Andrew Pollack's Blog

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  1. 11/20/2008Ever wonder about just how much Oil prices impact Gasoline Prices at the Pump?Well, not really a Domino related post, but I've wondered for a while now why it seems that gas prices go up faster than they come down. It took a few minutes to search out some real statistical data, and I put this chart together. It shows the percent change in price for a barrel of US Oil and the average consumer price of a gallon of unleaded gasoline for the US. The dates are close, and both are weekly, but they're not on the same day. Still, the trend analysis works fairly well. The charge tells the ......
  2. 11/20/2008Fairly large project put on hold -- looking for something interesting to work onIn the course of the last month, I've had two fairly good sized projects either scale way back or get put on indefinite hold. Sign of the times? In one case it is related to the economy so I guess you can say that. In the other case its a fairly typical thing where the people who want the work done got stopped by the I.T. department who wants to do it themselves with different (though as yet undefined) technology. That one will come back to me in the spring once they fail. In any case, I'd love to find ......
  3. 11/19/2008Can Lotus Sell Me on Portal? What would it take to make me a believer? ......
  4. 11/19/2008The first unofficial Lotusphere 2009 Track Breakdown by Product AreaI've been making some aggressive statements about track planning, and I've been tossing some warning statements about trying over-play the hand on pushing products that don't have following. I can now much more more clear about what's good and what's not. I imported the preliminary session list from the web site into a spreadsheet, and just marked off which sessions fell into which categories. Keep in mind not all sessions fit in a category as I didn't make a million categories. I'm likely wrong about a ......
  5. 11/18/2008Cloud Computing Concepts - Part 4 - Cloud Computing in the Long RunWhat does Cloud Computing look like in the long run? The best thing about predictions is that you very rarely get called to account. In this case, I’m going to make some pretty broad predictions. Some will come true, some won’t – but here’s how I see the market in ten years: The Internet is the Cloud. Just as there is no “The” internet, but rather a lot of interconnected networks owned by a huge variety of people, nations, and companies; there will ultimately be no “The” cloud. Instead there will be a few ......
  6. 11/18/2008Cloud Computing Concepts - Part 3 - Picking a Cloud Computing StrategyHow to pick a cloud computing strategy That’s the billion dollar question. Some vendors are starting to offer real solutions in the cloud computing arena. Before you decide to turn over your company jewels to a cloud based solution, consider these things: 1. Data Security – Is what you’re putting out there going to stay private to your company and never every get into someone else’s hands? Will it be more easily obtained by government with or without subpoena? 2. Data Availability – Is the data being ......
  7. 11/18/2008Cloud Computing Concepts - Part 2 - Why Businesses Like it, and Why They Don'tWhy Business Likes It, and Why Not? I.T. Shops bring it on themselves A move to Cloud Computing is a huge commitment for a business to take. When your applications and sometimes even your data isn’t stored, managed, and controlled by your own business you’re talking a huge risk that the provider of those things could disappear or have some major catastrophe. Why would any business take such a risk? For those of us in the I.T. industry – those who consider themselves technology savvy, there would seem to be ......
  8. 11/18/2008Cloud Computing Concepts - Part 1 - What is Cloud Computing?What is “Cloud Computing” – and why is it so attractive as a concept to business? Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, and IBM are all talking about their “Cloud Computing” models and Sun has been saying for years that “The Network is the Computer”. What does this really mean, and what will it take to make it work? Part 1 - What is it? Like any other new buzzword, no exact definition is possible. You have to strip out the marketing spin associate with how each vendor wants to use it. When you get down to it though, ......
  9. 11/18/2008Lotusphere Plans: Open Live Photo BloggingI'm going to take something I built for Second Signal and apply it to Lotusphere 2009. The application works like this: The Basics 1. Take a picture with your camera phone. 2. Send that camera phone picture and a short text caption to a mail in address that I'll publish3. The site will receive the photo, create a snapshot, and add it to a live index page The Details Who can use it? Anyone - but you could get banned if you try hard enough. Photo Limits? There will be a maximum size per photo -- its meant to ......
  10. 11/17/2008Presentations posted from AdminCamp 2008In the fall of 2008 I had the privilege of participating in the AdminCamp show in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. The whole show was fantastic. If you ever get the chance, you should attend. The focus of the event is deeply technical, but no small amount of effort is paid to making sure that every attendee and every speaker is well fed and has a good time. I've never seen a show done better. Confessions of a Penetration TesterAndrew Pollack, 60 Minutes, Closing SessionPutting the best lock on a rusty chain isn't ......
  11. 11/16/2008Lotusphere is January 18-22. President Elect Barak Obama's Inauguration is January 20th. Will it matter to you?I have to admit that I'm swept up in the hysterical wave of idealistic hope around this newly elected President. I'm not foolish enough to think that's going to last. He'll make mistakes -- he may already be making a big one -- and his administration will do things I don't like. They may even do things I detest, though I hope not. For now though, I'm hopeful that we've made the choice to put a man who is capable and well meaning into a position with the power to do great things. On Tuesday, January 20th ......
  12. 11/14/2008I've noticed a trend in customer demand over the last few weeks: InteroperabilitySametime, ST Advanced, Quickr, Domino, and Websphere SSOMicrosoft IIS with Dominox.509 Certificate AuthenticationLDAP with damn near everythingTool vendors and ISV's -- pay attention. This is a serious customer pain ......
  13. 11/14/2008VPN Hell -- I hate when I have to work through people who can't get things rightI've spent all day working on an agent to correlate some data and produce a report for one of my clients. By itself, that's not hard. Unfortunately, the VPN connection supplied by their I.T. department cannot stay connected this week at all. I've got the connection set to auto-redial, but it literally couldn't hold up for 5 minutes at a time. The system log shows 64 reconnects over the course of my working on this thing. Ever tried agent code debugging when your session drops out every 5 ......
  14. 11/11/2008Dear Apple, why do you insist on telling me about music I won't buy?Dear Apple - While it is true that I have in the past purchased iPods, and in one case a desktop computer from you, I have never been even the least bit interested in purchasing music, videos, or other content from your on-line store. Quite aside from the fact that I don't like the way you sell these things, the DRM and the proprietary nature of your gear and software; I simply have no need of your store. I have even less need of your weekly "New Music Tuesday" electronic mail. Why? Because I don't like ......
  15. 11/11/2008Speaking at Lotusphere 2009So yes, it looks like I'm speaking at Lotusphere this year. I'm not sure which or how many sessions, however, as I submitted several and the number of accepted/rejected doesn't equal the number of submissions. I'm guessing that Postini snagged some as spam due to the repeated subject and sender. I'll dig through tonight and figure it out, then ......
  16. 11/11/2008Thank you for flying the desperate skysI used to travel a lot. No, really, like every week. I glad I don't any more. Travel gets more difficult and annoying every week. Its been an unusual month and I'm finally back from a long series of trips that have had me away from home for something like 15 of the last 20 days and logging something close to 20,000 air miles. To top it off, I've been flying on old-school airlines that are desperately seeking to exploit every possible method to extract the last dollar from every traveller. This means adding ......
  17. 11/10/2008Reading "Halting State" by Charles Stross -- He's really nailed consulting, high tech startups, and contract employmentCharles Stross has written "Halting State" -- a near future high tech mystery novel. It reads like it was written by a cross between William Gibson and Kurt Vonegut Jr. Its that good -- at least what I've read so far. I'm not Tom Duff and I don't digest these things in a single sitting. Each of the main characters has their part of the story told in the second person. That's a little hard to get used to. "You" -- the reader -- switch perspectives with each chapter. It puts you right there in the middle ......
  18. 11/09/2008US Airways - Once again, the most difficult airline to put up withOn business, particularly flying to Lotusphere or other conferences I always to try book airlines that I've got confidence in and with as few stops as possible. Each connection you have to make reduces the likelihood of getting to your destination on time. US Airways has a track record with me that's just abysmal. I knew I was asking for trouble when booked this flight, but with the prices it really was the only way to go. Flying to Phoenix with my oldest daughter for a wedding, we were scheduled to fly ......
  19. 11/09/2008Why isn't it possible to have a political conversation with someone, that doesn't involve the repeated talking points of a celebrity media person?I've had some really interesting conversations lately, but they quickly seem to devolve into a repetitive litany of talking points and off the wall statistics that clearly come from some media personalities research time. Its a shame, because from that point forward I'm not having a conversation with the person in front of me -- or on the discussion site -- I'm playing a game called "combat the out of context research guy talking points." That bores me. Anyone who wants to come and talk politics with me ......
  20. 11/07/2008Travelling again, and there's an important reason why I'm blogging this morning...Well, there are two reasons I guess. The first is to put a bit of warning out there for those of you who haven't yet gotten back to me about the spots you want on the CULT shirts for Lotusphere 2009. We are probably going to do less shirts overall this year, but they're going to be good fun. We're overdue posting the Top 10 list, but that will happen within days. If you haven't contacted me yet, but plan to sponsor -- your time is running out. I'm headed to Phoenix now with my oldest daughter. She's 15 ......
  21. 11/06/2008Creating new kinds of content for the full Notes 8.x client -- what I struggle withNotes 8.x gives us this rich platform to work with as developers. There's this ability to do stuff at the GUI layer, to hook into the framework itself and do ....stuff. So why aren't we seeing more stuff being done beyond the "example" level of complexity? To me, as I try to get my head around building for this environment there are four challenges. Three are technical. I'm not going to attempt to answer these here. I just want to start by identifying what I see as the challenges that need to be address by ......
