one lost an eye in the process of handing them out. Microsoft still put on a great show and “The Party” at the House of Blues was really cool. I just wish one year they would actually send me the email so I could get the wristband instead of standing in the slacker line.

Enter the ton of bricks that hit me. I am extremely thankful and 99% percent sure, no wait, I am 100% sure that I work for the coolest and one of the fastest growing companies out there. Thankfully after a week of spreading the word about SoftLayer I am on this flight back home. Thankful the pilot knows how to fly and land this jet. Thankful the flight attendant just gave me some lukewarm orange juice. Thankful I remembered to take my laptop out of the bag I checked this time but still managed to leave my cell phone in the checked bag! I am off my leash!

Ok so back to my subject.

I am Thankful this is almost my 2 year anniversary at SoftLayer. Thankful the guys that started this place and the great minds they have added along the way are really running a top notch company. Thankful that I wake up every day excited about my company and my role, thankful that SoftLayer lives within our means, and thankful the things we spend money on are for one thing, to make our product better and our customers happy. Thankful we do not waste on the posh extras that some other companies brag about. Thankful that once a customer tries us out and understands what our system is capable of they rarely ever leave. Thankful SoftLayer has great punch and people drink it regularly with pride, both customers and employees alike. Thankful that our products have the ability to help struggling companies in this down economy and we continue to grow because of it. Thankful we are setting sales records and our churn rates are much lower than this time last year. Thankful word is spreading on how we can let a company hold on to their capital for other expenditures and simply pay monthly for their IT needs on demand. Thankful we have a plan and we stick to it. Thankful we know what we are great at and don’t try to be everything to everyone wasting countless hours complicating our business plan. Thankful I can sleep at night knowing I am at a stable company and I don’t have the worries that many people in our country have during this recession. I wish everyone affected by the recession a fruitful second half of the year and hope that everyone can start recovering from the current hardships.

Oh and I am thankful that the flight attendant has moved along to the folks behind me and is finally finished booty bumping me every 3 seconds and thankful we are 45 minutes from DFW!

And I know…… you are thankful……. that this blog is ending……. Thanks for reading…….thankfully……

Wow, where did we come from to get to here?

How many readers remember being your Dad’s remote control for the TV, heating a bit of oil that covered the bottom of a pan till it sizzled to make popcorn, percolating coffee pots, wondering how long it would take for enough hot water to take a shower after your primping older brother hogged it all? What about “fast” forwarding cassette and VCR tapes or thawing a chicken breast for hours on the counter? The list goes on and on.

My absolute favorite was sitting around on a Friday night at about age 10 at the baby sitters with my brother listening to the radio just hoping that “Shake your Booty” would come on the radio so we could record it instead of having to go buy it.

The amount of time we used to sit around waiting for things to happen was huge! Today, it’s all in an instant!

We have five remote controls or at the very least one really smart one that can do it all. Microwave popcorn that takes minutes and no cleanup, instant coffee – just add water, instant hot water heaters that never go cold, mp3 players that you can just click and go from song to song with no waiting; DVD/DVR that you can just go from scene to scene or skip those boring commercials… and you can use that same microwave to thaw your chicken in no time at all.

Today you can be listening to the radio in your car and click a button and it will tell iTunes what song it was and queue it up for your next download, you just have to love technology and the speed at which it happens.

I also remember the days when we had a rotary phone with an 82.5 foot cord that you could string across the house to the bathroom or in front of the TV and keep talking. Then it became the wall phone with the 84 foot stretchy cord and the number keys were on the handset, how cool was that? It never failed though- no matter how long the cord, you always needed more!

Today, you can Facebook, Tweet, chirp, yell, chat, and instant message from just about anywhere, even from a Jet Blue jet flying through the air. That is just pretty cool stuff.

In my previous life before I became a booth babe and a bloghogger I was known for being fairly technical in the world of Microsoft Windows Server and Citrix MetaFrame. They actually worked pretty well for a few of the company apps I had to deal with along my career path. The hardest part was actually setting up the application server to be just perfect and getting it on the wire to allow the employees to do their jobs.

The real challenge was getting more servers added to the pool in a timely fashion at month end for accounting or at rush times of the year for the sales group. It takes time to blast an OS no matter what method you are using, then get the app installed and functioning and then add it to the pool. Sure, I came up with a few tricks on how to image Citrix and they worked but it was still a waiting game trying to procure the hardware, install the image, get the server racked and cabled, etc. It never failed, a week before I had them ready the sales and/or accounting group managers were all over me because it was MY fault that they had slow applications. A few times just about the time I had the servers ready they didn’t need them anymore, I missed the rush.

