Libby Says...
I started this blog a while ago and then decided I didn't have my thoughts fully together on the matter. I'm still not sure that I do, but I'm ready to say something, anyway. We all ("we" being the press and the "faithful" community) tend to drive the Lotus/IBM PR folks a bit nutsy with our insistence on knowing about the internal personnel moves that IBM makes. With the recent move of Larry Bowden and his portal group into the Lotus management structure, Ambuj Goyal taking over from Al Zollar, Jeanette Horan, Scott Cooper, and others moving to other positions within IBM, and the layoffs/reorganizations that took place, including folks like Gary Devendorf and others leaving Lotus/IBM, we were in full voice asking what the deal was with the changes. And we mostly get the "it's an internal matter that we don't discuss" answer, especially with regard to the layoffs. Well, fair enough. But that doesn't stop us wanting to know and speculating on what it all might mean. Of course, I actually got asked by a couple of folks why it seems to be such a big deal. It's unusual in the business world for changes at the lower levels of management, much less the levels lower than that, to be such a big deal to the press and to the community, I guess, and so it's something to talk about why it matters so much to us. Part of it is just that we're a very close-knit community who's very passionate about not only the technology, but the company who produces the technology, and we care about both the technology and the people producing it. After all, Lotus does represent the human element, right? Well, maybe we take that a little more seriously than it was intended. Part of it is just that cult-of-personality thing that happens when you have effective, charismatic spokespeople who take an active role in the aforementioned active, passionate community. And part of it is that we see so many changes on the horizon and in the recent past that we want our security blanket of the people we've come to trust. If they are there to explain it all to us, well, then, we can probably make sense of it all. If all those folks we've come to expect to hear good explanations from are doing something else, or working somewhere else, well, we're not sure how to take some of the other changes that come along. The one set of changes seems... informed... by the other changes, even if they have nothing to do with each other in reality. Then there's also the appearance of secrecy. It's no secret that the Lotus community has gone through some worry about the future of Notes and Domino. While much of that concern has been put to rest by Lotus's roadmaps and assurances that there will be a Domino-as-we-know-it for us to work with for the foreseeable future, we can't seem to give up the nagging feeling that there are going to be changes to Notes and Domino that we won't like. When we see people that are responsible for things we do like being reassigned or laid off, well, that worries us more. Not talking about it, no matter how appropriate the reasoning (and I do think it's reasonable not to talk about it publicly, btw) makes us feel like there's something we're not being told about the future of the product or the brand. I think there's also the assumption that these folks, since we know their names and they're customer- or partner-facing, have a lot to do with the Lotus strategy and the execution of that strategy. We think we know how they feel about the products, the community, and the future. We're somewhat afraid that when new folks come in, especially from outside the Lotus fold, that their views will not mirror what we've already come to terms with and that we won't like where it goes -- we're afraid they won't or don't "get" Notes and Domino because we've come across so many people in the technology world, even at IBM, who don't. What do you think? Why do you care about the changes that Lotus makes internally, especially at levels lower than, say Al Zollar was/Ambuj Goyal is. Or do you care? The other blogs.... I see that Chris had to get on my case a bit today. Yes, Chris, whole wheat pasta does cook a bit longer. But really, I was just trying to figure out what to make you write next and got distracted. :-) I was sooooo perky and happy to read the guest bloggers on Bruce's blog today: Mark and Mike of Angel Infinity. Not just because I like these guys, although I do (yes, go ahead, blush!), but because they were talking spring weather (i love spring) and baseball, and very eloquently, I might add... Yay!! I was already feeling like things were good because spring training had started, but now that the season has officially started... Well, expect me to be a bit distracted. Especially tomorrow, when the Astros actually play their first game. Even beyond that, though, I my thought- process was kickstarted by Mike's comparison of baseball to life: e wonders where he'd be if he'd made different decisions. Don't we all wonder that sometimes? We've all been blogging about how we got to where we are in our careers and with Notes/Domino -- think about the things that really affect where and who you are --- all the small decisions, or being a particular place at a particular time, or meeting a specific person.... (This next isn't as much of a non-sequitor as it might seem -- I'll get to the point...) I got as far as telling you how I decided I loved Notes and Domino the other day, but I didn't finish telling you how I got to where I am. Well, while I was teaching Notes and Domino, I had another one of those epiphanies that made me realize that while teaching the stuff was kind of fun, doing it was even more fun. I got to do a little, tiny bit of consulting while I was training, and I helped maintain our internal networks, but I wanted to stretch my wings a bit. It didn't hurt that consultants made a lot more money than trainers, either. So, I jumped and went to work as a Messaging/Collaboration consultant. Many twists, turns, and interesting stories
later, one of our best friends,
Mike Meyers, called me up and
asked if I'd ever thought about writing a book. He'd just finished his
amazing best-selling A+
Certification Guide, and his
publisher was looking for someone to write a Notes certification guide.
