As promised my follow up post to VeeamON NYC.
So what does simply resilient really mean? Well if you are a Veeam 100 member you know that to get into that group you had to be very resilient. The V100 are hardened veterans of the Data Protection fight and you learn to think on your toes.
Speaking of which, that is precisely what I had to do after VeeamON NYC.
The problem was that I had to be at the KCD conference in downtown Toronto 7:00am sharp the next morning but there were no later flights out of New York to Toronto.
The AI Agent said “give up”.. ha nope humans are resilient and we sometimes think out of the logical box, that is what makes us so special :) (I feel like I have an audience of AI agents listening shaking their heads 🤣).
No I did not go upstate NY and swim across the lake (too many jelly fish and water this time of year too cold).
However there is always the bridge, with the great view of Niagara falls.
So I got a flight out of Newark airport to Buffalo. I wanted to arrive not to late but as fate would have it Buffalo airport had some kind of power/staffing problem, strange both at the same time but… and after landing we waited for more that an hour on the tarmac. After finally getting off the plane we entered the infamous “Uber wars” when a million people get out of planes and Ubers are few and far between.
My plan was to uber to the Rainbow bridge where I knew that there was a 24/7 365 pedestrian border crossing. Unfortunately in the rush I did not have my glasses on and instead of Rainbow bridge I clicked Rainbow shop in some deserted Buffalo parking lot. At first I thought, this is it, the uber driver saw my Veeam Vanguard backpack and figured I was someone very important worth robbing, but was relieved when he asked if I really wanted to go to the middle of nowhere. Luckily you can edit your uber ride and my adventure continued.
I made it to the border at 1 am. It was deserted and there was a light rain. To leave the US you just walk through a turnstile but I made sure to take some selfies trying to look better each time until I realized that there were cameras everywhere and the CBP would think I was some kind of narcissistic twit so put my serious face back on and went through turnstile.
The bridge was completely empty of cars and tourists which made for a unique photo op. I had the bridge, border and falls all to myself! After making the obligatory selfie shots I entered the little building on the other side to face the Canadian Officer.
I guess a sole person with a backpack coming over the pedestrian border at 1am might just raise some suspicions, plus the poor guy had been sitting there all night watching the rain, so going up to him I heard him start to type on his keyboard vigorously.
He began asking me questions about where I was what I was doing but I knew the trick that would get me through this side of the fence much quicker, I gave him a full rundown about data protection, with of course a dose of Kubernetes since I was heading to KCD in Toronto. I saw the disappointment in his eyes when he realized that instead of catching some crazy smuggler, instead a real life IT nerd had wandered into his shift. He soon stopped typing and almost with relief told me I was free to continue. I could not just leave it at that since I had specifically kept $1.25 to pay the toll in my pocket my whole trip, but it turns out you only pay the toll when you leave Canada so I felt a bit silly.
I then got my next uber (after putting on my glasses and headed to a hotel in Burlington where I got 4 hours or so sleep and then the next morning jumped on the train and made it to KCD 17 minutes early!
KCD was great and I made sure to let the Canadian Kubernetes community know, you need Kasten and you need immutable backups!
