We're now halfway through the dumpster fire of storytelling simply known as The Mandalorian. I should warn you if you stumbled upon this video thinking oh this will be a fun recap video of my favorite show The Mandalorian, no that's not what it is. I mean it is a recap video and I hope that it's fun but it's mostly an airing of grievances. I haven't liked this season at all and this is coming from a person who loved season one and two, thought the book of Boba Fett was a disaster. I can't believe they finished arcs of The Mandalorian in that show. It's some of the worst writing known to man and then The Mandalorian season three says hold my Vescar because this thing is a nightmare of writing. I just can't even begin well I have began. I've done the whole season so far up until this point. I'm gonna finish it out. I'm hate watching it at this point. Please subscribe if you you know enjoy watching angry middle-aged bitter men complain about a kids show because that's what this really is at the end of the day. It's a kids show. A show that my kids aren't watching. We fire up the episode with Grief Carga on Planet Navarro. Man we have a bunch of characters that people don't know the names of so they said Grief Carga a few times in this episode which I appreciated because I can put a name to the face of Apollo Creed who I was previously just referencing in the mass. This episode is going to be focused on his beef with space pirate Davy Jones. Spencer's Gifts edition. Ceewee Davy Jones lays siege to this rebuilt city this beautiful utopia simply because some of his pirate crew couldn't get a drink at a children's school that used to be a bar years earlier. I mean kind of unrealistic expectations kind of a silly thing to go to war over but here we are. That's the Mandalorian. The title comes up and we're treated to what is surely going to be the best moment of this episode and that's a bizarre alien western song. It's hilarious. I love it. I dug it. I was like oh yeah remember the western stuff they kind of had in the first season where it was grittier. It was more simplistic. It felt like a one-man army sort of show like a last of us set in space but now this show is colorful. It's poppy. It's punchy. It's for all ages.   But let's focus on the episode. Carson Tabaugh who I think is a new character. I don't remember seeing him before. He gets the distress call from Apollo Creed. I forgot his name already and he's hanging out at a bar, a local bar. There's another CG big-ass alien guy.  It doesn't matter. A good group of people will see this character and be like hey and then they'll really wet themselves when he says the thing that Han Solo said. Good luck kid. You're gonna need it. I don't think he said kid but he definitely said good luck you're gonna need it and I thought oh that sounds like something Han Solo probably said and then I googled it and yeah sure enough of course because that's what this show is now. It's just member berries. We're now back at Coruscant. Look at that these stories might actually meet up. That's how storytelling works. You don't just randomly start a new story thread without alluding to it or transitioning to it which they did in episode three or four of this season. Now they're actually tying to it nicely. That's how writing 101 is conducted. Anyway back on Coruscant. Tim Meadows is there. Of course Tim Meadows talking to the crew. Wait what? Tim Meadows. What? When did he join into this thing? Why? I have to say Meadows is one of the most underrated comedians. Just full stop. He's underappreciated. Whenever I see him show up I just start laughing. He just has that presence. He's funny. Just everything about his demeanor. I don't know if he's supposed to be playing comic relief here. I think he's supposed to be serious but I couldn't stop laughing. I'm like Tim Meadows this is awesome. New guy Carson has a chat with him. Female Mario Lopez makes a cameo. She's like hey remember me from that other episode. I'm here again and then she leaves. Meadows isn't having it. He's like ah no. New Republic ain't doing this. You can make like Padme and go cry to death back on your planet with the people over there because this isn't going to happen. New Republic's not going to help. That's fine. Carson's got this. He flies his ass over at the Mandalorian Beachside Resort and Cafe where the Mandalorian are all prepared for him.  The whole crew's there. The whole family's there. Guns pointed at this poor sap of a character who's just trying to get some help.  He persists.  Makes his case. It's not impressive. Din Djarin doesn't do anything impressive anymore. So second guy comes up the big brute with the machine gun. Looks like a halo character skin. His speech was much better. Machine Gun Kelly puts it all out in the line. Talks about how the fondlings need to grow up outside of cave. Touching grass.  And then it's off to the races. We have the ground fight. We have some space combat with Mando and Bo-Katan who I wasn't sure was in this episode at first because when Carson first arrived at Mandalorian Bayside I didn't see her and I thought oh you know what she's probably constructing a new throne that she can sit on all day and sulk. But then she came sauntering up.  We have a decent action section. Again though it's very Power Rangers-esque now. Everything's very colorful. A lot of the costumes look like masks you buy from one of those pop-up Halloween stores. Machine Gun Kelly finally gets to use this thing. Even Blacksmith Mandalorian Lady gets to take out some dudes and I love that she still uses her blacksmith tools. No guns. Just walks up in there. It wasn't near as cool as what I just did. I can assure you. Spencer's Gifts Davy Jones isn't having it. In one last ditch effort he tries to take out the townspeople. Bo-Katan. Din-Jarin. They see what's going on. They take out that final engine ending in a blaze of glory. And by glory I mean the opposite. This ship crashes down. It burns. It blows up. Pirate Guy's probably dead. I hope. Just a terrible character. For the job well done Magistrate Grief Carva gives Mandalorian Sanctuary at this city. He says hey you guys help me out. Want to help you out. Live here. Just live here. Be free amongst the people. Could they have lived there before? Did they have to like save the town in order to live in the town? I'm kind of confused. Did they really need to be off at Volcano Bay living amongst the dinosaurs? Or could they have just gone over to Coruscant or to you know one of these other planets and just it just hung out. I don't know. Everything's very muddy.  For instance they could have gone to Mandalore at any time and checked if it truly was toxic. Din-Jarin went there in an afternoon like driving 20 miles to the nearest Starbucks popped off the helmet five steps out of the plane knew it wasn't toxic.  Not even doing a test flight. You know it's their home planet full of history full of knowledge and resources but take their word for it. It's poisoned. It's toxic. Episode starts to wind down with Blacksmith Female Mandalorian telling Bo-Katan hey pop off the helmet. You trust me? You trust me? Take off the helmet. You don't need it.  You're like blade. Half human half vampire but in this instance half regular person half person that used to wear her helmet all the time. So basically just completely the same but without a helmet that's the only difference. So she gets to choose mask on or mask off whenever she feels comfortable and I think it's incredibly lazy convenient writing just so that we can see Katie Sackoff in All Our Glory and I have zero complaints about that because she is truly the only good thing in this show right now. Episode ends with Captain Tava, he's a thing now I guess, stumbling upon a mysterious craft out in space. This turns out to be a New Republic transport ship that had Moth Gideon on it. Had, being the keyword there, he was extracted at some point by, wait for it, Mandalorian.  This show has no point- And this was another mediocre episode, sadly probably the best one of the season. Really sadly one of the best ones of the season because at least narratively it had some sort of a flow to it. There was a beginning, middle and end. It tied in the Coruscant stuff as bad as that is and yeah there's some mystery going into the next episode. Again I don't really care about any of this. I find all of it kind of just nonsense. The show really wrapped up at the end of season two when little baby Grogu or Grogu was sent over to Luke. That was it. That was the game. But now we're just spinning our wheels and this is going to go into just complete narrative nightmare-fuel world and I'm here for it. Lastly I used to watch this show every Sunday with my family. I know it comes out on Wednesdays but we waited to the weekend, had a big pancake breakfast, all of us sat down, my wife and two children for the Mandalorian episode. How's it going now? Well my kids bailed after two in season three. Tonight I watched this show in bed next to my wife who was reading a book. That's how little interest the Mandalorian is to this family anymore. I want to hear from you though. Where are you at with the season? Is it getting better? Is it improving now that things are starting to connect? Some of the threads are starting to make this sweater or are you like me and it's just really bad writing? Don't care about any of the characters. The Mandalorian crew, the cult is really dumb now. The more they tell us about them, the more pathetic they look. I want to hear. Let me know in the comments. Like this video. Please share it around. Subscribe if you haven't. I post new videos every week on movies mainly. It's called Adam Does Movies.  So I thought let's air grievances as a family. This is the way.