Since I'd been geeking out with him at every opportunity, and pushing my
oh-so-favorite Notes and Domino, he suspected I might be the expert they
were looking for. He very kindly recommended me. So, I left consulting,
went to work for him, and... And so were born the Accelerated
Lotus Notes Application Development Study Guide
and the Accelerated
Lotus Notes System Administration Study Guide...
Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
 So, yesterday, I was talking to Chris while making my lunch. (For those who don't know, I work from home, which makes lunch a cook-your-own-something endeavor.) I told him I was making macaroni and cheese, but that my Mac 'n Cheese was whole wheat macaroni with organic cheese. (Hey, can I help it if I'm trying to be a little healthy, even while eating something that's clearly a little bit closer to junk food than real food?) Well, Chris decided he had to mock me a bit about this and decided that I clearly didn't know anything about real mac and cheese -- and that what I eat is clearly Faux mac and cheese, as you can see above. For comparison, these are closer to "real" mac n cheese.... And this is what I really eat.... Sigh. Don't you just love being made fun of? I guess that's what friends are for... Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
When I was on my vacation week before last, I was completely without technology for almost 5 days. Ah joy. Over this weekend, I found out that I was avoiding sitting down at my laptop or using my cell phone. Once I got past the withdrawal of being away from technology, I liked it. So, spent this weekend reading instead of writing or working on the laptop on the 80 million things I should be working on. Ahhhhhhh. Doing my morning blog-walk this morning, ran across a reference to this. I guess the real question is what you want out of your blogs vs. what you want out of your forums. I tend to think of the forums as a place to ask questions and have a dialog that revolves around very specific issues -- most likely technical. Maybe that's not fair, but it's how I think of them. I expect blogs to contain some of that, I guess, but really to be more... hmm... about each writers' thoughts, either about technology, or the industry, or whatever. Like Ed, I like to read the off-topic posts about the lives of the posters as much as I do the "on-topic" posts about Domino or technology or whatever. I enjoy knowing more about the people in this community. I'm not sure I'm explaining how I feel about it very eloquently, but I was pretty incensed (overreacting? maybe.) to read it. Especially since I took this part (quoted below) as directed at me (ego? maybe. too sensitive? maybe.) Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Today's blog was inspired by Colin over at the gutted geek (love your site design, btw, Colin). Colin has been musing this week about how he got to be a Notes evangelist. I'm sure we all have interesting stories about how we got into that position (or if you're not actually a Notes evangelist, how you got to be where you are). I started out as a non-techie, doing technical writing and editing that mostly required me to translate some techie's knowledge into easily-understood English. While working at that job, I did one big project that required me to test and document a Notes system -- basically home-grown sales-force automation on, I believe, v3. After a while, I realized that I'd become the person in our office that a lot of folks came to for help with WordPerfect, or Word, or the printer, or the fledgling-use of Windows, or whatever application was causing them pain. Simultaneously, I realized that those folks teaching this technology were making a lot more money than I was. So -- off to teach technology. I worked for a man (hi Daniel!) who believed that the breadth and depth of what you knew should make a square box, not a rectangular one. I have fallen off that wagon a bit as time has gone on, but I worked really hard at it for a long time. Anyway, I taught all kinds of things until one day, the president of our company realized that we had lost our CLI -- he'd gone to work someplace else, and we hadn't replaced him. Of course, I'd mentioned that to her months ago, but it really hit home around the end of October when she realized that we'd lose our LAEC status if we didn't get another one by the end of the year. Libby to the rescue apparently. So, I became the Notes-geek expert, passing all my CLP exams, PCLP exams, and my CLI evaluation in pretty much no time at all. I fell in love with the stuff, I have to admit. Maybe it's because I was completely immersed in it for three months solid or maybe it's just because it's such darn cool technology, but, there you have it. That's when the, well, not quite addiction, but definitely love, for Notes (and then Domino when it came along later) started. There's more to be said about how I got to where I am now, but that's for another day. So, how did you get where you are now? Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
