Libby Says...
I won't actually say anything about relationships myself (waaaaaay too dangerous), but I do just have to link you to Davezilla's take on 60 signs you're in a capital "r" relationship... Laugh out loud funny. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Well, I'm finally back from the WebSphere Technical Exchange. Actually, I got back Wednesday night, but I was so busy while I was there that I'm still catching up on mail and other assorted things. Of course, as always, it doesn't help that I'm jetting off again next Tuesday for Houston, but, hey, that's what a busy travel girl has to do, right? :-) Chris just yelled at me for being non-bloggy this week so far, so here's some links and some stuff on the show: WebSphere Technical Exchange There were about 800 people there, which isn't too bad a showing. One good thing is that there were many more non-IBM attendees this year as compared to last year, from what I could tell (and supported by discussions with some IBMers who were there). The sessions were very good, although still mostly done by IBMers -- I'm really convinced that almost all the WebSphere expertise right now is within IBM/IGS/ISSW (software services for websphere). Many of the folks who are our authors in the WebSphere space were speakers at the show, and this gave me an opportunity to meet them -- some for the first time. Of course, there were some friends from previous conferences, like my friends Glen and Steve, both of whom are Loti I've known for a while. Expect to see some more about the show in the September Take Note column -- I don't want to spoil that by saying everything here! People I love it when the blog world and the real world collide in a nice way, which they've done a couple of times over the past two weeks. First was a chance to have lunch with Kathleen McGivney -- she's spoken for the View's Admin show, is writing for e-Pro now, and keeps promising to get a blog going soon. She was in San Diego and we got to meet for a nice lunch. Then a friend of mine happened to be reading my blog, noticed I was planning to be in Houston, and dropped a note to see if we could have lunch while I'm there next week -- sort of a little Lotus/business related and just a good chance to get caught up. Then another friend of mine who I haven't seen in, oh, about 6 or 7 years thought about me, googled me, and found my blog, where she too found I was planning to be in Houston and now we're planning to meet while I'm there. That's the 4th or 5th person from my past who has found me because of my blog, which is really a nice treat -- I love getting back in touch with friends who I've (sadly) lost touch with for various reasons. Links and Misc I've been very interested to read the discussion going on between Ed and Chad Dickerson (InfoWorld) about staying with or migrating from Notes. I found Dickerson's blog response to Ed's blog particularly good, but am happy they've both espoused the same conclusion -- migrating just to migrate is a bad idea -- it has to have a business purpose. All good. Some of the discussion (especially in Dickerson's response blog) sort of dovetailed with a conversation I was having with someone at the conference this week -- that discussion surrounded how companies use and choose Notes/Domino vs. Exchange. In his blog, Dickerson mentions that he would estimate 98% of their use of Notes is for e-mail and that only a few other databases are used. This, to the best of my knowledge, is WAY too common. For some reason, Lotus and IBM decided to sell Notes/Domino as e-mail. They've always called Outlook/Exchange the competition and messaging/mail user seats as one of the measurements of success (at least in the past). People think of Notes/Domino as their mail system. One of the reasons that Lotus/IBM may have used this tactic is that it's a lot easier to explain e-mail to people than to explain all the rest of what Notes/Domino does. So, of course, since they understand it, it's somewhat easier to sell -- especially since it competes so well now in TCO, etc. However, this causes, I think, more problems than it solves, because in many cases then people really only think of it as a mail system -- which means one, it looks like a commodity that doesn't have any particularly distinguishing characteristics from Outlook/Exchange, which means that when someone tries to come in and argue for a migration, it's just one mail system vs. another. And two, it gets misunderstood and under-used. Which means that so much work that could be facilitated by use of a quick departmental/team database gets forced into something else -- e-mail, Excel spreadsheet, word documents, etc. This happens even in my organization and it drives me crazy. Because people don't understand the real paradigm of Notes, they don't think about how it can help them in their projects/work, and so it doesn't get used to its fullest extent, leaving it more open to hostile takeover attempts. Sigh. :-) Also thought it was interesting that Dickerson talked about "one technology that elicits a visceral reaction" -- I think that's sooooo true (and I'm still not sure why -- none of this really seems life or death). Notes, Unix, Linux, Macs, etc.... I had some other comments to make about his original column, but I think between Ed's blog, Ken Yee's post in the InfoWorld forums (you go, Ken!), and Chad's responses that it's mostly been said. As an Editor I have to link to the comments on writing without editors, from Dave Winer and Jeff Jarvis. I'd like to say that from my perspective, an editor's job is not to change what you're trying to say, especially in an editorial/opinion piece, but rather to ensure that your writing does the best job it can of clearly expressing what it is you're trying to say. Of course, it's also an editor's job to choose what goes into a magazine or onto a Website, ensuring that there's the proper balance, correct tone, good quality, and appropriate content. "Proper" and "Correct" and "Appropriate" being defined by the mission statement, as interpreted by said editor. On the other hand, I think many editors are frustrated and/or unsuccessful writers. Sometimes, when that occurs, an editor does rewriting that is not only unnecessary (the piece is right and good, but isn't the way the editor would've written it) but sometimes also a travesty (changing what the author meant, or adding in opinions the author does not espouse) Happily (from my perspsective), Jeff had some additional comments here and here to make on his comments about editors which seem to come closer to how I hope people view editors than his original comments did. Oh, and this just in... (thanks, Ed) -- NetworkWorld links to Ed's blog and mine. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Via Laurent deWalick -- One company's story of chosing Domino over Exhange in ComputerWorld Hong Kong. It's not all about cost -- it's more about platform flexibility, apparently. They're also smart enough to be excited about the "more than messaging" that is Domino. Yay! Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
The Domino blogsphere seems somewhat quiet this week -- not too many posts or comments being passed around... Is everyone on vacation? I've already mentioned it, but there's some more travel coming up: July 21-13 -- Las Vegas for the WebSphere Technical Exchange July 29 - August 3 -- Houston -- I'll be doing some work, interviewing and getting a tour of a customer site in Houston that has recently done a huge new Domino implementation with more high availability technology than you can shake a stick at. Look to see something about it in our December issue. August 6 -11 -- New York City One trip did get cancelled -- I'm not going to Saratoga Springs in late August anymore -- I'm a little bit disappointed, but I'll be happy to stay put a bit. On the other hand, I may replace it with a trip to Portland, OR. My mom lives there, has just bought a new house, and has a birthday at the end of August. Plus, I suspect I might sneak in a dinner with some of the bloggers and some friends from high school who live near there. We'll have to see how it all works out. One link today that I thought I'd point out: from Dave Winer's blog -- not about technology, but about self-image, women, and imperfections. Check out yesterday's Ode and today's About Girlism. Here's the absolute best part: don't worry about idealized and objectified measures of beauty, that isn't beauty; the things that make you who you are, the differences, the imperfections, and what you do with them, are what make you hot. I think that goes not only for women, but for all people. The differences between us and how we capitlize on those to make us unique are a lot of what makes us interesting individuals. On the technology side, I think it's interesting that Mozilla and Netscape are no longer a single entity -- and wonder what it bodes for the browser market. It's been encouraging to see other browsers come into the market -- Opera, iRider, etc. Not everything on this list (C|Net) is an actual browser, but you can get an idea of what's out there; Yahoo's list is a little more clear. Who knew there were so many? Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
I'm back from my long weekend -- I had two days in San Francisco for a wedding (got to see lots of my very close friends from college -- great fun -- actually, one of them took a very embarrassing photo of me, but luckily he hasn't posted it yet!), then two days in Sonoma County. I have some things to recommend if any of you find yourselves with time in the Sonoma area. We stayed at the Bodega Bay Lodge and Spa. I honestly wasn't as impressed as I'd hoped to be. Some things I was incredibly impressed with, however, include:
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Wild Bill had a recent post on LDD that I happened across this morning. You go, Bill. It does bring up a conversation I've been wanting to have about Forums, however. Do you go to forums? Only LDD or others (and there are, of course, more than I'm linking to)? Do you participate in forums? Do you like having forums other than LDD out there, or should we just have the one? Do you feel that there's still a sense of community in the forums or have we begun replacing that community with our blogging? I don't have a neat little voting mechanism, but I'd love to hear your comment on the following:
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I got asked an interesting question in e-mail yesterday: "To help settle the know it alls of baseball facts. Infield pop-up with a runner on first nobody toches the ball it hits the ground, hit or error? " So, what we're talking about here is an infield fly (it sounds like) that drops -- and would the batter get a hit or would it be an error. First of all, let's assume that the umpire calls the infield fly rule. The batter is automatically out, so it's neither a hit or an error -- it's an out. In MLB rules, if it was obviously an infield fly and the umpire doesn't call it -- it's still probably an infield fly, so it's still an out for the batter. If the umpire doesn't call the infield fly rule, and it wasn't so obvious -- might be and might not be -- and the runner that was on first makes it to second safely and the batter/runner makes it to first safely -- then it becomes a judgement call on the part of the scorer. The pertinent item in the rules to help with this call is the phrase "ordinary effort" -- if it could have been caught with ordinary effort but wasn't, it's likely to be an error. If it would've taken an extraordinary effort (unlikely, but possible), it's probably neither an infield fly nor an error, but rather just a plain old hit. Agree? Disagree?