Welcome to Instant Servification! CloudLayer, oh CloudLayer, I would have paid out of my own pocket back then to have this technology. With the release of hourly billing you can just use them when you need them even if your peak loads are only a fraction of one day. You create your golden image, save it, and push it out to as many as you need for as long as you need, and then when your peak usage is over, cancel them like high interest credit cards!

That is instant Gratification at its best! Welcome to SoftLayer how can we help you?

Outsource IT! I have been saying that for years now. But now I say; outsourcer beware!?!?! Really? How do you know if the company you are calling upon to keep your business up and running is safe and sound? Do they have certifications? Are they registered with the Better Business Bureau? Do they have scary fine print in the Terms of Service or User Agreement? Do you actually read those and understand them? How do you find out about all the questions above? Do you go to trade shows? Do you read about companies on the Hosting forum sites? Do you hear it from your friends? There are lots of ways to get that kind of information in today’s social internet jungle. Do you follow the company on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Linked-In, or all of the above? Should you? So many questions…

I am going to assume that you think this blog is going to be about how SoftLayer is a reputable, certified PCI compliant and SAS 70 datacenter, with competent and caring employees that can put themselves in the customer’s shoes and understand the frustrations that can go along with outsourcing your datacenter needs. Nah, that would be too easy and not very much fun.

This blog is about mud. Yes, I said mud. I was driving down a county road in Texas recently and we had a bit of rain in the days leading up to my trip. If you aren’t from Texas then you need a quick definition of “County Road”. A county can be paved, gravel or dirt topped and can be a great road or a horrible road, it just depends on the county that it is in, the tax base, and the abilities of the crews hired by the county to maintain them. I was travelling down a very wet gravel top county road, following along on my cell with GPS and Google maps and was about a mile from my destination. In what seemed the blink of an eye the road surface went from wet gravel to dirt and within about 10 feet my truck simply slid off the road into a nice 4 foot ditch filled with rain water. Looks harmless in the picture below doesn’t it?

It was a nice soft splash landing but my city slicker tires had no chance of getting me out of that ditch even with 4X4 engaged. So when water started coming under the door into the cab of the truck, I knew it was going to be a bad hour or so. It was time to outsource. I called the ranch to see if they had anything that could pull me out but they said that I was in a pretty tough spot and didn’t think they could help. So what would any techie do, I googled mud towing in the closet town. Of course I picked the first place on the list and gave them a call. They said they had a mud recovery truck and they would be out in about 45 minutes. Awesome, just 45 minutes! This was at 4:30PM and it was pretty cold and still raining and the ditch was filling up even further with water. Outsourcer beware, I was expecting a “Mud Recovery Truck!” I had visions of monster trucks dancing in my head. Fail!

Now I have to say that there weren’t ten forums about mud towing in Navarro county that I could visit, or customer references readily available so I just had to take that leap of faith and trust in the skills of my saviors. And I have to give credit where credit is due, that truck really is a monster! It did things a Transformer would love to be able to do. It got stuck at least 30 times in the 5 hours it took them to get me out of the ditch. Yes, I said 5 hours. Did I mention that monster trucks can do very bad things to city 4X4’s? Thank goodness I have an Echo to drive back and forth to work.

So I don’t want to leave you hanging but my truck is in the shop now and I am still waiting on an estimate. Things I know are wrong; front right A-arm damage from forcibly pulling the truck over a stump in the ditch, alignment issues, check engine light on, cruise control doesn’t work anymore, passenger side back door pushed up about half an inch including damage at bottom from the same stump, muffler caved in and exhaust pipe dragging the ground, front bumper air damn ripped off and metal bumper bent outward, yea you guessed it the pesky stump again and last but not least I need an entire new jack assembly because it is either broken or lost in the mud or both I should say (attempting to jack the truck over the stump).

The moral of this blog, if you have the tools available to research the company you are going to outsource to and they have references be sure to use them. They might save you a $300 mud recovery bill and a $1000 deductible somewhere down the road.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Bodhi Day, Happy Santa Lucia Day, Happy Las Posadas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Boxing Day, Happy Kwanzaa, and last but not least Happy SASsy day!

