Libby Says...
Finally. Some respect for the Admins among us! Yay! It has seemed in the past as though the majority of the Domino bloggers are developers. And that those developers have very little interest in the other side of the Domino house -- administration. I know that's a gross generalization and not entirely correct, but there you have it. Over the last few days, however, some of the stalwart developers in our midst have had some specific respect for the admins.
Of course, I've been advocating a more even spread of knowledge between admin and dev for a long time, in my columns over at e-Pro... I think we should all have some knowledge of both administration and development, as well as knowledge outside of just our Domino specialty, such as knowing an operating system (or two), some networking info (DHCP, DNS, IP, etc), some basic hardware how-to, and maybe even (gasp) something about the competition (make money on migrations anyone?)... Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
I think I've mentioned that I love books. It's only when I get really, really busy that I don't have two or three books that I'm reading at any one time. I know that Tom often talks about what he's reading in his 'blog. Ned Batchelder recently mentioned this cool site -- Weblog Bookwatch. They look at weblogs.com to see the recently changed 'blogs and then scan those sites for links to Amazon, B&N, and Powell's. Then they compile the list and present a top 10. Makes you want to talk about books even more, doesn't it? There's a similar site at All Consuming that I think I like a little bit better, as he lists some of the blogs that talked about the books over the last hour... In other links -- GirlHacker.com has some T.V. Review Haiku today that I really dug. Do any of you remember my old bio where I promised to send Domino haiku if you asked? Over the years, I had about 20 people write and ask me for some haiku. I wrote a new one each time. Now if only I could find them easily... Too many mail files since then. :-( Here's a Haiku Generator that might be interesting for you... Anybody want to write a Domino-related haiku generator? :-) Speaking of books... If you like language and books and Shakespeare and word play, you have to read Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair. The main character, Thursday Next, is a special agent for the LiteraTec arm of SpecOps -- the time-traveling, book sleuthing good guys... In this case, she's helping to return the kidnapped Jane Eyre to the novel before the masterpiece is changed forever... The next Thursday Next book is Lost in a Good Book, available in hard cover now... (I've got to get to the bookstore!!) The other recent read was Sharon Kay Penman's Time and Chance, the middle book in a trilogy about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. I like historical fiction a lot, and I like Sharon Kay Penman. I think my favorite of hers might be The Sunne in Splendour where she talks about that controversial character that we all know from Shakespeare -- Richard III. She redeems him from his Shakespearean role as villianous monster. (An interesting sidenote -- when I was in England with my best friend Cindy about 7 years ago, we saw Richard III in Stratford-Upon-Avod (Shakespeare's birthplace) and then drove the next day to Warwick Castle, which Richard once owned, and where they have quite a display trying to introduce visitors to the real king, rather than just to the Shakespearean character. As you may know, there's a huge debate over the historicity of the play...) Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
You've heard that it's not always what you know, but more who you know that gets you jobs and etc in the business world. There's a new tool for networking that's part blog, park knowledge management, part P2P, and part e-mail -- LinkedIn (via Joi Ito's website). Basically, you have Connections, the people you know and who you've invited to join. You have your Network, the wider group of LinkedIn members who can reach you through your connections. Then, you have your Requests -- when you find something you need, you search for a connection that can help you through your network, and then you ask one of your connections to forward the request down the line to the person. Because each person in the link gets an e-mail from someone they know, with an introduction, etc, it's similar to meeting someone at a party or other networking event. I don't think it's ready for prime time yet -- it seems to currently be missing such things such as having to import/invite all your contacts, manage them separately from your e-mail, and lack of fine tuning/searching. However, it seems like a way to take some of what Discovery system does for an organization out to our external contacts. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
In addition to today being my Dad's birthday (he would've been 62 today -- happy birthday, Daddy!), it's also apparently the 10 year mark for the IBM Software Group. While the group was officially announced in 1995, according to the story (and Steve Mills interview) at eWeek, it really came into being in 1993. Mills talks about e-business, the On-demand "set of business characteristics," competition with M$ and .Net, J2EE as the "son of Corba, " and the Rational acquisition. I did notice that in answer to the question a bout his message on competing with Microsoft, that Steve didn't really get into the whole Exchange vs. Notes debate at all, although he does emphasize the fact that IBM software offers heterogeneity (in which Lotus clearly participates) vs. Microsoft's one-size-must-fit-all Windows-only plan. In fact, if you ask me, Steve was remarkably reticent about our favorite yellow brand, but I'm sure that's just my bias showing. In other news:
Time for another true confession... I have a television addiction. To Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And it's ending for good tomorrow night. Sadness. (And while I won't out him publicly, I will say that I know I'm not the only one around here who has said addiction... Are you reading, my fellow addict?) In honor of the show, I thought I'd give you a few links about about the show...
