Hello Yukon 28209. Yes, this is Candy Mattson. The National Broadcasting Company presents Candy Mattson Yukon 28209. Just a moment. People can barge in on you at the...now where's that... Oh, it's better than nothing. Wait a second. Hi, Candy. Well, Mallard, my favorite foot flat. You caught me at the wrong time. It depends on your viewpoint. Shall I leave? No, no. Come on in. What brings you up to Telegraph Hill, Mallard, dear? You? An interesting subject. Care for a drink? No, I'm on duty. You mean I'm being honored with an official call? Sort of. In that case, you can leave. No, seriously, Candy. You can help me, if you will. Well, the mountain coming to the mountain. Oh, you're not so large. Now you can leave. Only kidding. Here's a pitch. In the presence of mind, Gordon Ayers has a little problem on his hands. He needs your help. What is this? Don't get excited, Candy. He's an insurance adjuster for an aviation outfit here in San Francisco. A couple of months ago, a guy and his wife took off in a private plane from one of those little airports down the peninsula and crashed. She burned to death. Ayers investigated and okayed the claim. A rather fancy amount. But his company doesn't like it. They don't think the crash was legit. Interesting. He has to prove he was right. He came to me. He wanted us to verify the facts. But we're the San Francisco police, and that's out of our jurisdiction. So? So, I mentioned you. Oh. He wants to meet you and have a little talk. If you can get the guy out of the soup, there's a nice little hunk of cabbage in it for you. Mallard, I'll take it, but there's something phony. How do you mean, Candy? This is the first time you've ever given me a helping hand in my private eyeing. Could be. There's a reason. Could be a reason why I'm going to take the case, too. Must be the rabbit in me. I love to nibble on large hunks of cabbage. Do you recall the lyrics from that old song, the one that goes, He floats through the air with the greatest of ease? Well, that's what happened to Candy Mattson. One of San Francisco's better known private investigators. She found herself floating through the air all right. But not with the greatest of ease. As a matter of fact, it was one of the most hair-raising experiences this pert little gal detective ever ran into. Well, why go on about it? Here she is to tell you about it herself. Well, that's the way it started. Inspector Ray Mallard, an old friend of mine. And that's all I can call him, darn it, an old friend of mine. Dropped by and insisted I meet this Gordon Ayres an aviation insurance adjuster. Two things induced me to take the deal. Mallard's big spaniel-like eyes and the money angle. It was right after Christmas and I was a bit short. Mallard left and I took the slip of paper he'd given me with Ayres' phone number on it. Sat down by Amici's pet aversion and doodled with a dial. Good afternoon, Pacific Seaboard Fidelity. How do you do? Is there a Mr. Gordon Ayres there? Speaking.  This is Candy Mattson. Oh, Miss Mattson, yes, happy to know you. I imagine Mallard explained my dilemma. Not in detail, no. Well, the situation is quite complicated. I was wondering if we could meet and discuss it at length. Can we get together this afternoon? If you say so, yes. Time is of the utmost importance, Miss Mattson. All right, you call it, Mr. Ayres. Splendid. I'm just leaving the office now. I have an appointment down to Peninsula in an hour. Do you have a car? Yes, I do. Could you meet me at the San Mateo Airport? Cranston Flying Service. That's okay, about an hour and a half. Hour and a half, fine. Goodbye, Miss Mattson. This I didn't like. Already, I was money in the hole. San Mateo Airport. Right on the water next to Bay Meadows, separated by the highway and a couple of salt marshes. Why should I have to meet the guy down there? Oh, me? Well, I drove down to the San Mateo Airport, found the Cranston Flying Service building, and got out of the car and waited. It was a nice afternoon, so I stood watching some of the planes take off and land. Pardon me, you weren't by any chance... Oh, no, of course not. I'm not by any chance. I'm Candy Mattson. Are you Mr. Ayers? That's right. I didn't expect anyone quite so young. Well, did you want to talk, Mr. Ayers, or just stand there like a sea bass out of water? Oh, pardon me. I want to talk, of course. By the way, have you ever flown? On commercial airlines, many times. Why? Would you like to take a little hop this afternoon? What's that got to do with why I'm here? Plenty.  In what do we fly, and who's going to be our guiding angel? Well, we'll probably fly, and that's Cessna over there, and I shall do the piloting. Well, I don't know. Have you been flying long? About 20 years. Oh. And I also flew for Uncle Sam in a late mess over Germany. Okay, I'll take your word for it. Good. Let's go into the office. Mother told me there would be days like this. Candy, she used to say, never leave the house without your parachute. We slipped through some prop wash, and I displayed a bit of silk that didn't belong to a parachute. Then into the building that housed the Cranston office. It was typical. A glass-topped counter with various flying trophies hung about the walls, old propellers, silver cups, pictures of planes, and assorted certificates. Ayers plopped his wallet on the counter, and the chap proceeded to check him out. We went out onto the field and climbed into the plane. Then Ayers gunned the motor, and we were taking off. This is all very cozy, Mr. Ayers, but what's the idea? There's a very definite reason for it, Miss Mattson. See that tower down there? No, no, down there toward Redwood City. Oh, yes, I see it. Well, that's where we're going. About a mile east of that, there's a private airport run by a man named Folger. We're going to simulate a landing at that field. Well, I'm still not with it. I want you to notice all the physical qualities of that field as we come in for a landing. Notice the boundaries, the hazards, and the amount of free space a plane has, especially a light plane.  Okay, Mr. Ayers, let's go. I'll watch. Fascinated as I am by flying, I started looking around. The lower end of the bay on our left, the skyline to our right, and the bustling peninsula directly beneath us. I was shocked out of my reverie when the plane turned on its side, and we cut sharply to our right and out over the bay. I thought Ayers had lost his mind, I thought Ayers had lost control of the ship, but no, it was just a routine bank. Then another bank right, and we were nosing in toward an airfield down and in front of us. Did I startle you? A little. It's all right now that I know we're not playing tag with gravity. I'm going to cut the throttle now and nose in for a fake landing. I'm glad you told me. I'll know how to behave. Keep your eyes open, Miss Matson. You see any high-tension lines around the airport? No. Any fences, highways, or any other obstructions? No, no I don't. Now look, this is a normal landing. Mm-hmm. Now if I were to sit the plane down here, I'd be about a mile from the waterfront. Then if I let the plane taxi the usual amount, I'd be up by those hangers. Any problems about that? None that I can see at the moment. Look carefully. You see anything at all? Anything? No. If I didn't know better, I'd say we were in the Sahara. Okay, then I'm going to give it the gun. Without the wheels touching the ground, we were climbing into the sky again and back toward the San Mateo Airport. In less than minutes, Ayres brought the plane in for a neat landing. We were over a very dry martini in a little spot in Berlin. Okay, we've played charades long enough, Mr. Ayres. Cut me in on the plot. That's merely this. The man who owns that airport, Folger, was out flying with his wife one afternoon. Brand new plane. They came in for a normal landing. Just as we did. As far as I could figure out, the plane nosed over and caught fire. He escaped. His wife didn't. As the adjuster on the case, I voted straight accident and asked my company to pay the claim. They didn't like the idea. You know how insurance companies are, Miss Madsen. Naturally, they have to be suspicious. But in this case, their fears are groundless. Mm-hmm. What about Folger? Where is he now? Still running the airport. Now, let's get down to cases, Mr. Ayres. Just why did I get the free plane ride this afternoon? Well, I've known your friend Mallard for some time. I wanted him to sign this affidavit, saying the field is perfectly safe for normal flying. He wouldn't do it. Naturally. Naturally, being with the San Francisco police. Then he suggested you. I have to have some licensed representative of the law's signature in order to clear my neck with my company. Here, you saw for yourself. Will you sign it? Whoa, there, boy. Wait a minute. Feather your prop. You... You mean you won't sign it? I didn't say that. But I don't sign anything until I read the fine print, not even for my pal, Mallard. I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to leave now, after I have another olive, and what goes with it. Then I'm going home. I'll call you tomorrow afternoon sometime. What, Miss Matson? Don't start to argue, Mr. Ayres. After my second olive, I get very stubborn. This got wilder by the moment. I was supposed to sign an affidavit clearing this joker on the basis of a 30-second buzz over a cow pasture. But oh, no. I wasn't going to get caught with my flaps down, not for Mallard or anybody. I drove home to my penthouse on Telegraph Hill, dished up a warm tub, some warm soup, and then some warm blankets and blacked out for the night. In the morning, I drove over to California Street near Old St. Mary's. I wanted to see a good luck piece of mine. Rembrandt Watson. Rembrandt's a photographer and tops in his profession, now that he's not supplying the rent for all the bistros on the Barbary Coast. Candy, my lily. Greetings. You know, if I was a G.I., I'd slug you for that. How are you, Rembrandt? Strictly, yes, we play bon. That's French. Well, that's your opinion. And that's English. Oh, dove. You look as well scrubbed as Mount Diablo after a rainfall. There is a romantic parallel. What brings you about on this lovely day? This lovely day. How would you like to go for a little drive, Ducky? Well, let's see. I was supposed to have tea with D'Argeny's Murphy, the honest Irishman, but he'll understand. Yes, I'd love it. Where we going and why? San Mateo. And for why? I don't know. Well, that's San Mateo for you. Anyone else going with us? No, just the two of us. Oh, good. Then I shan't have to ride in the tunnel. Wait just a moment, dove, whilst I toss Henry me great day in a brisket or two, and I'll be right with you. Rembrandt fed his monster. We piled into the car and whished off to San Mateo. On the way down, I tried to plot a course of action. It wasn't easy. As my friend Ayres had said, the field was free from flaws, and where do you go from there? I was soon to find out. Is this our destination, dove? That's right. Erid little spot, what? Yes. Reminds me of the recruiting posters I used to see for the foreign legion.  I want to see something. What, dear? The other side of this hangar over here. What's over there? The burnt fuselage of a plane.   Can't help it. This is business. Is that the one? I should imagine so. Hmm. Quite a mess, isn't it?  