 So, welcome to Vlog Thursday. I'm flying solo today. Marvin is doing stuff, more specifically stuff with the Chamber of Commerce. So, I am involved a lot and I've talked about this before when it comes to networking with other people. That's a really important aspect of business and at some point I can't be at all the things I want to be at and I send Marvin to some of the Chamber of Commerce events. So, my involvement is I'm actually now on the board of our Southern Wayne County Regional Chamber. So, I go to meetings and do board stuff and I go to some of the events. I went to an event the other day and that's the big event they do is about a few hours from here and they do this annual thing and so I sent Marvin there because I as much as I kind of wanted to go have fun, I guess someone needs to do some business and make things kind of work and Marvin's job is kind of sales. So, that's where he's at today. So, I'm just flying solo. Now, I've also made me think about doing this is taking my camera to a networking event and figuring out a way. It's getting easier as everyone knows me as a person who produces a lot of videos and post a lot of things on Facebook and YouTube. So, it feels a little less awkward wandering around in a crowd with the camera and I thought about doing it to talk about networking with people and I think that's an important aspect that is challenging and not as easily defined. You can read a million books about it because we in order to explain how to network with people you kind of have to create an ambient feeling of how you do the networking. There's not as much a technical guide as there is with technical things where I say you just do this and say this about people and so like showing is even more interesting. I mean I thought how do I make some videos where I can show how I go to these events and speak with people and me and Marvin can get together on this because you know having a couple people and showing how we network with other businesses and things like that might be kind of a fun video to make. I'm just trying to figure out how to produce it. I was going to do it the other day at one of the meetings I was going to but I managed to be late to that meeting so I didn't want to then come in with camera to start talking to people because they were immediately joking with me about being late and I'm like this is a horrible way to start off this video so I ended up not making the video. The video I was working on though was a video last night of more wiring jobs and onsite and I'm making a strong effort to do more of those it's just hard to do because they're it's figuring out a way to film it and I filmed some of it and I screwed up the video because I got a new microphone and hooked up to a GoPro to make something easy to do and somehow that got messed up. The audio did so I got to figure out how to redo some of the audio track on it probably just do voiceover so that's another video that's coming. Another video I'm working on is just off-camera here is a project that I've had sitting there for longer than I wanted and it's the amazing shunast server that's sitting there. I'm going to be working on that the next couple days so I can get that review finished. I've done some playing with it, some setting up, reading through all the documentation making sure I have a clear understanding of it because I do not like to give misinformation on things. I mean occasionally someone said I don't give enough information I'd rather give you as much as I have but not anything wrong is more important to me so I'm being very thorough because this is an enterprise NAS device and it's really cool but it's got some complexities as far as I like to understand a lot about how it works. But if you want to just put your faith in the shunast, free NAS, I exist with people it works really well like if you just assume everything inside of its magic but I think a lot of you want to see in depth of how the magic works and of course I've been reading about how the magic works which has made it really interesting. So that's definitely another video that's coming. I'm hoping you know I'm trying to always establish a quicker workflow so I can get these things done faster and one of those things it kind of disrupts me is you know doing the other job that I have is I'm not a full-time YouTuber far from it. I do YouTube videos when I have a minute and I want to do more of them but I need to eventually hire more people to help do the things that I do when I'm not making YouTube videos so stuff that runs my company. But once again always trying to be more and more transparent about that so I need to get to a next level so I can hire another person so I can just make more videos because I really enjoy doing that and only have to work on select projects. So on that topic I will then segue over to something that's going on here in Detroit and I want to do some more Detroit videos. I'm trying to find some more YouTubers that are in the Detroit area maybe that are in the same tech genre I am I've reached out and I'm really not finding them. The only person I'm aware of and far from knowing me he's got a really great channel if you don't follow him referred to as the Detroit Borg he's the only big YouTuber I'm aware of in the Detroit area maybe there's another one I'm just not aware of them or if they're in some of the other categories of YouTube besides tech it's not that I'm not as interested but it's different audiences you know if you're a gamer great I'm not I'm really bad at video games they don't hold my interest so I like playing them for like 10 minutes 20 minutes and occasionally play Diablo 3 style so but so I am trying to reach out to other YouTubers they don't have to be in Detroit but I kind of like the physical person-to-person meeting but I do have some plans at some point to reach out to and figure out how do you approach some of the other YouTubers and you know get with them and talk with them and things like that so that's definitely kind of like I like the social interaction I like discussing you know ideas for videos and the channel and things like that and I love hearing the feedback from all of you which is really exciting so also if you know a few YouTubers maybe you guys suggest I know Willie Howe and then Chris