Texto y fotos: Carolina Vilches Monzón

Para homenajear al trío Trovarroco se ofreció ayer en el teatro La Caridad, un concierto motivado por  el décimo aniversario esta agrupación. Además de la agrupación homenajeada, el espectáculo contó con la actuación de Vicente Feliú, Lázaro García, Vionaika Martínez, Mayelín Pérez, Henry Pérez, Maikel’s Quartet y la agrupación Cuba Añejo Son, en calidad de artistas invitados. La dirección artística corrió a cargo de Rachid López, quien también es el director general de Trovarroco.

Trovarroco se llamó inicialmente Trío de Cuerdas Arte y Estilo, y nació de una idea Rachid López, guitarrista concertista de villaclareño, en los últimos meses de 1999, para dedicarse a la música de concierto.

Rachid López con la guitarra de concierto, Maykel Elizarde en el tres y Cesar Bacaró en el contrabajo acústico, son los virtuosos integrantes de la agrupación.

El trío se ha desempeñado en temas clásicos del Barroco y del Renacimiento, ha realizado un trabajo muy interesante con obras del repertorio latinoamericano y tradicional cubano y trabajan la vieja y la nueva trova cubana.

Vicente Feliú

Mayelyn Pérez

Vionaika Martínez

Maykel´s Quartet, uno de los "hijos" de Trovarroco

Henry Pérez y Lázaro García

Sexteto Cuba Añejo Son, nuevo proyecto de Rachid López

AFTER HALF A CENTURY, LITTLE BOXES made of ticky-tacky do not look all the same.

I remember noting how the Long Island development I grew up in evolved over the years, as homeowners made changes that gave their once-identical split levels individual personalities. Some people added second garages, others built up, Tessie Feldman notably added a scrolled cast iron portico, and what was once a cookie-cutter development became considerably more varied and interesting.

Julia Baum, a young Brooklyn-based photographer, documented a group of 1950s suburban tract houses in Santa Clara, California, in all their unique glory. The project demonstrates, she writes, that “human individuality cannot be contained. Inevitably it shines through even the most average facade.”

The landscaping is as much fun as the houses.

Go here to see the whole set.

Olá pessoas!

Vocês conferiram aqui o lançamento dessa grande e bonita campanha de 50 anos do café Santa Clara.

Acabou de ficar disponível na internet os filmes de 30″. E o bacana é que tem lugares novos. A homenagem às cidades que fizeram de Santa Clara esse café de sucesso se expandiu. Vejam aí:

A campanha foi criada pela cearense Promosell Comunicação.

Abraços!

That’s what they call hitchhiking in this country. I guess it makes a little more sense in Spanish—hacer botella—well, grammatically at least.

I think the term originates from back when people used to have bottles in their cars for hitchhikers to put tips in. Haciendo or cogiendo botella in Cuba is a legitimate, government sponsored mode of transportation, because there is generally a shortage of transportation in this country, and extra space not being used in cars seems like a good thing to take advantage of. Although many people just stand on the side of the road holding out their hands or some small bills (usually no more than $1), outside of every major city there is an “amarillo” stand, where guys in yellow outfits run out into the middle of the highway and hold out cardboard signs that say PARE (stop), and shuffle people into cars/trucks/buses based on destination. I say it is government sponsored because government owned vehicles are required by law to stop and take travelers free of charge if they have the space (this does not always happen, bribes happen for line cutting and things like that).

Anyways, the reason I’m saying all this stuff about traveling in bottle is that I did it this weekend with two friends, we hitchhiked Cuban style all the way from Havana to the beautiful cities of Santa Clara and Cienfuegos in the center of the island and back—about 600 kilometers total, all for less than $2 each (it could have been less, too, but we were generous).

This is what happened:

Asked people how to get to an Amarillo stop in Havana. Got there, bumbled around a little stupidly (our first time!). Waited in the hot hot sun, I thought about how I should have packed my spf65 sunscreen instead of the 15.

Finally, after an hour or two of tired, impatient waiting (we’d been trying to get out of Havana for about 4 hours now) we hopped onto a bus that was going in the general direction we wanted to go. We got dropped off under a bridge about half an hour later, still closer to Havana than anything else. Waited. The good thing, though, was that there were a lot of Cubans with us in the same position, and though they weren’t ecstatic about all the cars driving past without stopping they didn’t seem too perturbed or antsy about the situation. I start to climb up the bridge to pass the time, and then lo and behold, just as I climb down, a truck stops, and the Cuban friend we made while waiting is waving frantically at us to get on. I climb on, or rather, I step on the wheel and then some men who are already up pull me over the side of the truck (it was pretty tall, and there were no foot holds), and then watch as my friend who is halfway up gets thrown off as the truck starts to drive away. Luckily, everyone starts to scream “Espérate!” so the truck stops again and then he gets on.

Our first camioneta! This is an open backed truck, you know, the old kind that normally carries boxes of things to sell. Ours had apparently been transporting large amounts of papaya before the humans got on, because the floor was covered in slippery black seeds and red pulp. Anyways, even though we couldn’t sit, my friend had almost died, I was getting severely sun/wind burned, and the truck looked like it was one pothole away from falling into pieces (not to mention a few oxygen particles away from crumbling), we felt like the kings of the world, because there we were, cruising down the national highway with all these Cubans on this tall truck, the wind blowing our hair in this majestic way, definitively leaving Havana for real, finally. I had seen something like this in “Guantanamera,” a Cuban movie, and thought it was pretty novel, and now there I was, doing it myself. I felt pretty cool.