You find yourself wondering what Happy SASsy day might be, well I am here to tell you. SoftLayer has done it. We put our processes and procedures on the line and let other people check them out, and we passed. I have never been very good at tests as my brother got 99% of the brain DNA in our family.

That means our SAS 70 assessment is complete, and we are compliant and exception free! We completed it without a single time extension and did it the first time through. What does this mean? This means that our customers are safe with us and our reseller customers are safe as well. It also means they you have been safe with us since day one and now we have been looked at under a microscope to prove it. We have procedures in place to protect our customers and we actually follow them. If you are a public traded company that needs structure, processes, procedures, great sales and support, and a customer portal that is most likely the best and most powerful you have ever seen then now is the time to come give us a try. You have seen the rest now come see the best.

SoftLayer Technologies, Inc. SAS-70 Complete.

Next?

We are feeling SASsy here at SoftLayer!

You hear a loud whistle in the distance most likely someone’s internet clock set to 5pm. You are finishing up the last 20 or 30 emails you are behind on and getting ready for a little OT. Suddenly, out the window you hear a scream; “Yabba Dabba Doooo!!!!” and you see someone running from the building next door as fast as they can. You realize it is time for all the clock punchers to go home for the evening. Who else would scream “Yabba Dabba Doo”? No one screams it at 5am when the alarm goes off to go to work… at least no one I know, unless it is Starbucks and Krispy Kreme day.

Here at the SL Server Quarry we have some interesting similarities to the Stone Age Flintstones and this blog is intended to point a few of them out. Since a few of them were recently compared to Darth, Luke and their friends I just couldn’t resist. This is my blog so I make the rules, they can be based on looks, personality, or whatever I can come up with that is humorous.
So starting at the top… and the easy ones…

Fred “Lance” SLintstone – The shows main character and the designer of our highly automated quarry. Like Fred Flintstone, he is the task master that gently pushes Barney, and everyone around and makes them meet deadlines that a team of 80 might not be able to meet. These impossible requests keep everyone in the server quarry on the same path and going for the same goal. Rumor has it he is out playing in the clouds most recently.

Barney “Sam” Rubble – Barney is here every morning when I get here and is always here when I leave. In most cases he beats Fred; I think he has faster feet. I have tried many different times of arrival and departure to trip him up but I can’t seem to work longer than he does. I think maybe he just lives under his desk and goes out once a day to move his truck around so people will think he left and came back. That’s why he never parks in the same place. I always thought it was so his employees couldn’t figure out when to show up and leave but I have since foregone that conclusion! Barney keeps Fred SLintstone very happy.

Wilma “JenJen” SLintstone – Lance’s wife of course. Now you would think this would be off limits but she too has quite a role here in the server quarry. She is always ready to help us say things politically correct and get the word out. Unfortunate for her and good for me, PR groups can’t proofread every blog. They just don’t have the time as they have real work to contend with. If they had that much free time then they might want to consider a career change.

Pebbles “Amanda” Slintstone – is one of our SLales gurus. She is one of the best in the industry. I think she could play the part in a movie based on the similarities in the looks alone! If you need a server you can’t go wrong by contacting her.

Mr. “Sean” Slate has a goal. He wants us to have everything we need to make our customers happy. No matter whether it is internal equipment, new products, new toys, whatever, money, cables, pickaxes, sledge hammers, you name it and he helps in that way. Don’t let the smile fool you, there must be a little stress in his position since Mr. Slate is a little light on the topside.

Betty “Sam’s Wife” Rubble – Oh no, I am not falling into this gravel pit. This would be my boss’s wife, I know better!

Bamm Bamm “Michael” Rubble – Bamm Bamm sits quietly in his cube knocking out the sales. He is the pretty boy of the bunch. Even though the only thing he knows how to say is “Bam Bam” it must work in server sales as he does quite well. It is a rumor that he learned the phrase “Bam Bam” while chasing Doug Jackson around with a club. You have to watch that server quarry SLales team.

Dino “Daniel” SLinstone – Dino is fun loving and likes goofing off with Pebbles and Bamm Bamm, he can also be moved to anger, at which point he snarls and snaps. HR currently has Dino in obedience training so we feel certain that he will stop snapping. Rumor has it he makes a mean elephant chili, but I believe it to be exactly that, a rumor.