Look it over, Rembrandt. Anything strike you as strange. Wait a moment. Yes. Why are there tattered pieces of fabric on this side of the plane and on the other, nothing but melted steel frame? Good point, laddie book. And another thing. Look inside the cabin there. The safety belt on the other side. Intact. So it is. And I should sign F.A. David's yet. Wait till I see that melody. Pardon me. Was there something you wanted? Oh, how do you do? I don't like his looks, dear. Did you want a ride? Is that why you're here? We have cubs, prisoners, just about anything. No, no, nothing like that. Then, what is it? I happened to own this airport and I don't like people poking about. The owner? Then you must be Mr. Folger. Ah, yes. That's right. Who are you? Santa Claus. A little late. Come on, Mr. Folger. Let's go into your office. I'm sure we have a lot to talk about. Folger led the way and we went into a little quonset hut type of building that served as the airport office. There were no trophies here. Nothing but bareness. On one side was a pot-bellied stove and on the other, a mangy-looking parrot inside a cage. Folger motioned us to a couple of firehouse chairs and sat down himself in one that swibbled. Now then, what's this all about? I'm Candy Mattson. This is my friend Mr. Watson. Nice name. I'll be frank with you, Mr. Folger. I'm working with a Mr. Gordon Ayers of the Pacific Seaboard Fidelity Company. What? That's right. And they're holding a payment of your claim until Ayers can get a signed affidavit verifying his judgment. Ah, fidelity. What in the... Ah, fidelity. Pay no attention, Miss Mattson.  I must admit this is somewhat of a shock. I thought it would be. Now, is there anything you can do to help me? Pictures, diagrams, anything like that? Yes, I have a complete file, including a newspaper photograph of the Christ itself. May I see them? Ah, newspaper.    Yes, you may see them. I keep them in my apartment in the city. If you'd care to drop by this evening, I'll show them to you. Good. Supposing you give me a call when you get in town. Candy Mattson, Yukon 28209. I'll write that down. Candy Mattson, Candy Mattson. That's right, Polly. NC, 98012. I said quiet. Oh, someday I'll ring that blasted bird's neck. The only reason I keep her around is because she belonged to my wife. I'll call you this evening, Miss Mattson. We left the place, got in the car, drove back down the road and ducked into a little clump of trees, well hidden. Rembrandt looked at me as though I was losing my mind. But in about ten minutes, we heard the sound of a car coming from the airport. It roared past us and that the wheel was soldier. That's all I wanted. I whipped us back to the quonset hut, fully expecting the place to be locked tighter than a drum, but it wasn't. The door was wide open. What's the idea, Candy? Well, I'm not sure, Rembrandt. It's just a hunch. That open door, though, means we're going to have to work fast. Work fast? At what? My telephone number is UConn. Not NC, something or other. I have a sneaking idea that somewhere back in the dim recesses of that parrot's memory, I can get a key to this whole thing. Now, hello, Polly. Pretty Polly. Give me a pencil, Rembrandt. Pencil? Here. Thanks. Pretty Polly. Candy Mattson, UConn 28209. Pretty Polly. Candy Mattson, UConn 28209. Candy Mattson, Candy Mattson. NC, NC. NC, 98012. 98012, that's it. Thanks, Polly.  Let's get gone with the wind. I left Rembrandt off at Diogenes Murphy's place on Van Ess Avenue and drove downtown. I ran into a present-day miracle by finding a place to park, then took the elevator up to the offices of the Pacific Seaboard Fidelity Company.  Sit down. You're as good as your word. Thanks. Got anything for me? I may have, but first I want to know if you've got anything for me.  I don't quite understand you, Miss Mattson. I'll come to the point then. How in the name of Kitty Hawk could you honestly pay a claim on that wreck at Folger's airport? The plane was obviously burned only on one side, the passengers, and also the passengers' safety belt was still intact, tightly fastened.  Well, I'm like the insurance companies. I made the same mistake myself. That fuselage you saw was a training plane. It cracked up on a routine flight, no one hurt. The plane in which Mrs. Folger was killed was sold for scrap a week after my formal investigation. Well, looks like I pulled the trigger on the wrong target. No, that's all right. As I said, I made the same mistake myself. However, I don't think it was advisable for you to go down there without consulting me first. Oh? Folger called me on the phone right after you left. You've given him a fine case of the jitters. Look, Mr. Ayers, I operate in my own manner. If I saw a reason to give Folger's cow pasture the once over, that says it should be.  Oh, no, no. Wait a moment. I'm sorry. No, no.  Right. Now then, what's the next step, Miss Madsen? I... Well, offhand, I really don't know. I'll call you first thing in the morning. First thing in the morning, fine. I knew what the next step was, but I wasn't telling Ayers or anybody. This was more than just working for a commission. I thought I was on to something now, and I was going to follow through. I called a friend of mine at an aviation insurance brokerage and got enough night work to keep me going until next St. Swithin's Day. I took my material home and started in. It was a history of every fatal plane crash in the United States for the past ten years. About eleven, I fixed some coffee. About two, I started nod. Pinched my cheeks and snapped out of it. About four, I had some more coffee. And at seven, just as the sky dawned, red streaked across the bay, I found what I wanted. Exactly what I wanted. It didn't tie together yet, not all of it. But the knot was now begun. It only needed a little tightening. I stretched out on the couch, set the alarm for nine, and woke up right on schedule. Once again, I got Ayers on the phone. Civic seaboard fidelity, Ayers speaking. Good morning, Mr. Ayers. Candy Mattson. Oh, good morning, Miss Mattson. How do things look? Well, if you're referring to me, awful. I've been up all night. By the way, I wonder if we could make that flight again. Flight? Yes, over Folger's airport. Only this time, I'd like to make an actual landing. Oh, why, sure, that can be arranged. And I'd like Folger to come with us. I want him to describe just what happened as we go along. This morning okay? The sooner the better. I'll call him right now. Have him get a plane ready. I'll meet you there about noon. Now I had to work fast. I called Mallard, explained the situation, and he agreed to get one of his radio technicians and come along with me. We drove back down the peninsula, and I left them both at Cranston's flying service where they went to work. Then I continued to Folger's airport. It was a little before noon, and Folger had the ship out on the runway warming it up. Hi there, Mr. Folger. Seen anything of Ayers? Yeah, he's in the office. He'll be right out. Come on, you can get in. Okay. Here comes Ayers now. Here, let me give you a hand. You can sit up front and I'll sit back here. You all right? Thank you. Right on time, I see, Miss Madsen. Yes. Got the plane in gas, Folger? Yeah, I'll sit. Well, I guess we can take off. Here we go. Miss Madsen, what's your plan? Just do what we did before. Circle out over the bay and come in for a normal landing. Okay. I'll banker here. Fine. Is there any way for Folger to take the wheel? I beg your pardon? I said, is there any way for Folger to take the wheel? Oh, why not? I don't think so. He's back there. That's because he can't fly, isn't that right? Isn't that right, Folger? What? What's she talking about, Ayers? I don't know. She must be out of her head. I'm not taking any chances with her. I'm going to set the ship down right now. The way you set it down with Folger's wife in it, so she burned beyond recognition? Why, you? I can get the whole story, Ayers. Look at Folger. Why does a sheet?  Yes. I'll talk. I'll tell everything. Including the story about the same kind of crash in Toledo, Ohio? I'll write you two. Don't move. I assure you this gun is very deadly. You, Folger, open the starboard door. Go on, open it. I'm doing it. Oh, yes, I do. And neither one of you are going to live to tell about it. Go on, Folger. Get up by the door. Go on. God, please, don't do it.  You're next, Miss Matson. Just a little too darn smart for your own good, aren't you? I should have known better than to try to use a dame for the fall guy. Go on. Stand up by the cabin door. Sure. Okay. I'll stand up by the cabin... No. Oh. Well, candy girl, I'll see you get yourself out of this one. I hope Mallard's still listening to this mic. Mallard.  Can you hear me? Hey, what's wrong? I had to tap Ayers over the head. What do I do now? I don't know how to fly this thing. Wait a minute. I'll put cranks on it. Miss Matson, listen carefully.  That's it. How am I doing? Fine. Now look down at the horizontal bar at your feet. Press the left one ever so slightly, and turn the wheel left at the same time. Like this? Keep your nose up. Up. So it's just above the horizon. That's it. Keep it there. Better. Now straighten both the bar and the wheel. Slowly. Slowly. I've got it.  Now try to drift off to your right a little, pressing the opposite technique, doing fly. Hang on, Candy, you're going great. Now look for the protruding gadget on the right side of the dashboard. Watch throttle. Push it in about a third of an hour until I tell you to. The ground's coming up awfully fast. You're coming in just right. All right, kid? Yeah. My knees feel like I did the conga from here to LA, but otherwise I'm all right. The boys will take care of Ayers. Come on, we've got a report to make. Report? Sure. We've got a report. What? San Mateo didn't want to scare the guy off until they solved the case, so we cut you in on the deal without you knowing it. Candy, you did it. We've got a recording of the whole thing made over the plane's radio. Congratulations, Candy. You'll get a nice hunk of dough for this. Nice hunk of dough of all the dirty tricks. Mallard, you... I... Oh, what's the use? I can't bore you out now. I'm Ayersick. It was a very slick deal. Ayers was a top-notch insurance boy. About five years ago, he met up with Folger. This was in Toledo, Ohio. Folger was married to a very wealthy gal but couldn't get his hands on any of the money. Ayers hit upon a pretty little method of mayhem back there. He took out a license plate under Folger's name, fire-proofed his half of the plane, also the passenger's safety belt. Then one fine day, he came in for a landing, deliberately pancake the ship, left the motor running and let the crate burn with Folger's wife in it. They collected plenty. These days they had the names of Smith and Jones or something like that. And Ayers was the insurance adjuster. They moved on to California, took the names of Ayers and Folger and set about to do an encore on the same old act. Folger met another wealthy gal, married her and set himself up in the airport business. Ayers got himself a job with a San Francisco insurance outfit and voila, they were ready for another crack-up. My suspicions were first lit up when I saw Ayers' face. He had more scars and stitches than a well-seasoned hockey player. And that broken-up fuselage behind Folger's airport, that was another giveaway. It was a test model they'd used to make sure their plans were all set. But the real giveaway was the parrot. What a memory. NC 98012 was the license number of the plane that crashed into Lido, killing Folger's first wife. The parrot was also her pet and Folger had kept it for sentimental reasons. He shouldn't ought to have done it, though, because through the parrot, I traced the whole thing. It was a nice one-time racket, but they should have quit before the police tripped them up. Oh yes, Ayers was convicted. And Pacific Seaboard Fidelity rewarded me quite handsomely. But that mallard deliberately using me for bait. I got even with him, though. I made him take me deep sea fishing about a week later. Oh, did he get sick. Sea sick. I just did there and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. Listen again next week at this same time for Excitement and Adventure, Just Dial. Candy Matson, Yukon 28209. Heard tonight were Lou Tobin as Ayers, Harry Beckill as Folger, and Jack Cahill as Cranston. Henry Leff as Inspector Ray Mallard and Jack Thomas plays the part of Rembrandt Watson. The program stars Natalie Masters as Candy and is written and produced by Motty Masters. The sound effects were created by Bill Brownell and Jay Rendon. Eloise Rowan is heard at the organ. The characters in tonight's story are entirely fictitious and it resemblance to actual people is purely coincidental. The program came to you from San Francisco. Dudley Manlove speaking. You are tuned for the stars on NBC.