Got dropped off at Jaguey, had dinner. In Jaguey there were tons of Chinese people (from China, a pretty rare sight in Cuba based on all the stares I get in the streets) for some reason (we walked into a restaurant and literally everyone inside was Chinese, and I burst out laughing then scuttled away) and I awkwardly avoided them. For some reason, my gutsiness turns off whenever I’m faced with large groups of Asians. I need to work on that.

Went to the side of the highway to try to get to Cienfuegos. By that time, it was dark, and we were a little worried. Luckily, however, everyone was stopping (this didn’t happen the other time) which was a good sign, even though no one wanted to go to Cienfuegos. Finally, we hopped onto a truck going to Santa Clara, which is a big city close to Cienfuegos that we considered going to, but didn’t seem as cool.

The second camioneta ride was one of the best parts of the entire trip. It was pitch black by the time we got on, and the Cuban national highway doesn’t have lights on it, so it was really really black. I used my backpack as a pillow and leaned back (no papaya gunk this time, just a lot of dirt). The sky was beautiful, llenísima de estrellas, with a little bright sliver of moon. I had never seen so many stars in my life. There were also some navy officers on the truck, and their outfits were billowing romantically in the wind.

Santa Clara: saw the Che museum and mausoleum. Rode in our first peso-horse carriage, and thought it was novel, but the next day we took two more. Like other things that seem novel, it was just one of those things about transportation that are pretty normal in Cuba.

Went to Cienfuegos. Indulged in having money and dished out $5 each for a taxi over there, but it was worth it, I think, because we got there in probably 1/5 of the time it would have taken. Also, in the United States, sometimes I dish out $5 for Boloco burritos.

Cienfuegos: extremely clean and orderly and pretty and nice. Felt not like Cuba, but somewhere else in Latin America, except for things were extraordinarily cheap. We got an illegal casa particular for $20 for the three of us, which was a great deal, especially because usually they make 3 people get two rooms. We did have to sleep 3 on a bed, however, which was not so nice. Luckily, went to a club that night and didn’t sleep too much. The club felt extremely un-Cuban as well, filled with people who looked like they had money, and no one was trying to hustle us. The best part of Cienfuegos was when we climbed up to this mirador which was a beautiful old crumbling mansion with a really tall tower and you could see the entire city and bay and it was so beautiful it felt like the entire trip was worth it just for being able to run around up there. Also there was a time when we climbed to the roof of our casa at night and sat up there talking, which was nice too.

Bottled our way back. Same old camioneta and Amarillo shit, even stopped in Jaguey for lunch again (ate at the same place, it was the only one with food), saw and avoided some Asians, got back to Havana, tanned, dirty, bruised, but alive and happy, and feeling pretty happy about ourselves.

Texto y fotos: Carolina Vilches

Las difíciles condiciones económicas que vive Cuba nos han obligado a los cubanos a ser creativos en cuanto a soluciones para resolver nuestras vidas, y uno de los problemas que nos golpea es la escasez de medios de transporte. De cualquier manera, y aunque esté bastante escaso, nos movemos, y para eso nos valemos de todos los medios a nuestro alcance.

Las carretas haladas por tractores, bueyes,etc., han sido por siglos un medio de transporte muy utilizado en los campos de Cuba. Ahora se le añaden con frecuencia bicicleteros que se "cuelgan" de este medio para adelantar camino y ahorrar fuerzas.

También como modalidad de estos tiempos, los tractores abandonan los terraplenes y entran a las carreteras e incluso a los pueblos más cercanos.

En los lugares donde el agua es el elemento más abundante, el medio de transporte por excelencia sigue siendo el bote de remos.

Las “volantas”, pequeños carros de dos ruedas halados por un caballo, son frecuentes en nuestros campos. Algunos campesinos le incorporan adelantos de la técnica para hacerlos más agradables.

Un campesino "parquea" su volanta frente al consultorio del médico de la familia de un pequeño poblado en el municipio de Remedios, Villa Clara.

La yunta de bueyes, pareja inseparable del campesino trabajador, imprescindible para su trabajo, es además continuamente utilizada en nuestros campos, y de manera muy creativa, por cierto, para transportarse.

El caballo, transporte milenario y universal.

En las calles de Güinía de Miranda, un campesino prepara su volanta tirada por bueyes, mientras conversa con otro montado en su caballo.

El arria de mulos, pionera del transporte de carga en Cuba, extremadamente útil en las zonas montañosas. Poblado Bermejas, en el Escambray.

En las ciudades, sobre todo en las capitales provinciales, el coche de caballos ha retomado un lugar que había perdido ante el auge del transporte automotor.

Pero a veces ni los carretones son suficientes para mover al gran flujo de personas en Santa Clara.

El transporte urbano resulta también insuficiente, por lo que es común la aglomeración de personas para subir.

No faltan los que arriesgan su vida remolcándose en bicicletas a vehículos mayores para cubrir distancias largas.

Ontem, no La Maison, aconteceu a grande festa da Veja na cidade, Comer&Beber Veja-Fortaleza. A Promosell prestigiou o evento e ainda conferiu a vitória do Café Orgânica Santa Clara, na categoria Cafeteria.
Na foto (da esq. p/ dir.): André Pinheiro, Mário Ribeiro e Leonardo Antunes.

Are your office network troubling, can’t able to share file or printer. Are your network infected with virus. We know you couldn’t sit idly and wait for 3/4 days and look for some computer repair service who can fix the issue. Call us we are super fast and will provide same day service.
santa-clara-computer-repair

It’s Raining Blogs: How to be an ActiveRain RainMaker…Join Me at VREBAR Tu., 11/17 @ 2:30

By Michelle Carr-Crowe

Have you always wanted to be an ActiveRain RainMaker? Curious about how long it might take? Why you should bother?