To the people's democratic party in Keduna state has rejected the governorship election resort declared by INEC which announced Ubersani of the ruling APC as governor-elect. Speaking at the press conference at the PWB secretariat, chairman of the party, Felix Hyatt says the party will only accept authentic resort from the INEC server that is the IREP. The party says the electoral empire is not neutral or was not neutral in conducting free fair and credible elections which reflected the true mandate of the people. I demanded the use of authentic resort from the INEC server as the only accepted resort for declaration of governorship in our state. The lack of transparency from INEC officials was glaring and justice will not be done to us. He lamented the alleged partisanship of the electoral empire, the non-years of the beavers in some polling units, high cancellation of voter declaration or declaring or declaring rather of resort different from that of the IREP. I ask you, why do we have the server? The server is with INEC, why did INEC look for server in order to improve the sanctity of elections and for the same INEC to turn round not to use server again means that they must have gone into a dirty deal with whoever they represented and we feel we have no we have no any justification to support this declaration. And don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Good morning everybody. Did I say it yet? What morning it is? I don't know. We're visiting with Bob's family who live up this way. We are going to go have lunch with them before we head to the airport to go home.  The brothers both like hot rods and Bob is out right now taking a picture of it so I will get a picture from him of it and I will put it right about here. Anyway it has been a fun trip but yeah I'm tired so anyway we're going to go have some lunch and enjoy the local area and then go home and I will be back. So we landed, we're back in Portland, we're obviously in the car, headed home. It was funny because in the shuttle bus to the parking lot it said something about minimizing how many people were on the bus and everybody has to wear a mask and all of that because of what's going on. That bus was crowded. There were people it see it was full.  I was waiting for luggage to come off the luggage rack and like fall on me and now we're trying to get out. We thought the hardest part was going to be finding the car because unlike other times when we've traveled because we're out of practice we usually take pictures of where we are in the parking lot so we don't have to guess where where's the car when we get back. We didn't do that this time so we had to make a guess. Anyway it was complicated we did find the car it wasn't that hard.   I never thought this would be the hard part. I don't know. It was a fun weekend but I'm glad to be home. I'll be back. Good morning everybody. Happy Monday morning. It's Monday morning September 13th 8 55 a.m. I'm unpacking some things I purchased and or ordered from Wish that came in while I was gone and things I purchased while we were in California at Dyson and so that's on my desk behind me and so I gotta put that away today but first I'm gonna edit the vlog write my daily my day and my posts for the week for the Facebook art groups get those all scheduled get all that all scheduled and done. I also have to go to the grocery store at some point today so yeah so we'll get we'll get it done I need more coffee first because you know just it was a fun weekend but it was long I need more coffee all right I'll be back okay hello so I have this skirt style it's really cute I haven't worn it in a long time because honestly I was too fat to fit in it but now it's been so long that I don't know if you can hear this like this has elastic in it not that you know that because elastic is completely shot not to mention because normally the waist is not this big anyway not to mention the fact that there's a hole in it somewhere in the back here so I'm gonna fix it because I really like the skirt it's cute all right so the first thing to do is we are going to surge off the old waistband which will do two things it'll get rid of the old waistband and it'll finish the fabric up here so it doesn't fray because this is like a thin gauzy fabric so let's do that first looks more normal than it takes in the afternoon Tuesday September 14th other than some filming of some art stuff have I vlogged it all today I don't think so anyway it's Tuesday I normally do a chat and coffee thing with patrons and supporters everybody was busy today cool no problem life happens but I did have a lot of journaling to catch up on including this sort of year of my life journal that I've been working on I used some of mine and other designers art foams for some of the backgrounds they turned out so cute these are just journal pages like to document different things that happened in my life in any given year um like oh see if I can lift this up in June on the 5th of June my daughter got married and this is open there we go so I saved bits and pieces I bring them home and then I put them in here and if I'm traveling I save bits and pieces and bring them home and I put them here anyway and now I'm working on another messy journal or page it involves glitter and it's hey guys it is sometime after six o'clock on Tuesday three minutes after we're out for our evening walk before dinner I'm not super hungry so I think I'm just just gonna have a cup of broth it's interesting today I started to get messages and comments from an artist in creative I follow on YouTube and she follows me back and other social media um about my weight loss so yeah it started as a boredom challenge in January uh wondering if I could do 10,000 steps a day that was part of it anyway I'm about sick and you know I want to be better and I want to do better for myself so I started eating more salads and vegetables cutting out a lot of starches and carbs little to no alcohol less desserts and a lot more walking I don't know what you call that but that's what I'm doing I want a cup of bone broth every day guys it is Wednesday September 15th it is 10 19 a.m you always know it's going to be an interesting day when you start off the day working on some videos and forget to turn the camera on yeah that's a thing everybody it's Thursday September 16th it is 8 46 a.m don't get excited I looked already and I looked already because I have a doctor's appointment so I'm working on getting healthier and losing some weight and not that losing weight is my primary focus I want to be healthy and so anyway um I've been doing pretty well so far the doctor has been lowering my medication I've been on blood pressure medication since I turned 40 I'm now 58 yes that's a long time and the first time since I started it my medication has changed but it hasn't gone up it's gone down so that's good I think he feeds the ducks they come to her house every year they come from the golf course which we're about to walk by and she just said sometimes she has to walk the babies back because they get lost I guess but she feeds them all the time and they wander back and forth from the golf course to her house for food see I would be that person I would do the same thing Bob knows he's just shrugging his shoulders because he knows that's true yeah so anyway that was fun all right now we get on with our walk so we can go home and have dinner all right I'll be back obviously we're in the car again done some of my morning chores and work and I need to go pick up a few more things at Walgreens that I couldn't find anywhere else yesterday Walgreens is my favorite store but you know you gotta do what you gotta do right I keep hearing rumors from friends and acquaintances people I know in supply chain or retail the retail setting that the supply of goods may actually get a little worse this fall and spring then it's already been so I don't know how true and accurate that is but it might get a little more difficult than it already is to find stuff like one of the reasons I couldn't find a few things yesterday was not because the stores didn't normally carry them it's just because they were completely out so I'm going to go over to Walgreens and see if they have it otherwise I'll just have to keep my eyes open my sincere apologies to Walgreens I everywhere I went yesterday running errands was looking for my mascara and you have this crayon I use and instead of eye shadow those of you who are of a certain age and experience dry skin and hot flashes know like you want to wear a little bit of makeup but there's just certain things you just can't wear anymore they look terrible on your skin or you start sweating and they drip right off so anyway I have a particular eye crayon that I like that works to just give a little color it's actually an eyebrow crayon but I use it on eye shadow just in the outer corners and then blend it out it is a l'oreal palette l'oreal paris brow stylist kabuki blender pencil crayon I use the dark brunette color they had that they had my mascara which was on sale buy two get a third free I don't need three mascaras so I just bought one they had my night cream they also do carry my day cream although I didn't need any right now they have both here and they had the mouth rinse I need to be using on my that I use after I brush my teeth I had all of it here so my apologies Walgreens the patrons will get first look and if you want first look on some of my videos being said we are going out obviously tonight it is Friday still it is 503 p.m. we're going to go over to the kid's house and then we are going to our first concert of any kind since this whole pandemic thing started and we are going to go see kiss we like rocket I like music I don't know what to tell you I like rock it all I want to see the show they put on yes they're all old enough I think well most of them are just about old enough to be my dad yeah I mean you know my mom just passed away she was 79 so I mean yeah but you know they do they I like their music so we're going to take the kids and we're going to go up it's actually for Becca's birthday present last year yeah her birthday yeah her birthday present last year hers and his they're a week apart by the way and we didn't get to go because of the pandemic they rescheduled it to this year now I have to tell you I was half nervous they were going to reschedule it again but nope we're doing it you have to wear a mask you cannot you either have to have a clear plastic bag or it can't be bigger than four by six so and no paper tickets it has to be on your phone so we've done all of those things and we've got our mask and yes my mask matches my bag because you know why not who doesn't love a good sugar skull all right that's it for the minute I will see if I can safely without getting copyright issues get some sort of something videotape probably not of the show but maybe of us walking in and stuff yeah but if kiss has a youtube channel which they probably do I'll link it down below you can check them out if by chance you've never heard of them and you're because you're like my dad and he has no idea who they are my mom knew who kiss was she liked rock and roll dad as he says likes elevator music so he has no idea it's good morning it's saturday morning september 18th uh 10 something am it's just before 11 am um so if you're watching this clip then you just saw a clip holy cow of me on the freeway with the kids and bob on the way to the kiss concert last night and there was a large fire at a homeless encampment on the side of the freeway it was so big and so hot we could feel the heat inside the car I did try to call 911 about a dozen times it was busy every time I'm assuming that's because everybody else on the freeway was also trying to call it did I understand get it put out safely I don't think anybody got hurt but holy crap anyway you also saw some video clips from the kiss concert for obvious reasons I'm not going to put the sound in I'm going to take it out for copyright issues and the clips will be brief and probably from fairly far away again for copyright issues I'll put some other music in there I don't know what I'm going to put in but anyway it was a lot of fun wow did they put on a great show glad I got to see it everybody was required to wear a mask and socially distanced as they could plus it was also outside so we did do it safely but it was nice to be able to go to an event like that again um but we're tired today um my dad is in town today he's over at the kids house he's helping them with polyas with some car stuff and I guess buying tools and getting some advice from the tools um what he's probably going to need and Bob is going over there to join them and I am here at the house I'm going to catch up on some computer stuff all right that's it for this week the family is all coming for dinner as I just said my dad is here with Tala his dog and we're going to be having a family dinner night maybe watching the new Clint Eastwood movie yeah so anyway I hope you've all had a good week we've had a fun week I mean you know it's weird it's COVID but it's been a fun week I hope you've had a fun week I hope you have a fun week next week I'm getting questions about my weight loss journey if you guys are interested we'll have a conversation maybe an open zoom meeting I don't know put something in the comments down below check out the video description for relevant links ways to support the free content here on youtube and in the facebook art groups and places to follow me on social social media I can't speak today um which include instagram and all that stuff I do have a snapchat I don't think it's linked there yet because I don't know how to work it but anyway um there's a link tree list the links down below it includes patreon and my Etsy shop and all of that stuff so check it out um don't forget to stay safe stay healthy stay creative and go out and have a great day have a great week and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it hear that voice my dad's here so I'm gonna go get the door I'll see you all next week don't forget to have a great one bye guys