  22. 11/05/2008John McCain -- You came back to us last night, but where have you been?John McCain's gracious concession speech last night -- delivered in earnest and without reservation -- was dead on the mark. For the first time in over a year, the John McCain that has been honorably serving our country and keeping his own conscience for decades reappeared on national television. It was as if an exorcism had been performed. What a shame that for all his years of service, most of the world will only know him by the show he put on in the last few months. I said during the nomination process ......
  23. 11/05/2008Sometimes we get it right. As a nation, we've shown something important to the world - The best night in my memory of politicsLast night the strong center of American political thinking stepped out and said "Enough". It isn't every day that any idea or candidate can capture the support of such a wide cross section of our country. In nearly every measurable demographic other than the most hard core neo-conservative right wing base, Americans united to say that no matter what differences on individual parts of the Democratic message they can no longer stomach the abuses of power that have defined the last eight years. That's what ......
  24. 11/04/2008I'm holding Ben personally responsible....Ben, with all his business success surely has plenty of power and influence in Ohio. I'm counting on you, Ben, to "deliver a result" (as they say in Futball) in Ohio. I mean it, Ben. Get with the program ......
  25. 11/04/2008The disgusting dirty tricks are out in full forcePersonally, I think any new or changed advertisement of a political nature less than 72 hours prior to an election is highly suspect. Today is the first time I've seen the negative "Rev. Write" ads in months -- but they sure are prominent and as misleading and slanderous as ever. Its the same crap as every year. Save the stuff that's most ugly until the last minute when there's no time for it to be refuted or for the candidate to respond. There are robot phone dialers in key places making calls to mislead ......
  26. 11/04/2008Planning to stay up late and watch the returns come in? Join our chatI've set up a Skype based public chat for anyone in the greater Domino community that plans to stay up and watch the results come in. We've done this on other topics and it works fairly well. Get a skype account if you don't have one already, then join in: The Lotus Domino Election Eve Skype Chat Be warned, topics will range and may not always be ......
  27. 11/03/2008Structure Fire - Saturday; links to coverageSo Saturday wasn't spent on Lotus Domino much at all. After getting in at 2am from London and sleeping till 8, we had a minor call around 11am and then while I was raking leaves at around 2:30pm we had a call come in for a structure fire. The fire, on the part of town we call the "Foreside" was a really fast mover. We pulled in and the second floor was already heavily involved. By the time I had the truck set up and a pack on to go in we heard on the radio that the roof had self-vented (burned through so ......
  28. 11/03/2008Election Day - From a public safety perspectiveI won't get a chance to do much Domino work tomorrow. Voting tomorrow is expected to be at record turnout. I thought I'd take a minute to give you some insight into what that means from a public safety perspective even in a small town like Cumberland, Maine. First, with polls opening at 7am and a heavy turnout expected in the morning, we're going to have to staff the Town Hall with a fire watch crew. That happens because we expect the building to be over-capacity during that time. Next, since the town hall ......
  29. 11/01/2008Battery Killing Utilities -- Find them and shut them off.My flight back from London on a relatively old 767 that seemed (to me) to be configured for domestic travel rather than international wasn't too bad -- but only because there were enough open seats. The power supplied by the aircraft to some of the seats was barely workable. My Dell wants about 95 watts inbound to the block adapter and that's close to the advertised limit of the seat power. Add a little loss on the inverter and it gets iffy. Viewing a movie from the hard disk, the on again/off again ......
  30. 10/31/2008For those of you Europeans who don't care for how Americans do wireless services -- your system has fully pissed me off.Instead of paying $125 for a week of renting a pre-setup "Orange" subscribed cell phone as I have done in the past when I left the US, I decided to try doing the local thing this time. Once arriving in Germany, it took me a few hours but I was able to find an unlocked Nokia phone (a very very cheapo one without bluetooth or anything else) for 40 Euros -- I think it may have been used as a demo, but its hard to know with the language barrier and to be honest I didn't care a bit. Then I puchased a SIM -- ......
  31. 10/30/2008Why I have such a hard line on the risk of Portal being over-pushed at LotusphereEarlier today I posted a list of things I think should be closely considered in the planning for Lotusphere 2009.... In among that list, I was pretty strong in my caution against over-pushing WAS and Portal in the way it was done for 2004. Ed came in to the defense of the Portal team, reminding me of the current date and of how there are several hundred people who came to Portal conventions earlier in the year. A couple of others have decried the value of that platform, which I still contend is a niche ......
  32. 10/30/2008The Lotusphere Thread -- What should IBM pay attention to this year in the planning?Every year there are good things and bad things at the Lotusphere conference. If you've got anything in mind for what they should really be aware of, lets post it here. I'll start... Food & Food Tent -- Having just the one was really great last year in that you could meet anyone you wanted to have lunch with. The downside was that it was very far away from the Swan, where all the "Best Practices" sessions take place. That's where I spend most of my conference time. Late Busses -- Many people have mentioned ......
  33. 10/29/2008A few pictures from AdminCamp 2008 in Gelsenkirchen, GermanyThis is the view from the balcony here at my hotel room.The lead organizer of this conference is Rudi Knegt. His has been a well known name in the IBM Lotus Business Partner community for about as long as I have, but I've never spoken at one of his conferences until now. I have to say I'm very impressed. As a speaker I can tell you that Rudi, his beautiful wife, and his conference team have gone to remarkable lengths to make sure I've had everything I could possibly need ---- and beyond that, also had a ......
  34. 10/27/2008AdminCamp - Another succesful Domino conferenceThis is the first time I've spoken at one of the AdminCamp conferences, and I'm quite impressed. The turnout seems to be excellent, as is the facility. Our hosts have been quite gracious in providing everything we could possibly need to provide a solid presentation and also to be comfortable and have a good time. Its good to see such a thriving community in Europe dedicated to the Domino ......
  35. 10/26/2008A long week of travel - finally settling in for Adminkamp in GermanyThis has been a really long week, but at least for a few days I should be able to catch my breath. Take a gander and you'll see what I mean. Tuesday: Leave home 10:30am Leave car at Bus in Portland 11:30am Arrive at Airport in Boston 1:45pm Leave "big" suitcase at Airport Hilton Catch Flight to Phoenix via Chicago 3:30pmWednesday Arrive Phoenix and get rental car 11:30pm (local time -- 2:30am for me) Arrive at my Mom's house 12:30am (3:30am for me) Spend the dayThursday Leave Phoenix by car for Flagstaff ......
  36. 10/25/2008Never forget the first rule of holesWhile I've been traveling a lot this week and had a very hard time keeping up with the blogging community, a certain train wreck just continues. I'd say I was speechless but we all know that's unlikely to ever happen. Lets say I'm a bit surprised to some that there are people still out in the blogging world without the slightest understanding of when they're doing themselves more damage on a daily basis. I suggest to anyone who reads this that in many things - blogging included - you should remember this ......
  37. 10/20/2008I'm leaving the country.I'm getting on a plane tomorrow for Arizona, where I'm presenting about Second Signal to a regional Chiefs meeting up near Kingman, then flying to Boston where I'll pick up my other suitcase and catch a flight the next morning to London. From there its on to Germany and Rudi-Con. I can't say I'm going to miss the political ads for the week I'm gone. They, along with some of the conversations I've had, have been increasingly shrill and irritating. When I travel overseas, I feel distinctly American. ......
  38. 10/20/2008More annoying McCain campaign speeches. What a shame he's abandoned so many principles.[] Here's a test: Watch any McCain speech from the last few weeks, and count how much time is spent talking about McCain's plans, McCain's ideas, and McCain's beliefs while also counting how much time is spent talking about Obama. I'm starting to forget why I ever liked this guy. He seems to have pretty much abandoned any attempt to manage his campaign toward a discussion of ideas at this point. I'm seeing his stump speeches devolve into little more than name calling and character bashing. The thing is, ......
  39. 10/19/2008I see dumb people! -- And not just the ones with with the wrong political signs in their yards...I do a lot of security review work, I write a lot of software in a lot of different languages. I sit in meetings with I.T. executives arguing about security issues. Do you know how many people make the same mistakes? Nearly all of them. When I do penetration testing for a major company, about 90% of the time I end up with a whole category of findings that comes down to "big new lock on a rusty old chain." Essentially, it comes down to the idea that you should never ever halfway lock something. You're ......
  40. 10/19/2008An amusing and productive -- if slightly irritating -- weekendAs I get ready for a long bout of travel I always get a bit rushed with things not done. It is exactly at this point that extra work pops up. First it was Ari's laptop that sucked a day of my time from me in a way I'll never get back. Just when I thought that was it, we had a power outage yesterday and the generator failed. All this while for some reason, I wasted too much time trying to be nice to someone who didn't even realize it. I don't do "nice" very often, so maybe I'm just not that good at it. lol. ......
  41. 10/18/2008Obama in a landslide -- while most media claim its a close race, in the actual EC votes that count, it isn't at all.One of the most unbiased, reliable, and clearly presented sites is FiveThirtyEight.com. That site combines all the polls and produces actual data you can read and interpret for yourself. They don't make predictions with it. They show you where things stand, and what the trend has been. As you can see from this image, the way the Electoral College plays out, this election is in all likelihood going to go Obama in a landslide of epic proportions. [] Why does the media want to show you stats that make it seem ......
  42. 10/17/2008If you make a bad blog post and don't like the result, what's the best way to deal with it?First of all, those of you who know what inspired me to write this, please keep it to yourselves. I do not mean this entry to be a dig at anyone or to re-open an argument. There is a valid topic for discussion here though. Here's my take: 1. It is perfectly valid, as a blogger, to remove an entire entry -- the original post as well as all the comments. Its your blog, and if you've made a mistake by posting a topic or responding to comments in a way that doesn't look like what you want on your blog, it is ......