If you want to take your brand, business and Internet presence and inject it with Google Juice, you need to get on ActiveRain, and become an ActiveRain RainMaker. J

oin me and 26 other social media and real estate professionals at the First-Ever Virtual Real Estate BarCamp, Produced by Jim Cronin & Real Estate Tomato

In “It’s Raining Blogs: How to Become an ActiveRain RainMaker” I’ll cover the following:

· Intro to Blogging

· Definition of Blogging

· Why Blog? Business: Free exposure, free listing ads & crossover possibilities

· Why Blog? Personal: Integrating personality, hobbies & real-life

· Getting Started on ActiveRain ·

 Choosing a Target Market & Strategy

· Writing Your First Blog

· 5 Do’s of Blogging

· 5 Don’ts of Blogging

· Examples of a Perfect Blog

· Extra Bonus Blogs: Upping Your Points and Ranking

· Expanding Your Blog’s Reach Be part of history!

Over 1,500 professionals are already signed up. You can still register for FREE here: http://rebarcamp.com/virtual/free-registration/

See you in the Rain!

P.S. To request a copy of the written presentation, It’s Raining Blogs: How to be an ActiveRain RainMaker, send an email request to me at getresultsteam@gmail.com.

  Mom on lead vocals

We love seeing families celebrate a milestone.  At City Beach we go out of our way to make sure your experience is something you’ll remember. Our latest Bar Mitzvah was nothing short of spectacular with food, our massive inflatables, a Rock Band competition, and the one of the most active families we have ever met. They had so much fun, you could see it in their faces!  Take a look as the entire family got into the groove at our City Beach Santa Clara location.

To Military Personnel & Veterans, Your Country’s Free Citizens Say Thank You

By Michelle C. Carr-Crowe

Every year, as Veteran’s Day and Thanksgiving closely coincide, my heart goes out to those currently serving, and those who’ve served in the past. I, and your country’s free citizens, say, “THANK YOU.”

With the tragedy at Fort Hood, Texas, Veteran’s Day becomes more real and poignant. It’s easy to write a column or blog thanking veterans in general. It’s easy to put out the American flag in front of the house. Many agents like to decorate the houses in their farm areas with little flags in the yards.

However, in the past several years, I’ve formed a new, more meaningful tradition. On Veteran’s Day, I simply ask people around me if they’ve served in any of the U.S. Armed Forces (Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, Marine Corp.) I ask agents, I ask grocery store clerks, I ask the people waiting in line with me at the post office—basically anyone God happens to lead into my path that day.

Whenever he or she says, “yes,” I shake that soldier’s hand, looking straight into their eyes, and speak a grateful, “Thank you and God bless you.”

Sometimes it turns out the person is a mother, father, sister, brother, wife, husband, daughter or son of a soldier. I do the same thing, only I ask them to also pass on my thanks to that loved one.

In addition to my brother and several cousins, in the first year I had enough courage to ask strangers this question, I discovered two of my teammates had served, as had two of my current clients.

I don’t really know whether my gesture meant anything to the people I spoke to or not. They might have thought I was a kook or a bit eccentric. Yet I felt better knowing I made a personal effort to reach out to those who put their lives on the line for me, my family, and the freedoms we enjoy as Americans.

In my opinion, a personal and heartfelt “thank you,” is a gift that anyone, even in this economy, can afford. And it’s a gift our servicemen and women deserve to receive.

Would this simple gesture have made a difference to Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist who killed thirteen people at Fort Hood? Who knows? We do know, based on statements from fellow soldiers and family members, he felt conflicted in his values, and unsure if serving in the military as a Muslim was “doing the right thing.” Maybe a gesture like this would have reassured him. Maybe it would have generated a conversation to clarify his values. Maybe it would have made no difference at all.

However, to the families of the thirteen people killed by him, I offer my condolences and sympathy with a heavy heart. And I reach out my hand, look them in the eyes, and say, “Thank you and God bless you.”

Saratoga Senior Salvation-A Tax Credit for Move-DOWN Saratoga Buyers

By Michelle C. Carr-Crowe

Lost in the hoopla about extending and expanding the “up to” $8,000 credit for new homebuyers is the credit for existing homeowners. In my opinion, this can be “Senior Salvation” – a tax credit for move-DOWN Saratoga buyers.

I called my broker, my local real estate board, the California Association of REALTORS®, and even the IRS to ask my question: does this credit apply for move-down buyers?

So far the answer is, “As long as they qualify and have a tax to apply the credit to, it looks like YES.”

To summarize:

1. A first time homebuyer is one that has not owned a home for at least three years.
2. A repeat homebuyer must have owned their current home for at least five consecutive years out of the last eight years.
3. The maximum purchase price for the new home is $800,000.
4. If single, your earning maximum to qualify is $125,000; if married, it’s up to $250,000.
5. There’s no gap between the prior deadline (November 30th) and the new credit period, which ends April 30th.
6. While you must be in a contract to purchase your new home on or before April 30^th, you have until June 30th to close the transaction.
7. To prove you qualify, you’ll need to attach proof of purchase to your tax return  (most likely a HUD-1 or final closing statement).

Caveat: please, please check with your tax professional and attorney before making any real estate commitments.

However, this may finally be a tax credit that helps seniors who’ve lived in their homes for more than five consecutive years of the past eight. 