from Cross Talk Solutions both people that I chat with from time to time great YouTube channels as well so if you have a few others that maybe you want to reach out to or you think I should reach out to because you know our channels compliment each other that would be great I'm definitely interested in all ears because there's a lot of people out there's a lot of great YouTubers I just don't know them all and I also don't necessarily have an introduction or know how to introduce myself to them so I want to do something because I don't know what we should do together right now so suggestions on that might be cool I thought about maybe some live streams with a couple other YouTubers and talking about things as well especially around security topics which are a really big deal and its security is getting more and more scary complicated fun it's a non-stop topic that I keep reading more and more in death time especially all these new botnets coming out wow this one and it has a couple names I believe they've settled on the majority people have settled on because the names cooler calling it the Reaper and it's fascinating it is the biggest botnet ever built we don't know what it's built for but it's gonna get scary because it's way bigger in scale than like the Mariah botnet we had about a year ago that was able to take down dynamic DNS so this botnet is way bigger in scale and growing at a phenomenal rate of all these wonderful crappy things that people plug into the internet they have no security at all and it's what are they gonna point at what are they gonna do with all these taken over devices that are out on the internet that's that's something that's fascinating and scary you're kind of watching as you see what's gonna happen next it's a lot of a lot of questions coming out there so that's a more security topic something I want to do but I kind of want someone else to bounce some ideas off with on there so if someone else maybe you know do another co-opted blog or vlog about security that would be something else I'm interested in so we do talk about that on our Sunday morning Linux review podcast which I've been getting a lot of we've been reaching out to our listeners on that getting a lot of feedback as well and one of them I didn't think about and this is just me I've talked about Sunday morning Linux review and I talked somewhat about my YouTube channel on the Sunday morning Linux review but then I realized there's not this perfect crossover that I need to do of I need links to both and they comment on the comments we got from one of our listeners on the Sunday morning which was why isn't Tom's channel linked on a website I'm like oh yeah I probably should because I mentioned the videos that I might be working on like my virtualization series of videos and people like you didn't link to the video and I'm like oh yeah this is where I'm really good sometimes at creating I think maybe I'm good at creating content but then for getting to promote it for getting that I'm just like I just do it on YouTube I don't know oh I'm supposed to post it somewhere and so I'm trying to work on some of that marketing you know cross-pollination of the ideas and getting them all to spread so that's been all those little things this is kind of how I start rambling about stuff back to another topic that's going on here in Detroit is the Amazon HQ to bid so Detroit and we're gonna say Dan Gilbert who is the guy who owns a large he's the company that owns a large piece of Detroit with the Quicken Loans and if you listen any podcast you know they're going in heavy on a lot of the ads and things like that they put a entire bid together to try to get Amazon to come here to Detroit this is interesting I don't know if Detroit because anyone who knows a lot about our city knows we are missing some critical pieces of infrastructure and we have some issues a lot of issues that may or may not want the city to come here and if you were lucky enough to watch a mayoral debate I did not watch it because I'm not part of the proper city of Detroit not where I live so I have no voting there I figured I just watch a recap I did it's yeah it's a it was bad it was like oh crap so it makes me worry that Jeff Bezos may have watched it go I don't know if I want to put my place in there but to the other side of it I believe the Amazon facility needs a massive footprint and them needing such a massive footprint they may not put it in Detroit City proper if they were to choose Michigan as the destination for their new HQ that they're building but I'm still you know interested in it building the HQ here is very different than building a distribution centers here I unfortunately don't have the most positive view I mean I guess the distribution centers bring some jobs here but they're not very high paying jobs these distribution centers are opening up all over the place we're actually we have one right literally down the street from us like a couple miles from our office here and then where's another one being built about 15 20 miles north of here because we are consumers of Amazon here in Michigan in its greater Detroit area so they felt us worthy of getting the distribution centers here that being said I almost feel those jobs are very temporary because putting stuff in boxes and I'm not trying to be a little anyone who works there but you know Amazon is trying to automate that they want to turn that into a more automated production line so that's why they spend almost 18 billion dollars a year in research yes look that up Amazon spends 18 billion dollars a year in research and they're trying to build a second HQ to have more research engineers that to keep future thinking that's more than our automotives as in you have to combine all the R&D of the big automotives that we have here Detroit to rival that level that Amazon spending more than Google on R&D that blows my mind and is a really interesting statistic so that being said I look at Amazon as maybe a blessing or a curse I'm not sure the jury's still out some people in Seattle seem to have some opinions of them that are both positive and negative because of how they reshaped the city of Seattle how much would they reshape provided they're going to land here which we're supposed to find out later today you know when