You thought once the newness of blogging had worn off that I'd just disappeared, didn't you? Not quite. Actually, I took a vacation. And that vacation actually included no technology. Amazing. (Yes, I did have a day or two of withdrawal symptoms.) Other than last week, I can't actually remember the last time I didn't check my e-mail or use my laptop at least once per day. Even when I go skiing I check my e-mail, but then I can play true geek -- I can check it from the top of the mountain. Cool, hunh? We ski at Whistler, in Vancouver, B.C. as often as possible. At the top of Whistler mounatin (there are two there, Whistler and Blackcomb), there's this really nice lodge. And in that nice lodge, they have free Internet access. So when I go up there, I usually take a few minutes out of my day while waiting for lunch and check my mail. I know, I'm such a geek. Anyway. I'm back! So. On to other topics. Something annoying happened while I was away. Part of my trip was in Houston, where I was staying with some friends. I did bring my laptop for that part to work at the beginning of the week before going off camping. Anyway, while at that friend's house, I hooked into his high-speed Internet access and tried to connect up to my VPN to access my Domino server. Survey says? No way. Now, when this kind of thing happens, I am almost always sure that it isn't Notes' fault. Everyone else, of course, blames Notes. I hate that. So it's a challenge to me to figure out precisely what else is wrong so that I can smack them around and show them what's wrong. I didn't have the chance to do that this time, but I had a guess that it was either my VPN or that friend's firewall. I'm pretty sure that it was the firewall, since as soon as I got home to my high speed access and my firewall, all is well. The last time (ok, well not really the last time, but the last time it made a good story), I had a really great argument with someone over whether a problem was Notes or some other part of the environment was when I was a consultant long ago. Some of you have heard a part of this story if you've come to my Disaster Recovery sessions, but for those who haven't, it's kind of funny. So, this is probably about 5 years ago and I was an architect/admin consultant migrating a company from Exchange to Domino (R4.6, I believe). We installed a mail server, applicaiton server, and development server to start with. They were pretty nice Compaq servers, with Olicom ATM NICs. So, we installed, all was moving all fairly well, and then all of a sudden. Bam! Green screen of death. No, not the blue screen -- we're all familiar with those (and how to change them to green screen), but this wasn't that. This was a black screen with green squiggles all over it. Since much of the team was coming from the Exchange world and wasn't too happy that we were doing the migration to Domino, they started blaming Notes/Domino almost immediately. Of course, anyone with any sense probably guessed that a GSOD couldn't possibly be a software problem, right? Of course. But, would anyone listen to me? Nope. In their mind, I was just the Notes person -- what could I possibly know (despite an MCSE, Net+, etc)? (And just to be fiesty about it, they were also, I belive, predjudiced that I was the girl. It was sort of a good-old-boy oil-industry group of folks)... So, we had regular failures of our Domino server for over a week before they finally said "Fine. You think you know what it is? You fix it." Well, fine. I will then. My guess was that something creating a screen like this had to be hardware. If it was O/S, we'd see the BSOD. If it was an application we'd get Quincy. So, I ruled out those and started looking at hardware issues. Lo and behold. On Compaq's knowledgebase at the time, there was a known issue with the Olicom ATM card and the hot-swappable PCI slot in which it was placed. So. Move the Olicom ATM card to a non-hot-swappable slot. Poof. Problem fixed. I was so angry at those nitwits who called themselves hardware, network, and operating systems experts and wouldn't look beyond Notes for blame. Anyway. Rant over. One more link for good measure today, because it's just cool -- for all of you fledgling geeks out there who may not know all the geek-speak -- try this nice geek-speak glossary. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