  43. 10/15/2008Press Cancel to Continue -- A full day wasted on Windows VistaLast night, Ari's new laptop was issued a bunch of patches from Microsoft. This morning, the startup process ended with a blue screen. Every time. I started working with it at about 7am. I'll spare you the longest and most boring part of the story and just say that I was finally able to get a normal boot out of it by about 4pm. Here's a few things I learned: 1. If you start Vista in safe mode, you cannot use the Windows Installer to remove software. Brilliant. 2. Vista does have a better interface for ......
  44. 10/14/2008The C.U.L.T. Shirt preliminary design plan has been chosen!In a secret meeting held deep beneath the surface of the earth, protected from the sophisticated eavesdropping gear used against us, Lotus Geek and I met to discuss the shirts for Lotusphere 2009. We held a planning session with the aid of some good friends -- one of whom is a former candidate for the Nobel prize for fashion and design, another of whom is a graduate from the Sorbonne with a degree in humor, a masters degree in wit, and a PhD in repartee, and a third -- who's presence was unknown even to ......
  45. 10/11/2008Fair is Fair (thanks D.)I've had my share of problems with Dell Support, but today a representative did a good job for me and I figured I should point that out here, since I'd pointed out the problems in the past. My Dell D820 laptop -- now just over 2 years old -- has been getting some attention from me lately. The new drive is in, and I'm planning to keep this machine for at least another year. The keyboard is tired, though. One of the keys is loose, one sticks, etc. I decided I'd buy a replacement part and put it in. They're ......
  46. 10/10/2008Encrypting the new laptop drive - Truecrypt is free, incredibly secure, incredibly flexible softwareIf you have customer data, medical data, or anything confidential on your drive and you travel -- you owe it to everyone who counts on your security to encrypt your local data. Sure, your Notes databases can be easily encrypted but what about the rest of the stuff on your drive? Truecrypt - http://www.truecrypt.org/ -- is free, open source, and very powerful. Spend a few minutes on their site reading through the documentation and you can start to see just how paranoid some people are about their data. ......
  47. 10/08/2008Screen redraw problems with Firefox & Notes 8 -- or other big GUI apps? Here's a possible bandage...This is something that's getting increasingly reported in several forums. Among them are the Firefox Q&A forum, and some of the deeper tech Domino ones. Switching between applications -- particularly Firefox along with either Notes 8, DDE, Photoshop, Visual Studio, or other highly graphical applications -- seems to produce screen redraw problems after a while. The screen only partly re-draws, leaving the application that was last up "ghosted" on the screen. I've been searching and reading and testing, and ......
  48. 10/08/2008Ordered a birthday present for myself -- well, for my laptop anywayI've purchased almost no new computer hardware this year. The truth is, I've been focused this year on getting to zero debt (other than a reasonable mortgage which is about half way finished). To get there means not buying a new car and resisting the temptation to by a massive new desktop or really big server. It also means sticking with the Dell D820, now just over 2 years old. I like the D820 a lot though, so no real hardship there. Its a dual core 32 bit machine with plenty of battery life and RAM. What ......
  49. 10/08/2008Now, I'm really in my PRIME.[] No, not Optimus Prime. About a half hour from when I write this, my birthday comes around again. This year is a big one. No, not because it ends with a zero of a five. That's just silly. Those have nothing remotely interesting about them mathematically. No, this is a big one because its a Prime Number. The nice thing about making a big deal out of only PRIME number birthdays, is that the older you get, the less frequent they become. ......
  50. 10/07/2008What makes Vista so painful -- and why IBM had better learn from it.Microsoft Windows Vista hasn't been quite the glowing success they'd hoped. Despite years of effort, massive pre-rollout testing, and a marketing budget that would make MTV proud, it was met with a negative reaction by even those users who really don't understand what it is. Chris Linfoot's blog about Vista's problems happened to catch me with a similar subject in mind. Between that and a conversation with Volker yesterday, I decided to write about some of the things that IBM had best learn from the fall ......
  51. 10/07/2008Things I wish the client side rich text editor did in the Notes client.The more I write, the more I wish the classic editor in the Notes client would handle just a few more things in a reasonably intelligent way. Lately, these small annoyances have really compounded for me. Let me list a few here. If you agree, maybe someone at IBM who finds themselves in a role with some influence {*cough*edbrill*cough*} can pick up these and do something about it. #1. Let me use the control key with the mouse to select more than one thing at a time, even if they're not connected. For ......
  52. 10/05/2008What stops Linux from being a mainstream workstation operating system choice?Brad Linder over at Downloadsquad wrote an interesting little rant about trying to un-install something he didn't like on his Linux workstation. He's touching at the edges of the really important part of the problem. It takes a lot more than a stable kernel and some good packages of software to make a good end user desktop operating system. If you want to really understand how much work it really takes to turn Linux into a solid desktop OS, take a look at how much work Apple had to do on top of BSD to make ......
  53. 10/04/2008In light of Ed's promotion at IBM, I have some questions about how things work there. Maybe you have some too.As most of you in the Domino blogging community already know, Ed Brill -- long one of the strongest and staunchest supporters of the platform -- has been promoted to Director, End-User Messaging and Collaboration at IBM. That's a big deal. Its a big deal for Ed, of course, and its a big deal for all of us, as I believe Ed to have been very empathetic to the "right" side of many of the product battles you've seen referenced here and other places. I chose that word carefully, because I don't claim for a ......
  54. 10/04/2008Fantastic scenery today in Maine -- Twin Brooks Recreation Area and the Maine Pumpkin Festival - 30,000 pumpkins?Today was really beautiful in Maine. Caitlin had a soccer game this morning at Twin Brooks, so I took the camera along. Thanks to Photoshop, I made this 360 degree panoramic view from where I was standing. Click the link to see it much, much larger (500k). The rest of these pictures come from the Maine Pumpkinfest. This was held here at the Cumberland Fairgrounds today. Their goal was to break the world record for the number of lit pumpkins at something on the order of 30,000. I won't know until later ......
  55. 10/04/2008New Acronym: AYFKM -- Are You (Freakin) Kidding Me?I'm just back from a fire call not long ago. A fairly typical call. An alarm sounding at a home. No source of smoke. Homeowner has no idea why the alarm is going off. The 911 dispatcher instructs him to evacuate the residence while we're on the way. We get there, and he's out front. Though he's told dispatch that he's evacuated the house, as we're checking things out we come to find out that his wife and his young daughter are ASLEEP IN BED. AYFKM? True, this turned out to be a faulty detector. It happens. ......
  56. 10/03/2008Its time for C.U.L.T. Shirt Sponsorship Again! Don't ignore this then call me in November pleading for an open slot....Last year we gave away 1800 shirts. For those who don’t know, the C.U.L.T. shirt (Certified, Unofficial, Lotusphere, T-shirt) is a tradition that was originally started by Rocky Oliver (Lotus Geek) and Henry Newberry. In 2003, Henry decided to focus on other things, so for Lotusphere 2004 and ever since I’ve been doing that part of things. Generally speaking, Rocky and I – with help from our friends – come up with a theme for the shirts. The idea is to be somewhat topical, but mostly fun. Sometimes we make ......
  57. 10/03/2008Making Notes 8.x (including 8.5 beta) in Eclipse feel much faster.I've been reminded of this gem, given to me by skilled person I trust, which really speeds up the way Notes 8.x in Eclipse feels. I can't say if its actually faster, but it does feel much faster. I've heard some interesting stories about why this isn't set to a higher default, but since they're only stories I'm going to hold off repeating them. Use your file explorer to find this directory: UPDATED 10/12/2009 for Notes version 8.5.1 The file "jvm.properties" is now located in a new place. ......
  58. 10/02/2008SNTT: A very fast, very helpful reporting method from the Domino serverI don't do SNTT very often. When I do, its because I think there's some trick or other that you may actually find really useful. This week, a client needed a report out of a Domino application. There were a lot of ways I could have done this, but the one I chose ended up being very fast and made the client particularly happy. I thought I'd describe it here. The application is one in which files are posted for users of the site to download. Once made active, the system emails the users a special link. The ......
  59. 10/02/2008Speaking of office environments....here's mineI guess Paul started this -- or maybe someone else. I've seen other people's little work areas. All well and good if you don't need to ever put something down I guess. Here's my office from a few different angles. You can see that I've blocked or shaded the windows, made a ton of space around me to put stuff while I'm working, and generally created a cave environment. The office was built as part of the addition several years ago just specifically for use as my office. Its built so that it could be used as ......
  60. 10/01/2008The claim that these "Mortgage Backed Securities" (aka Mortgage Soup Cans) can't be properly valued is crap.How many times, when oil goes up over $150 a barrel, when home prices skyrocket to ridiculous levels, or for that matter when Disney charges you five bucks for a bottle of water, have you heard that "The Market Sets The Price"? Oil was worth $150 a barrel because that's what the marketplace said it was worth. A few weeks later it was only worth $90 a barrel. What changed? The opinion of the market on its value is what changed. The latest gem of a deregulatory ruling by the SEC (Securities and Exchange ......
  61. 09/30/2008The US House of Representatives has to limit inbound mail. Anyone remember what mail system they're using?The excessive load from actual non-spam email from constituents is more than the Exchange servers at the House can handle, apparently. They've announced that they've had to limit inbound mail. You may get an auto-response back indicating that you should try again another time. ......
  62. 09/26/2008Limited time: A usually private torrent tracker of which I am a member is accepting open referrals.If you are at all into torrents as a means of gaining access to content, you'll want to use this link: [ FYI: As this site has now announced its going to be private again, you'll need to ask me for a link ] This torrent site is quite good (stunningly so, actually). Membership is ranked and there are some rules to follow. Please make sure to read the rules and the faq. They're short, but you'll get the point. The most important thing to remember is that if you download a torrent, don't immediately shut off ......