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Ahhhhh.... Just such a gorgeous day here... Sunny, warm (70F), breezy... Oh, welcome! Sorry, I was just distracted by the sun for a moment. Barbara Bowen, Lotus's worldwide certification program manager, is guest blogging on Ed Brill's Lotus Weblog today (and for the next four weeks). She's talking about the new IBM Software group certification -- have you all heard about this already? Basically, instead of being CLPs, we'll be IBM Certified Professionals (at varying levels). There're details about it on the Lotus certification site. Barb is actually one of my favorite people -- she and I have been friends for many years - we have a lot of fun together and she's introduced me to a lot of cool people (she also introduced me to Chris, but I won't hold that against her...) (just teasing, Chris!). Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
So, I don't know about all of you, but I got to preview the movie at 10 pm on Weds. night... Yay, me! :-) I won't be a spoiler-y kind of person and tell you about it, but I will tell you to wait through all the credits -- they show the trailer for the next one after the credits are done. And by that time, you're chomping at the bit for more, since they kind of leave you hanging. It's fabulous, by the way. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Let's talk a little bit about awards and polls. Consider this my little FAQ/rant on awards... e-Pro Magazine recently (at the Admin2003 show) announced our Apex award winners for the Lotus Industry, in both Editor's choice and Reader's choice categories (WebSphere category awards are in nominations now...). Congratulations to all the winners and finalists, first of all -- they all have worthy and useful products. In the process of announcing and writing about the awards, I do hear a fair number of complaints from vendors or readers, some of whom are sure the voting is "fixed" in some way and others of whom are just unhappy with the results. Some of these want constructive discussion, to make sure they understand the category and voting criteria completely, but there are always those who just want to rant. Then I read this bit about some issues with a JDJ poll related to products. Here's the actual thread at Alan's (JDJ's editor) blog. It seems that there is always some dissatisfaction with awards of this type, even including the Beacon awards that Lotus and IBM do every year. So, here are some of my random thoughts on the process and results of not only our awards, but awards in general.
(And speaking of judging... my thanks to the Apex award judges, including Ed Brill, Alan Lepofsky, Chris Miller, Dan Rasmus, Jason Collier, Scott (The Turtle) Wenzel, Jim O'Donnell, and e-Pro's own Rita-Lyn Sanders and James Hoopes.) I believe that awards are a good thing. They let users know what products are out there that some people have found to be useful and good. They increase the visibility of some of the products in the market (and not only the winners, but the nominees and the finalists as well). They increase the visibility and prestige of the company presenting the awards. I'm seeing "win" all around here... One funny story about the whole "win" idea, however. One of the nominees for Lotus Apex awards this year was Jamie Magee of Martin Scott Consulting for his products WirelessMail and NoteMan (different categories). Jamie was a four-time finalist (Editors' and Readers' choice for both categories). Since he was at the Admin show, he got to stand up to be recognized each of those four times, but didn't end up winning any of the categories. We're now calling him the "Susan Lucci" of the Lotus industry. (For those that need the joke explained... Susan Lucci is a daytime-t.v. star who was nominated for a best actress daytime emmy for years and years and years and years and never won... until she finally did in 1999. But she's much better known for not winning that for winning.) (If I were more creative, I'd take one of the pictures of Jamie and merge it with a picture of Susan for some real fun, but I just don't have quite that much time on my hands...) Ok. I'm sure there's more to be said about the whole concept of awards -- what do you think? Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Recently, Ed suggested that we each introduce our Domino-blogging friends to some of the other bloggers we read. If you've examined my blogroll, you can see that I already have a few non-Domino bloggers over there, such as my friend Chris Noessel. Chris is a very close friend of mine from college who is now in Ivrea, Italy at graduate school. His blog, Bonebox, is one that I read fairly often (although Chris only updates about weekly). When he does, however, he is quite amusing, more often than not. So, root around over there on the links list and you'll find some fun stuff. Well, I think it's fun, anyway! Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Well, isn't Chris cool. As you can see to the right, he sent me some code for showing my AIM status in addition to letting you send me an IM. I do have MSN and Yahoo, but for some reason those statuses aren't working out as nicely. So, for now. you only get to see the AIM status. Still working on the annoying referrers issue. I know, I know, you'd all be happier if I had a little more talent at Web development. The real problem is just time -- I haven't got any right now and so I'm not spending any making the blog look nice. Sorry! Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
So, you may have seen Chris's post (below) about how my blog decided to freak out on Sunday. He blames me (do I look like a stupid user to you?) (don't answer that!). He may be correct. Here's the only thing I did on Sunday. I used the template (the one that's on his server, so that it's got all the right signings, etc...) to replace the design on my local replica of the blog. Then I rebuilt it. Now, here's the trick -- it's all about signing. Steve asks us to sign the db after rebuilding... But if I sign my local one, it will use my ID... not Chris's server... And therein, I think, lies the problem.... In other news -- I tried to update all my stupid fonts. Which mostly worked... Except now my referrers section is trying to take over the blog next to it... Still in progress. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