Live from Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE at the VTUG Winter Warmer 2015. Oh, here is your host, Stu Miniman. Welcome back to theCUBE live from VTUG Winter Warmer 2015. I'm Stu Miniman and joining me for this segment is Jesse St. Laurent who's the VP of Product Strategy with SimpliVity. Jesse, thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me, Stu. All right, so it's your first time on theCUBE. We've had SimpliVity on a few times. Duran, your CEO, has been on a few times and this is home court for you guys. For those that don't know SimpliVity, they are a startup in the hyper-converged infrastructure solution set and headquarters in Westboro, Massachusetts, which is right up 495 from where we are here in Foxboro. Jesse, give us just a quick little background as to what you do and where you came from. Sure, some VP of Product Strategy for SimpliVity. So for us, that means touching customers and partners. It means strategic partnerships on the business side. It also means engagement with our engineering teams as well as our product management teams, making sure that the product is headed in the right direction from the market and also making sure that we're getting all the feedback from our customers and that all flows into the right place. Yeah, so you were one of my panelists on the hyper-converged panel. We'll be sharing that with theCUBE community when we put up all the VTUG stuff. One of the main things we talked about is I used to think of the pieces of infrastructure, my storage, my server, my network as discrete pieces, and there were whole lines of business around that and whole IT managers out of those. And now it's more about infrastructure. So you come from the networking world, right? Talk a little bit about just what you've seen along that trend from going from discrete components to more of infrastructure. Sure, so my background is really servers and storage operating systems infrastructure. And I think if we look at the historical stack, it was marched down from the top. You have top-of-rack switches, you had servers, you had storage, you have a whole stack of appliances in your data center and a whole bunch of software packages that enable all the features and functions that we think of in the traditional data center. And the problem is, or one of the problems, is that you go from this big stack and then it's time to add another device, you add another whole device, right? And this kind of endless cycle of, well, add another storage device. Well, now we're out of balance over here, we've had one of those upgrade this. What SimpliVity looks at is really to simplify that. So scale this out horizontally and not thinking about these discrete building blocks of single functions, but thinking about a hyper-converged appliance that can deliver all the functions we're talking about. Yeah, and one of the things interesting about you guys is it's not just the base pieces. You have a very robust stack built in. It might not be the best analogy, but when I think in the storage world, one of the things that NetApp got kudos for years was when you bought NetApp, it was a single device and you didn't have to layer on all of these features because it was just one operating system with all the features built in for the data center infrastructure. Do you guys have every piece that I need today and in the future, will they just be a part of it or will I start having to add on and have separate licenses in the future? Yeah, so it's a great question. Today, when you buy an OmniCube, it's this 2U building block for your data center. You get CPU, you get memory, you get storage, you get all these other data center appliances, backup functionality, replication functionality, all at one single license. As we add features and functions in the product, the goal is to continue to add them into that core system. The idea that we look towards is simplicity and if you want to drive simplicity, simplicity for the end user is not 27 different line items to buy one of these systems, it's a single line item. So you buy a cube, you get everything, right? The simplicity, we try to make that systemic to our overall business. So it's the product, it's how you engage with us, it's how our support works, it's how the product itself works. We think that should be pervasive. Yeah, it's interesting thing because you have so many different pieces that you can replace that the entry point into when a customer might adopt you, it's not one, it's not like they say, oh, okay, I need a new server. Wait, I'm going to go buy SimpliVity or this year I'm doing new storage. How do you guys deal with the fact that there's so many different entry points and get customers to pay attention to you and might be somebody saying, oh, I'm looking at way in optimization and they run across you guys and then say, oh, wait, it leads to a broader discussion. Walk us through some of that. Yeah, I think there's a handful of major points. In our view, the more opportunities the better, right? So if it's a DR project, certainly great opportunity. If it is someone who's looking at bringing back up to disk into their environment, the cost of that oftentimes will pay for an entire SimpliVity overhaul of your environment. If you're doing a tech refresh on the server side, there's an opportunity there. That's just looking at kind of the capital side of it. If you look at the operating side of it, which is really, we talked about earlier on the panel, the number that always gets thrown around is 70% of costs in IT is to keep the lights on. And if you think about the amount of simplification that can happen there and the cost savings there, that's just huge and that actually creates a bunch of additional entry points around ways to take costs out of the environment just from getting your IT organization to stop thinking about loans and shares and controllers and start thinking about applications and services and things that are valued in the business.  And replication's been, storage is challenging for most people, but replication is one of those that we've all struggled with for many years. What makes what you guys do with replication different from everything else that's out there on the marketplace? Yeah, I mean, one of the things we struggle with is a little bit of vocabulary, right? So replication suggests, well, you know, we're backing up data from site one to site two and some traditional synchronous or asynchronous method. We think about data management in a very different way. We have a technology that we refer to as the data virtualization platform. And what we did is we rewound back to the beginning and thought about, if you're writing data into your environment, how do you want it to be treated? You've got an application or virtual machine. Ideally, you want that data to be as efficient as possible. So part of what we do is deduplicate, compress, and optimize that data at inception. We call it pre-dupe. By doing that, we now keep the data in that efficient format for its entire life. So that means whether it's locally, whether it's protected across two cubes, whether it's going to the cloud, whether it's going to another site, it's all in that efficient format. So that's the first part of the equation. In our view, that has to be built in from the first line of code you're writing. The idea of bolting these things on, we've seen it in other file systems over the years. It's a hard problem and in general, you end up having to do a rewrite. That's the foundation. And then on top of that, to come back to the DR aspect, is really how you manage the data movement. So there's, can you make the data efficient? And then there's, how do you get it from Boston to San Francisco? Traditionally, that was lun to lun, share to share, IP to IP, and a tremendous amount of configuration. And if a change happened on one side or the other, there was a huge amount of business risk, a huge amount of planning, a huge amount of work that went into that. A lot of times, a huge amount of money to a consultant that went into that to do the work for it. In our environment, you simply define, send this virtual machine to San Francisco once an hour, keep it for a week. Once you do that, you've abstracted away from the underlying infrastructure. So wherever that VM goes, however you treat that VM, that policy remains. And the individual sites can change completely. You can tech refresh completely, a SimpliVity site without ever having to adjust or do a manual data migration around any of those policies. Yeah, it's a great point and you're right. Big difference that you talk about DR or backup. There were so many point solutions out there and customers will always struggle with how can I justify this point solution and what's my utilization going to be? And if I've got, you know, most customers have multiple locations. So if I need IT at multiple locations and my utilization is low, I mean, if we look at most IT, even if I'm virtualized and heavily virtualized, you know, it's not like it maxed out my computer or it maxed out my IOs. I have bandwidth, but how do I utilize that? So if I change from the point solutions to just my IT that can take care of all of these different things, it's a different mindset. How tough is it for customers to wrap their head around this new mindset? It's a great question. We typically get asked that from customers. It comes in one form or another. Sometimes they say, you know, how did you build seven, eight, 12, whatever number of people use different devices? And the real answer to that is we have a vocabulary problem in IT which, and especially SimpliVity has a challenge, which is there's preconceived notions about what all these things mean. And for us, instead of thinking about all the point solutions and trying to build them individually, what we look at that just from an allergy perspective is being like the flu. There's two ways to treat it. One is you can go to the drugstore and you can buy a dozen different medications because your head hurts because you're coughing, you're sneezing, you can't sleep, whatever the other issues are. When you take that handful of medication, you probably don't feel much better than before you took the handful of medication, right? Our theory is if somebody could figure out a solution to the flu and actually cure the flu, you take that one medication and suddenly you're not worrying about six or eight or 10 different problems. You now, in our view, have the data virtualization platform. And once you address it at that systemic level, it actually changes the vocabulary and it changes the discussion. Yeah, it's interesting. We've used the terminology sometime. Is your solution, is it aspirin or is it a vaccine? Yeah, exactly. And we're looking to vaccinate IT and there's some things that you might never run across from your solution. But there's other things that, you know, boy, it's going around and it's gonna hit you one of these days and you're gonna be glad that you've got protection from that. That a good analogy? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that it's all based on the right foundation, right? And the vaccine to a certain extent, you know, you can get into the minutia, right? Flu vaccines where we always get last year's flu strains in this year. So if you didn't design the right one last year, you've got a problem. For us, we think there are really some core decisions you have to make up front. And if you make those right decisions, if you focus on efficiency, if you focus on mobility, if you focus on the ability to take your virtual machines and move them around and back them up efficiently throughout your infrastructure, you've solved a lot of underlying problems and you can stop thinking about the points around the environment. Yeah, it's interesting. You look so many solutions in the marketplace, you usually start in kind of a niche environment. Let's start with test dev, let's start with, you know, not to besmirch it, but VDI has a very specific, you know, if I have flash and I have high performance, I can really nail that and, you know, there's some hyper-converged solutions that started there and like VMware's vSAN starts there, but that has some unique characteristics. Mission critical, I mean, this is, businesses run, it's called mission critical, because if it goes down, I'm out of business. Why should companies trust a startup to run their business? And I mean, how do you guys ever come that? Yes, it's a fantastic question. When coming out early on, we didn't expect customers were going to go put their core mission critical apps day one. What we found was that the value proposition and the TCO of our technology was so compelling to these folks that we went in and ended up taking on more and more applications very quickly. So one of the things I've experienced in my whole career in IT is, when you put a box in, if it becomes the easiest thing to manage in your environment, then suddenly it becomes like this magnet of infrastructure, right? Whatever is the easiest lowest barrier to entry, lowest friction, suddenly the administrators start putting more and more stuff on there, it just becomes bigger. And for us, that's what happened. I think as a company, one of our really core corporate cultures is around corporate responsibility, right? When you are in charge of somebody's data, there is nothing more important, right? And we take that very seriously. So we go out of our way to make sure we take every level of protection possible within cubes, across cubes, across data sets. I think that's really what's given customers the conference to not only go out and put test and dev or video on these boxes, but we look at across our customers, almost 80% of them are running SQL, about half of them are running Exchange, about half of them are running SharePoint. Almost all of them are running multiple sites in DR. That gives you an insight into what our customers are telling us through their actions. Yeah, Jesse, I want to bring up another point. You talk about really, it's the data reduction or really storage services components. It's a complicated mess out there.  You know, there's a fit for all of those, but it's a different fit in how we put those together, and of course all the solutions aren't the same. You know, boy, how do we make it easy for customers to understand some of these, you know, some of the minutiae and the differentiation?  How do we help educate them better? Yeah, it's a fantastic question, because if you look at the way we look at dedupe and compression and efficiency in general, there's a dozen or more aspects to it. To turn it into the, you know, the green checkbox and yes, this is the answer, it does dedupe. I think it really oversimplifies and it's really a disservice to the user. I think that the core question you can ask when you look at any technology is, was it designed to do this, right? So our stuff from the ground up was designed to do it, and in our platform, everything above the device driver and below NFS is SimpliVity technology. We knew from the first line of code we wrote, it was going to dedupe, it was going to compress. We didn't want the user to have to think about it. So one of the challenges is, as soon as you start having on and off switches for all these things, now the user has to say, well, for exchange, should I compress but not dedupe and is that different for Oracle and what should I be doing for this other app? So if you simplify it for the user and you say, it's just on, it dedupes and compresses everything all the time, it's simpler. The problem with that is the performance when you turn those things on all the time is terrible. I mean, in general, there is no free lunch, right? Dedupe requires a tremendous amount of overhead. Compression requires a tremendous amount of overhead. The worst part about compression, right? There's some data that just doesn't compress. Unfortunately, you don't know that until you try to compress it and you realize that all those cycles were wasted. Our way to address that, our solution to that problem, is we have an accelerator card that goes inside of every OmniCube and takes all of those cycles that you would normally invest to do that and pushes them off to our accelerator. That enables the platform to run all your business applications, all the things you bought it to do. All the heavy lifting required to deliver the data efficiency is offloaded and the user doesn't have to think about it. I think in the end of the day, if the user doesn't have to make a decision if it just works, that's mission accomplished. Yeah, it's interesting. You and I have had conversations on, this board is, please correct me if I'm wrong, the one custom piece of hardware in the SuppliVity solution. When you guys first came out, primarily it was sold with Dell servers. You are now also offering it with Cisco UCS servers, but either way, you're using this accelerator card. Can you just give us a short as to, there's usually the balance, is Moore's law, am I going to have more cores? We talked about utilization of servers and VMware even doesn't choke up all these. Obviously, compression and Ddupe can hurt performance, so what's that balance between having that hardware board, how often do you refresh that? If a customer buys a SimpliVity, did they get a refresh on that board every couple of years? What's the hardware software mix? Sure, so the card is designed by our team. We have a hardware development team and there's two interesting things about it. One, it's designed specifically to work with our software stack and really we talk about it as a hardware device, but it's running a whole software stack. So the majority of the IP in the card is actually software, ironically. So it's designed specifically to work with our technology. So it's not an off-the-shelf card and our technology wouldn't be able to deliver the functionality it does on the software side if we tried to leverage some other type of off-the-shelf card. So I think it's very unique in that aspect. Intel continues to get faster and that's certainly something to pay attention to. You never want to bet against Intel, you never want to bet against Ether in the data center. At the same time, you have to have predictable performance, right? And one of the things that we've seen is users, especially in the enterprise, especially when you're running mission critical applications, value performance tests that generate nice boring flat lines. And it turns out when you look at things at the micro level within environments, one of the most predictable ways to get flat line performance is to have very predictable results on the data efficiency side. Having the hardware allows us to know exactly how long it takes to do compress and optimize this piece of data, that's something that when you live in a shared resource world, you don't have that same level of predictability. And again, as you look at the mission critical apps, predictability is incredibly valuable to them. All right, Jesse, wondering, it can talk a little bit about just go to market. Are you guys primarily channel focused? How do customers get engaged with SimpliVity? Sure, 100% channel. So we do not have any direct business. It goes 100% through our channel community. And that is a mix of two types of partners today. It's partners that are Cisco partners. We have a great offering with the Cisco UCS platform. We go to market together with the Cisco channel folks and the Cisco teams on that side. And then we have some partners that are also partners with our direct product or our cube as opposed to the OmniStack. So in the Cisco world, it's OmniStack. It's basically all of our IP running on a UCS system.  And we take that to market again through partners. In a lot of cases, those partners are actually the same exact partners. Yeah, interesting thing on that. If you look at the configuration of a UCS with your OmniStack software, of course, I don't need an external storage array. It's disk inside. What's high level economics of what you guys typically, what do you talk to customers is the savings of going to a traditional kind of 3-tier architecture, server-SAN, server plus storage array with storage network versus what you can do with your solution. Yeah, so typically it's plus or minus 3X. So we could exaggerate and come up with some giant marketing numbers if we threw in every piece of software that we could potentially disrupt. If you just look at the things that are commonly disrupted within the environment, that pretty easily gets you to 3X within those environments. And that's consistent across the UCS as well as the SimpliVity Cube based offering. Okay, great, Jesse. Last thing I want to talk about, it's beginning of 2015. Where should we be looking for SimpliVity? Show us a little, what do we expect to see from you guys this year? Headcounts up over 400, I believe. You grow in gangbusters. So what's in store for 2015 in SimpliVity? So more of the same. And if we look back, we went from 100 folks to 360 in about 12 months. We're a bit over 400 now. And if you look over the course of 2015, we expect that to roughly double. We expect the company in terms of revenue to do more than double. So aggressive growth curves, you'll see us pretty much everywhere. Yeah, you're doing some hiring locally and globally? Yeah, so we have teams coming on globally. Our field today is already global. We have folks in North America. We have folks in Amia. We have teams in the Pacific as well. We're expanding in all three of those regions in terms of field organization. We're expanding our engineering teams and the teams in our corporate office in Westboro. The plan is to bring a couple hundred more people into Westboro. We have, for I think the third time in the last 18 months, run out of space in our Westboro facility. So we're yet again expanding. All right, well, Jesse, I really appreciate you coming to spend time with us. You're now on the CUBE alumni list and expect to hear more from you in SimpliVity much more this year. So you're going to wrap it at this point. We will be right back with many more guests here from the VTUG, talking about hyperconvergence, cloud networking, and lots of virtualization here from Gillette Stadium with Teddy Bruceky over our shoulders. Thanks for joining us. We'll be right back.