  63. 09/24/2008My submissions for 2009 Lotusphere Best Practices - Come tell me which you would go to or suggest to others -- please...These are the sessions I've submitted for Lotusphere 2009 in the Best Practices track. If you are a player on the IdeaJam game, click on these and promote them please. ...please wait while they load from IdeaJam.... inwidth = 500;inheight = 320;id = "78C187F92050B897862574BF0004C15F";//-->inwidth = 500;inheight = 320;id = "E5AACB4D686CAE4F862574CE0067CBB1";//-->inwidth = 500;inheight = 320;id = "1AB8F22D926817F4862574CE006805C1";//-->inwidth = 500;inheight = 320;id = ......
  64. 09/24/2008Are you a fan of the original Star Trek series? Did you know there is another season?The original Star Trek series only ran for 3 seasons, from 1966 to 1969 and produced less than 80 episodes. After 42 years from its original air date, it can still be found playing on re-runs and can still be ordered in collections on DVD. The series is an icon for generations of idealistic science geeks, but its also so saturated through pop culture that references to it are still made in nearly every other genre. There are hundreds of Star Trek references in popular shows like Heroes, The Office, ER, The ......
  65. 09/24/2008Adobe Acrobat Reader has been DROPPED from all my systems, in favor of FoxitNot just good enough, its better. Foxit Software has a free replacement for Adobe Acrobat Reader for download. They offer a "Pro" pack of additional tools and utilities which are quite good as well, but the free reader is not only good replacement, it is better in many respects. How is it better? To begin with, its much faster to load. The difference is immediately noticeable. Adding to that, it doesn't bug me with updates every time I load it, then fail to properly install those updates. It doesn't load a ......
  66. 09/23/2008I have received a copy of the letter from Mr. Paulson to a state Senator, asking for funds. I post it here for your interest.DEAR ESTEEMED SENATOR; REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP FIRST, I MUST SOLICIT YOUR STRICTEST CONFIDENCE IN THIS TRANSACTION. THIS IS BY VIRTUE OF ITS NATURE AS BEING UTTERLY CONFIDENTIAL AND 'TOP SECRET'. I AM SURE AND HAVE CONFIDENCE OF YOUR ABILITY AND RELIABILITY TO PROSECUTE A TRANSACTION OF THIS GREAT MAGNITUDE INVOLVING A PENDING TRANSACTION REQUIRING MAXIMUM CONFIDENCE. WE ARE TOP OFFICIAL OF THE UNITED STATES TREASURY WHO ARE INTERESTED IN EXPORTING OF LOANS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY WITH FUNDS ......
  67. 09/19/2008Thinking about the current real estate crisis -- what's being done, what's not, and maybe what should beAs a result of the most recent abuse of good sense and lack of feduciary responsibilty, a lot of banks and a investment houses are stuck with a lot of houses that aren't worth the money they've loaned out on them. The problem then, is that the houses aren't good investments for the short term. We also have a need for housing for many people -- good people. It seems to me that what's missing is two things, not one. The first one is being tackled by the Fed -- spreading enough money into the credit system ......
  68. 09/16/2008The Completed Snowthrower Rebuilding ProjectI find it much easier to work on and repair a snow thrower on warm September evenings and weekends than on cold February mornings when I'm trying to get the car out. This year will be the 13th year of service for this MTD 8hp snow thrower. MTD products fill the lower cost market niche in equipment but my experience with their products has always been extremely positive. There are more expensive machines that are built to supposedly last longer -- and maybe they would. Would they last twice as long? They ......
  69. 09/15/2008The big "Mass Casualty Drill" on Saturday. I got to apply some cool tech proof of concepts.On Saturday, Cumberland Fire Department held a big "Mass Casualty" drill at the fairgrounds. More than 8 months in the planning, we invited dozens of agencies to take part including hazardous materials teams, the Red Cross, rescue departments from several towns, and of course victims volunteers. [] The scenario was fairly straightforward. An accident during the fair involving a school bus and a tanker full of gasoline in which the tanker began leaking product all over the place. It could happen. If you'll ......
  70. 09/09/2008Intel's new ATOM chip + Asus EEE PC 901XP - FTW!Before deciding on the new ASUS EEE PC 901 XP, I read as many performance reviews as I could find. I was trying to compare it with the VIA thin client chipset or even the Intel Celeron but none of the tests really gave me what I was looking for. See, the clock speed (the mhz or ghz of a chip) doesn't tell the whole story. [] If a chip has fewer base instructions, it needs a higher clock speed to do the same things. At the same time, chips with more complex instruction sets can run fewer cycles and get the ......
  71. 09/08/2008Hundred Pushups Challenge: Day 0 - The initial testI saw a couple of other people giving this a shot and I thought it might be a good, simple way to improve my strength so I've started their simple (free) program. Take a look at the [Hundred Pushups Challenge] for more information. The initial test is just as simple as doing a series of good, honest pushups and counting them up. Compare this on a chart for your age, and you get the initial ranking. For my age, I come out in "Rank 3" to start with -- so that's got me starting about a third of the way ......
  72. 09/08/2008Do you care about Domino performance in a way you can do something with? Say so on ideaJamMac has asked that if we're planning to submit a session in the BP track that we post the idea up in IdeaJam to see what kind of support its got. I want to do a Performance session in the BP track this year. I usually do security, admin, mail routing, and linux -- and I'll probably post those as well -- but this year I want to do "Performance" in a way that makes sense in the real world. You see, real world Domino performance issues aren't all about the simple stuff like memory and number of disks. There's ......
  73. 09/08/2008Could we finally be seeing a good E-Ink product hitting the streets?Imagine if the newspaper organizations could get back to spending their money on reporters and research in depth instead of the materials, infrastructure, fuel, and overhead associated with distribution? []Plastic Logic] seems to be one of the first to actually near market with a reasonable E-Ink alternative. Their product is about the size, shape, and width of a magazine – and is at least somewhat flexible. It also has a long battery life, and can display several standard formats – including PDF. Best of ......
  74. 09/07/2008Saw a pretty cool bit of tech on Discovery Discover Channel (http://www.Discovery.com) has a new series called ["Project Earth"]. The series seems to feature each week a new experiment aimed at solving some aspect of the energy or climate challenges we're told we all face. It looks like some of the shows in the series are pretty oddball -- I saw one that involved giant rotating balloons that were supposed to float all the way up at altitudes where the wind is fast and constant. It looked kind of crazy. I watched one tonight though, via the DVR, ......
  75. 09/04/2008If you could pick the topic you wanted from me at LS09, what would it be?Fall is here. Lotusphere 2009registration is open now, as is the call for abstracts. If you could pick my topic, what would you want me to cover? In the past, the Security Jumpstart I do with Gab has been very well attended with a repeat and both sessions really full, so we'll update that with all the new 8.5 stuff and submit that one for sure. Other than that, there's a ton of stuff I'm thinking about. Is there one you've seen me do that you think is worth repeating? Is there a new topic you think I ......
  76. 09/03/2008Trendspotting: What Google is really starting with ChromeAside from being a fairly cool -- if a bit undercooked -- new browser, Chome has another lesson for us. Google has very specifically NOT created an incremental bloatware version of existing code. They've built something new from nearly the ground up, embedding the proven technologies they needed -- javascript by V8, and rendering by Webkit. Only by starting from scratch were they able to get some of the size, memory management, and security enhancements that form the core of their promising new ......
  77. 09/03/2008Using the management of their campaigns to learn about the candidatesSome things about these two political campaigns have struck me recently as glimpses of what to expect from an administration led by either candidate. It isn't a perfect picture, but it is telling in a way. It also matches what I think about these two men so clearly my own viewpoint is mixed in richly in the interpretation. To be clear about that bias, I should state here that I am currently planning to vote for Obama, though will not vote an entirely Democratic party ticket. We have some very good ......
  78. 09/02/2008Chrome - Google's new Web Browser. Super tool, still needs a few things.Google's new browser, called "Chrome" made a rocking debut today. Its got a lot going for it, and a few things to catch up with. First, what's great: 1. Fast. Damn fast. Really really fast. The more AJAX on a site, the faster it will seem. 2. Tabs turn into windows - just tear them off. You can do it with an add on for Firefox, but there you go. 3. Much better "sandboxing" for security. 4. Each tab is its own operating system process. That makes for way better memory management. 5. One tab that's hung or ......
  79. 08/30/2008Notes 8.5 Public Beta 2 - First impressionsNotes 8.5 Public Beta 2 came out the other day and its now running as my production working environment. ......
  80. 08/28/2008Have you used the Asus EEE PC? I've got a couple of unusual questionsI'm considering the Asus EEE PC as an option for Second Signal base station units. The 900 looks fast enough by specs, and in all other regards is more than sufficient. I do have a few questions about the units though, that can be answered by people who have owned one. 1. Is there a fan? Is this unit passively cooled or is there a cooling fan that comes on? 2. Can the unit run in an "Always On" state reliably? 3. Can the unit run with the laptop screen closed without overheating? Did you have problems with ......
  81. 08/28/2008Blogging Respite - A long couple of weeksJust a heads up. Its been a long week or so between the unexpected kitchen remodeling, and some other things that took too much of my time. On top of all that, This week the kids are home from all summer programs but school hasn't yet restarted. That's been true for two weeks but this week is my turn to "stay home" from work to watch them. Ari made her Junior Varsity soccer team and has been having either two practices a day or a practice and a game every day for two weeks -- and she needs a ride to and ......