Although Roma are the largest ethnic minority in Europe, they still experience high level of racism and have to deal with many societal issues. Also, Roma are being represented in a very stereotypical way in the media and art world. The Roma Theatre has more than a century long past with active professional theatre groups in many European countries, but unfortunately they are still hardly known. The Roma Heroes Theatre Festival initiated by the Independent Theatre Hungary is the only International Roma Theatre Encounter in the world, which have been organized in every year since 2017. Some of the present artists and their work are introduced in our series. Today, my guest is Tamás Sagedi, the director of the play called Camille Engel and Martin Illich, the writer of the play, who will also do some translation during this discussion. So, hi guys, how are you? Hello. Hi. Fine. Good to be here. My first question would be, Marti, could you please summarize very briefly what the play is about, who and what inspired you by writing it? So, the play Camille Engel, which was presented on the second festival, was inspired by real stories of Roma youngsters who participated in workshops based on the plays of the first festival, and in this workshop they focused on their heroic stories of the dramas and their own heroic stories, and the stories of the heroes of these young people who live in Hungary and Belgium, because we also had workshops there. And it was important to put together different real stories of these young Roma people. And this way, without to build an imaginary character, the Camille Engel, who is like an average teenage girl, but with very special superpower, that she can go to the minds of their relatives and friends and relieve the experiences of her grandparents. And this way, through one character, we were able to present very different stories also in history and geographically and so forth. So, that's how it started. Thank you. Do you have a favorite part in the play, because it was challenging or because it's close to you? And it's a question also to Tommy. Thank you for the question, but if you want to say something before, you can, if you want to Okay, so we started to do this story based on the existing stories, but we still didn't have the end of the story, because this teenage girl shares a lot of story. And then we went to Belgium, and we also were supposed to use the stories which we need there. And then there was a girl who shared her own story that she went to school and she became pregnant, and she decided to keep the baby and to leave the school. And as we met this story, we saw that it should be like the end of the play, which is like a very usual problem or challenge of young girls, even Roman, non-Roman girls, that they are pregnant and during their studies and what are their decisions. And we don't want to say that it's a good decision to keep the baby or to continue the study, but we wanted to put in focus that you have to make your own decision based on your own values, whatever they are. And my favorite part of this job or this period when I directed this show, I think that was the most great challenge to directing a show with just one person. I had some experience earlier to make a theater performances with three, four actors or sometimes more, but that was the first time when I made a show with one actor on it, and it was a great challenge for me and that was a great challenge for Emilia Lovasz II, who is the actress of the show, because that was the first monodrama for her, too, and for me, too. We wanted to work together for a long time with Emilia. Also ten years, so it was a great, great chance to work together, and I think that that was the most important, the most big challenge, and of the story, my favorite part of the story, when the old man in Emilia's life, the Kamiya down girl's life, this is the beginning of the story, he's reminding into the past, and it was a great challenge, too, how to directing this situation with one person in the same area on the stage, to jumping in the time, to the past, to the future, to the present, so it was a good practice and it was good to thinking on how we do it, so we wanted to use many furniture on the stage, we only wanted to use some usable boxes to the stage and just visual art in the background to make the feelings of the scenes. Thanks, so my next question would go for both of you, actually. Could you please share a few sentences about your artwork, what are your principles when creating art, what is your art, Cree? Okay, so what I think is very important for me and also for in a very general to show like different perspectives, so we never want to show just one perspective or to be a tool of just one ideology, but to show like that life is very diverse and also Roma communities and majority can be very diverse and all decisions can have different aspects, but it's always important to show the values, but also the disadvantages of any situation, so not to paint black and white situations. Maybe this is important for me, mostly the same as independence theater and personality, if I work as a director or if I work as an actor too, I would like to work not just for the art, I would like to do it for the message of the show, for the message of the story. This is what is the most important to me. So I think I wouldn't able to work as an actor at all in my life because I don't want to stay on the stage just because I would like to be an actor to be a celebrated actor. I would like to be an artist who wanted to say something for the something for general. Thank you. I would go with this on and it's this question is to Tommy, but more to feel free to add your thoughts if you if you would like. So Tommy, what does Roma theater mean to you? Do you consider it necessary for Roma theater makers to have their own institutions? For me, the Roma theater, it means there is some Roma people in the theater group, in the artistic group. And it is it is a good if the writer or the director is a Roma, but it not so it is not not not not it is not the most important for me. The first, first important message, as I said earlier, how it works for if it goes from Roma community, the story, the message and work together Roma and non-Roma artists. This is the idea for me. So I prefer work mixed Roma and non-Roma artists together because for me, it's closer to the mainstream theater artists or any artistic way. So I will be happy. I would be glad if it if the Roma theater goes to the mainstream theater or Roma art goes to the mainstream art. So I think it's most important to look to the to the performances, to the stories, to the artistic as an art, art object, art story, theater play, not just Roma art, not not Roma theater play. At first, the coming home girl, for example, the story about the girl, about the young girl. So it can be at first woman's story. And this is the second way, if I'm thinking on this girl is a Roma girl in Hungary, but it's at first it can be a girl story. So it's the best way it goes into the mainstream artistic way. Thanks. Marci, do you have something to add? Yeah, just very shortly, maybe that this is important, this culture of mainstreaming, so not to keep the Roma art in a culture ghetto or slum, but it's only presented in Roma events or in different places. And we think it's also important to cooperate with Roma and Roma people together, but it's important to have a decision making position that Roma people like director or writer, so not just actors, not just, but also the ones who figure out the whole concept of the story. Thank you. I think it's super important that these points that you both of you raise. Okay, so lastly, my question would go to both of you in general about your future plans or goals regarding the career and also Marci regarding independent theater. So maybe Marci, you could start or Tommy or Okay, so regarding independent theater or maybe all these Roma heroes initiative and frame of this retrospective is also organized. It's important to be of the bigger and stronger network of European Roma theaters because together all the initiatives can be stronger and to be of the also visible cultural heritage because the theater dies from day to day. But if you can record it and see it also for the next generation, it's very important and also to start corporations and create new place. We always focus in the lots of also focus in the future. I think on social issues and we are planning to have more use, use plays so targeting use or children because we think that this is the target group which can be raised the burners much better than the adults. So we will do probably this kind of performance beside our educational work. Thank you. And as a writer Marci in your career or professional work artwork because you mentioned independence. Yeah, I'm usually interested in in stories which come next to me so or which came to me so I will see but I'm new dramas or work as a drama to go to another place. We'll see you. Thank you. Tell me in my plan, I would like to make some educational programs in the future for maybe for these plays what what about Marci's talking and I would like to make I would like to make us pray a story about about my life about my last few days because it was a strong, strong period of my life. So as an artist, as an independent artist, I would like to work on this because it would be important to me to make my next step in my life. So at first, I would like to work on my past stories, stories of women in my life, in my past. And in my in my mind, I would like I would like to make it with another theater group with a corporation with the Jonathan theater because it could be interesting if I if I talking about my stories from my view, and it would be nice if the other theater group could talk about this story too, but not my point of view, but the women's women point of views. So it would be interesting if it goes six minutes in a week. And in the other other plans as I have, it's so open. So I can I try to be open many opportunities in my life. I would like to make theater plays as a director if I if I find some chance to do it. Or sometimes I would like to play as an actor too, mostly the same situation as I said, that kind of theater, which which talks something important topics, which is which is important to me. He talks about maybe maybe make some changes in the minds. Thank you. Do you have anything to add that you forgot what you wanted to say? And then I just didn't let you. Okay. Then thank you for the discussion. Thank you. Thank you for you. And now you can see the performance called Camille Unger directed by Thomas Segebi and written by Martin E. Leish. Enjoy the show. Okay. Bye bye.