So, when we start talking about carbon credits, what we're really focused on is being able to capture that CO2, and a lot of ways we're able to capture CO2 is through conservation practices. Those practices in agriculture that contribute to sustainability of the practices, whether we're talking about cover crops are reduced tillage because of those practices help to either capture or maintain that carbon in the soil. When we look at CO2 emissions by industry, we know that agriculture contributes about 10% of overall CO2 emissions, which is a lot lower than a lot of the other industries like transportation and energy industries. But by design and our production practices, agriculture is really the only industry that by what we do, we're able to offset and capture a lot of that CO2 through our practices either above ground and trees or below ground and roots in the organic matter. Can you imagine how would we even live if we didn't have agriculture? We are very blessed that we go to the grocery store and we don't even think about food being on the shelves. And that's all possible because of our producers in the state and in the nation. And to be able to provide just a little bit of information or a little bit of help to a grower to ensure that we continue to not think about where, you know, access to food, that's why I think all of us in extension do this job.


Welcome members to the fourth meeting in 2015 of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, reminding everyone to switch off mobile phones as they can affect the broadcasting system. First item on our agenda today is for members to consider some guidance on supporting constituents and to consider whether reference to equalities considerations should be added to the code of conduct. Does anyone wish to make any comment on that? I'm not trying to be picky and I understand why this is here, but I think that it's right. Constituents won't always declare that they have a mental health issue. Sometimes it's the people who either don't want to tell you or haven't been diagnosed who are the most difficult to try to help. I just wondered whether we need to perhaps say something about a scenario where perhaps a member suspects that there may be a problem of that. It's not just people with mental health problems, it's people with problems of a whole range of things I can think of where you maybe have to just stop and think about whether your approach is absolutely the right most helpful one in the circumstances. I just wondered whether we need to have some acknowledgement of that difficulty. The guidance that's referred to in the draft section being proposed to the committee tries to cover those sensitivities as far as is useful. There's a section about trying to recognise different forms of disorder and also how can I suggest to a constituent that they need help with their mental health. There are very sensitive situations like that but it might be that some more of that information could be covered in the bit of volume 3 that we've got in the paper. I think that, convener, if at least there's a reference to a linkage or that it's referred to in some way I think that would be helpful. I've been referred on a previous occasion by a constituent with severe, very severe mental health problems. In relation to this individual, two other MSPs have also been referred, but in each case the committee has been the clerks on behalf of the then committee. It's been quite clear. It also raises the issue of course of the safety of members and our staff, but that is not the proper place to make reference to that because some mental health issues can be severe enough. At the end of the day we've got to judge it as we say it and be aware that we have places we can go to get assistance on the matter. I think that that's really what it's about. I think that what Patricia Ferguson said is helpful and we'll take account of that. Our committee content that I agree changes in the light of those remarks and we proceed from there. Thank you very much indeed. We're agreed to the wording subject to that and that ends the public part of the meeting.


Hi everyone, Joe for JaspysCaseBreaks.com with 2022 Leaf Lumber Baseball. Five box, half case, number three. It's a random number block break. So you've seen us do this with the fillers. Oh, there it is! Aaron Judge just hit 61. A two-run shot at that. Tied up with Roger Maris. Great job. Everyone's cheering him, dugout emptied, clapping him. That's nice. All right. All redemptions go to zero. As you know, you've seen us do this with teams. This is serial number break. Big thanks to this group for making it happen. I think for the first few orders, we accidentally had the title. We had mislabeled title as break four, but I think the skew number in your order confirmation should still say three. This is for break three. Big thanks to this group right here. Thanks to the numbers. Let's roll it. Let's randomize it. Five out of five. Ten the hard way. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten. Now Michael down to Kevin. Five out of five for the numbers. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and tenth, and final time. We got four down to zero. All right. Michael with four, Martin three, one, and six. Michael with eight, Ed with five, Martin with two, Michael with nine, Martin with seven, and Kevin with zero. Zero gets you any and all redemptions, including one-of-one redemptions. Martin, you'll still get live one-of-ones. We're gonna pause the video just for a moment. We're gonna see if there's any trades and numbers. Pretty rare, but we'll give that the people the chance. When we come back, we'll have the break. Stick around. All right. Welcome back everybody. Aaron Judd just hit his 61st homer, Homer this season 2022, tying Roger Maris. For the most single-season home runs in the AL. Pretty crazy. The ball ended up in the what looked like the Blue Jays bullpen. There was like a fan who kind of leaned over the railing, but just missed it. Went off like sort of the bottom of the railing out in left field. So no, no idea or word on what's gonna happen with that baseball. And I'm sure, I'm sure someone will say something on Twitter or something like that. Someone will let us know in the chat. All right. So there's one, two, three, four, five boxes on the left side, five boxes on the right side. One, two, three for the left side. Four, five, six for the right side. And that's five. So we'll do the right side right here. This side we'll do for next time and break four. Cardinal CJ saying Pujol 700. Make sure you're watching live Cardinal CJ. You might be lagging behind by a few days. We got a one out of nine. Lumber Lineage, Willie McCovey, Eddie Murray, and the crime dog Fred McGriff. So that goes to Martin and the number one. Yeah, the Blue Jays might give it back to Aaron Judge. Yeah, I don't know what if Aaron Judge wants it back or not. Has that been reported? He must have been asked. We got Game Use Lumber, Daryl Strawberry, 11 out of 20. That's also for number one. We go by that digit right there. Great thing about random number block rakes is that we don't have to do a randomizer. Look at this. StatBats, AtBats per home run. They're Sammy Sosa, Ted Williams, Manny Ramirez, Adam Dunn, Ryan Howard, and Mike Trout. Seven out of 15. What's Aaron Judge's AtBats per home run? That's for this season. So that goes to number seven. That'll be for Martin, last bottom mojo. And then we got two out of two. That's a train whistle here. We got Mark Race, Ron Santo, Billy Williams, and Rhino. Nice. Four cubbies there. Two out of two. Martin with the number two. And out of fives and under, get the train whistle. All aboard the Big Hit Express. And I think as of now, Aaron Judge is also like a point ahead in average, which puts him at the moment in Triple Crown Territory. We got 10 out of 12. Robin Yacht, Dale Murphy. Your AL and NL MVPs back in 1982. That goes to number zero. Kevin with zero. Game used lumber, Kirby Puckett, going to number seven. That'll be for Martin. We got your 1967 MVPs. There's a piece of Yaz's bet. There's a piece of Orlando Sopeta's bet. That's Martin with the number three and a train whistle. Nice. All aboard the Big Hit Express. And we got three out of nine. Batrack eight. Wow. Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Ted Williams, Mickey Mannell. That's pretty nice.  That's Martin with the number three. That's awesome. I'm not sure who the best baseball prospect is right now. There must be some end of season, the minor league season wrapping up. There must be some end of season lists out there on MLB or Baseball America or something like that. Yeah, Freddie Freeman's been raking. All right, weapons of mass production. Carl Yastremski, six out of six. That's pretty good. Pretty darn good. Martin with number six. There's Pudge, game used lumber, 38 out of 45. Michael with the number eight. There's A-Rod, weapons of mass production. Nine out of 12. Dual Relic, Michael with the number nine. Ooh, a bat barrel. Old school Rocky Colavito, one of one bat barrel. Martin with the number one.  That's awesome. Martin all aboard the Big Head Express. Rocky Colavito. I think he was an old Cleveland Indian, maybe? Yeah, he was with Cleveland from 55. I'd bounce around a little bit. 55-59, with the Tigers, with the Kansas City A's, back to Cleveland, then to Chicago, Southside. A season with the Dodgers, it looks like half a season with the Dodgers, half a season with the Yankees. Nine-time All-Star, an AL home run leader, an AL RBI leader, different year, hit four homers in one game in 1959. Next to box. Anyone seeing any reports on what happened to the ball? Aaron Judge is 61 ball. There's Eddie Murray, nine out of 30, weapons of mass production. Michael with the number nine. A couple pieces of his lumber. Could certainly swing it. Thurman Munson, 11 out of 12. Martin with the number one. Game used lumber. Oh, look at this. You got lumber team eights. And that's going to go to eight out of 30. Michael with the number eight. Thurman Munson, Lou Pinella, Willie Randolph, Bobby Bonds. Reggie Jackson, Chris Shambless, Catfish Hunter and Dave Winfield. And we got Tom Glavin, signature sticks. 45 out of 45. Chicks dig the long ball. He was in that commercial, right, with Greg Maddox. And that'll go to number five. That's going to go to Ed with the number five.  Tom Glavin could swing a hockey stick, too. All right, final box. Good luck. Home run Kings, Fred McGriff and Juan Gonzalez, 17 out of 30. Yeah, that fan was pissed. It had kind of fell right at the foot of the railing. Spun around in anger, 17 out of 30. So number seven, Martin with the dual bat relic. That game use lumber, Harold Baines, three out of 30. Martin with the number three and another big multiplayer one here. The hit Kings. Six out of six. Rod Carew, Al Oliver, Pete Rose, Tommy Davis, Steve Garvey, Lou Brock, Bill Buckner, Johnny Bench. It'll be for Martin in the number six. Is that right, Gilo? Weapons of mass production is what they called Gilo's biceps at the gym. We'll have to take your word for it.  David Justice, piece of his lumber and his autograph, 13 out of 25. That'll go to Martin and the number three. And there you have that's the leaf lumber, baseball boys and girls. Pretty nice stuff. Random number block break, number three, second half is in the store right now. Let's finish off that last half of the case. It's Jasper's case breaks.com. I'm Joe. I'll see you next time for the next baseball break. Bye bye.