  82. 08/23/2008The disturbing case of the Fridge, and cabinets built by Dr. Seuess. * Updated with picturesAfter 20 years of wanting one, I've finally got a fridge that has an ice maker. Unfortunately, that's the beginning of the story not the end. You see, our kitchen cabinets where built by Dr. Seuess. When I measured for the width of the fridge, I checked the measurement at the floor, at counter height, and then again with the upper cabinet. All were fine. Tight, but fine. Then the fridge came. Although all the widths were fine, they were unfortunately offset from one another by as much as half an inch. I ......
  83. 08/17/2008From Caitlin: "Dad, are the Olympic medals solid gold?" The answer is interesting...Gold is not a practical material to make solid objects from. They won't tarnish, but they will not last either. The first and second place medals are solid silver, while the first place medal is plated with at least six grams of gold. This year's medals also use Jade in their construction and are quite special. The host nation has some flexibility in how the Olympic medals are made and their materials, without strict standards of the IOC (International Olympic Committee). Here's a brief article that talks ......
  84. 08/12/2008The mis-use of Twitter as a chat room - and what to do about itTwitter has ripped through our community like a wave, capturing the time wasting cycles and a few more than that from quite a few people. The problem is, its totally the wrong tool for us. Twitter is meant to be a tool to tell your friends and followers "what you're doing" so they can meet up with you. It isn't meant as a chat room at all. Most messages should be one line saying "I'm here, doing this." Twitter has become -- for many in the Domino Blogger community -- a kind of limited chat room. Why? ......
  85. 08/12/2008Olympics Coverage Chat Room - Will continue for the duration -- and a side question: Did the Mongolian Team have to breach the Great Wall to come play?The skype based Olympics coverage chat room was reasonably cool last night. I'm going to leave it "Open" for the duration. Just follow the link here: http://bit.ly/3A23oV And you can join or leave at will. You do need skype, but that's free and quick. You do not have to exchange details with others in the chat. Its public. It seems to be most active during the East Coast Prime Time coverage on NBC, but since there are like fifty different channels and online streams feel free to us it whenever and however ......
  86. 08/11/2008The Smarmy Comments Public Olympic Chat RoomI've set up a Public Chat on Skype. Its new functionality so you need a recent copy of Skype -- just follow this link, download Skype if you need to, and join the sarcasm fest. ......
  87. 08/11/2008Cumberland Explorer Fire Academy 2008Cumberland Fire Department Explorer Academy 2008Explorers and Junior Firefighters from several towns were invited to participate in this year's Academy. The students lived at the station for five days, training in all aspects of firefighting. They ran calls with the fire department and were able to do nearly everything firefighters do.These pictures were taken at the Yarmouth, Maine training site. This structure has three floors and a basement and has been made safe for training. It has shutters for the ......
  88. 08/09/2008Running OSX in a Virtual Machine under Windows XP - Blasphemy?Behind me as I sit at my desk, there currently sits an Apple eMac G4. It has only one purpose - testing web pages with a real copy of Safari running on OSX. I realize there's a Safari for Windows now, but I don't trust it to always give me the same results. What I really hate most about it is the size of the thing. I never should have gotten one with a built in screen, but all I can say is that it seemed like a good idea at the time. That was a few years ago. I've wanted to run OSX in a VMWARE session for ......
  89. 07/29/2008Major software switch - Dropping Grisoft's AVG and trying out Avast!I used to love AVG, the free anti-virus software. Each version has gotten worse however, not better. The latest changes have it so intrusive that I've decided to drop it. On recommendation, I'm trying Avast! and from what I can tell, it is much more powerful, much less obtrusive, and seems to use less system resources. I was able to quickly configure it to watch my P2P connections, instant message session, smtp & pop mail sessions, and of course in memory viruses -- but also to leave my Notes data alone. I ......
  90. 07/25/2008What image to project in a professional photo?I've been asked again for a suitable photo to use in publication. This happens from time to time if you speak and write and isn't that big a deal. The problem is that the last one I had done by a pro is now something close to seven years old. That's it on the left. It was taken by friend who is a professional photographer. You can see that he did a hell of a job making me look better than I should. In fact, my favorite comment ever about this photo was from someone who said "He did a great job. It really ......
  91. 07/25/2008The most fundamental things missing from web browser standardsDeveloping content for the web is frustratingly limited. That's no secret. What are the top must fundamental missing features that should long ago have been fully and completely solved? Here's my quick hit list: #1. Fonts. Any font should be able to be easily referenced on a web page universally. I know you can embed fonts for some browsers but there are no good ways to really embed a custom font that everyone will see. As a result, we spend all day looking at boring (though readable) fonts. Now, I know ......
  92. 07/21/2008Favorite Tools #4: MagicDiscIts all about the Magic. MagicDisc (aka MagicISO) is another of those tools you won't be able to live without once you get to know it. Remember when software used to come on CDROM and later DVDROM disks? Back in the days before you downloaded everything? Well, it still does. Many of the downloaded software you get will be in "ISO" format or one of a dozen or so other "virtual drive" formats. These files are meant to be burned to CD or DVD and then used as a disk in the drive. MagicISO sits in your system ......
  93. 07/21/2008Extended Validation Certificates -- Or "How can top level registrars screw you even more?" (already hacked, btw)It isn't enough for Verisign and their ilk to suck a hundred bucks a year from every mom and pop internet shop on the market. Now they've created a new standard with the purpose of turning that $100 cost into $500 a year. By paying for this "Extended Validation Certificate" you get a new special certificate that turns the address bar "GREEN". The browser makers have been talked into supporting this apparently. Next comes the big advertising campaign that tells all the shoppers out there that if it doesn't ......
  94. 07/20/2008Lots of Fire stuff this weekend. Fireworks detail, and a bunch of people who just don't think.So this weekend, between working on Domino and Asterisk, I had a lot of firefighting stuff to do. First, on Saturday afternoon a down power line call came in literally 500 yards from my house, just over on the next street. I went direct and had someone toss my gear on the first due Engine. It turned out the line was a high voltage service line that feeds the transformers which then feed the houses a few at a time. This line had come off the pole and was laying across the grass and driveway of someone's ......
  95. 07/19/2008Data Dashboard challenge in Notes - Better sometimes, than using an RDBThis challenge is about dealing with a significant volume of raw data, and reporting on in a useful way. The fundamental difference in working with data in Notes versus working with it in a relational database, is that while typically an RDB can handle more raw data, viewing that raw data through reports only gives you exactly what you ask for. Notes on the other hand presents data in "Views" which are much more organic -- particularly if you've designed them well. You don't just see what you're asking ......
  96. 07/17/2008The hunt for a laptop for Ari - What is the perspective of a 14 year old on this purchase?The middle school here has a laptop program so for the last couple of years, Ari has had the use of a little Mac laptop. She also has a PC in her room that she's had for some time. Its not a great one, but its sufficient. As we're getting ready for High School this year, we've been looking to get her a laptop. We're willing to pay for what she needs -- enough that it will be a good machine -- but we're not paying for extras. She'd have to make up the difference. I think manufacturers could learn a thing or ......
  97. 07/17/2008Favorite Tools #3: Desk PinsContinuing my recent theme of talking about the little tools that I use on constant basis to make my work more efficient, this one is called "Desk Pins", ......
  98. 07/16/2008One form to rule them all....I've just completed a major piece of automation work for Second Signal. When I add a new department, there are quite a few things that have to get set up. Asterisk has to be configured with connection information for the remote software. Access groups have to be created. Time zone information looked up and entered in. Scripts for managing audio files need to be updated. Directories on the Linux file system have to be created, telephone numbers have to be linked to the right audio data locations. Pager ......
  99. 07/15/2008Favorite Tools #2: MWSnap! Fantastic tool for taking partial screenshotsWhen I'm speaking at conferences, I try to put plenty of screen shots in the presentation. I do this so you can take my presentations and print them out to work with as guides. The tool I use for taking screen shots is "MWSnap". ......
  100. 07/14/2008Great free file degragmentation tool -- from the same people who make CCLEANERI was updating my copy of CCLEANER this evening when I saw they same people have a new tool out. Defraggler seems to work very well, its very fast, and its free. I've used other tools by these guys with good success. One of the things I like most about Defraggler is that you can see what files are fragmented, sort them by pathname, and select which ones you want to bother defragmenting. I couldn't care less if a bunch of temp files are fragged. CCLEANER is going to delete them anyway. Instead, I degragged ......
  101. 07/14/2008Critical Security Patch - Did you miss this? Update your DNS servers immediately.Several days ago a major announcement was made about a fundamental flaw in the DNS protocol -- one of the most important underlying bits of infrastructure that makes the internet possible. This is not a flaw in the implementation by any specific vendor. This is a fundamental flaw in the protocol itself so: Nearly every single operating system and appliance that provides name service caching is susceptible This Network World article has details, as does this CNET "D3F3NS3 1N D3PTH" feature. You'll find a ......
  102. 07/14/2008Project Atlantic is the Killer App if you're an SAP shop - Updated IBM Website has examplesIBM's project "Atlantic" is a joint work between IBM and SAP that is going to blow the doors off any previous integration with SAP by IBM, Lotus, or Microsoft. To make it even better, No Portal Server Required. This is a Notes solution at its very core, and the work is done very well. I think this is going to stop a lot of migrations away from Notes in their tracks, and drive many customers who may have been on the fence about a client side upgrade toward the 8.5 client very soon after it is ......
  103. 07/14/2008What is the best data plan for roaming laptop access when I'm in the E.U for a week this fall?The only real down side I have with the Verizon Wireless laptop card I use is that because it is CDMA based it won't work when I go to Europe. In the past I've always just rented a cheap phone and that's been good enough. This year, I want to do better. I've gotten very very used to the idea of my laptop being able to get a decent speed connection to the internet pretty much everywhere whenever I want. I'd like to be able to do the same thing in Europe. I've found data connectivity in hotels there isn't ......