this is Christian Buckley with another MVP Buzz Chat interview and I'm here this morning with Jim. Jim, hello. Howdy. Thank you for inviting me. Well, Jim, for folks that don't know you. I know you're a newer MVP. Why don't you give us the the entire history in like a minute of Jim Wilcox? Alright, so it's kind of funny actually. I was thinking about this. I met my first MVPs back in 2012 and it realized that they were actually all named Chris. You and Chris Bortlich and Chris Bowen. Bortlich wasn't an MVP though. He's the Microsoft guy but he's one of those people like if they would expand the program because there are certain Microsoft people like Bortlich who go above and beyond on the community side. I mean it's not part of their job description the stuff that they do the support for the user groups and for like in our space like the SharePoint Saturday events and and the sequel Saturdays and all of that like there's Gennady and Bortlich and and now Erick Harlan you know just things like the folks like that that just do a tremendous amount for the community. Absolutely. But anyway back to you. Sorry, yeah. Who do you work with all that kind of stuff? So I'm Jim Wilcox. I'm a go-by-the-moniker at the Granite State Hacker. I've been working with the community for gosh you know probably about a decade at this point. Right now I'm with Insight Digital Innovation. We're a consulting company formerly known as Blue Metal. A lot of people know Blue Metal Architects. But I'm a .NET guy. Any opportunity to do C-Sharp especially with a compiler that's that's kind of home for me and and I've been having a lot of fun lately with a little bit of all kinds of stuff from a little bit of mobile, a little bit of desktop, a little bit of Azure cloud services, functions and that sort of thing. And interestingly enough a little bit of a rebirth in legacy .NET framework stuff because now there's this cool path forward to .NET Core and all that stuff. So we're seeing a lot of modernization in terms of bringing .NET framework up to .NET Core and getting it ready for new .NET 5 stuff coming down the pike which you know is very exciting. You know it's really interesting there. Well actually let me first ask. So your MVP is in what? It's in developer technologies. It's so developer technology space. And I was trying to was going to liken it to like you know like the US version of the office like a joke about you know where I think Jim was making fun of Dwight for like a what is the latest that's happening with the thousands year old karate? You know what new changes have happened? It's almost like I think like that was some of the old technologies like the .NET like what exciting things are happening with this old? It's like tell me about cobalt. What are the exciting things happening with cobalt? There are always interesting things going on with some of the older technology. So coming what's happening for folks that aren't following what's happening with .NET Core?  But they're really bringing everything back together again. It's like getting the band back together and everybody's pretty excited about it. It's all the things that you loved about the .NET framework stuff combined with all the new stuff that people love about Windows 10 functionality that you couldn't get in the .NET framework is now kind of converging on this new thing that they're coming out with very shortly called .NET 5. So what kind of stuff are you out actively presenting on into these topics talking about it or is it like brand brand news? It's going on as we speak and so you're not yet out. So no actually a lot of it's fairly well known. I've been doing presentations. Actually I'm fairly diverse. I do presentations about Uno platform which is not just converging all of everything into C sharp and .NET and all that stuff but making it so that you can target iPhone and Android as well. I've also been talking about but framework stuff so artificial intelligence and chats and a little bit of teams integration and that sort of thing. So that's how I'm kind of keeping myself in the office world and gosh what else. I still love to tell about what's going on with the language details like C sharp as a language. They keep on adding features and functionality to it and I always love to have the opportunity to tell people about new syntax and functionality that's coming along in the C sharp language but you get to take advantage of much more expressive syntax that you can do a lot more powerful things than you could before. So well you know and we were talking of course so I participated in the so the Granite Bay user group kind of online stuff. You guys are getting together. How often are you getting together online now? So I've been doing the Granite state code review nightly literally every week night since everything went virtual for the coronavirus stuff. Other than that I host meetups as a normal rule a couple of times a month and then you know events in and beyond that is as often as they arise. So and those are everything from Granite state code camp to you know teams Thursday New England to SharePoint Saturdays that I've been working on for years out here in the New England area. So yes. I mean because I know you had a full plate of events and things going on pretty much across the board is all that stuff are they because not some events are postponing or canceling and rescheduling out in advance. We were talking about last night like you have Mark Radley's the event that his team is putting on the North American Collab Summit in Branson, Missouri and that got pushed out to September. And so they're everybody's like crossing their fingers of whether people will even show up in September depending on what the new normal looks like. And I had an event as I was talking the first week in June over in Germany. So that was the the European Collab Summit that's going on but other events like our beloved MVP summit your first one. Yes. So had you booked flights already. Yes we had. In fact I still have my tickets on point all I'll figure out what to do with them. You know I'm looking forward to getting out to visit the Seattle area again someday soon. But yeah. Yeah that's that's rough for for those that aren't aware to this. So the MVP summit is an annual get together of all the MVPs and from all over the world. And so it's pretty amazing to see you know three or four thousand people for a week. And I think it's that I don't know how many actually show up but it feels like more but then because you have all the Microsoft people around and basically we get to go deep insights and ask questions and get to road map walkthroughs and tons of NDA stuff. But it's it's not even the content. I mean there's always so much you learn from that. And then of course share our personal and our customer experiences back with Microsoft. So it's it's a really powerful tool for them to collect information and validate theories on where products are going and road maps. All that stuff. But also of course to connect with each other and develop relationships and business partnerships and all that kind of stuff. So you can't do a lot of that online. Most of that. Yeah. Yeah. That's that it's rough. Yeah. I love the opportunity to represent the Granite State back to Microsoft. So you know that's that's awesome as far as I'm concerned. There was some nice opportunity to connect at MVP Summit online. We did it all in teams of course. And the nice part about that was that you know when when somebody says something at a live event you know it's it's very immediate. There's there's no real opportunity to catch up with it afterwards. But when somebody says something online it sticks around and you have the chance to to catch up with what people were talking about. And that sort of thing. So I do appreciate that aspect of the online part of it. But but at the same time there's there's nothing like you know actually being face to face with people and in a room full of like-minded individuals is always an opportunity that you don't want to miss but you know there's well that we've had that and I'm sure I would love to get your feedback too is that that's been to the problem with a lot of user groups. I mean across the board you hear of of regional user groups where their numbers have been going down and down and down. And part of that is driven by you know the topics that you're covering and and of course you get the diehards of the people that participate every single time. But for for new folks it might be a big-name speaker that you bring in or a topic that's something that's that's groundbreaking topic or brand new and bleeding edge and they want to hear more about it. You know the it's difficult with all that happening the you know there comes a downward trend of user groups and more and more people moving things to online. What's been your prior to all of this before this all happened with COVID-19. What were you guys doing? Were you moving to more of an online or were you still doing the face-to-face on a monthly basis? So I tended to want to stay face-to-face just because I see lots of you know there's lots of pre-recorded content and that sort of thing. But the FaceTime is is something that you just kind of can't really miss out on. You can't you can't go back and do it again. You can't watch it later. You know and and that adds value to it in and of itself. So so I was kind of feeling a little bit like we had lost some of our attendance because for a while we were doing things online and people would just kind of stop attending you know they they'd say all right I'm gonna catch it when I get home okay well I'll catch a recording well all right maybe they won't you know I've fallen victim to it myself where I intended to be you know part of some online thing and and missed out and ended up just saying all right I'll catch the recording and you know someday I will and I mean but what's the what's the answer I mean what's the what's the right mix of data do you have any thought I mean purely your opinion what's what what are what's the way to handle this what should user groups be doing. So right now there's there's just no choice and the nice part about that is is that you know we're experiencing what that's like in the in the coronavirus isolations just