they reshaped the culture in Detroit to put that HQ here we love all the high paying jobs of engineering and technical people but the other side of it is you know what would that do to the market here what would that change on a housing market good for us already own houses bad for us to want to buy houses so that's it's interesting problem because right now they're facing a housing crisis in Seattle where there's not enough place to put all the people on the people that don't work in Amazon that don't have a job that pays as much as maybe a higher engineering job cannot afford housing and have to go further out to the city I noticed that when I was in Seattle it seemed to be a you know a topic at least with a couple of people that I talked to I'm not an expert on that level but it becomes interesting because the company like Amazon has so much dramatic influence over the places that they land so that's a lot to think about and it's going to be very interesting to see now other top cities out there I seems to be basically on the hyperbole I've read on the internet and read it that the Denver and Detroit seem like two likely locations my understanding and not having been to Denver but talking to friends that have is their in infrastructure in Denver is very solid and can support Amazon but they do have a lot of traffic we have this little train it goes in a circle oh and we built this thing that goes like three miles at one mile an hour you can out walk it so that's basically what we have to pitch for transportation here in Detroit so if you've been here to try you're like you have to walk places or drive a car I'm like we're the motor city you just drive a car everywhere that's that's just how we laid this place out we do not have any we were at we've tried to fund public transportation here it isn't happening that's a whole another topic that's yeah it's a little messy but that's where we're at with the Amazon thing I'm keeping like I said I had it because it will change if we get it it changes the dynamics and economics of the area that I haven't owned a business in so that's very fascinating to me so other things on to other things not a lot of other things I'm keeping it short today because I actually have a ton of work to do I've gotta get this review done and finished and I'm trying to be very thorough on that I am doing more of the Citrix Zen service stuff I'm going to have a whole virtualization part playlist that I'm putting together because virtualization is really popular it's really important we do a lot of it well we're doing some of it and we're doing more of it as as the future goes because you know it's how a lot of these data centers work is infinitely slicing things up into the virtual assembly and not everyone wants to just stick it in the cloud and they need servers on site but you don't necessarily need all the servers to run in bare metal so you want them to run virtualized because you can run multiple servers inside of one physical server which is the whole purpose of virtualization so I've really liked everything I've done with Citrix Zen server we moved our platform everything from virtual box over to Citrix Zen virtual box was pretty cool and still is I still use it on my desktop to run Windows because I've run everything in Linux but the Citrix Zen server just I can't be happier with all the functionality it has in the you know I've seen you get some positive feedback on the video I did with it I think some people just don't realize the level of features they had and maybe this because they see the word Citrix they figure it's closed source and and very you know oh you got to pay a lot of licensing fees reality is you get an amazing platform that's open source and you don't have to pay a bunch of fees their their structure for Citrix Zen is doing selling service and support for a product that they give away which I've always liked that I think that's pretty cool business model and Citrix needs to be making money I've also I've got a been deploying some cloudberry deployments I actually seen an email from them a few minutes ago come up my phone as they reached out to us they said can you review our product I said absolutely and it is a solution because we have a few clients that are really old school they do not like anything leaving their building they have multiple companies so they have cloudberry's an easy solution for me to set up where we have NAS over here at one of their offices and servers at the other office and they have all the backups they are doing all say backups they realize the importance of it they do not like anything cloud everything has to be on-premise even the software that we just set up they just got another server to host everything internally because they just don't want anything in the cloud and then we have VPNs built between each of the offices that they have to make all this work so I may do some videos on that too since it's about network and capacity planning and we have a few more of those projects coming up we have an R&D company that we just finished quoting that you and I think I may mention before because we've been there a few times to Hannah it's it's kind of a long engagement process when they really plan things out but you have to when you walk in the lobby the little lobby area before you may go further you sign a non disclosure agreement that you won't talk about anything that is beyond the door so that's where my conversation about them stops they are research and development and I can only talk about what happens up until I walk through that door I normally don't sign any NDAs but because they're in prototyping I get it I can't talk about what they do that makes sense they do neat stuff that in reality of it is I will say this much I don't know what they do I looked at all the neat stuff they got I'm like I see cool electronics everywhere I don't know what you guys actually do but I do know they don't want anything in the cloud they're worried about security so there's keeping everything on premise and everything's very locked down the way they do all of their stuff so they don't share out anything and anything's only shared between their facilities so it really creates a very small threat surface by not having anything on any type of Google Drive Google