  104. 07/12/2008IndyMac bank failure - Does this mean my mortgage payments are over?I realize the news reports all seem to make it look as though these failing financial institutions were all spending their time defrauding each other and their investors, bilking innocent unwed mothers out of their savings, and stealing houses. Clearly that doesn't tell the whole story, because our experience with IndyMac has been positive. ......
  105. 07/11/2008Updated Blog Template - Finally on-lineThis is a new template applied to the existing data, so all your comments and feedback should still be here. I plan to extend this template to the main NCT site very soon, and then the links across the top will make more sense as the whole of the "NCT" site and the "BLOG" site will finally be a single integrated user interface. Let me know if you see anything that isn't working. Try using the site search, that is the biggest change I've ......
  106. 07/10/2008To our shock and amazement, Nathan T. Freeman.......is no longer a candidate for the Darwin award. His wife (and what a saint she must be!) has been able to summon the patience to provide him an heir. Soon, the first of Nathan's progeny will begin its own exploits. Now that the Freeman genetic transfer project has forked, one can hope for a better result with the new code. Having briefly met Nathan's wife, we can at least look forward to a much improved User Interface on the new model. Best of luck to Mother and Child. They're going to need ......
  107. 07/10/2008Insane pictures from the July 5th tanker fireIncredible pictures from the July 5th tanker fire in Golden Valley, Arizona..... Here is the story on CNN's ......
  108. 07/10/2008Long term Notes success and interesting Sametime traction at a new SMB client siteI don't normally pitch product in the kind of engagements I take on. Usually, I'm there for quick and specific purposes and then gone again. It may be a security review, some help on performance, or a project in trouble -- but in most cases its not a "sales" kind of engagement. That's why yesterday's call was so interesting. There's a company here in the Portland area that we consider to be fairly big in Maine, but most of the you would put in the SMB market. They've got a few hundred mail users in four ......
  109. 07/06/2008Surprisingly good zombie movies seen from my comfy chairHere's the thing - I love movies. I don't actually go to the movies very often. There are a number of reasons for this, including the fact that I've got two businesses I'm trying to run, three children, a second career as a firefighter, and I live in a place where there are almost no modern theaters. The closest stadium seating theater is a half hour drive away, and the next one after that is about forty five minutes drive. The nearby theater is in what used to be a K-Mart and its like watching a big TV at ......
  110. 07/05/2008Breaking News: Gasoline Tanker fire on US 68 near Kingman, AZ -- Second Signal Audio from the call here!The audio below is taken directly from the Second Signal system. The incident is still ongoing as of the time of this blog posting. There is at least one, possibly two semi-trucks on fire. At least one is a gasoline tanker. US-68 is currently closed near Kingman, AZ. http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-42978 Golden Valley Fire Department is one of the first departments in the country using Second Signal to provide information to call-responders in real-time. For more information about Second Signal, click this ......
  111. 07/05/2008Setting / Changing the UNID on documents - a fantastic hack for fixing problems or creating development copies of databasesCredit where it's due, Nathan brought this one to my attention. He's using the technique for something else he'll be blogging about later with a great deal of excitement. When he told me what he was doing, I wasn't as interested in how he was using it as he was (have to keep that part a secret) but I was pretty interested in the little hack he's taking advantage of. You can set the Universal ID on a Notes Document. I wasn't aware of this, but in lotusscript, NotesDocument.UniversalID is not a read-only ......
  112. 07/04/2008Geek move review! "Untraceable" -- Does it pass the geek test?I watched this one while doing some other things, but what caught my attention was the effort they went to in making the tech stuff at least close to plausible. They actually went overboard a bit explaining that right near the beginning. The idea is that this serial killer uses a website to stream live video of captured people being slowly killed. The gimmick is that the more people who watch the video the faster the death. The site can't be traced because (and they go to great lengths to explain this) the ......
  113. 07/04/2008A must watch video for CSS developers - Even if you don't use YUIMost of you know that by this time of day (7pm as I write this) I have the attention span of a gerbil on crack. That should add some weight to the recommendation I'm about to make. I just watched (most of) a 42 minute presentation on CSS that is geared toward jumpstarting the viewer on using the YUI tookit. The presentation is by the author of the CSS files themselves, and manages to include some fantastic background and detail about exactly how different browsers calculate fonts widths and scaling. By ......
  114. 07/04/2008Config driven CSS websites in Domino - What do you tokenize?I'm soliciting ideas & best practices on building configurable "theme like" CSS for a Domino site. I'm in the midst of a design refresh for this blog, as well as the main NCT site. They are both functional but truly ugly. I've decided to merge the two into a much more integrated self -- but more on that later. As part of the redesign work, I've been hand crafting a bit of HTML and CSS that will eventually become the framework into which all the active content will be placed. Every time I do this, I try to ......
  115. 07/03/2008Declaration of Independence - Take a minute or two, and read itWere it not for the events leading to, and following from this document; we in this part of the world would be speaking English, would be disliked by the French, and would...oh, heck, just read the thing. It's a great work.#dofi {xwidth:100%; color:black; margin:15px; padding:25px; background-image:url(/apblog4.nsf/0/0734560CA88260728525747C000F479F/$file/parchmnt.jpg) ; border:solid 1px black; #dofi p {INCONGRESS, JULY4, 1776A DECLARATIONBy theREPRESENTATIVESof theUNITED STATES OF AMERICA,INGENERAL ......
  116. 07/03/2008All your YouTube viewing history will now be available to ViacomAs if my post earlier today wasn't enough, here's some further emphasis. According to Wired, a judge has ordered Google to turn over its entire history of user viewing data to the media giant. The ruling is based in part on the idea that IP addresses which are tracked don't constitute sufficiently identifying information to be considered a privacy problem. IMHO this is a massive hypocrisy. If the data isn't revealing enough to be a privacy concern, then it has no value as a proof of violation and thus ......
  117. 07/03/2008Designer in Eclipse (Domino Designer 8.5 Beta) "Error creating new project" Dialog BoxIn Domino Designer 8.5 Beta 1, you may have seen this dialog box when attempting to view the design of a database: The "Project" it is referencing is an Eclipse project that is part of the Eclipse workspace. Your NSF database is being presented to the Eclipse framework as a project. The problem appears to be the result of already having a project with the same name. This happens if you already have used Designer in Eclipse to look at the design of a database with the same name on another server. To resolve ......
  118. 07/03/2008George Orwell would have been so proudWell, actually I doubt he'd have been "Proud" as it were, given that his work was meant to be a warning as much as a predictor. It may be that instead of "Proud" I should say he would have been dismayed by our inability to avoid so much of his forewarning. Stories today by Mike Gotta and Ian White (writing on the Collaboration 2.0 blog at CW) have got me thinking again about how much data is being compiled every day about us. A great deal of what we watch, read, write, and who we talk to is logged and can ......
  119. 07/03/2008Bush Administration ends up supporting the Internet Porn industryIn a recent press release, an independent organization of the Adult Entertainment industry is reporting that on-line memberships had a significant jump in volume as a result of the Bush Administration's economic stimulus package. The story can be found in many prominent locations and was referenced today in The Huffington Post. It appears that for many Americans, it wasn't the economy that needed stimulating. According to Kirk Mishkin, Head Research Consultant for AIMRCo, "Many of the sites we surveyed ......
  120. 07/02/2008Extremely frustrating problem with Domino Directory "Global Domain" document - Causes you to waste hours looking for the problemDo you see anything wrong with this? I'll give you a hint: The server accepts mail for three of the four listed domains just fine. The fourth one fails. Why does it fail? Because there is a SPACE character after the end of the the domain "thisoneisbroken.com " Unlike the "Members" field on the "Group" form, which has a translation formula as so: @Trim(@Unique(Members)) The "LocalInternetDomainAliases" field on the "Domain" form has no translation formula. If you have a space there (from copying a domain ......
  121. 07/02/2008XPages: Is this a show stopper for you?There's a control missing from XPages in Beta 1. I honestly don't remember (if I was ever told) if its in the plan or not because I never thought to ask about it. I guess it never even occurred to me that it was missing until I tried building a version of this blogsite using XPages. At present - speaking of Domino 8.5 Public Beta 1 - there is now way to drop a Rich Text control onto an XPage, bind it to a rich text field (e.g. BODY) on a document you've bound as a data source, and have it render the rich ......
  122. 07/02/2008XPages in Beta 1 -- Not done enough yet for me to use in productionI've spent 20 or so hours working with XPages now against my local server and have come to the conclusion that as excited as I am about them - its going to have to wait. There are a number of features not yet complete, a few bugs, and a lack of help that leaves me looking in anticipation for a next beta. It's frustrating that I can't talk about what isn't there that I'm expecting, because that would be breaking NDA. It's even more frustrating that I have to wait before I can go live with some of the things ......
  123. 07/02/2008Killing Spree!This morning I've had to go on a bit of a killing spree. Relax, its not about people. I've had to use various pesticides and herbicides to reclaim the area around the pool from the rapidly encroaching wildlife of Maine. Where I live, summer is short but the soil can only be described as 'fecund' and we've had plenty of rain to keep things healthy. The result is a riotously fast growth of every kind of weed, bug, amphibian, and rodent you can imagine. ......
  124. 07/01/2008DAOS (Attachements stored outside the NSF in a pool) after 1 week - The VedictIt's a winner! After one week, the most important thing I can say about using DAOS on my mail file, is that I'd totally forgotten about it. DAOS enabled servers use a file system data store as a shared pool for file attachments across many databases to prevent duplication, drastically reduce file storage space requirements, reduce disk fragmentation, and improve NSF file performance and reliability. After one week of using DAOS, my mail file remains about half the size it was before, but otherwise I'm ......