One of the 'blogs I read occasionally belongs to John Patrick, who used to be VP of Internet Technology at IBM. He's got interesting perspectives on the future and, well, sort of the edge, of technology, so to speak. I first met him at an IBM Solutions conference a couple of years ago when he was keynoting on The Future of the Internet. It was one of the years when the big fear for all the Lotus people was that IBM was taking over and just didn't understand how darn cool Notes/Domino really is. In his session, I think John talked more about Domino in his portion of the keynote than Al Zollar did in his. So, I liked John immediately. Recently, he 'blogged about 'blogging. Which, although it may be on that old list-o'-sins, is pretty interesting. Especially if you look at the circle of 'bloggers in our extended Domino-related family and think about just how much we affect each other -- regardless of distance, company we work for, or what we actually *do* for a living. These blogs affect how we think about technology, companies, and the other people in our industry, just to name a few things. I don't, as you might have seen, think they replace real journalism, but they definitely offer some great context and insight. If you visit some of the other blogs I read (list to right), you'll find that some of them have been talking about blogging as well, like Ben and Colin, so it's clearly something we do think about as we do it. Since I've just started blogging, the actual act has been on my mind a lot lately. Some random thoughts:
A last point: I think Daypop's WordBursts are related to, but cooler than HotorNot. Just my 2cents worth on blog-rating. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
I really don't intend to make this joke (or link) central, but sometimes, I just have to share the things that actually make me laugh out loud. So. Brothel for Sex-Starved Dogs BERLIN (Reuters) - A German artist has applied for a license to open a brothel in Berlin for sexually frustrated dogs and says it will be the first of its kind anywhere. Karl-Friedrich Lenze, 54, said he planned to charge dog owners $27 per half hour of happiness. "If dogs can't get what they want, they get cranky -- just like people," Lenze told Reuters. The establishment would offer patrons a variety of carefully vetted "employees" of both sexes, rooms for private encounters and even a "bar" where customers could sniff out their preferred partners. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
One of the interesting things about reading people's 'blogs that you know in one context (i.e., Lotus and technology stuff) is finding out other things about them. I figure I'll have to talk about these things as time goes on, so I might as well get all my skeletons and shameful secrets out in the open early on. So. The first thing that most of you who haven't seen me between March and October don't know about me: I'm a huge, giant, immense, rabid, enthusiastic.... baseball fan. I didn't grow up liking baseball, or really any team sports. I swam competitively, so I watched swimming and diving on tv, but my dad wasn't a big sports fan, so I never really got into anything. I watched some basketball in high school, because my best friend Julieana played. I watched a lot of football in college, because my Houston Cougars were kicking some serious ass (Heisman winner and all, thank you very much). I didn't dislike sports -- I'd always watch whatever was on or what other people were interested in, but I just never got into it all that much. I did play some powderpuff/flag/mud football games in high school/college, but that's a different story. Then I went to a baseball game with a guy who kept score and knew enough about the game that he could answer questions as incessantly as I asked them. And I do ask a lot of questions. (How else are you going to get into something, if you don't understand it all?) He and my husband, Brian, taught me about baseball: how to keep score, the bastardization that is the designated hitter, the lingo... :-) And from that day on, I've been a big baseball fan. Most specifically, a huge Houston Astros fan (and especially the "killer Bs"), but I try to root for the Padres, now that I live in SD (unless they're actually playing the Astros, of course!). We went to spring training one year. I've dragged all my Colorado colleagues to Rockies games when I'm there, regardless of the weather. I keep score. I keep trying to bring the joy of keeping score to other people, including a whole passle of Loti with whom I saw a game in Oakland during last year's