seeing you know what it's like to have these these user group meetings we're not really recording them you know they're they're just you know get together see how reform yeah yeah yeah and and in this particular case it's really more about just having the human connection seeing what we can you know what we can do to help each other out um ostensibly it's all about code but you know the reality is is that we're we're just trying to make sure that everybody's okay and and keep in touch with people that we care about um you know so that's that's what we're doing right now um going forward I I think uh it probably makes sense to come up with kind of a hybrid like um you know do these things maybe online occasionally and and then do them in person when you can when it feels like everybody wants to get together and have a slice of pizza and a beer or something maybe go from there so yeah we're we were thinking we were touring with the idea uh I was out kind of outvoted on it we're like we're sticking with the before all this happened of course with the monthly face to face which I get it the problem for me is where I am and the the time that we have our meetings we were holding from four to six uh and it could take 45 minutes to an hour for me to get to the location and then some traffic you'll get back and it was just so that was a big chunk of of that day and it was just a difficult day um to to to get out and and do that like Tuesdays and Thursdays are like my my busiest days of the week usually yeah because I just got you know client meetings stacked up and so to drive and spend all that time away from the home office and so I had suggested was a getting together quarterly so still doing that but uh getting together quarterly and doing a bigger push around that and then everything else online and we'll see I think because I think to your point this experience of being forced to be entirely virtual has given people that were reluctant to give it a try I think a taste of hey here's what could work and here's some things that we could be doing um I agree with you it can't be a hundred percent it just can't be um and they're they're I've always been an advocate for even if you're doing monthly face to face to do something different like on a quarterly basis have a breakfast get together with somebody on a topic but that were it's more social to do pure social no topics of doing like a share pint type thing where you know people to get together that are drinking not drinking and just congregate we did we did that always in Bellevue when I lived for 12 years in Seattle area and had some fantastic locations downtown Bellevue and we'd always get a great crowd of 15 20 people for those things just you know we'd publish it same day like hey we're gonna do this and people would show up flash mob social yeah but but it's important to have those connections and talk about other stuff than hearing somebody present and people different people usually the same people asking questions and things around it and just mixing it up and because you tend to see my experiences I'd love to hear yours but yeah that you get the regulars that show up with a you know some new people but you're generally the in-person events here in Salt Lake we'd get you know 20 people showing up um 10 of them would be the regulars and then there'd be 10 new people that we'd never see again every single time there's these new people that just show up and and they're usually topic driven speaker driven um and and so it's good to do that and then of course online you get you can have speakers from around the world you can and then you know you might have 10 15 people that are watching in real time and then hundreds of people that watch the recording you know within the next couple months so yeah yeah it's interesting stuff so so give it given the the state of things and where we are in events being shut down what do you have going on what's coming up are you doing webinars are you doing any talks uh actually uh we've got teams thursday new england that was originally supposed to be literally yesterday um yeah how'd that work out yeah yeah um it was on my calendar and i you know shed a tear yeah yeah but actually very much looking forward to to being a part of that it's going to be on june 3rd um as a virtual i expect a virtual event at this point because we've been talking about actually having it at in burlington uh you know burlington mass the and and and basically um you know at this point things look like they're going to be extended into into june who knows how much longer um we'll see but um hopefully it'll be there it'll be in person then that'd be great you know but uh reality is we're probably going to have teams thursday on a tuesday on teams so teams tuesday still still have that you know going for you yep yep so so people want to find out more about you like the active blogger where can they find you out on social what do you what are you active on and participating so i happen to be in twitter uh you can find me as granite state hacker there um i am also on uh linkedin i have a blog um called well it's part of granite state users groups which is an organization that i i um have to help manage finances for lots of different local events and uh that sort of thing and uh so we have a website and that's where i keep my blog and and all that stuff that's granitestateusersgroups.net so very cool well jim i really appreciate your time taking some time out on your friday and uh enjoy the weekend stay healthy stay safe and uh we'll talk to you soon likewise you too thank you so much and uh happy friday happy friday


Simon Michelle from FEG, Welkin Live, was that a justified move in light of those utterances, just summarised? Yeah, good afternoon, Carson. Well, like I think it was generally also driven by the drop in the oil price, reaching new levels as well and the impact that that's likely to have on inflation. You know, the data is certainly moving in the opposite direction and where they'd like to see it. And this builds into this theme that, you know, both growth and inflation are lowering and that's being reflected by the US 10 year, for example, reaching 2.16% overnight. So new levels there, short term rates holding pretty, pretty strongly. I mean, the two years only three basis points lower than its peak this year. But you're seeing that flattening of the yield curve as the market discounts the rate of further rate hikes in the US. So yeah, I think, you know, we're expecting it to come through and we're seeing it reflected in rates at the moment. Was it kind of a deadhawk bounce by Janet Yellen in June on reflection, do we think? Because we need to be talking even from Kaplan's perch about trimming the balance sheet sometime before the end of 2017. But you know, for Evans to say, wait until later this year before raising rates, I mean, you're putting horse before the car. Well, this is a problem. And I mean, it's going to be very difficult for them to do the both things at the same time. And I think that if they stick to that calendar of starting to lower their balance sheet, it's really going to restrict the ability for them to continue to increase rates. You know, the market is discounting a December rate increase now. It's pushing that out, starting to push that out into 2018. So then the question becomes, well, you know, if we push out the forecast for further rate increases, what impacts that's likely to going to have on the Fed that has been strongly messaging that they'd like to begin drifting that balance sheet level down? You know, you're seeing that reflecting Fed members, which you mentioned at the top of the cross as well, where you, you know, spoke about one of the Fed members there, you know, getting quite nervous. You've also had a couple come out and say, look, we're pretty happy with how the economy is looking. You can look through this week inflation. We've got a strong labor market. That's likely to lead to inflation coming through. You know, I think that's looking a little bit of a tough argument at the moment, given the data we're seeing come through. Lines in the sand on the 10 year rising by four points overnight to 2.16. Where does it get, as it were, too hot to handle? Well, it's interesting. I mean, it depends what the other rates do. I mean, we were talking only a couple of weeks ago about the margin between the Aussie 10 year and the US 10 year. Now, the Aussies at 2.4 at the moment. It's been at that level pretty much all month. I mean, it's pretty much just been moving inside with fashion, but the US continues to move down. So that actually gives a little bit of relief, I suppose, to some of the other central bankers on what they need to do. I think that if you have a look at growth and inflation forecasts, if they continue to keep falling, we would expect to see those longer rates fall. Look at the US 30 year, it's down to 2.77. It's over half a percent lower than its peak in March. You know, it's certainly not reflecting that long end of you that we're going to see higher growth. So when you see those forecasts out there of around 3%, you know, I just don't see that in the near term. And the USD, meanwhile, what kind of a signal point is that for you on optimism or otherwise of that 3%? The fact that it was fairly well supported overnight, don't just take one sessions trade to make the point. But what do you see more broadly there? Yeah, look, I mean, still very strong. I mean, if you have a look at the US equity markets compared to ours, for example, I mean, you know, you've got two stories there as well. And I think that you're still seeing strong demand for US Treasury. So we're seeing that at auction. Strong demand for Treasury inflation protected securities as well. And that's being reflected in the strong dollar investors still very happy to lock in these US yields at this level. So, you know, if you follow the market, the market's certainly happy to buy these levels. They certainly don't see a lot of risk of these rates moving up quickly. So you're not seeing any sort of a change in demand. Yeah. So maybe it was a dead hawk bounce from Janet. She can go back to doing what she does best. And that's being an Uber, an Uber dove. Thank you very much. Talk to you soon. Thanks.