  125. 06/30/2008Mixing @Formulas and Lotusscript on Web Pages? Now that XPages are set to take over the world, did you think your Lotuscript skills were wasted? The short answer is absolutely not. As you can see from this image (taken from another fantastic XPages example by John Mackey), there's something funny going on here. This looks an awful lot like Lotuscript. It isn't really Lotusscript, but instead it's JavaScript with objects created to do most of the same things you can do with both Formula languages. Most people who program in Lotuscript mix up two ......
  126. 06/29/2008Free the Bookmarks! (or "What we should learn from the OSS movement")Firefox 3.0 has been out for about 1 week. There are more than 280 community created "Themes" -- color and icon sets. There are over 475 add-on tools for it which make managing bookmarks better for people. There are nearly 150 add-on tools just for better handling the tabbed interface. Why? What's the deal? Do the thousands of contributors to the Mozilla project all just suck at creating user interfaces? No. It means the open source movement recognizes that no matter how good their UI skills are, a huge ......
  127. 06/29/2008Wanted: Guest Bloggers - Looking for a few good lurkers willing to try their hand at one or two brief storiesI'm moving toward an updated and much move community focused kind of venue for this site. One of the features I'd like to add is a place for those in the community who don't blog, but may have one or two hot button topics they'd like to hold forth on. Initially, I'm going to ask for people who want to talk about something related to Domino. I'd love to get perspective pieces talking about what's important from corporate I.T. people involved in the data to day business of Domino & Notes Admin, Security, ......
  128. 06/29/2008Nearly 5 years of blogging -- with comments -- as a wordleNot content with just Cut & Paste, I exported this entire blog -- every subject and body field in it -- to text. I stripped the HTML tags and frequently re-used URL links (like the links to where I store photos) and then took the entire text over to http://wordle.net/create Its less interesting than I'd ......
  129. 06/27/2008I'm thinking about packaging up some services around security, court ordered mail search compliance, and performance.I've been considering taking some of what I've been doing around security and compliance and creating some packaged offerings. They would all be priced under $10,000 and would be soup to nuts offerings targeted at the following: 1. Response to court or lawyer requests for document search across mail, discussion, and other Notes databases --- The idea would be to bring in my tools to do a comprehensive, unbiased search across an entire mail domain, putting together in place all of the uses of a term, ......
  130. 06/26/2008Gab & Tim go on a fire call! A short story in pictures...Good friends Gab & Tim Davis came to visit The North today. The got a bit more excitement than they bargained for when we went down to the fire station. With the idea of just a bit of tourism, I brought them in to our Central station to show off the trucks and gear before we went for lunch with Barb. After getting Tim all decked out in bunker gear -- fully encapsulated, breathing off a bottle -- we went for a ride in Engine 1 for a few minutes. The surprise came when just as we were getting ready to leave, ......
  131. 06/25/2008What is the root of your application?I got stuck a bit today. It took me getting out of the programming tools and back to paper to get myself unstuck. By diving into code too soon, I'd painted myself into a corner without understanding the nature of the problem. It took more thought and less code to solve the riddle. Now that I've got some really powerful tools to play with, I'm having to think about things I never did before. For example, where does an application's data begin? A user hits my XPage and that user is new. There's no profile. ......
  132. 06/24/2008Meta-Blogging: What can be learned from watching Planet Lotus hit countersI've been chatting a bit with Yancy and others about Planet Lotus. The site has really become a great resource. I've been watching the stats. Here's a few things of note: 1. Interest in XPages massive. Any good story about them generates a ton of hits. 2. Admin stuff is under represented. Admin posts generate a lot of hits as a result. 3. More and more people are contributing real value. 4. It still pays to be famous for just being famous. What else can you ......
  133. 06/24/200850 Percent Reduction in mail file size with no loss of data or functionalityThis morning, I set up DAOS on my Domino 8.5 Beta server. Its a Win32 machine running in my office. My customer facing servers are not upgraded yet. Since my mail file is replicated onto more than one clustered server, I saw no danger in giving DAOS a try today. So far, everyone I know who's been testing it is increasingly comfortable with its ability to handle problems as well or better than data stored in the NSF natively. DAOS pulls file attachments out of the NSF and stores them in an arcane file tree ......
  134. 06/24/2008Enough theory! Here's how my first real foray into building something with XPages is goingAfter all the time at the workshop doing walk throughs, all the demos, and all the talking -- I decided to try building something useful with XPages today. Even with all the background information, I'm finding my knowledge to be a little too theoretical and when it comes to practical code I'm really having to work for it. The idea is simple enough -- but revolutionary from a pure old-school Notes perspective. I have two forms. One has company data, the other has record data. The records have a many to one ......
  135. 06/24/2008XPage - Quick Example: Save Time adding view page controls to a view on an XPageThis screenshot shows a quick example of how easy it was to add view paging controls to a view container on an XPage. I'm creating a custom control, which is really like a sub-xpage. You create custom controls to tie blocks of user interface together that work with specific data or functionality. You can then use them on your top level xpages, on other custom controls, etc. Unlike subforms, they're not limited by not being allowed to have the same field names, or by having some functionality that only ......
  136. 06/23/2008George Carlin - A place for my stuff; Was he talking about Notes? Link to the routine on YouTubeIt may not have been about Lotus Notes, but one of the things that always makes me think of George Carlin is how much Lotus Notes has become a place for my stuff. As my little tribute to Mr. Carlin, take a look at this few minutes of video. ......
  137. 06/22/2008Introducing Skippy! Ari gets a new puppy. I would say it was cute, but that would be redundant. Ari has wanted a puppy for a long time. She's saved the money needed, gotten good grades, been helpful around the house, and done a huge amount of research into understanding the different breeds. We ended up adopting from a local shelter. Skippy is 5 months old and some kind of Corgi/Lab/Other mix. He's good tempered and seems to learn very fast. ......
  138. 06/21/2008Gaming Planet Lotus is juvinile and destructively arrogantSomeone pinged me on IM today and pointed out that it was very likely someone had used a hack similar to one I pointed out to Yancy a few months back that could allow someone to "game the system" as it were and rack up endless link count numbers on Planet Lotus. It's not a difficult hack to accomplish and fairly tricky to defend against (though not impossible). I don't really know if the post in question is actually being manipulated that way. I'm told it has more link hit numbers than there are daily ......
  139. 06/21/2008IBM's Project Atlantic -- SAP Integration with Notes that's compelling and approachable on day 1I got a preview yesterday of IBM's new Project Atlantic. Since I don't do much SAP integration myself, I expected another hour or so of slow, painful, death by slideware. Boy was I wrong. I'm still working out just what was disclosed under NDA and what was public information, so I'm going to post impressions here, and ask you to follow the links for details and to see aProject Atlanticlive demo.Here's what made such a great impact on me: 1. It's a real integration, not a database driver. IBM and SAP have ......
  140. 06/19/2008Themes in XPages - More insane powerSo for now they work just against elements (components) on XPages - but its what they do that's cool. Imagine if you could say that anywhere you place a "Button" in your application you want to make sure that an html class type is set to "styleButton". A couple of lines in your theme, and now all the buttons on your XPage have a class set that will let you identify them in your CSS. It isn't just CSS properties or even just html properties. STYLES can change, replace, or append to the default settings of ......
  141. 06/18/2008A somewhat hidden gem in 8.5 beta - Make your Workspace look better!I saw over the shoulder of an IBMer today that his workspace was much nicer looking. I wasn't peaking at what he was doing, just happened to be sitting behind and to the side and it caught my eye. I asked him about it, to see if this was a "what's next" kind of thing on a private build. "No," he said, "it just turned on like that one day in the Beta." We spoke a bit, showed Maureen, and eventually one of them suggested it could be related to the use of "Textured Workspace". His was turned off and mine ......
  142. 06/18/2008Tabs, tabs, tabs, tabs ....wonderful tabs... -- Will most XPages sites use tabbed navigation?XPages provides a really natural way to create tabbed interfaces for web applications. You drop a tab control onto the XPage, then drop a custom control (remember, that's just another XPage built to be use-case specific) onto the various tabs. My application has four interrelated forms so it makes perfect sense to create a custom control for each as well as a custom control representing the access method for each (e.g. for those with multiple documents, a control which displays them in a view or a fancier ......
  143. 06/17/2008XPages continues to impress the heck out of meSo today I'm taking a pretty deep dive into XPages development as it currently exists in the Domino Designer 8.5 Beta. What continues to impress me is the success of Phillipe and Maureen -- and of course their entire teams -- at integrating the things learned in the process of building newer things like Portal with Maureen's unrivaled depth of understanding when it comes to the root core problems we struggle with in Domino and Notes development. There are dozen or so places as you get deeper and deeper ......
  144. 06/17/2008So a bunch of Notes guys walk into a bar.........Actually, its not a bar, its a conference room. It will probably end up being a bar later. I'm sitting here with - among many others - Nathan, John, Rob (Captain Oblivious), Howard, George, and many others. Its a hands on seminar environment. Do I need to go into much detail before you start to imagine just how fast the actual conversation is diverging from the planned ......
  145. 06/13/2008Pluto - and Notes - get the last laughPluto finally gets some love from the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Two years ago the long running battle of Pluto's status as a planet looked to be over. The IAU declared Pluto to simply not be a planet. Pluto, they said, was more like a comet with a relatively round orbit. Terms like dwarf planet and planetoid were used. In 2003, at the IBM Business Partner Day opening session, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson (who later returned as the Opening General Session speaker) declared "Pluto is not a planet. ......