The “Techies” Gruesomes (Fred’s strange next door neighbors) – We love the Gruesomes. Without them we wouldn’t have the great support we have. They work hard all the time and anyone that knows about some of the things they do must be a little bit strange in a good way. These guys can help you with just about anything you need when it comes to problems in the server quarry. This is a partial pictorial of the industries finest!

Don’t forget The “Information Systems” Wayouts! (The English rock group mistaken for aliens!) – this group of four guys and their team keep all the quarry’s internal brains and lots of quarry customer stuff working as well. Most outsiders know them as humans but all good SLackers know they must be aliens. Who is that smart and human? I can’t tell which group is which, can you?

The Great “Ric” Gazoo (an alien exiled to earth) – The Great Gazoo brings a ton of alien gadgetry to SoftLayer. Without this alien technology we would be just another place on the web. With his alien brain power he makes Lance and Nathan’s ideas come to life.

Arnold “Mike” the Paper Boy – Arnold is the money guy around here but he also writes blogs in hopes that he can keep up with the Kinmans. It will never happen but he can be called the paper boy for those reasons. Not to mention his boyish good looks many, many, many, MANY years ago. We just need to teach him to let go of the flat rocks and chisel and get into the quarry’s more technical side.

Joe “Nathan” Rockhead – Joe is friend of the show. He and Barney go way back. I think they have some kind of collegiate relationship because they say the word Aggie all the time. I’m not quite sure what that is all about. Joe’s head is full of all sorts of things but I am not so sure it is rocks as he keeps us on the cutting edge of everything! I guess it is true; some people do like to read! Joe is kind of an enigma as you can see from his Flintstone comparison picture. (In other words a picture of Joe from the Flintstones just doesn’t exist!)

And last but not least!

Sam ”Kevin – Klaude “my name is not Klaude” Slagheap (Grand Poobah of the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes) – is the Grand Poobah of all our loyal SoftLayer groupies. Yes, we have groupies. Kevin manages them very nicely and helps them with just about any crazy request they might come up with. Of course there are no Flintstone pictures of Sam either, but here is one of Sam in the SLintstone era just to fair to everyone! You can check out his handy work on our Facebook fan page!

So what you have witnessed here is a few of the many people that make SoftLayer as cool as we are. We all work hard to make sure of one thing; that our customers are as happy at the SoftLayer server quarry as we are!

Welcome to the Wide World of SLAS 70 (for those who use Google it is really SAS-70 Type II)! Shh, don’t tell anyone but we are in the final audit stages now (under review). For some reason this is supposed to be a big secret, well not really or I wouldn’t be telling you about it. Maybe it is just so you don’t jinx the whole process.

If you are over 40 and doing the things you are supposed to do at the doctor then you have a pretty good idea of what SLAS 70 is. So we open our company up for the scope. I will just leave it at that. SLAS 70 is us telling the world how good we take care of our processes and procedures when dealing with our customers and also our internal controls. Since we would like to have more publicly traded companies as customers we need to be compliant according to my brother (the other Kinman blogger) and Mike Jones, CFO extraordinaire. It really is a good thing because the investors in these public companies like the fact that they use compliant companies, well they demand it apparently, which helps give them peace of mind in their investment. I’m not sure how many investors are left in the world but even the 1 or 2 still out there count for something. In a nutshell, we have to be good at what we do and we have to let an accounting firm come in and look at everything we do and then sign off that we are the best. WE know we are the best and now we will show the world.

SLAS Hint #1 – PDF! So I don’t know how many sheets of paper I saved with good old fashioned PDF conversion but I can bet I saved at least 2 trees. If I had to print out all this stuff like in the old days it would have been scary.

SLAS Hint #2 – Stress! On my desk right now I have, a half full Monster, an iced RedBull, 1 baby rattle, 1 golf ball, 1 rubber ball, 1 tennis ball full of BB’s, and 4 Squishy stress balls. The stress balls de-stress me and the baby rattle calms me of course.

SLAS Hint #3 – Time! It is all about how much time you have or don’t have. I should have kept track of the hours for this project but they all ran together at some point last week. I thought Thursday was Friday, and was really bummed out when I was told it wasn’t. I bet everyone has done that at least once.

Ok, well it is back to staring at the screen and hunting and fishing, not the fun kind either, just for data needed for the scope! I don’t want my new buddy, the auditor, to miss me since we hang out and email so much. Hey, can someone please pass me some latex gloves?