For example, a senior couple selling a 1.5 million dollar single family home in Saratoga Lynbrook they’ve owned for the past 10 years, then buying a single-level 3 bedroom condo in San Jose for $650,000 not only get to keep their $500,000 tax-free capital gains benefit and transfer their tax basis, they can also now use up to $6,500 as a tax credit.

Savings for Cupertino Seniors-the Tax Credit for Move-DOWN Cupertino Buyers

By Michelle C. Carr-Crowe

Lost in the hoopla about extending and expanding the “up to” $8,000 credit for new homebuyers is the credit for existing homeowners. In my opinion, this can be “Senior Salvation” – a tax credit for move-DOWN Cupertino sellers and buyers.

I called my broker, my local real estate board, the California Association of REALTORS®, and even the IRS to ask my question: does this credit apply for move-down buyers?

So far the answer is, “As long as they qualify and have a tax to apply the credit to, it looks like YES.”

To summarize:

1. A first time homebuyer is one that has not owned a home for at least three years.
2. A repeat homebuyer must have owned their current home for at least five consecutive years out of the last eight years.
3. The maximum purchase price for the new home is $800,000.
4. If single, your earning maximum to qualify is $125,000; if married, it’s up to $250,000.
5. There’s no gap between the prior deadline (November 30th) and the new credit period, which ends April 30th.
6. While you must be in a contract to purchase your new home on or before April 30^th, you have until June 30th to close the transaction.
7. To prove you qualify, you’ll need to attach proof of purchase to your tax return  (most likely a HUD-1 or final closing statement).

Caveat: please, please check with your tax professional and attorney before making any real estate commitments.

However, this may finally be a tax credit that helps seniors who’ve lived in their homes for more than five consecutive years of the past eight. 

For example, a senior couple selling a $2 million dollar single family home in Cupertino Monta Vista they’ve owned for the past 8 years, then buying a new single-level 2 bedroom condo in San Jose for $650,000 not only get to keep their $500,000 tax-free capital gains benefit and transfer their tax basis, they can also now use up to $6,500 as a tax credit.

And as the capital gains $500,000 tax-free credit is set to EXPIRE as of December 31, 2010, now is a huge window of opportunity for seniors seeking to maximize their benefits.

Pizza Antica
334 Santana Row
#1065, San Jose, CA, USA‎
(408) 557-8373‎

Pizza Antica had pretty awesome pizza. They pizzas are oven cooked and have a very thin and crispy pizza shell. Their toppings and selection are also pretty good as well.

They have a neat looking oven. As you can see, the fire is raging away in there. Apparently we aren’t allowed to take photos. We got in trouble for taking photos and was asked to stop. But in the end we still managed to sneak photos of the pizza when it was served.

I believe this was the mushroom and meat pizza. It comes in an oval shape and they cut it into 6 pieces. The way they serve it is also quite interesting. They have a wooden tray and they put it on a metal stand. And if you can see in the photo, they the plates underneath it. This is a cool idea, as it does save a lot of space.