So I finally got around to reading Struck by Jennifer Bosworth who is actually not Jennifer Bosworth anymore she's Jennifer Wolfe now, but and I Don't really know how to Introduce this. You know, I don't know how to start this off. There's nothing about this book that like Comes together in such a way that allows me to just say yes, this is what it's about And this is how it made me feel this is the introduction song It's not very good, but it's not too long. The setup for the story is really weird It's about a girl named Mia Price who is addicted to being struck by lightning and So her family moved to Los Angeles where it doesn't rain very often and therefore there's not much lightning But then there is a massive earthquake which destroys most of the city and leaves them cut off from the rest of the world and Then there are two separate cults that think Mia is the key to the end of the world and In spite of that, it's not as weird as it might sound like while you're reading It's not actually that weird or at least it doesn't seem that weird I don't know. Maybe I just got Stockholm syndrome got sucked in or something like It's bizarrely mundane a lot of the time like the actual events of the story aren't that strange up until near the end near the climax the characters don't have any really out there personalities except for like maybe the villain and Like to give you an example of how not weird this feels even though it probably should Despite Los Angeles being, you know destroyed and being cut off from the world and there's very little food very little water and electricity very little medicine and Like law and order has almost completely broken down in spite of all that the main characters all have to go to school still like Mia and her brother Drive to their old high school every day and They go to class there and like they mentioned things are different than they used to be because you know the earthquake destroyed a bunch of stuff a bunch of people are dead, but I It's weird because that's not weird if that makes any sense like this story is full of stuff like that Which is just too mundane and it feels like something that would happen in real life almost even though the circumstances are so out there So this book is weird in some ways because it isn't weird I suppose I should finally get around to saying whether or not I liked this. I did you know I liked it. I wanted to love it though because you know the setup for it is just so Bizarre and out there that I was expecting it to be like really kooky and weird Especially because this is a first-time author like Jennifer Bosworth slash wolf has written other books since then but you know, this was our first one, so I was like, okay. Yeah, weird stuff. Let's see what goes on but I don't know. It just wasn't that weird and there's parts of it which are just like Clumsy and not that well put together. So while again, I did like it. I just I couldn't bring myself to love it It's a good book, but I can't say it's great Part of why it's so difficult to talk about this book is that it's really hard to pin it down or define what it is You know, like it's hard to define what genre it fits into. It's hard to really say what it's about beyond the broad strokes it's hard to point out any like unifying themes or anything like it's just I Don't know it's kind of all over the place and I feel like that should make me hate it But I just I just don't so I'm going to have like a regular review bit And then there will be spoilers and hopefully the spoilers section will give you an idea of just how Weird it was to go through this even though a lot of the events aren't that weird like I keep using the word weird I'm sorry it but that is just the thing that comes to mind whenever I think about pretty much any aspect of this book So like I said earlier, this is a book about a girl named Mia Price. She's addicted to being struck by lightning She's in Los Angeles Big earthquake happens suddenly. It's basically a post-apocalyptic wasteland where everyone is fighting over food and stuff And there are two separate cults that try to recruit her and think that she is the key to Ending slash saving the world There's one called the followers which is led by this guy called Rance Ridley Prophet And if you saw my video on book trailers or you watched my stream where we went over some of them You know what this guy looks like and it's kind of amazing Three days from now God's storm will arrive and cleanse this earth of the wicked Only you my followers will be saved Also, yes, his name is Rance Ridley Prophet like they mentioned in the book He had his last name legally changed to Prophet Because subtlety, I guess I don't know and he just runs a cult called the followers And there are these people called the seekers who tell Mia that she has special powers and the seekers also have crazy special powers and I mean, that's not really a spoiler that happens like really early on and I think you could probably figure there's something supernatural going on here just based on the premise But still that that's basically what's going on here and also there is A skyscraper which is entirely a nightclub Like yeah at the epicenter of the earthquake all the buildings went down except for this one skyscraper which is just standing there tall and Defiant I guess but it's just turned into one giant nightclub now And it's just constantly full of people called rovers who don't really do anything in the story Like there's no characters who are important to the plot who are rovers the rovers as a group don't really do anything They're just there Filling up that entire skyscraper and throwing a party at the end of the world This book is very much a standalone, you know, like by the end of the story It doesn't end on like a cliffhanger or anything and I feel like I got Most everything out of it, you know, I feel like there's a beginning There's a middle and there's a satisfying conclusion or at least mostly satisfying conclusion but it is open for sequels at the same time and I mean this was uh 2011 I think is when it came out So that was like, you know when the dystopia boom was super big and everyone was trying to cash in and be the hunger games and This one it might sound kind of like it's one of those and it is definitely drawing some inspiration from it But it's really not it's very much its own thing and the fact that it's not a series It's not stretched out more than one book is kind of proof of that The book also is not particularly long or short like it's a little under 400 pages. You can see there It's it's not that thick, uh, but it's a decent length But it feels really short, you know looking back on it It feels like not that much happens and that sounds like a criticism But not really because usually when you say not much happens in a book That's because it's boring and events don't really They aren't that exciting and they don't feel like they're leading into one another or anything And this one we have some problems with that like a lot of the plot is basically just Mia meeting somebody And getting into trouble and then Mia meeting somebody else and then getting into trouble And Mia meeting somebody else and getting into trouble and all the while there's exposition going on But like it doesn't really seem to build to anything until near the very end when The villain becomes a bigger deal and then his plan comes into motion and then we go to the climax But yeah up until then it's just like yep. Here's Mia meeting Jeremy Who is like I guess her bad boy love interest or whatever. Here's Mia meeting Katrina who is One of the seekers who tells her that she has special powers Here's her going to buy something from a drug dealer, but then things go wrong You know, it's like it's it's an issue with the story structure and pacing and Like again, it's not horrible because most of these events are fine on their own Like they're not individually boring, but looking back on it It just feels like it goes by really quick and not always in a good way The villain rance ridley profit seems like really powerful and intimidating at first, you know He has the minds of his followers in his grip just by speaking to them, you know And hell he's even blind and he is still Really good at getting people onto his side like Like I don't know how to explain it But you know, he seems like a very powerful cult leader Even before the world ended or the world didn't end But even before the massive disaster that destroyed most of Los Angeles And then after that disaster happened and people are looking for hope and stuff Like he takes advantage of their fear and their despair and he brings in more and more people into the fold and He seems like you know like a big threat Like he's very intimidating and kind of scary because you're thinking like yes This is how cult leaders work But then near the end and I guess my old spoiler here We find out he has just mind control powers And I mean again, this is a story about people with weird powers It's not that strange that the villain would have him, but you know again minor spoiler But yeah, like that's how he gets so many people onto his side and honestly that just made him Lesser of a villain for me, you know because he Just it seems so much more Potent, I guess if if he's just manipulating people with his words, you know Because that's how real cult leaders do it It makes him seem a little more real a little more human, I guess and that just makes him scarier Whereas this he's just like yes the magic bad guy who uses his magic powers So again, this is uneven like he's really good And then he's not at the beginning of the story Mia seems like an addict, you know again She's addicted to being struck by lightning it makes her Well, honestly the way it's described it seems like it makes her kind of horny But whatever that that seems unintentional But you know, it seems like this would be a story about her, you know Trying to recover and trying to accept herself and trying to understand herself and about self control and all that But her arc is really more about protecting her brother and her mom And I mean, I guess there is some stuff about accepting herself like acknowledging she has these powers and everything but it it's just So all over the place. It it's weird and like again these individual arcs aren't bad It just starts off like one thing and then suddenly it's another There's Jeremy who at first seems like he'll be You know a villain at first and then he'll slowly grow to love her or something and then he'll be her bad boy love interest But there's really no process of him turning good He just kind of seems like a villain at first and then he's good Like I mentioned earlier this setting seems like it's in the middle of an apocalypse You know, there's the earthquake which destroyed los angeles and then it's mentioned that there are massive disasters happening elsewhere too, which are destroying Large chunks of the world at least Which is part of why I was saying it is open for sequels like we don't know exactly what's causing all that But it doesn't seem natural and it's mentioned that the united states is at war with a bunch of other places Which is part of why their uh relief efforts in los angeles are so crappy So like it's in the midst of an apocalypse But the characters also go to high school And they deal with petty drama there like not that much, but they deal with petty drama there Uh, it seems like there would be a whole lot of time devoted to Mia trying to control her powers and learning what her powers even are because like Even after reading it. I can't exactly define what they are but There's very little of that, you know, this book just seems like it's going in so many directions and then it goes in different directions and That would make it seem almost like it's unfocused, but it doesn't feel unfocused This book is so uneven, but at the same time I've liked so much of it.  