Rule 6.05 (The Batter) (l) An infielder intentionally drops a fair fly ball or line drive, with first, first and second, first and third, or first, second and third base occupied before two are out. The ball is dead and runner or runners shall return to their original base or bases; APPROVED RULING: In this situation, the batter is not out if the infielder permits the ball to drop untouched to the ground, except when the Infield Fly rule applies.
I don't think that the rules answer the question, really, but this discussion of the infield fly at eteamz.com has a bit more in the way of explanation. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
I'm usually a boring IE kind of girl -- not b/c I like it, necessarily, but b/c almost everything works with it. A friend just sent me a link to the demo and downloads to a new browser, called iRider. Here's what he said:
I must admit -- the demo was pretty cool. I haven't downloaded it yet, but I plan to at least give it a try. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Ah, the lost art of the insult. Via Don Park, via Dave Winer... Not that I spend a lot of time looking for ways to insult other people, of course, however, if you *are* going to insult someone or something, you should at least do it with panache and style, right? One way to do it with some style would be to take a page from Shakespeare's Insults -- the Bard knew how to make someone cringe. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Nice long weekend -- spent the fourth here at the house with some lovely smoked bar-b-que. That's one of the many things I miss from Houston -- real Texas bbq. Brian has tried to make that up to me by buying a smoker and doing brisket and sausage for us here at home. Comes pretty close. Saturday was family day -- we went to visit my cousin for his 6th birthday and spent the day with him and my grandparents. Sunday was a nice baseball game -- lovely day for it, although the poor Padres lost. Sigh. More travel coming up soon -- San Francisco and Sonoma this weekend -- a friend's commitment ceremony (like a wedding) over the weekend and then a few extra days in wine country. I'm thinking we might go riding on the beach (horses) and in the vineyards (bikes)... We'll see. Then in August, for my birthday (don't even ask how old I'm going to be -- I'm not feeling very happy about the whole age thing), we're going to New York. Yankees game and Shakespeare in Central Park. Liev Schreiber is doing Henry V, which is one of my all-time favorites. I've mentioned that I *love* Shakespeare, right? I'll also be in Las Vegas in a few weeks for the WebSphere Technical Exchange. Anyone else going to be there? This doesn't seem to be the size of show that Lotusphere is -- more like a devcon-of-old type of show. Later in August, I should be back in NY for Eden's First Annual User Conference -- I've never been to Saratoga Springs, despite having grown up in NY, so it'll be neat to see the races. Not quite as busy a travel schedule as Rob or Ed, but, should still be fun. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Well, if this year hasn't just sped by -- not only is it July already (I hate it when I forget to post early on a new month!), but Rocky is already talking about LS2004. I encourage everyone to comment there (or here) about what you'd like to see at LS04 -- especially in the BP track. And remember - if they don't hear your preferences loud and clear -- no whining later! ;-) Not that you would, of course. As for my wishes for LS04 -- I would like to see a bit more admin in the BP track (which I think Rocky's hearing from many sources), and that "admin" should include QP, ST, etc. Rob mentions "Admin for Dev" and "Dev for Admins" sessions -- I've done an Admin for developers session in the past and it went over VERY well -- I think these sessions would be well suited for a show like LS. Other than that, not too much to report this morning -- I'm way underwater in terms of stuff I *have* to get done this week -- article reviews, webcast stuff, book stuff... Just a ton of stuff, basically. An interesting link or two: Tech news, about blogging from Corante.com An interesting NYTimes article about an executive at Jupitermedia who's blogging Dave Winer's ScriptingNews has been busy the past week or so -- he's been getting flamed, he's been standing up for and trying to explain RSS and Echo... and he had this snide remark that made me chuckle: An old software industry joke. At Microsoft, a new version of Windows isn't ready to ship until it doesn't run Lotus. Read that carefully. And at Microsoft in the early nineties they used to wear T-shirts saying Delete Philippe. That was before they cut off Netscape's air supply. Of course all this michegas is totally against the interests of users because it decreases their choice, and therefore their power. Also via Dave Winer, in the New York Times Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link |
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