This was our other pizza. I think there was tomato, artichoke, and ham. I liked both of them a lot. Uncle Brian took us here just because they are famous for the crust. Stinky’s aunt had mentioned to us before we went to eat here that the pizzas are very, very expensive. But I think the price is fair. I guess the reason why she says it’s expensive is because she usually buys pizza from Costco, the Kirkland extra large pizzas.

~~~~~

By-Th’ Bucket Bar and Grill
4565 Stevens Creek Blvd, Santa Clara, CA, United States‎
(408) 248-6244‎

On another day, we went to By-Th’ Bucket Bar and Grill. Stinky and her two little cousins ordered from the kid’s menu. The kid’s menu had prices that were considerably better when compared to their portions.

The store offers this kind of bread for a starter, the free of charge type. And I just loved the softness of the bread along with the dill spread. Stinky’s aunt was brave enough to demand for a second batch after all of us ate our piece. We were already stuffed with bread before we got our actual meals!

So Stinky orders a ham and pineapple pizza. Nothing special there. But obviously there is limited toppings as seen in the photo. The flavour of it is also quite typical. I don’t taste the specialty in their pizzas.

Julianne got the meat pizza from the kid’s menu. This one basically has pepperoni and beef. The pizza itself is quite small, considering it’s kid’s size. But there really isn’t enough toppings to satisfy me.

Olivia got a burger from the kid’s menu. It’s pretty plain as you can see. There is no sauce or lettuce, just a meat patty with some bacon, and some fries on the side.

As old as I look, I didn’t want to order anything from kid’s menu. I think I look way too old for that anyway. But as broke as I was, I settled for a clam chowder. Their chowder wasn’t exactly really tasty either. In other words, I have tasted better clam chowder before.

This was kind of funny. I don’t even know what this was called. I think it’s some kind of fried chicken strips. From my memory, I just remember it was super salty and didn’t fit my taste buds at all.

Stinky’s aunt ordered garlic bread. I didn’t get to try this. But it looks okay – super garlic looking. But I do like garlic. Maybe I did end up trying this dish, but memory fails.

Not too elaborate about anything today. I’m super tired, though I’ve done nothing except eat for the whole day HAHA.

~ pooky sleeps now *yawns*

Hier mal wieder ein kleines Update, in letzter Zeit gab es ja nicht all zu viel.

Hier in Santa Clara ist das Wetter immer noch relativ warm, um die 20 Grad (Celsius) haben wir tagsueber noch. Wir mussten bis jetzt auch noch nicht unsere Heizung anstellen. Die Heizungen hier sind sowieso ein spezielles Thema. In unserem Appartment haben wir in jedem Zimmer (ausser im Badezimmer) eine Elektroheizung, die nicht besonders effizient ist. Zusaetzlich sind auch die Haeuser sehr schlecht isoliert, so dass man schon sehr viel Energie braucht, wenn es denn mal richtig kalt ist. Aber das haelt sich ja (zum Glueck) in Grenzen, richtig heizen muss man eigentlich fast nie, ab und zu morgens oder abends mal, aber das reicht dann auch.

Apropos Energiekosten: Die sind hier sehr niedrig, nicht nur Benzin, sondern auch Strom. Hier in Santa Clara ist Strom noch mal guenstiger als in den meisten anderen Teilen Kaliforniens, da der Stromanbieter “Santa Clara Power” ein eigenes Kraftwerk hat und deshalb den Strom sehr guenstig anbieten kann. Wir zahlen 7,7 Cent pro Kilowattstunde.

Na gut, so viel zu langweiligen Strom- / Heizthemen. Bei uns gibt es auch noch wichtigere Neuigkeiten, dazu aber in einem anderen Blogpost mehr.

Montaño y Bueno firman el convenio para el museo. Laredo Información.

El Ayuntamiento de Sevilla y la Consejería de Cultura han firmado un convenio por el que se hacen con parte del legado artístico del músico sevillano Manuel Castillo para exponerlo en el convento de Santa Clara en 2012. Castillo es hijo predilecto de Sevilla y ha sido Medalla de Oro de las Bellas Artes y dos veces Premio Nacional de Música.

La delegada de Cultura, Maribel Montaño, y su homólogo provincial, Bernardo Bueno, han firmado un convenio para difundir el legado del músico sevillano Manuel Castillo.

Será en el convento de Santa Clara donde se exponga parte de sus patrimonio en un espacio dedicado al autor aún sin concretar.

Este proyecto se enmarca en la tercera fase de rehabilitación del convento, por lo que no podrá ser una realidad hasta 2012.

“Tenemos la obligación de difundir el legado de Castillo”, explicó Bueno, que resaltó la amabilidad y solidaridad del músico en vida.

Este proyecto museístico se completa con un piano, un órgano, más de 3.000 libros, alredor de 1.500 grabaciones sonoras y demás objetos personales.

Este convenio, por valor de 60.000 euros, permite hacer de dominio público el patrimonio de Castillo.

Laredo Información

Lovely 3 Br Home in Exquisite Neighborhood Missing Just 2 Things-YOU & 1 Other Thing …

Lovely 3 Br Home in Exquisite Neighborhood Missing Just 2 Things-YOU …and 1 Other Thing…a Second Bath…But WAIT!
More than half of the homes on this street only have 1 Bath also.
Before you reject, come see it Sunday from 1:30 to 4:30
You can’t buy a better neighborhood for the $$!

REMEMBER: Tax Credit and Unemployment Benefits Officially Extended & Expanded
The existing tax credit for first-time buyers, originally set to expire at the end of the month, has been extended, expanded and approved by the House, Senate and President Barack Obama.

The new measure benefits a larger group of potential home buyers. It allows both first-timers and existing homeowners to take advantage of thousands in the form of a tax credit. All properties must close by the end of April.

The measure would continue giving an $8,000 tax credit to first-time buyers. In addition, it provides a $6,500 tax break to qualified homeowners looking to move up to middle-market homes that cost no more than $800,000.

The legislation also significantly raises the qualifying income levels to $125,000 for individual income tax filers and to $225,000 for joint filers.

Grandma’s Cottage! Updated Willow Glen Charmer! Located in Superb Neighborhood!
* REDUCED $!
* FREE Gifts at Open House on Sun, 10/18 1:30-4:30!

*Grandma’s Cottage is Light, Lovely & Squeaky Clean!
*Move-In Condition & Located on Quiet St in Fabulous DRY CREEK Area of Willow Glen!
*Gleaming Hardwood Floors!
*Dual Pane Windows!
*Custom Blinds!
* Great Natural Light-Fabulous Airy Feeling-All BR Feature 2 Windows!
* Gated CourtYard!
* Pretty Patio!
* Yummy Fruit Trees!
* E-Z 2 Block Walk to Booksin, Willow Glen Jr & Willow Glen High!

2180 Cheryl Way, San Jose

The Cloud Computing Conference and Expo in Santa Clara has come to an end, leaving a fair share of opinion, skepticism, and robust discussion for the period of incubation leading up to the next conference. Many companies have adopted “Cloud-something or other” as their new name, and are aggressively bringing their products to market. We observed exhibitors displaying cloud network management software, cloud email and SMS messaging, cloud security – basically cloud everything.

According to the conference organizer (SYS-CON’s Jeremy Geelan), the conference exceeded all their expectations. Those expectations were to enlighten attendees on the state of cloud computing, train those who need to need to know more about clouds, and offer a forum to debate both the value and future of cloud computing.