Uh, I did like her relationship with jeremy well enough. I didn't think it was amazing But I mean, he's at least not abusive or anything I liked Some of this setting that they built like they didn't really dive into it that much But I I liked it, you know, I liked the villain for a while But we didn't get that much about his personality or anything And like I said, he becomes less intimidating once we realize he has powers, but I don't know at the same time I just I liked this book. I I can't even point to exactly what it was But just the way all of these parts clumsily meshed together just I was into it So I don't know if the if the idea of the premise interests you at all I would say check it out at least, you know, maybe maybe don't buy it, but at least read sample pages on amazon or check it out from the library or something And if it doesn't hook you then maybe you're just different than me, but I don't know I was into it But that's about all let's go to the spoiler section and hopefully that will help things make a little bit more sense You're right. Hey So as I said It feels like very little actually happens in this book even though looking back on it I can point to a fair number of individual events, you know Like we have Mia meeting the followers, Mia meeting Jeremy, Mia meeting the seekers And the climax and there's a scene where she goes looking for her brother and goes to the giant tower nightclub Out of all the weird stuff in this book that is the thing that really sticks out in my mind like why Why is that a thing? But then we get to near the end of the book like the last quarter of it maybe the last 20 percent and then Her mom who has been kind of brainwashed by the prophet already gets like full on brainwashed by him And then Mia also gets full on brainwashed by him and Then he's going to use them to do his evil plan, which is to destroy the world We don't really know why he wants to do this or what his goal is for afterwards But he he wants to destroy the world And so he sets up this wedding where he's going to marry Mia's mother Okay, and she manages to break through his mind control a little bit before this And then he also brings in all of his followers and Some of them also have powers It's it's really not explained how these work Just like some people have a lot of energy in them and can affect energy around them And Mia has like a whole bunch because she's the protagonist. She has to be super powerful And He's also going to be broadcasting it on tv and basically even though there is no storm. He wants to summon another storm It which will then the lightning will strike In the fault in the tectonic plates and cause another earthquake But this one way bigger and it will cause like a chain reaction of other earthquakes and tsunamis and volcanoes going off and stuff and that that'll destroy the world and The way he's going to do this is again by just He's convinced all the followers that the storm is going to happen and again some of them have powers and so Like all their powers are being subconsciously combined together And then he also wants Mia to be there as the final ingredient to like really summon the storm And I know this sounds like weird and kind of vague and that's what it is like you understand it well enough to like Feel as if there's not really any plot holes or anything But still it is kind of odd how vague all of this is so prophet forces Mia to like get the storm started and it starts going and then the seekers come and they use their powers to fight a little bit And Mia like overcomes everything and she kills prophet using her powers And her mom seems like she's about to die But then she strikes her excuse me with lightning and it like cauterizes the wound on her neck because prophet slit her throat and She lived I don't know how well that would actually work, but okay sure whatever And then They're on the beach while this happens and then she like runs to the giant rave tower And stands on top and then she like gets struck by more lightning and just absorbs the whole storm into herself And prevents it from destroying the world And then after that her and jeremy are a couple And I mean it's kind of insta-lovy You know like again, they didn't seem like they hated each other up before this point They did seem like they were at least getting along as friends, but I didn't feel any chemistry or romantic connection between them But yeah, they're a couple now and then that is just That's the end of the book Another reason why it felt like this was kind of prepping for there to be sequels But then they just they never came out and I highly doubt there ever will be any like I know there is a spin-off prequel novella, which I believe follows Jeremy before the events of the story, uh, but yeah, it's I don't think there'll be any sequels because it's been almost 12 years since this came out and the author has not Touched it since and in fact she seems to be focusing more on screenwriting now, which I mean fair enough but yeah, she's she's not writing books anymore, but yeah, like that's uh that's the end and mia It gets struck by lightning and gets more scars because from the beginning of the book she covers up most of her body because After being struck by lightning she has like these weird red lines which are scars all over her except for like her neck up And then after being struck again at the end of the book It also covers her face and she has like red veins in one of her eyes now And it seems like it's saying okay. She's super powered or something So I don't know it just there's things here that seem like they're hinting at a sequel to come but it just it never did And yeah, that was that that's struck Like I said, there's not really any unifying themes here That tie it all together. The story is very clumsily put together The world building is surface level at best And yet I just I really liked it and I want more And I can't exactly explain why which is a little embarrassing as a critic, but you know, I just I don't know something about struck just really grabbed me And I mean we're probably never getting more, but I did enjoy it a lot. So Yeah, those are my scattered thoughts on this very scattered weird book But I I mean I I didn't hate it. That's all Subscribe and watch the video and ring the notification bell like like the video comment on it Share it around all that stuff. I'm supposed to say Goodbye Oh my goodness people are still watching this I'm I'm not sure why I thought most people clicked away before the credits started, but uh, yeah, these are all my Patreon people And my 10 dollar and up patrons are oppo savelain and olivia rayon brother santotes buffy valentine carolina clay Dan anceliovich dark king don deo echo flax carcat kitsune lexie delorm Liza rudakova lord tiebreaker microphone mist boy peep the toad roby reviews ruby ish mail Sad martigan sillier the vixen stone stairs tesla shark vavictus and wesley all of you are great And if you want your name on here then consider becoming a patron you get early access to my videos as well It's it's a great deal. I promise if you don't want to do that You know, you could always subscribe to the channel like this video comment on it So it goes around uh, or you know becoming a youtube channel member that that's cool, too Uh, follow all my socials and stuff which are linked below. Uh, I'll see you. Uh, goodbye


It's just an arrangement. So that socially there is some sense to the way you fulfill the needs that you have. A human being has needs – physical, psychological, emotional, financial, social, various kinds of needs. To fulfill these things in a dignified manner, we came up with something called marriage. So that it is fulfilled within a framework. Your desires don't run wild and disturb everything in the society. Some kind of a framework so that it can be conducted in a sensible manner. Now you have raised this to heaven because somebody told you marriages are made in heaven. Only the unmarried ones think so. So it's just two people, all right? Now spiritual process is about turning inward. Can I turn inward with somebody else? Marriage is an arrangement to fulfill certain aspect of your life. Don't complicate life by thinking we will walk together on the spiritual path. There's no such thing. Because spiritual path is not the path that you take into the Wellangiri mountains that you want to walk together. Even if you go to Wellangiri mountains, please don't walk hand in hand. It's a narrow pathway and it's not an appropriate way to walk in the forest. You can walk in the park walk hand in hand. You can go shopping hand in hand. You can sit in a cinema hand in hand. You can't turn inward hand in hand. Now, does it mean to say someone who's married, what it means... let's understand this. Someone who was married means someone who's made an official arrangement for their needs in life. A formal arrangement for simple needs that a human being has, which are biological, which are psychological, which are social, many things. So these arrangements that you have made conduct these arrangements gracefully so there will be time and space for you to turn around. If you pay excess attention to these arrangements, then turning around will not be possible. This does not mean if you're alone, you will do it. If you're alone, you may be always looking out. You spend your entire time and life looking out for somebody. That will also not help. If you think your desires, your longings and your needs can be well handled by an arrangement of marriage, all right? Don't try to raise it to heaven. It doesn't happen in heaven, believe me. And if heaven is making so many mistakes, then we'll have to seriously reconsider many things. So, of course in India, we don't blame it on the heaven. We do our own calculations of all the arrangements of stars and planets and everything. We match all the planets and stars very well. It's very easy to match stars because they never fought ever. But to match these two people, that nobody has managed except those two people. If they are sensible, if they are sensible, they can manage it. Nobody else can match these two people. Priests have tried, gods have tried, ghosts and goblins have tried. It's not worked and not worked and not worked. Two sensible people, they can manage. If both of them understand the limitations of the arrangement and the possibilities of the arrangement, they can conduct it sensibly. If you try to raise it to heaven, you will see it will for sure crash. So your marriage has nothing to do with your spiritual process because your spiritual process is an inward journey. But one dimension of this is, to walk alone, people falter. Actually this question was asked to Gautama, the Buddha. Is it better to walk alone or in company? Gautama looked unsad.  Because Gautama, not me, okay?  It's him, not me, okay?