So body fat for runners. Let's talk a little bit about how it affects performance, how low you can go and still be healthy, the difference between males and females, the difference, how it differs in importance depending on race distance and all of that. So let's jump right into it. So as runners, we obviously care about performance, at least some of us do, and that means we care about our weight, because essentially the lighter you are, the easier it is to move, the faster you're probably going to get to the finish line and a race, but only down to a point. And there's also sometimes where more weight might actually be beneficial. So here's the thing, our weight really consists of three, you know, well, there's several factors, but there are three factors that vary quite a lot, okay? And that is muscle, water and fat. Of course, there's also the weight of bone and certain other things, but those vary less and we can't do much to affect it. So water weight, we're not going to talk about that today, but that's essentially, you know, if you eat a lot of salt one day, you're going to hold on to some more water, that sort of thing. If you're fully stocked with glycogen, I'm going to hold on to some more water, but that's a good thing, right? You weigh more because you're having all that glycogen and there's water associated with the glycogen, but that glycogen is going to help you go fast, okay?  So that's the water. Muscle, here's the thing, muscle matters, right? Because the muscle actually moves you to the finish line. So if you lose muscle, you might not become faster, even though you're losing weight, and if you look at someone who's sprinting, 100 meter sprinter, they're pretty, they're pretty strong, right? If you look at 100 meter sprinters, 200 meters, even 400 meters runners, actually the shorter the race distance, the more muscle you typically see on the runner, because they need that power. It's explosive. It's almost like weightlifting, where it has to do with strength to a large extent. As you move up in distance, we get into endurance, which is a sort of different thing, and that's when it's good to be lighter. So regardless of distance, we want to be as strong as possible for as little weight as possible. And for sprinters, that weight needs to be a bit higher because of the muscle, whereas in long distance, it can be lower. Now we get to the fat. So fat has a lot of different functions in the body, and it is important.   You need essential body fat, it's what it's called. There's a certain amount of body fat that's essential for your health.  Now, when we're talking about fat, we usually talk about it in terms of percentage of body weight. This is percent body fat, okay?  That's 10% body fat, okay? So I don't know my body fat because you can test it in different ways, and I haven't tested it for a while. And I don't know, but I'm guessing my body fat is maybe around 12% or something like that, okay? So that means that 12% of my weight, I weigh 68 kilos, 12% of that, is 68 times 0.12. That's a little more than 8 kilos of fat on my body, 8 kilos. Okay, typically what they say is that for a male, because it's different from male to females, for a male, essential body fat, some people say as low as 3%, 3%, 4% is essential, others maybe go as high as 5 or 6, saying that's essential. But certainly anything over 6% body fat is non-essential fat, okay? Meaning you don't have to have it. But, you know, I haven't seen all the research and based on what I have seen, it seems that it might still be a good idea to not go as low as 5 or 6. Maybe you want to go to 8, 9 or 10, or even as me, I'm probably around 12, which is fine as well. Because in the other end of the spectrum, you have an upper limit. We'll get to the female number soon. In the other end of the spectrum, you have an upper number, which is sort of like, when you go above this, you're going to start seeing a decline in your health. Essentially, you start getting obese, right? And for males, that's probably, I don't know, maybe 18, 20% body fat. When you go above 20%, you're probably less healthy than you could be. So somewhere in the 5 to 15% range is probably optimal. Above that, you start and get into the high numbers and if you go below 5, you're definitely too low.  Now for females, they carry a little bit more essential fat. So typically, I've heard that females need to stay above 10 to 12%. That's their essential body fat. And they can go as high as up to 20% and actually still be perfectly healthy, might even be able to go to 25 and actually be spot on in terms of body fat. And it's very important for women to have healthy body fat levels. It affects their fertility and just as with males, it affects their hormones. And what happens a lot, it's known as the female athlete triad. It's a problem that affects women when they're training too much, not getting enough calories and or going too low in terms of body fat. They lose their menstruation, the period, they might get osteoporosis, overtraining syndrome, certain different things happen, which is not good. So if you're losing a period, you're probably too low. And typically if you can see the six pack on a girl, if you really can see the six pack, she's probably below 12% body fat and that's probably not a good idea. So I would say based on what I've seen girls should probably stay between 13 to 20% of body fat, probably towards the upper end of that actually like 18 to 20 is probably better. Now, here's the thing. As a runner, you obviously want to be as light as possible as a long distance runner anyway, because you don't want to carry excess weight. That's just going to slow you down unnecessarily. And when we're talking about running performance, the one parameter that is very often talked about is VO2 max. And VO2 max essentially means the maximum, well, the V stands for volume, O stands for oxygen, and the two stands for oxygen as well, like O2 is oxygen. So VO2 max, the maximum amount of oxygen that your body can utilize. And it's usually measured in milliliters per kilo body weight per minute. So you'll see something like an elite athlete is having a VO2 max of 75 maybe, which means 75 milliliters of oxygen per kilo body weight per minute. Now, because it's a measure of how much oxygen you use per kilo, if you weigh less, that number will be higher.  And it's a calculation you can do well pretty simply. If you weigh, if your VO2 max is 50 per kilo and you weigh 60 kilos, that's 3000 milliliters, 3 liters essentially of oxygen per minute. Now if you lose 5 kilos, now you weigh 55 kilos instead of 60. Now that's 3000 divided by 55 instead of 60. And now we actually, our VO2 max went from 50 milliliters per kilo up to 54 and a half per kilo. So we actually increased our VO2 max by almost 10% by losing 5 kilos. Now that's amazing, that's a lot. And if those 5 kilos of fat were completely unnecessary, excess fat, then it's probably a good idea to lose it. This performance increase would be something you should seek. Now, the problem is that when you're losing fat, you typically also lose a little bit of muscle. And your performance is typically not as good and your training adaptations are not as good in this period of time when you're losing weight because you're not in an optimally anabolic state. You're not in that billing phase.   So in the end, after that period of losing those 5 kilos over a couple of months or so, you might actually end up losing a little bit of performance because of it as well. At the end of the day, you might end up actually gaining because of the weight loss, but that's a balance that you always have to sort of find. And of course, what happens often is that athletes will get sort of hooked on this idea of losing weight. And they actually get into an eating disorder where anorexia, essentially, where they're just trying to lose weight, trying to lose weight in order to get faster.  So you've got to be careful with this idea of losing weight. But if you have excess fat to spare like a lot, it's probably a good idea to lose it in a healthy manner and then rebuild from there. How low can you go though, right? Because if you want to be at the top level, you want to be as light as possible, but still have all the muscle and all the performance that you need. And so I do think, you know, elite marathoners will probably get down to like 7%, maybe 6% some of them, 8% maybe. But what happens oftentimes is that they go down in the competition period and then they put on a couple of kilos in the off season just to get back to base level. I don't think it's healthy to go approaching that essential fat level. I think 12%, which is what I'm at, is probably much healthier overall. And I'm thinking in the future, when I'm getting into a very competitive shape, I might, you know, I might lose a couple of kilos just to sort of get that little bit of an edge. But then, you know, at the moment, I feel like it's not necessary for me to lose anything more. I'm pretty happy with my body fat levels now. And of course, you also got to, you know, do the calculations a little bit in terms of like, how much faster will you run a marathon, for example, by losing a kilo, right? And if you are, if you're at the elite level, if you're absolutely up at the top and you're trying to go from 204 to 203, well, yeah, then that one kilo or two, it might actually make a difference, a huge difference. It might be the difference between winning or not winning, okay? So in that situation, sure, it matters a lot. But if you're more of a mid-pack guy or a girl, if you're more looking at like a four-hour marathon maybe, or cracking three hours perhaps, like I'm going to try to do this year, and you can check out my video on my 2019 races, I'll put a link through there. Then losing a couple of kilos might not make that big of a difference. So a couple of minutes, a minute, I don't know. Is that really worth it? Maybe it is, maybe not. I'm thinking not. And the longer the distance in ultra-running, the more other variables play in, okay? So if you're down in the middle distances running 1500 meters, every second counts, every second counts. But in an ultra-marathon, sometimes the winner can be like an hour or two ahead of second place, okay? So things like hydration, nutrition, and guts, and pacing, and all these kind of things, they play a much bigger role in your success. And your body weight will matter less, okay? So, yeah, it's a big topic with a lot of emotion attached to it. People are very emotionally attached to their weight. I think it's healthy to have good body-fat levels. You don't want to go down approaching essential body-fat. Just, you know, get into the healthy range, and that's fine. And then once you get to a point where you really want to optimize your performance and every little bit counts, well, then you might choose to very carefully, very controlled, optimize your weight by losing a little bit of fat.  And then later, when you're in your optimal weight, then you'll start focusing on that faster performance and higher performance gains. And, of course, if you're interested in my help losing weight or optimizing your performance, you can send me an email. If you really could do a coaching session, you can contact me actually through the LoneTrail Facebook page. So just send me a message there. There's a link in the description if you're interested in my advice. Now, I think that's it for now. Any questions you have, post them down in the comments. Thanks for watching. Please subscribe if you haven't done so already and I'll see you around. Bye.