Doc shared docs Microsoft Office Docs they do everything in-house and they don't even email design files back and forth they just save them into different folders and servers and you may reference that you've done this so they've got some secure practices and they actually need a 16 terabyte server now to store the next level of stuff because they've outgrown their current server and infrastructure so we're going to put in this together and you know putting together the next level of infrastructure they were because now they have different R&D departments and they want them very segmented off from each other so if something would happen in one you couldn't hop to the next R&D department and the different connected machines on that and it's fair enough that's a very they really want to be very on top of all this which goes back to running virtualization running separate servers firewalls VLANs it's going to be a very it's a I like projects like this because it requires a lot of thinking also for those of you who have reached out to me about PF Sense I am working on and I'm going to be speaking at an event about PF Sense which also forces me to come up with the next video for 2.4 which I've been really happy with PF Sense 2.4 I haven't any problems all the in place upgrades have just gone smooth and boring and nothing to talk about the only thing and maybe I'll comment on when I do some of the upgrade videos is sometimes it says failed update when you say there's an update you click it and it fails and then you just refresh the page and then what then it says loading update works I have not been able to make that consistently repeat but I have seen it occur that's as much as I have that when I once I try it I try to recreate that scenario in one of my virtual labs and I've been unable to make it can the matter of fact my virtual ones all done perfectly fine with no not a single air message and I've only seen this on one machine but it's really weird they're identical with the VPNs we have all three the same firewalls at the locations one out of three did it they're all the same and it wasn't the head-end one it was one of the legs of the VPN as I would call it so also on that VPN topic I am going to be doing a specific video just on VPNs and there because I learned saying about VPNs it took me two hours to beat my head up and learn that you can't configure them away I thought you could with open VPN PS it's it's something I just thought I could do and maybe I'm still maybe it can be done I'm not smart enough to do it but it's not the way you're supposed to do it but I became determined to try to see if we could do it that way which is probably not the best idea for a video but I like I like to see if I can challenge myself to get something done so that's been that's been kind of fun and I just locked myself in a room and it's kind of aggravated after two hours ago I'm gonna do it the right way now but I just want to see if there was some work around to make a peer-to-one user authorization VPN make the traffic go both ways and it doesn't go both ways the way I want it to but I'm gonna do a separate VPN video because the VPNs are hugely important very popular and I want to make a video specifically on it so it's a tutorial and walkthrough it's also a lot of these videos and we were just discussing this because I just did a Facebook live event with some local businesses which I can probably link that below I think it's public it's on my Facebook page which I make public I think the person who recorded it has a public Facebook page so you don't have to have Facebook to watch it but all that being said is I want to make sure that with these all those VPN stuff and everything else that we are I'm very creating all this content and it's also serving as content and instructions for my staff and that's one of the things we talked about in Facebook live is I don't mind giving away the secrets I guess if you want to call it not that I really think these are secrets you can read the documentation but my tutorial videos serve to me both to educate people who just want to watch them or sometimes my staff would go hey how do I do this thing and I have a video that shows them how to do the thing that way it's easier once I've done a whole video on how to set up the VPN now Tom doesn't need to be the one to set up every VPN that gets sold and then more of my staff can go okay I can follow this step-by-step tutorial that Tom put on YouTube and it's a work instruction for how I get something done this is actually why one of the weird videos that I have on there that may not be as relevant to all of you but I have a podcast production video that's because there's three other co-hosts and I have a method by which I do the production for a podcast that video may or may not work for you you may go what do I care about podcast production you don't have to but it is linked in our notes of how we produce the podcast and so someone can follow that and see how to use Kaden live and how I use it to produce the podcast the study want to make sure of you once again it's an instructional thing that way if I for some reason unable to produce a podcast or whatever uh Tony whether your co-hosts or Phil or Mary can follow the work instruction and go hey look there's a video on how to produce it so that's another reason I produce a lot of these videos and uh software tutorials but again I'm ranted long enough so thanks for watching if you like the content here like and subscribe also I will uh mention Willie Howe following an old camera I don't know what he was talking about he messes me and I seen it briefly uh about this but if you don't know who Willie Howe is go follow his channel he's another unify guy like me that we're preaching a lot of unify love uh he understands the VLAN's a lot better I've referred to him uh him and Chris both that uh understand it so I'll link to both of their channels below because I mentioned them in in here but uh great people if you're looking for other similar content to me and if you have other people to recommend that are like me or that I should reach out to let me know once again thanks for watching like and subscribe and click the bell if you want to get noticed of every time I release a video and rant about stuff thanks