Canada Line Private Opening on August 15

My brother had some tickets to the Canada Line opening on Aug 15 before the public opening on Aug 17 which I heard was really busy (up to 100k people rode it and some waited up to 3 hours).

There were 3 openings (12-2pm, 2-4pm, and 4-6pm).  We opted to go for the early one and boarded the rapid transit at the Southwest Marine terminal. 
There was a small lineup when we arrived but it was less than 20 people. This will lessen the taxi business significantly from the airport as most will take this instead. 
Unfortunately, there were no freebies to be had unlike the public opening.

Admission Sticker

River Rocks Ads even on the trains!

River Rock Casino advertisement for riders!

Time Restrictions

The plane! The plane! (Fantasy Island from the 70s)

Empty!

HostingCon 2009 in Washington, DC

Just back from HostingCon 2009 from Washington, DC.  
The conference was located at Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center at National Harbour.

Gaylord National Resort

The biggest news was that Emil Sayegh of Rackspace Hosting Cloud said "Over the next for five years, shared hosting as we know it will be made obsolete by the cloud. I firmly believe it.
What we need to think about is an environment in which cloud computing and dedicated servers coexist".  It was a discussion panel consisting of reps from Google, Microsoft and SalesForce. 
It could just be marketing speak in order to sell more cloud services as they recently released their own private cloud earlier in the year.  We shall see. 
It's akin to Bill Gates saying in Nov 2004 "Two years from now, spam will be solved".  And it's 2009 and still, people still spam. 

Another announcement was that cPanel has (finally) released their Windows 2008 control panel, Enkompass under release candidate. 
It should be widely available by the fall.  We tested the demo and it looks really similar to the Linux version that Canadian Web Hosting has been offering to our customers. 
We will begin testing the system this fall and decide if it's a viable option to our current Plesk offering.  If you're currently using Plesk, give us your feedback! 

cPanel Enkompass

Enkompass Screenshot

ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers) gave a speech of the impending depletion of IPv4 (internet addresses) in 2 years.  There's even an iPhone app I installed on my phone that shows the countdown!  To solve this, they are educating hosting providers to get their systems ready for IPv6.  Anyone (even end users) can apply at ARIN and get their own IPv6 numbers!

Although the exhibitor booths were sold out, the crowds seemed to be smaller than the Parallels conference we attended earlier in the year.  It might be companies are tightening their belts amidst the downturn in the economy. 

Parallels Booth with oxygen bar

On the first night when we went back to our hotel room, we thought someone broke into our rooms because we saw a sheet of paper with a small, foam airplane. We found out that companies paid for the priviledge to spam us in our hotel rooms with their marketing wares.  It was from CDG Commerce, a processing company that had their logo on the plane.  The second day, it was Google with their reusable lunch bag filled with pretzels and gummy bears and a sheet describing their Adwords program for hosting providers.  On the third day, there was nothing... As usual, there were lots of pens, t-shirts, and hats given out by the exhibitors!

Tony at Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

Smithsonian National History Museum

Kevin in front of Archives of USA