I try not to be one of those expo attendees who find joy in tormenting booth staff, as often you will meet sales and marketing people who have no technical knowledge of their product, and are trying to simply collect cards and develop potential business from visitors and conference attendees. A model used over the past 100 years of industry conferences and expos.

However, of around 50 booths at the conference, only a handful of vendors could really be considered directly involved in development of cloud products or services. The rest either resell somebody else’s service, have tagged their legacy product with a “cloud” prefix of suffix, or simply set up a booth to have visibility or presence at the conference.

Now this is not a bad thing, in my opinion. As a cloud evangelist, a person who has dreamed about cloud computing, GRID computing, high performance computing, and network computing for most of my professional life, seeing the tag “cloud” plastered on just about everything makes me happy. It means the term and enthusiasm for cloud computing is no longer the domain of engineers, but is about to hit the “hype scale” that will drive the vision into the eyes and minds of just about everybody on the street. Without hitting this phase of “hype” development, cloud will risk dying or fading away like many of the other great ideas of our generation.

If that is what it takes to continue forcing companies to build faster, cheaper, and more agile cloud products; if that is what it takes to push governments to understand the value of virtualization and consolidation; if that is what it takes to push entertainment, social media, the financial community, and all industry information technology planning over to the cloud, then I will gladly buy the lipstick and distribute it freely to marketing companies to smear on the next startup’s branding plan.

Getting Past the “Geek”

As with all well-attended conferences, the most robust discussions took place in hallways, the exposition floor, and café tabletops. It is exciting to be in the early stages of technology shifts, as everybody has a different vision, different direction, and different opinion on the best way to create technologies, and apply them to business and social problems. Bringing back the Internet analogy of the 90’s, when email was considered a tools for geeks (circa 1992), and would never replace robust and mature technologies such as fax, cloud computing has a fair share of skeptics and “nay-sayers” as well.

Why? As engineers we are probably much more agile when jumping on the technology “first-mover bandwagon.” We are the ones with home entertainment systems which frequently pop circuit breakers, and occasionally attract local police departments to gently remind us we are being obnoxious and disturbing our neighbors.

Financial officers, operations staff, sales people, and other professionals are inherently reluctant to refresh technology and processes which work. To disrupt a business process requires a very compelling argument outlining and presenting the need for change, the risk of not making a recommended change, the potential outcome if the change fails, and the “pain point” technology refresh will solve when adopted.

Another example. Today most sales organizations have adopted some kind of CRM (customer relationship management) platform. It might be a SaaS product such as SalesForce.Com, Microsoft Dynamics, or other internal application. 15 years ago no sales person would willingly put their sales “funnel” into an online system, nor would they even give up their address book without a fight. Time has proven CRM systems are good for both the sales person, as well as the company, and facilitates the book-to-bank process. But it took a very long time to prove to both companies and sales people this process was valid, and still today has a strong lobby of reluctant old-timers who resist CRM.

Virtualizing IT applications and consolidating data centers makes sense. Economic, environmental, and performance sense. Let’s support the marketing efforts to bring cloud to the headlines. As engineers we need to be tolerant of those efforts, and understand without the marketing phase of cloud development it will take us longer to get into the DNA of future network and compute technologies.

And solve the final question, “which shade of lipstick is best for the cloud?”

John Savageau, Long Beach, from Sunnyvale, California

The SMS message was desperate. AJ sent the plea “If I have to see one more picture of a cloud in a PPT I might lose it…” After two days of presentations at the Cloud Computing Conference and Expo, where companies tried to bring the audience up to an Intro to Clouds 101 level, some attendees were grasping for new ideas, new information, new reasons why companies should release their IT models currently based on strict FUD-Factor (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) compliance, to the new generation of cloud computing.

The “same slides, different day” approach was starting leave some attendees a bit glazed, until Shelton Shugar, SVP of Cloud Computing at Yahoo! kicked off the morning with his keynote speech “Accelerating Innovation with Cloud Computing.” Shugar woke the audience up with an overview of how Yahoo! Is “walking the talk” with cloud computing deployments in their own network.

Yahoo! Mail, Sports, Finance, and other applications – all are using some level of cloud compute support based on HADOOP. Shugar detailed Yahoo’s support of the open source community through their “Open Cirrus” program. Not only aggressive cloud computing thought leadership, but actual industry leadership.

Insulating Innovators

Perhaps the most enlightening “sound bite” of the morning is Shugar’s statement that cloud computing relieves the developers from spending time on IT, allowing them to “focus time on their (business) problems, and not on the infrastructure.”

This is really significant. Having joined several presentations at the Cloud Computing Conference and Expo in Santa Clara, mostly repeating the same lines of reduced OPEX, CAPEX, energy savings, IaaS, PaaS, Saas, and so on, Shugar finally started bringing the ideas into a perspective business managers could relate to their own professional pain points, as well as open new ideas of what value this cloud “thing” might actually offer.

I remember in the old days (of the ’90s) while working at a telecom company breaking into the emerging Internet industry. We had a training section which consumed a lot of their schedule supporting remote access training for NOC (network operations center) technicians needing high level access to servers and routers. The training section maintained dozens of switches, routers, and servers in a computer room to support the training environment.

Each student needed practice working at the command line interface of network hardware, however in their day-to-day job they would never need to physically touch a network device, as the actual device could be located anyplace around the world – they simply need to practice troubleshooting and monitoring through remote access.

