Michelle had me take this pic as we walked home tonight from The Prince Arthur – our neighborhood Pub.

That’s right – after six weeks living and working in England we can say we have a neighborhood pub that we call our own.

We’ve gotten to know Windsor as “locals” while I have worked here. We have our grocery, our Larder, our cleaners, our Church and our pub. I have never lived 6 weeks that have evaporated as quickly as these have. What a wonderful time we have had. My mind and my camera are full of fantastic memories and the satisfaction of a job well done.

The bitter sweet part is – tomorrow we leave. We are already shadows here.

What I keep telling Michelle and the boys is though it is sad to leave – we get to leave together.

Don’t get me wrong – We are all excited to get home and back to our life in San Antonio – it just feels – bitter sweet.

I wonder if this is what it will feel like when we go home after this life is finished – or – will we just be glad to be home.

Peace.

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[This is a post I published at work today...]

I have been over here in the UK launching Rackspace’s SharePoint support for the past 6 weeks and today is my last day here in the office.  As a token of the team’s appreciation they bestowed upon me today a very nice engraved pewter cup:

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Working with the Rackers here in the UK has been an honor and a pleasure.  It was great to see some familiar faces (Taylor Rhodes) and some that I didn’t expect to see (Jeff Adams). It is with mixed emotions that I leave here today but I am very anxious to get back to my San Antonio Racker team (and my family, house, dogs, fish, grill…) and re-engage there. 

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The SharePoint product Rackspace is a new product now – a truly global product – and the team will have to go through an adjustment period as we all adjust to the new demands that places on us.  Suffice it to say – we will strive to ensure we maintain our high NPS, love for the product, love for the customers, and love of the Rack.

So tonight I will raise a cup (the very cup you see in this picture) filled with an English Bitter and toast the team (both US and UK) who made this trip a success…

Cheers ya’ll!

I would imaging that as this trip progresses, posts during the week will be dramatically shorter or non-existant on some days given the fact that – well – I’m just going to work.

What “post worthy” is my commute to work is now by train – for the first time in my life. I really like it!  Total commute time is about 40-50 minutes depending how the timing is with the trains.  I use an app on the iPhone to check daily train times and plan my arrivals and departures accordingly. Here are a few pics from the commute:

See the full gallery on Posterous

Michelle and the boys had a good day. Michelle was reminded that she is and can be quite resourceful!  She made her way to the leasing office, the dry cleaner, a funky small hardware store, and a department store.  All on foot and all on her own!  Yea Michelle! (but sady, she took no pictures).

I’ll leave you today with a pic from the Rackspace parking lot (or: Car Park as they are referred to over her)

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/27/microsofts-surface-becomes-the-worlds-biggest-remote-control-f/

As an employee of Rackspace – I hear one comment over and over as I discuss SharePoint with pre-customers:

We are deciding if we are going to manage SharePoint ourselves – or have it hosted.

I would like to challenge that statement. 

For those of you who keep and control your own SharePoint servers I’d like to ask how many of you have actually seen those servers?  Our internal IT shops act as much like a hosting company as one employed in that specific business.  Think about it – a separate department under its own unique management is in charge of: data-center facilities, power, network, server procurement, data-center personnel, operating system specialists, SQL DBA’s, and SharePoint IT-Pro’s.   My point in this is not to ask you to challenge your thinking about whether to use your own IT shop for manage your servers – but make that point that should you decided to place any aspect of your SharePoint services outside of your own datacenter is a “hosting decision” not a “SharePoint decision”.  To take this one step farther – we are moving far beyond this being a “one time decision” for SharePoint.

You see, SharePoint’s capabilities are so vast, data in your farms spans simple collaboration to that which could be covered under SEC regulations, and there are more options now for where this processing and data can exist.  The new reality in choosing where processing occurs and where data is stored  is that the One Size Fits All mantra simply doesn’t apply.

This post is the beginning in series where I hope to present a to you as many of the decision points that exists and the factors that impact them.  It’s my hope that by the end of this series you will have a greater appreciation and understand of the options at hand and feel more empowered to make the decisions with which you will be faced.

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/buy/Pages/Licensing-Details.aspx

If you have any questions about how to license SharePoint, take a look at the above link.  One major change/clarification I found was when licensing the SharePoint server for “unlimited” connections:

No CALs are required for users licensed through SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites.

That means no more dual licensing for users who are authoring content for their public facing WEB site.

Enjoy!

Download now or watch on posterous

IMG_0010.mov (16328 KB)

Tonights burger grilling session was done as recommended by Adam Perry Lang style. This means they were first grilled over the coals (note the char marks). While that was going on (and before) I was grilling onions in Extra Virgin Olive Oil seasoned with fresh pepper and sea salt. The onions were removed and after the burgers had cooked for 2-3 mins per side – they were transferred to the cast iron griddle.

All of the awesome grilled onion flavored oil was transferred to the burger. Oh, and did I mention I cooked 2 strips of bacon on there as well? Total flavor explosion!

The Rackspace SharePoint team will be live on Slashdot (www.slashdot.com) answering your sharepoint questions today at 12:00 central.  Come on over!