developerWorks LIVE show. I try to go to games in every city I visit... So far, I'm not doing all that great on collecting baseball cities, but... that just means there's more to see! Houston Dallas San Diego Anaheim Los Angeles Oakland Boston (I had such great seats to a game here last May... thanks Gary!) Chicago (Cubs) Colorado And of course, since it's spring training time, there's a small portion of my brain is revving back up that keeps track of batting averages, on base percentages, RBIs, slugging percentages, standings, pitching wins/losses, etc... So now you know, if we're in a restaurant or bar together from March to October, and I start looking intently somewhere over your left shoulder, I'm still listening to whatever you're saying, but I'm also probably riveted to the tv behind you, trying to make out the scores, highlights, and play of the day on ESPN. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
So, I worked pretty late last night. As I was hitting my stride on an article I was finishing, I got not one, but two IMs from some of my "work friends." Work friends are defined as people I met because of work, but who I consider friends regardless of what we end up doing for our respective companies. It's these folks I look forward to seeing when I travel. I'm so lucky to know them! Anyway, I promised one of those folks (who shall remain nameless for the moment, but who was in *rant* mode) that today would be positive, happy blog day. It's actually pretty easy for me to do that, too, since while he was ranting, I was seeing something I could say happy things about. Many times in the past I've ranted about IBM/Lotus not having their marketing heads screwed on straight. One of my columns (sheesh, from longer ago than I realized) talked about how IBM's advertising group was not paying Lotus the respect it deserved in the ads arena. While I was looking at news stories yesterday for writing my column, I noticed a ton of Lotus ads. There're even (yay!) banners up on e-ProMag.com. There's Alex the Collaborator banners, Lotus Instant Messaging (Sametime) banners and medallions, and others, at sites as diverse as BusinessWeek Online and eWeek. Yay! While I don't have any of the print magazines around at the moment to confirm whether they're there also, I think it's great when the software we care about and many of us have built our careers on gets advertised out to the rest of the IT and business world. There. Perky, happy, Libby. :-) Just for you, Mr. Rant. Articles that may be of interest: CRN's Rob Wright thinks Lotus (and Lotusphere) are on a downslide. I'm not sure I agree with all he has to say in terms of why Lotusphere's attendance was down and what the executive movement means. CRN's Rober DeMarzo talks about IBM's Beacon Awards from PartnerWorld. I just have to say Congrats to Boom Vang. A few of ePs regular contributors work for Boom Vang, so we're happy to see them doing well. I'm really not sure how I feel about the spin that cnet.com has put on the move of the Portal group into Lotus. I'm think that integrating Lotus's features into the portal software is a good thing, but they imply that it's a bad thing for Lotus software products that this is happening -- a sort of ending -- where I see it as a much more positive recognition that Lotus's strenghts are in the same area -- human work/collaboration. Here's an InfoWorld interview with Ken Bisconti that talks about NextGen and the future of Domino. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
I'm actually taking a few days off starting this Friday (and not actually returning to my Carlsbad house/office until the 18th, although I'll be working a few days between now and then). Of course, that means trying to get a bunch done to be able to take time off. Especially because for four of those days, I'm actually leaving my laptop behind (I almost can't believe it; I don't remember the last time I didn't have my laptop within feet of me...) and will be roughing it (sort of). I'm really usually a the-Holiday-Inn-is-rough-enough-for-me kind of gal, but one of my best friends in the whole world is getting married and a group of us are, well, kind of going on her and her soon-to-be hubby's honeymoon (at their express request, of course), which involves actual camping. In a tent. We'll see how it goes. The point, however, is that there's a lot to get done before I can go. One of those things is the final production process involved in putting the April issue of the magazine together. As we go through that process, one of the more time-consuming aspects for me personally is writing my editorial. The time consuming part isn't really the