So let's look at physiologically what is going on. So over here we have the normal pulmonary capillary alveolar structure. So we have the pulmonary artery that goes down into the pulmonary capillaries, CO2 diffuses into the alveolus, O2 diffuses into the pulmonary vein, and then the oxygenated blood gets carried to the body and the cells. Now what happens in ARDS, there is an injury to this alveolar capillary membrane. Whenever an injury occurs, for any of these reasons up here, the immune system is triggered and this cascade of immune cells want to come and help fight whatever is the cause of the problem. So there's this cascade of cellular and biochemical changes that triggers these immune cells that are usually well intended, such as neutrophils, macrophages, lymphocytes, monocytes, and all of those produce cytokines. Cytokines are basically cells that help promote the immune system to do its job. Especially with COVID, you have probably heard of the term cytokines stored. So now we have this massive immune response, all these cells that want to come fight any of these causes, and therefore, in order for these mediators to be released from the pulmonary capillaries, this permeability has to be opening up. So they have to all be released and what happens when the cells are released, they're released in fluid. And so then we have this interstitial edema that occurs between the alveolus and the pulmonary capillaries. So this increased fluid that happens here. And then if we have basically this alveolus that's now covered in fluid, it's not going to be able to perform the oxygen and CO2 exchange as a normal alveolus would. Now this increased vascular permeability causes the interstitial edema. And then the lungs get kind of stiff because they lose their compliance, their ability to open and contract as the chest wall expands and then recoils. And then platelets also come to play. They aggregate and release more chemical mediators, which then means that more cells are being attracted to the alveolar capillary membrane and the fluid crosses that membrane. And as you can see here, this alveolus is swollen, it's very puffy. And now that fluid level is just increasing here. So basically this alveolus you could think of is drowning in this fluid that all these chemical mediators from the immune system are causing. And this alveolar edema then does not allow for the oxygen and CO2 exchange and therefore the patient is going to have this acute respiratory distress syndrome.


from Austin, Texas. Extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering Dell World 2015. Brought to you by Dell. Now your hosts, Dave Vellante and Stu Miniman. Welcome back to theCUBE in Austin, Texas. This is Dell World 2015. I'm Stu Miniman with Dave Vellante. Happy to have back on the program Ashley Garak-Pawalla, who's VP and GM of Dell servers. Ashley, welcome back to the program. Thank you. Thank you Stu, Dave. Thank you Dave. So Ashley, what's new? Not much new in the news lately. We've all been joking this week. Dell, still strong, at least from the numbers that you guys put out in the markets and for people to track. So what's been hot in the server business for you this week? Well, we've got a lot of exciting news that's happened. If you just look at servers for a second, we've continued our trend to growth. We're on a pretty nice path. As you said, we don't share as much numbers as we used to, sorry about that. But the last four years, and this'll be the fifth year straight, we've taken about two points of share from the number one vendor and we hope to be the number one vendor soon in terms of units, a little bit more to go in revenue. But still number one in the US and APJ, a little second in Mia and moving up very strongly there as well. So we're also really, really excited by the ramp of some new products, whether it's FX2 or 13G in general, has been a fastest ramp we've ever had. And then just in August, we announced publicly for the first time a new server business, scalable solutions business. Think of it as sitting between the PowerEdge mainstream server line and the DCS custom hyperscale line. And if you know how fast DCS grew, we think this is actually going to grow faster, which would make it our fastest Dell enterprise growth. Yeah, it's interesting. I think actually one of the opportunities we have in the market, now that you're private and EMC's going private, we got lazy when it came to measuring the business. It's like, all right, let's count the boxes, let's put them in buckets and just stay there. And too many people think of Dell as, well, how many PCs and servers do they ship? We've been talking for years about the transition of customers don't think about, we were talking to Travis Vigil about storage. I don't buy storage boxes. I deploy applications and here's environments that I have. What are you seeing on the server side? We've talked about that transition. Where are customers? Do they still have the server budget that they buy every year and how many boxes and manage the rotation the way that they did or are you really seeing a change? I'm seeing a drastic change. If you went back, how old are blade systems in the market today, maybe seven years? They were probably designed. Maybe maybe 10, I remember the original IBM platform. Eight and a half years ago, maybe started to talk to customers 10 years ago. And when you did, you talked to the server admin and he got upset with you because now you made him talk to the networking admin and who was going to set the policy for the switch? Who managed that? It's all in one box. It's too converged for how they work. That's gone, all right? So we don't have that issue anymore. And now we talk to people who have, I'm the infrastructure or I'm the software layer, I admin converged, cloud services, things like that. So I think we're past thinking about that in discrete compute networking storage buckets. However, different customers are looking at it differently. So some customers now, very much, I'm going to lay down a very standardized infrastructure and I want it to be standardized and then my software's going to be the thing that differentiates and pulls out the right modules, if you will, for applications and work. And some are going the other way, which is, actually I just, I want a simple, give me an appliance for this workload. Now give me a different appliance for this workload. And I want each one to be optimized because I don't want to go, I don't have a hundred data scientists to work through that software layer that allows me to orchestrate, automate and manage. So I think we're seeing spectrums across the board. And the business has changed in other ways too. I mean the competitive landscape has changed dramatically. I mean on the one hand and the sort of core sweet spot of the server business, kind of have a duopoly as you guys in HP, but you have ODMs coming in, you've got Cisco getting into compute. I wonder if we could talk about the competitive landscape, how that's changed and how Dell has evolved. Sure, sure. So we've been doing servers now for 20 years. And if you look at the very first servers, the uniqueness that set them apart from tower desktops was that we put casters on them. Right, so, and we rolled them around, right? You remember those days? So if you think back then, The server landscape, who shipped the server was completely different. You had digital equipment, you had people in workstations moving the servers from Intograph, you had a completely different set. And I think that's happening again and again throughout this historical 20 years. So eight years ago is when we started DCS and that's when you saw this rise of hyperscale. And if you're at that size, frankly, I would probably try to convince you if you're spending three, four or $5 billion in CapEx every year, you should probably spend 50 to 100 million in Apex and hire people who are experts in helping you spend that CapEx wisely. And that has really given rise to a new set of competitors for us, which, whether they be ODMs or whether they be direct sales, and even smaller companies that are backed by a supply chain that didn't exist just five years ago. I think in some cases we don't compete in those spaces because we've chosen not to and those companies have chosen not to buy a solution from us or to rely on our supply chain, our services, our support that we offer. But that's a handful of customers at best. If you look at the competitive landscape and enterprise, we have a couple of differences. So right now we have a company that is splitting and going less end to end. And we have another company that used to be number three that has decided to get out of the X86 server hardware business. And I think those are acknowledgements of the success we've been having in getting ahead of certain trends, whether it's DCS, DSS, converged, and really putting together a competitive solution, but we're backing it with something different than ODMs or ODMs might do. Global support, two under countries. If you're a growing company and you're thinking about acquisition costs because your scale and infrastructure is so big, you're probably in more than one data center in more than one country and you have ambitions to go beyond that. And that's what we do best, is we're able to service it, get it there, support it even better, and the quality still matters in that regard. Unless you just take a philosophy of, I'm just going to buy over provision and then replace as things fall apart, right? But I think what's really interesting is it's not enough now to have a catalog of really great servers and say, here's my catalog, Dave, would you like to buy something? I think you have to say, Dave, what is, what are you trying to do? What's your application? Are you just doing one app? You control everything? All right, then we need to talk because you're going to grow in a different way. Are you running an enterprise with email archives, mission critical, then we need to talk, we're going to do it in a different way for you. But either way, you should have to leverage in a conversation with me to say, this is exactly kind of what I need and your catalog may not fulfill that. So how do we talk about whether it's economically viable for me to have exactly what I need? So much more of a solutions approach, around workload, around different use cases, and I'll have to know where