Looking around the conference hall at the Cloud Computing Conference, companies such as 3tera offer a provisioning tool that is able to automatically produce images of servers, switches, and routers within a virtual environment. You need a new LINUX box, you drag and drop a pre-configured LINUX image into your environment. It “spools” and is ready for access within about 2 seconds. From the user’s perspective, it is a physical LINUX server that could very well be mounted in the next room. The object functions exactly as a physical server would behave.

Within the virtual environment the instructor (or students) could spool up as many virtual images of the LINUX box as needed to meet the class’ training requirements. The instructor and training division no longer has to spend a lot of time each day wiping servers, reloading images, replacing failed memory or hard drives – any of the non-productive tasks that traditionally prevented them from spending their valuable time building better training curriculum, spending more time with their students, or delivering the course as an eLearning course anyplace in the company.

Now apply the same idea to any job where you have either knowledge workers or manual workers spending any amount of their time working on IT infrastructure-related tasks which do not directly produce revenue or some level of customer service (a broad category). Even better if you consider the supporting IT infrastructure may not even be in the same building, city, or even region. You may be getting your applications and IT support through a public cloud service provider (CSP) physically located in a different country!

The idea of insulating your knowledge workers from the IT infrastructure is one more item for our bag of 30 second cloud elevator pitches. It is great when such as simple statement can have such profound meaning. Looking around the auditorium, when Shugar may the statement and described the need to insulate our knowledge workers from the burden of IT infrastructure operations and management, I could see about 1000 pairs of eyes lighten, eyebrows rise a bit higher into the foreheads, and smiles appear on the faces of attendees who finally breeched the layer of skepticism and fog which had drawn them to the conference.

The rest of the conference will now be a much more free and productive use of their new enthusiasm for knowledge on cloud computing, what it is today, and what innovations they will be able to apply to cloud computing platforms and infrastructure in the future.

John Savageau, Long Beach (from the Cloud Computing Conference and Expo, Santa Clara, California)

Cupertino Schools Residents-Remember to Exercise Your Right to Vote Today!

By Michelle C. Carr-Crowe

Whether you live in Cupertino, San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale or Los Altos, your property’s value benefits from being in the Fremont Union High School District (commonly referred to as “Cupertino Schools”).

Today, Measure G is on the ballot. Below is a synopsis of the proposal. Basically, it is an extension of the existing parcel tax at the same amount of $98, which is set to expire, as well as an annual adjustment for inflation. The measure exempts homeowners who are seniors and/or disabled. Please remember to exercise your right to vote today!

NOVEMBER 3, 2009: MEASURE G
To provide stable, local funds needed to protect teaching positions, and assure that Cupertino, Fremont, Homestead, Lynbrook, and Monta Vista High School students are prepared to successfully compete for college admission, shall the Fremont Union High School District replace its existing, expiring parcel tax with a tax at the same annual rate of $98 per parcel to be adjusted annually for inflation, with all funds benefitting local high schools, and offering an exemption to seniors and the disabled?

According to information for the 2007-2008 Fiscal Year from the California Dept of Education, following is some basic information on district funding dollars per student as compared to all of California as well as other nearby districts with high-performing academic scores.

Fremont Union High School District $9,255

Statewide Average for all High Schools $9,433

San Jose Unified $9,818
Los Gatos-Saratoga HS $11,264
Mountain View- Los Altos HS $12,699
Palo Alto Unified – $13,509

Be an informed voter and make your voice heard! Polls close tonight at 8:00 pm.

Having gone through a couple of decades worth of technology conferences, a familiar cycle occurs. For the first couple years, technology-related conferences are attended by engineers and operations people. Only after the technology has passed a couple of feasibility gates and begun to hit the business cycle do sales and marketing people take over. Cloud is now officially past the engineering phase, well into the sales phase – and the business community is scrambling to understand the implications of a virtualized world.

At the Cloud Computing Conference and Expo in Santa Clara, California, the opening keynote session venue was completely filled, with the organizer (SYS-CON Events) obliged to quickly expand the audience into two overflow rooms, in addition to mounting displays in hallways adjacent to the main ballroom. According to the conference organizer more than twice as many have signed up and are attending the conference than planned. And cloud “buzz” is electric within the halls.

Cloud computing is here, the industry innovation machine is spooling, and the “nay-sayers” are starting to quiet down as the reality of cloud computing is articulated, codified, and presented in a format that has finally gone past the high level “concepts” of recent cloud expos and conferences.

This must be true, because the hallways are now filling with people wearing suits, ties, and polo shirts with snappy logos. Engineers still roam the halls, identifiable by their blue jeans, T-shirts, and backpacks filled with gadgets and computers. The ratio is about 50:50, indicating cloud service providers are now attending conferences for the purpose of business development, rather than to simply share ideas and further develop cloud technology as an R&D community.

The Opening Keynote – Cloud Myth-Busting

Richard Marcello, President, Technology, Consulting, and Integrations Services at Unisys kicked off the conference with a keynote speech entitled “The Time is Right for Enterprise Cloud Computing.” The presentation followed a familiar model in the public (non engineering and technician audience) conditioning of a new technology – “the Nine Myths of Cloud Computing.” A very good presentation (really), which drilled into common misconceptions of cloud computing. This type approach is useful when giving an instructional presentation, with statements such as:

• Myth #9 – Cloud computing is brand new – a revolution
• Myth #8 – All clouds are the same
• Myth #7 – Cloud computing is about technology
• Myth #5 – Cloud computing is not reliable
• And so on…

Do a search and replace of “cloud computing” with “Internet” and you could pose the same myths, with the discriminating factor being one of how you present the response in breaking each myth. Yes, it is marketing and borderline cliché, but it does go far in visualizing cloud computing to the new attendees from the business side of our industry.