writing -- as you can tell, I have a lot to say at pretty much the drop of a hat. The tough part is coming up with the right topic to talk about. Part of that is reading everything as it comes out -- all the articles that the "mainstream" tech press writes about Lotus/WebSphere/IBM or the technologies we cover, like Instant Messaging, mail, etc, plus anything new the IBM has published on their site (or at Lotus.com). But then there's the sifting process. Some topics swirling around in my head to cover this month: Service-oriented architecture and what it means to us (Lotus, WAS, IBM) Is it time for Lotus to reconsider a Linux client? Why Certify? There are some others rolling around in my head, but none quite so clearly. I have to be careful that I don't start using up editorial content in blogs. While I have been mostly trying to get in the habit with some very lightweight, personal blogs so far, I do expect to have more... IBM/technology-related material at some point. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Well, as Ed and Chris have already pointed out, Steve has launched the new template and DominoBlog.com. I upgraded to the new template this morning and a few things broke -- all the imported stuff, basically, like images and other web pages.... No time to really play with it now, but hopefully it will be fixed soon. Forgive the errors, please. Also finally got Chris to restart HTTP for my virtual server and Brian (that's my husband, btw) to point the DNS to www.notesgirl.com at the new server... Seems as though that's causing some problems too, though. So if you really want to see this blog for the next few days while that all gets worked out, you'll want to go to the long URL format... Hopefully it will all resolve itself soon... Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
 Nowwe're getting somewhere. I finished bothof my last two presentations (all four done! yipppeee!) and tried to send them off to Jay and Debbie at the View. Of course, then I found out my mail file (at work, where I have no control over the servers -- can you believe that?!) is corrupted. Sigh. So, of course, they're done, but not quite sent yet. Not much else happened today. I went for a nice 3 mile run on the boardwalk in downtown Carlsbad this morning, read my two newspapers (SD Union Tribune and New York Times), and worked. Played with my dog, Yogi, a bit... Ah. The db isn't really corrupt. I'm at 6.0 at the client and the servers are at 5.x (yes, this is supported in ND6). I very carefully created a replication formula to ensure that the design wouldn't replicate around... And yet. Somehow. It did. After a month of not. Hmmm. Methinks it's possible that someone who has control of the server may have changed my replication settings.... Grrr. So now, I get to replace the design (remotely, via a slow VPN connection) and then see if I can get my mail back! While I write, I'm watching the sun set over the ocean. Most nights it's merely spectacular, but some nights, there's something ethereal about it. There are two fluffy clouds way off, near the horizon, that are lit up by the sun, which has already dipped below the horizon. So, the sky is almost dark but these two clouds are bright orange and lit in a way that looks like they have a light bulb in their core. So amazing. And then, within minutes... pitch black. I noticed Ed linked to me today. Surprising, considering I haven't done my DNS/virtual server tricks yet so that Notesgirl.com points to this blog/site and not the old, outdated, nasty site (yes, yes, I know you expect more from me... I'm hurrying!) and didn't know anyone could find me. He must've checked his referrer log and saw that I clicked through to his blog from my own links while testing... And then followed me back. Smart guy. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
The La Jolla cove is a protected beach area between where I live (Carlsbad) and downtown San Diego. It has beaches, a huge park, cliffs, great waves, lots of rich people, and great shops/restaurants in the nearby village. It also has outdoor yoga in the park on the cliffs looking out over the Pacific ocean. I love yoga to begin with, but taking a really good yoga class from a great teacher while looking at the Pacific ocean is guaranteed to put me in a good mood for the rest of the day. Good thing too, since immediately following yoga, I came home to do lots of laundry and work on my presentations and chapters. Sigh. Only true geeks are working on their handy-dandy Domino servers on Saturday night, hm? Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link |
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