to use solutions, but I wanted to ask you too about Oracle. Obviously, SQL Server as a database, very popular running on Dell systems. A lot of Oracle running on Dell servers, you know? I mean, it's just, that's the way it happens. I got good Dell servers, I want to run Oracle. How has Oracle's entrance acquisition of Sun obviously getting more aggressive? How has that changed the market? And then specifically, I'm interested in your Oracle solutions. How important of a market is that to you? Obviously, very high-end customers. Maybe you could talk about that a bit. Sure. I think Oracle entering the server hardware business is really been something that we're less worried about in terms of competition or creating a rift between the commercial trade between the two companies. Very, very important software company and partner to us. We use Oracle in our own company. Many of our customers want to use Oracle, but they want to use it on the best-performing servers in the marketplace, the best-supported, i.e. Dell. And so that's how you're going to live. Most, today, most of our customers have a heterogeneous data center. That's the world we live in. That's why Open and Standard helps put these things together. So what do I want? I want to make sure that Oracle runs the best on our servers. Second, we spend a lot of time on solutions, bringing that package appliance together so that you can buy a turnkey and working, again, to make sure we've got the best optimized package. I think if you look at just straight server-to-server, I think the IDC would probably classify Oracle in the other's bucket, so it's a little bit hard to see some of their numbers, for instance, but 20, 30,000 a year is not a, it's a different business than we're running, really. So if I were you, I would be stoked about this EMC acquisition. I mean, you had, obviously, you guys had a great relationship with the EMC, a couple of billion dollars, and then Dell decided to diversify and go more vertically integrated in storage, and then, of course, fighting words to a big storage company like EMC, and so they do the VCE and V blocks, blah, blah, blah. But now I've got a good-sized business, I don't know what is it, let's do VCE, a couple of billion dollars. VCE did over two billion months. Business, nice, you know, that is going to be part of my family. So that's got to be really exciting to you. I mean, you've got an opportunity now to build new solutions with that part of EMC as a part of your company, as opposed to sort of a partner. Yep. Where you had a little, I wouldn't say a coal war, but there was a little bit of a chilly relationship there. Now, how has that dynamic changed your thinking? Well, it'd be going to be difficult for me to speculate forward six to nine months. But- But go ahead. Based on the definitive agreement, if you go and take a poll of the server, technologists and experts who work for me, they are kind of walking a little bit above the floor, they're so excited. And the reason they're so excited is there's never been a bigger commitment in our industry or within Dell by Michael that we're an enterprise company. I mean, you just, no matter what, if someone comes back, I had a dinner with a customer who says, look, I don't know why I didn't consider you, but I've been buying HP servers all these years. I want to convert it over to you. As well, why didn't you consider this earlier? I thought you were a PC company. All right, the commitment has been made at the highest level, independent of the agreement or the proposed transaction. And so you have a set of enterprise people with and Dell who feel like just a weight has been lifted that the world knows now. There's been no bigger news this past week, however, in technology. And so the world knows that Dell is completely committed to the enterprise space and the data center space. And that's the part they're excited about. So Ashley, and the keynote, big news for me was Satya Nadell up on stage, talking about the partnership with Dell and Microsoft. What I'd heard a couple of years ago, Microsoft started to move off of some Dell servers and tried out some of the ODMs. Now it sounds like they're fully back in the fold. Michael said that Microsoft is their number one customer and Satya said how important Dell is. How important is the Microsoft relationship to your server business? It's really, really important. There isn't probably a more strategic customer in terms of hyperscale to us than Microsoft. And it goes much deeper than that. So if you look at just the total balance of trade of a commercial relationship with Microsoft across notebooks, desktops, server OSs, SQL, yeah, just keep going on and on and on. This is a partnership that is the foundation for most of people's data centers. They also have been very, very progressive in building out their cloud services and working with companies like us to build that out. And that's been very impressive. We've got a lot of experience in how to do this. We're sharing that with them and we're co-designing some futuristic technologies together. What's even more interesting is what we talked about at the keynote, which was being able to put stamp sizes of clouds into the people's hands with day to set it up, not weeks, not day to scientists set up. And so whether it's cloud platform system, now called premium and cloud platform system standard on Dell, I think we've got the ability to bring some of this technology in this way of bursting and cloud to almost all sizes of customers. That's pretty exciting, all on Dell. So Microsoft has been pretty vocal in when it comes to OCP. Can you give us the update from Dell's standpoint on OCP? Sure. Again, we were part of the founding elements of OCP. We still serve on some of the committees with our technologists in OCP. We've made donations in the past. We continue to offer certain donations today. I personally have been a little bit disappointed in that I think the commercial viability for the customers has lagged, the perhaps success of the donations. And part of that is our inability to today to share IP. I mean, just legally, that's not a framework for us to be able to share IP. So instead, we're donating specifications, which are valuable, but perhaps not as valuable as the IP would be and the designs would be. It's also based on hardware, not the elements of software that I think are one in the same. So without the orchestration management layers above it, it's a little bit more difficult to enable a customer to take advantage of some of these donations that have been made. So we still see an interest in the theoretical concept of standards. And if, can you help me, Del, lay down an infrastructure in my data center that I can then reformulate into the applications I need by using software as that element versus project by project setting up unique stacks that later I don't know what to do with or have to decommission in a different way. So I think cloud is too big a word, but the qualities of cloud, flexible, agile, reconfigurable, automated, that's what people really want. And this is, so anything that draws them towards that goal, I think is a good thing. And the advent of the mega data center was an inflection point in how data center design was thought about in organizations, whether it's large banks and even trickle down to mid-sized companies, how they're using cloud, et cetera. So you go back to the days of the 90s, early 2000s, you had sort of all the stovepipes. We know the story well, purpose-built hardware supporting a fairly complex application portfolio. That still exists today. Average age of an enterprise app is probably two decades. But then you've got the, as I say, the mega data center's kind of showing the way. At the same time, they're getting more complicated as you just described. How do you see the data center of the future? Is it, you know, this kind of old and new where the new is clean and the old is kind of this mess that you just sort of keep going? Or do those two worlds come together? What are your thoughts on that, Ashley? Well, the CIOs we talk to have a pretty difficult problem. So on one hand, their request has not changed over those last two decades. Can you get more efficient? Can you squeeze? Can you consolidate? But at the same time, don't make sure I'm very reliable. I'm very secure. So in a sense, it's an OPEX and efficiency discussion. At the same time, they're either inspired or perhaps a little bit fearful of a competitor who might turn that over to a business or a digital transformation discussion for IT. And not about efficiency, but about, let me grow there because I'll be faster to the customer. My apps will run quicker. I can reach people in global regions that others can't. And so that dichotomy of how do I operate is really a struggle for CIOs. If you see that transition over, I think the biggest fear we see is people saying, do I eventually just have to run a brand new green field? Bring it up with all these new technologies that I hear you talk about and then just have this other data center wither down to nothing and decommission it. And then I can build another one. And we don't think that's the case. Again, heterogeneous. You're living in decades of technologies being announced every year that can change the game. And so you have to live with both. So how do people operate in that way? Typically project by project or they start in development or proof of concept and then it grows. But some are taking a philosophy that's kind of embodied, for instance, in FX2, our converged platform where it can run and be more efficient in that traditional way of thinking. But I don't have to throw it away. When it comes to software-defined, cloud, big data, it's already optimized for that workload. And so it's future-ready, if you will, is the tagline we've been using. And so I think that's a really powerful way of building for a future technology right now. Excellent, Ashley. The great insight, by the way. I love the vision. It's very clean. And I appreciate you sharing what you're learning from talking to the CIOs. All right, appreciate you coming to theCUBE. Great to see you again. Keep right there, everybody. Stuart and I will be back with our next guest. We're live from Dell World 2015 in Austin, Texas. It's happening here. People coming out of the Solution Showcase. Lot of action, day two. This is theCUBE, we're right back.