For those of you that saw Libby's blog just refresh and refresh and never come up...I have taken her out back and flogged her numerous times. She claims innocence in the incident but I am still working on torture treatments. We will break her yet. IdoNotes Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
"Working order" for the blog seems to possibly be a bit of a misnomer. There's still some kind of issue with the rich text field -- I'm having to save and edit twice to get it to show up... Hmmm... Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
It seems as though my blog is back in working order, thanks to Chris and Steve. As most of you pointed out, Comments weren't working for a few days there, even though I could see them in the database. One problem, I think, has to do with the way we replace the design. It seems as though I have to do the replace/rebuild design process not only on the server replica, but also on the local replica, otherwise stuff breaks when I write on the local replica and replicate (which is what I was doing -- despite Chris's smartass comments to the contrary) while I was gone. The scheduling bit that Chris refers to also wasn't working in the last rev of the template (or at least not working in the way I expected it to) so we'll see what's up now. I'm back in California after my long trip. Boston was nice this week -- weather was mixed, but I got to see a few of our good vendor friends/partners and some of my good friends at Lotus. I am, as you might imagine, trying to dig myself out of a huge e-mail hole. I should have worked on that last night on the plane (2 1/2 hours from Boston to Chicago and then 4+ from Chicago to SD), but instead I rented a DVD player and some movies at the airport -- have you guys done that? It gives me some extra crap to carry, which I don't like, but it gives me a chance to completely relax and watch a movie that I actually wantto watch, which I do like. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Libby is off in Boston eating great food, having meetings and generally staying out late I think. She has let this whole week slide so I decided to pop in, update her template to 2.10e from DominoBlog and generally let everyone know she is alive and missing doing her own blogs. You may ask, why doesn't she just make one and replicate it up? Or possibly do one in advance and set the timer? Well....the easy answer is, I have no idea. :-) LOL I will update my own page later today with some questions on exams. I want to hear some feedback on that in a bit. Libby, Jason Collier and myself did a Birds of a Feather Session on certification and I am curious what the rest of our blogging friends think. So look for that this afternoon over on that other Bat Channel, other Bat Time (for those of you that watched Batman and Robin you know what I am joking about don't you?) Yours Truly, IdoNotes Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Here I was thinking I was being really good and getting some blogging done on Sunday afternoon. I was hoping to beat Chris to the punch, since he gave me such a hard time about being late to the blogging during the week. And so I dutifully get online, get ready to write a blog... and what do I find? He was faster on the draw again. Sigh. Anyway, we did have a good time at the Admin show. Of course, we worked hard too -- many long hours of writing slides in advance, then many long hours of presenting while there. The trip to Boston was a bit long -- I took the red-eye from Vegas, leaving at 11:45 pm. I got Chicago at 4 am (ish) and flew to Boston at around 7. Considering I basically went right to a wedding after arriving, I was pretty tired. Of course, the last time I took a red-eye was last year's (2002) Lotusphere. Ask the Turtle and anyone else who was at the ESPN for that year's Saturday night gathering -- I get a little giggly/punchy/fiesty when I haven't had any sleep! (Of course, it might've also been the tequila that time, but...) I'll be in Boston through Thursday of this week. Monday I'll be doing a Webcast with Barbara Bowen, the manager of the Lotus certification program, then I have meetings with vendors for the rest of the week and may make it out to Westford on Thursday before I leave for home. Hopefully I'll have some good Lotus-related scoop to report here toward the end of the week. For anyone curious, the hotel room here in Boston is nothing like what I had in Vegas -- in fact, the hotel room is about the size of... umm... 1/2 the bathroom of the room in Vegas. On the other hand, Brian rented a car this weekend to drive around Massachusetts, and ended up with a Jaguar, so I guess I got some spoiling here too. :-) Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Sorry you had to go a few days with no blog, and a whole day without anything to see. I'd actually forgotten what day it was -- somehow when I travel, I seem to lose track of days. ;-) I've been at the Admin2003 show in Vegas since Monday afternoon. Tuesday was the long grueling day -- 2 back-to-back jumpstarts (what ever possessed me to agree to that?) Anyway, so that was Tuesday. Tuesday night a couple of us went to the Strip and walked around. We had dinner at the Ceaser's shops (ok, at a restaurant down there) and then some nummy ice cream at the Ghiradelli's over near the Harrah's. Weds. was the jinxed day. My personal laptop decided to freak out -- couldn't get the screen working with the projector, couldn't get my Notes client to see my Domino server (on the same machine), couldn't get the files list to rebuild in my Domino administrator... and all this about an hour before my morning session. Then, of course, during the session, my microphone went out not once, not twice, not even three times, but four whole times! Ah well. At least the gang got a laugh out of it! :) Weds. night we the meet the experts and the showcase reception, after which a group of us went and ate some Italian food and then hung out at Jason's hospitality suite... Much fun. Thursday was your basic day. Got some work done in the morning. Had a BOF on certification and another session in the afternoon... But. I'm done with my sessions now (yay!). Of course, the big news is the room I got. Somehow I lucked into the mega suite -- they say it's 1600 square feet -- bigger than most of the houses in the neighborhood I lived in when I lived in Houston -- including a jacuzzi tub, huge shower, living room, dining room, 2 TVs, stereo, and windows on 3 sides... :-) Nice. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link |
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