Marcello did present one eloquent response to the myth “The Internal data center is more secure than the cloud.” He showed a slide which had three separate applications creating data. The data is stored in a storage cloud, as well as being manipulated in a service cloud. Data going into the cloud service (processing), and into the storage cloud is brought into a single stream, which cannot be intercepted by a “sniffer” or other device, and the actual data instances are only recognizable by the application using the data. To all others attempting to intercept the data, it appears as “water running through a pipe.”

Actually, not a bad analogy.

Marcello went on the describe his taxonomy of the “real time access engine” which controls the data streams into each application or storage device, security within an enterprise, industry, or organizational community of interest. However the most important message delivered during his speech was the idea that cloud computing will “generate new business models and ideas that none of us have yet envisioned.”

But, That’s Not What I designed…

This message is strong. All engineers have gone through the experience of creating a product, and then observing the product being used by people for activities never envisioned by the creator. Imagine the continuing astonishment of the originators of the Internet. A simple tool for distributed applications and network survivability, and it is now the basis for nearly all communications, entertainment, business, and social interaction between humans throughout the world.

What will cloud computing bring us in the future? What will smart kids who are going through an education system with complete immersion in the global Internet cloud as a normal part of life be able to see in a potential global model of data and applications virtualization? Much as the early days of the internet represented a mere tip of the future network “iceberg,” what we see in cloud computing today is just the tip of what virtualization of compute and storage resources will ultimate become.

What will happen when SSDs (solid state disks) become part of the layer 2 switching backplane (Slapping an SSD card into a switching slot, making Fiber channel over Ethernet obsolete overnight)? An entire content delivery network and system currently using 100 cabinets of servers and disk reduced to a single card in a switch…

Integration with IPv6. Standardization in cloud services allowing formation of cloud spot markets and interoperability.

We have a lot of questions to throw both at the engineers, as well as the business visionaries attending the conference. Welcome sales and marketing folks, welcome to the new age of cloud computing.

John Savageau, Long Beach (From the Cloud Computing Conference and Expo, Santa Clara, California)

We started the 2009 Rally Agile Success Tour (AST) Series in March in Denver, CO; we just concluded it in London, UK. In between the AST “train” stopped at:

• Atlanta, GA
• Boston, MA
• Chicago, IL
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Santa Clara, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC

All in all we hosted about 1,000 participants in these cities. More than 40 panelists shared Agile experiences with their local colleagues. Some 200 meetings were held with various participants in conjunction with the events. Obviously, I cannot write here about the level of business generated by the success tour, but none of my Rally colleagues complained so far…

The breadth and depth of topics that were covered is mind-boggling. Here are a few of the most intriguing ones:

• Agile Business Service Management
• Agile contracts
• Agile Governance
• Beautiful software
• Lean
• Sausage Syndrome
• Software capitalization
• Use of emulation in Agile projects
• Virtuous Cycle of Agile
• Why Agile is natural for Business Intelligence

The success tour proved successful to a degree that actually perplexed me for quite some time. I had certainly expected a strong series of events from the outset and could point out to various things we were doing right along the way. Yet, the very simple ‘secret sauce’ that made the event series so remarkable eluded me until I collected my thoughts for writing this post:

The Agile Success Tour proved phenomenally successful because the Rally team is so much like the customers and prospects that participate in the events, license the Rally software and work hand-in-hand with Rally coaches.

A few words of explanation for what might seem on the surface like a somewhat banal statement. The various members of the Rally team – sales reps, coaches, technical account managers, marketing professionals and execs – resonated with participants in the events due to exceptionally high level of congruence in values, thinking and practices. If Ryan were the CTO of eBay he would probably have licensed Rally software; Jean would have re-architected the flow of eBay processes; Zach would have integrated the ALM tools eBay uses. As for Lauren, she would have single-handedly created a world-wide marketing events organization for eBay.

The power of being like your own customers is magnetic. Digital Equipment Corporation was immensely successful selling minicomputers to engineers like their own engineers in the 60’s and 70’s. Sun Microsystems rode the early Internet wave as their product designers were carbon copy of the folks who roamed the World Wide Web. Apple triumphed with the iPod because just about every Apple employee would have murdered for such a cool device. Nothing beats the intuitive understanding that comes with designing, marketing and selling the kind of product you will buy, play with and use yourself.

After the Santa Clara event, Forrester’s Tom Grant told me the following about Rally:

What a smart company – everyone gets it!

Though a slightly different perspective than mine, Tom had actually identified the outcome of the company-customer congruence I am highlighting in this post. Everyone at Rally gets it due to natural identification with his/her customers. Contexts and experiences of customers are exceptionally well understood and often replicated in Rally’s Boulder, CO headquarters and its various branch offices.

Fundamentally, the success of the success tour reflects the affinity between Rally and its clientele.

Olá Pessoas!

O maior café do Brasil acaba de completar 50 anos. E para a felicidade geral do mercado publicitário da nação, a campanha foi das melhores.

Tudo começou com a vontade de homenagear todo mundo que fez esse café um sucesso. Em outras palavras, todo mundo que bebeu esse café no Norte, Nordeste e Centro-Oeste. Além disso, tinha quer ser uma campanha impactante, de apelo visual incrível, de emoção e que gere um recall como nunca antes. Em outras palavras, se ferrou segura essa turma da criação.

Bom, o trabalho foi árduo, mas a equipe da Promosell mandou bem. Muitos brains, muitos rafes, muitas ideias e muitas ida e vindas a SP. O resultado vocês pode conferir nesse fime.

Ficha Técnica

Direção de Criação: Marco Peres

Roteiro: Leonardo Antunes

Direção de Arte: André Pinheiro, Ivan Costa e Mauri Sousa (ilustrações)

Redação: Leonardo Antunes e Mário Ribeiro

Atendimento: Mônica Pinheiro e Bosco Carbogim

Mídia: Nira Andrade

Aprovação: Paula Castelan

Produtora (vídeo): Bossa Nova Filmes
Produtora (áudio): Lua Nova
Pós-produção: Tribo

A campanha ainda conta com anúncios em revista, jingles, materiais para PVD e mídia exterior. Os anúncios ficaram show de bola muito legais, vai valer um novo post em breve.

Acho que o melhor de tudo é ver o cliente satisfeito e o pessoal comentando. Coisas boas, claro!

Salve, Salve!