Hi everybody, we're back, this is Dave Vellante and this is theCUBE. We're here at 42 South Street in Hopkins, Massachusetts. EMC's having a big SAP customer event and we're here with Bernhard Schultzke who is a vice president, involved heavily in the SAP EMC ecosystem. Bernhard's with EMC. Welcome back to theCUBE. Hey, thank you Dave. So I'm going to control the mic if that's okay. So they say, you know there's an old saying in my business, never give up the mic. So anyway, so tell me what's new since the last time we've talked. What's going on in the SAP ecosystem? What are customers telling you? Customers are varying, engaged in looking at how to get more flexible TCO reduction. I mean, they hear a lot about HANA but they might right now really is on x86 migration, virtualization, getting there and so forth. So I mean, the event is just great. I mean, it's getting bigger every time. It's the biggest that we ever had and customers are all excited to hear from us from the set of specialists on how to do it. We've been speaking about, I'm not sure you can do a pre announcement here, but we've been speaking about how we've been bringing the right sets of skills set together to actually guide the customers from their physical to the virtual and customers are very well receiving that and there's a lot of anxiety to finally get there and a lot of good feeding and that we are structuring it out the way we do. Let's break down the customer problem here. So SAP environments are large, they're sophisticated, they're complicated, there's a lot of frankly, non differentiated heavy lifting that customers have had to do. Virtualization comes in, it simplifies things, you're talking about migration presumably from Unix to x86. So what kind of impacts are you guys able to have? Can you help us quantify that a little bit or give us some proof points? Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. Most of the things that customers want to hear about is like, okay, can we actually do it? Okay, so there's some doubt into, can the Intel platform do it? And we are quite able to basically make that call. And the next question really is about the change management to go there. Like, hey, we have these X, HPX folks and so forth, can we convert them over? Which is usually also not a big problem. And then there's the case of like, hey, we've got an environment right now, we have nice offers and so forth, should we be extending, can we do the math now? And what we kind of get to the ground to is like, SAP engagements are like, I mean, they are hogging all the resources. And I mean, SAP has so many great products, there's one more kind of each quarter that's been thrown out. And what customers find is they want to be able to embrace them because they finally get the bug of the better business processes and they don't want to be limited by the environment. So this is the kind of talking points that we're having here. So let's talk about the business case a little bit. I mean, what's driving the business case? What's driving CIOs and CTOs and CFOs to actually make the move and sign on the dotted line and actually expend resources to save money? And what kind of magnitude of savings are they seeing? Okay, that's a very good question actually. So I mean, if you're interested in money, I mean, if you're able to kind of half the cost of your infrastructure operation, I mean, that's interesting. This is what we see on average. I get my attention. It has mine also. What we also see is that it's a bit not an Apple to Apple comparison, but usually, I mean, if people go from their bit age to Unix environments to a new one, they see three times the performance and more. So I mean, half time the cost, three times more performance.  I mean, this is what's driving it.  So I'm surprised that that was sort of a main hurdle, but as you say, you're easily able to overcome that, yes? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, here's the thing, okay? I mean, the clock is ticking at different speeds, maybe for the technology geeks and for the customers, because I mean, customers need to run the daily operation, and they're being held responsible to meeting the SLAs and everything, so they can actually experiment and so forth. So talk to a customer yesterday who's still in the finalization of the SAP rollout, which kind of started six years ago. So you talk to them, they want to revamp their stuff. Yes, absolutely. The point that I'm trying to make here is, it's not about when you think like, oh, the new stuff is there, you just jump right on. I mean, we talk about companies that are actually embracing multiple holding style sub-companies that they all have responsibility on, so you need to have a controlled process to make that migration a totally smooth one. Yeah, because if I'm a CIO, I'm saying, oh, wait a minute, I'm concerned about risk. So yes, my Unix environment's proprietary is gonna be more expensive, I'm gonna be spending more on hardware, but I always, all these processes built up around it. I'm afraid, Bernhard, to move off of that on my watch. Maybe the next CIO. How do you help manage that risk? Take us through that process. Yeah, okay, I mean, that's actually pretty easy. So the migration process is not a very complicated one. It's actually a list of steps that you would have to take that you can line out on a couple of pages and so forth. So you basically put some examples in there. There's certain variations here and there, but essentially what you do is like, you line up with a couple of good guys and consulting folks or folks from the SI Alliance business and they will kind of hold your hand in that perspective, okay? They will tell you like, look, I mean, we're taking copy of the system, we test it through, we're going to show you, and prove to you that it's reworking smooth. We have a kind of a push button procedure defined. So you can take it one by time and you're going to measure the success. So there will be minimal disruption for you. And here, look at this, here's a couple of thousand customers who've been doing it before you. So this is usually that you wanna go through. It's like, let me find a good example. I mean, hiking a certain path, okay? I mean, you need to know the right way. You don't wanna basically step left or right and kind of fold E, but you know, if you take the step, if you take the guidance from your leader, it won't be a problem and you'll be enjoying basically everything else after on. So I'm thinking about that migration specifically. I mean, it's a package, right? So you're basically pretty easy to migrate a package, but some clients, I would imagine, have some custom code built up around it. Do you, are you running into those complexities? Do I have to do things like freeze the code? Is that, are there situations where it just, you know, it's a little harder and it might not make as much sense? No, actually not. Because I mean, the customizations are at an application level. That's actually decoupled from what we're talking about from an infrastructure. So that's not playing a major role in that respect. It would rather be kind of and further accelerator to go virtual and so forth because to kind of not out what you would have in your complex environment and want to copy it and transfer it to somewhere else, you can do that on a virtual infrastructure much easier. Yeah, now talk about virtualization a little bit. I mean, early on, maybe say two or three years ago, there was some concern about virtualizing SAP. I know a lot of application heads, you know, were concerned and maybe still be concerned about that. Can you talk a little bit about the virtualizing SAP, what the experiences have been? Yeah, I would basically cancel concern and replace it by uninformed because I mean, it's fully supported since when we do the math I think seven years from an SAP perspective. There's been just been going on some stuff with Oracle always tries to make it harder new from a database level. That's also fully supported from a VMware perspective. So I mean, it's kind of all a done deal. Some guys for whatever reason, I mean, the Unix folks to kind of try to keep them on their old side would tell you all kinds of anecdotal stuff on how crazy it is. But essentially, I mean, there's so many proof points there. That's not a real problem. And you can read it up. It's not a secret. So the gates are open, the flood gates are going.  And I'll give you the last word for the audience. Hey, customers go for it. We got all the help lined up for you. Great, thanks very much for coming back in theCUBE. Appreciate it. Keep it right there, everybody. This is Dave Vellante and this is theCUBE. We'll be right back with some more guests from EMC's SAP event here in Hopkington.


It was in my late teens when I was working as a bellhop at a beautiful resort in the Wasatch Mountains. Under the guidance of a person we called Lee the Bell Captain. Lee was on his third career working well into his retirement simply because he loved people. From my very first day I could tell he was different from any manager that I had ever worked with before. Why? Because he saw us. He saw how we worked. He saw our strengths and he made sure that we saw them too. Here's an example. One day an elderly guest pulled up and I helped her out of her car. It was just an ordinary moment in an ordinary day, just me simply doing the job I was hired to do. But after I helped her inside, Lee came up to me and he said, Clint, I was so happy to see that you noticed that that woman needed some extra help. He said, I saw how you were extra careful with her and you took your time as you walked her into the hotel door. He looked at me and he said, now that, that is the type of thing that can really make a difference in someone else's life. Keep it up. What an immediate connection that made. I remember I felt proud and more importantly it made me really think about the everyday interactions that I was having with our guests and the kind of impact they could have. By catching me doing good, Lee reinforced my strengths and modeled what it means to be a person who truly enjoys their job and loves the people they work with and serve every single day. In so many little moments, just like that, Lee showed all of us that we were more valuable than just our paychecks or even just his paycheck. And in return, we learned to love people a little bit more, to love people as much as he did and to show every guest that same care and that same value.