It’s been over 20 years, give or take since we all worked together. It’s so good to see them all. We were such an awesome IT team at Alltel. We did everything there! Desktops, Servers (windows, netware, linux), routers, switches, and firewalls, all applications deployment, all printers. We even took care of call centers, storefronts, and kiosks. We literally did it all!
Nick had some extra passes that came with our contract and we tried to get our teams to go, and only a few actually wanted to, so I accompanied them.
It’s a long drive to Vegas, about 5 hours long, but I drive the speed limit and listen to podcasts on cybersecurity. I’m really into the CISO Series right now… I just recently connected with David Spark and have had some light conversation with him. Good dude.
I got to meet with Tyler, whom I haven’t met in person before, but reconnected with my peer and one of the guys on my team, who I have met several times. The conference was nice, smaller than I am used to (that’s what she said), and I learned a bit. It was nice to get some learning in and also earn some credits. I also had a lot of work to do, so when I could, I got away, went to my room, and busted out some work, checked emails, sent and replied to chats, and kept a project I’m on, on track.
It was really neat that part of the ‘thanks’ for coming to fal.con and being a customer, we got to see the Chainsmokers at the Omnia nightclub. We got amazing seats and met some cool people. I have a video on my Facebook, I think I got the embed codes right for the bottom of this post, but sometimes older videos disappear due to privacy changes, so if they aren’t down at the bottom of this post, then…
Here are some of my photos.
Wipro/Edgile/ServiceNow me out to Silicon Valley to have a discussion on my project associated with my Vulnerability Governance program and we ended up being the headliner! It was pretty cool and I got to hang out with a coworker and an old friend! Our conversation was shared over New York, Plano Texas, and Kirkland Washington. I got to have some expensive whiskey and other fancy drinks.
The night I got there, I met up with Nikhil.
I had trouble finding my room.
The next day was the event
Here’s the post on LinkedIn
For labor day, again, we went to Tucson for Comic Con. It was a lot of fun, and oddly enough, we didn’t dress for it this year. I guess we just weren’t feeling it. We more or less “bounded” kind of like Disney-Bounding, where you wear an outfit that is more casual but is in the style or color of a character, without actually dressing as them.
Our first day there, where we ran into our friends, Allysen and Brian, was at a bit where people were painting mini D&D models and it was a lot of fun! I’ve always wanted to do that, but didn’t have the big collection of paints and I also never really played D&D, I played an offshoot when TMNT had their own. I remember it was in 1984 or 1985 when it came out and a friend down the street was into it and I was just into the ninja stories.
I chose a sorceress as I still play Diablo 2 and she’s my character that I got through Hell with. RESPECT!
We attended several panels that our friends happen to be presenting at and took photos with many we knew. Its a good time to do the fun nerdy and geeky things! I didn’t get photos with everyone, I’ll have to do better next year!
The Gathering of the Ghouls is a new con for those who dig horror, which isn’t necessarily us, but we like Halloween stuff so here we are!
Jaime, Allysen, and Melissa (and one other) were mermaids at the Dark Ones party tonight and were quite an attraction.
So I just got back from 2 back-to-back conferences in Las Vegas and wow, am I tired! I got to spend a lot of quality time with coworkers and talking to vendors and other like-minded nerds and geeks.
At Blackhat, I ran into John Hammond, and if you haven’t seen his Youtube Channel, you’re missing out. He goes into some hacker tools and displays his prowess over Linux and other operating systems. It’s pretty impressive.
We needed to get together to have some strategy and budget discussions, it was a lot of tough work and we tried to balance it out with some good food and breaking bread with a couple of our local team mates. Nashville’s Broadway strip hasn’t changed at all since the last time my wife and I were there, back in 2018.
Here are some of the pictures I took to share with you all!
![CarmeloWalsh[.]com](https://www.carmelowalsh.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/cropped-20250226_105950000_iOS.jpg)