  146. 06/11/2008It isn't necessary to run down some features to make the point for othersI've enjoyed watching the reaction to the Notes 8.5 beta. As a member of the "Design Partner" group, it is very easy to loose perspective when we're discussing things over time and making predictions of how this feature or that lacking will be received. I've been right in my predictions but wrong in the volume and criticality of those reactions. I'm glad about that. What has me a bit concerned though, is that I'm hearing some otherwise rational people being critical of some fantastic features just because ......
  147. 06/09/2008One heck of a weekend. Fire hose failures, 9 year old birthday party, Car Crash Calls, etc. etc. etc.I didn't do much Domino related work this weekend. There was too much else to do. When summer finally comes to Maine, there's no mistaking it. Everything is completely lush and green. We had a few days of rain during the week, but Saturday was in the 80's and Sunday was well into the 90's -- that's a rarity up here. Saturday morning I started out getting the pool area cleaned up and the last of the work done to make it ready for the swimming season. That means bolting in the stair rails and ladder, running ......
  148. 06/05/2008Notes Client and Designer -- My list of comments after a week of useOverall, for a BETA 1 version its been a good experience. Its been at least as stable as 8.0.1 if not more (which is a bit sad, really, for 8.0.1). There are a few annoyances however. I've been keeping a couple of notepads open while I work so I could toss in comments. Here's the list as this weeks nears its end: Notes 8.5 Client feedback Workspace got uglier - unread mark window is odd Its not inset any more. Its a border that changes color with mouse over. It looks like something someone did to test ......
  149. 06/05/2008Building and managing a hot failover server for DominoA pair of clustered servers behind a network dispatcher in your building is easy to manage. What about failover machines that aren’t located in the same city? I may be a day late and a dollar short, as they say, but I’ve spent a good bit of the last couple of days implementing a new server at a data center in Dallas. The new server will act as a hot standby. While Domino has built in cluster replication to keep itself up to date, there are many other aspects of a complex system to think about. Here are ......
  150. 06/04/2008The Birth of a Conspiracy -- I love this and hate this at the same timeGet out your tin foil hats, people. You're witnessing the birth of a new conspiracy. According to a few people who mostly go nameless, rather than a fire and explosion at the Houston data center, the whole thing has been some kind of bit theatrical exercise to cover up for.....here it comes.....a government raid. http://tinyurl.com/5hm7hw Now I'm all in favor of some creative writing, but c'mon people lets get this right if we're going to do it. Depending on your favorite brand of government evildoers, ......
  151. 06/04/2008The Planet's H1 Datacenter -- Still having issues on 1st floor. Secretaries, Janitors, and Accounting staff helping physically move servers off siteOf the 9000 servers in the H1 datacenter, about 3000 of them were on the first floor. The 6000 second floor servers are pretty much back on line but those on the first floor have taken much longer. Replacement generators had to be found, parts replaced, and frantic electrical from very tired people have all led to more down time. Because restoring power to the first floor was taking so long, the offered to physically move anyone's server who wanted it moved to another data center. About 500 servers were ......
  152. 06/03/2008Data Center explosion in Houston takes down 9000 servers - what happened, and what you should consider about disaster recoveryHaving been impacted by the outage at The Planet, obviously I followed it closely. Through many telephone calls and chats with staff there and with people I know personally in the area with professional relationships on staff at The Planet, here's the best take I can give you on what really happened. What Happened? At about 17:45 CST on a Saturday, a fire and explosion took down an entire data center in Houston, TX belonging to hosting provider "The Planet". The state of the art facility manages more than ......
  153. 05/31/2008Downtime here - a fire at the provider data center took us outIf you're reading this, of course, the incident is over with - I'm writing it on my local server and it will replicate when it can. My public facing servers are at The Planet. They've been an excellent provider, and I've been happy. Right now though, the servers are down. According to the reports at The Planet, they had a fire in a transformer. Word is, none of the networking gear or servers were damaged, but the fire marshal in Houston made them shut down the generator standby systems. Now I'm waiting, ......
  154. 05/30/2008Lotus Notes 8.5 Beta 1 - The Verdict after 1 DayI've been running 8.5 Beta 1 as my production client and designer all day on my desktop. It has proven stable and fast enough for me to decide to switch the laptop as well. I'm going to go into test mode on the servers next week and if all goes well I'll be using the servers in production -- including DAOS (file storage outside the NSF, without duplicates). There are some oddities, but hell, 8.0.1 isn't all that stable and so far 8.5 Beta 1 isn't any worse -- and in some respects its better. The Designer ......
  155. 05/30/2008The LS editor is only MOSTLY dead in 8.5. If it was TRULY dead, could I do this.....So, how is it done? In desiger, right click on File Resource to create a NEW file resource. Name it something.lss -- anything with an LSS extension. The editor will come up. Be warned, however -- there is probably a good reason why its NOT supported yet. As John puts it, it is probably "Crashtaststic". On the up side, I grabbed an LSS file I had on disk and popped it in there, and the class browser ......
  156. 05/30/2008Designer In Eclipse - The first impact on my designs it will makeIt's no secret that the IDE you use will change the way you write code. Down the line a bit, I'm sure XPages will have the biggest impact. The first impact however is a bit of surprise. Right now, I frequently use "PAGE" elements as CSS, Javascript, or HTML content. Editing them is weak but it works out fairly well. Along comes Domino Designer in Eclipse. I had hoped that the editors would work against regular "Page" elements just by defining them as one kind or another. Instead, the new editors for ......
  157. 05/30/2008What's your first impression - one sentence - of Designer in EclipseI think there's a lot to say about Designer in Eclipse. There's some great potential there, and there is some massive user interface work needed. There are things missing, and there are new features added in that are great but not fully usable against existing applications without serious re-work. My one sentence first impression: "DDE in 8.5 Beta is a giant bucket full of features blended in a mixer and poured into an eclipse bowl that someone forgot to clean out first." Some of the user interface -- like ......
  158. 05/30/2008Bleedyellow chat room for beta 8.5 random chatterNathan has set up a chat room at Bleedyellow for the sort of random stream of consciousness observational stuff we're all chatting back and forth about with regards 8.5 Beta. To get in, open a browser and go to: http://imadv.bleedyellow.com Then log-in (you need a BleedYellow.com account). Once you're logged in, go to: ......
  159. 05/30/2008If you're trying to get the 8.5 Domino/Notes Beta - Keep tryingThe web servers IBM is using seem to be overwhelmed but once you get through the transfer is still very fast. IBM isn't having a bandwidth problem (see the 900KB/sec transfer rate below). Just a scalability one with their choice of servers for this task. They probably should have used ......
  160. 05/30/2008Today should be an interesting day on the blogs. Eyes open Domino bloggers - I can't wait to hear what people have to ......
  161. 05/28/2008Zero-Day Exploit in the wild today, and fairly widespread. Exploits FLASH browser plug-ins. Today is not a good day to go to web sites you don't know well. Even many known sites are being used as exploit redirects. http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/29386/info Adobe Flash Player SWF File Unspecified Remote Code Execution Vulnerability Symantec has observed that this issue is being actively exploited in the wild. Continued investigation reveals that this issue is fairly widespread. Malicious code is being injected into other third-party domains (approximately 20,000 web pages), most likely through ......
  162. 05/24/2008Properly using GPS is very much like religionI'm down in MA today at a soccer tournament being played on 38 fields in about ten different towns. Finding all these parks and schools isn't always easy. The GPS is a real help for team parents. A few people who have them have still had trouble though. They see the written directions and try to half follow those and half use the GPS. It doesn't work that way at all. To change from using maps and directions to using a GPS requires a conversion of faith a bit like a religious conversion. You must stop ......
  163. 05/22/2008Am I ignoring XPages?In a conference call yesterday, where I was continuing to advocate for a few points that quite frankly aren't going to go my way, I was told that I shouldn't ignore all the new things going in to the 8.5 release like XPages. (XPages are not a secret, and have been fully announced and committed to so I'm not breaking any rules there) Hello? Is there anyone out there reading these pages who does not feel I have been supportive enough of ......
  164. 05/22/2008American Airlines makes a singularly stupid move in the ever escalating "war on customers"In 1993 when I was just starting to travel frequently on business, my preferred airline was American. Later that year, when my wife and I went to take my first born to Arizona, the gate attendant in Chicago hit is with a $40 on the spot fee for gate checking our stroller. Over the next ten years I spent well over $100,000 on Delta -- most of it in Full Fare Coach, last minute business travel (the highest profit margin seats on the plane). Welcome to 2008. American has decided that they'll now charge ......
  165. 05/19/2008Some parameters that I have added which have really help out an ailing server or two.I'm not a big fan of making changes to your INI files to tune up your Domino server. Most of the time, I've seen servers in worse shape due to excessive use of everyone's favorite parameter changes. It goes without saying that there is no such thing as "RunFaster=1" -- there are not universal "always set this" parameters. If there were, they'd be set that way by default. That said, here are a few I've found that have helped me deal with some issues lately. -- And a shout out to Gab Davis, the top Domino ......
  166. 05/19/2008Thank you for your feedback. I don't know if we accomplished anything grand, but.......I can say with certainty that it was read and discussed by the people you would hope are reading and discussing these things. In the last two weeks, the IBM Lotus team has had an earful about what the community wants, needs, and expects out of the next release and the ones after that. They've heard it here, and they've heard it much louder in private. Now its time to get back to work, because at the end of the day, where are we gonna go? Microsoft? Not until they come up with something that can ......
  167. 05/15/2008What are YOUR expectations from a Notes & Domino 8.5 Release?When Notes & Domino 8.5 comes out, what are the "Must Address" or "Must Have" features you demand in the three major components - Client, Server, and Designer? It isn't a secret that I'm in the Design Partner program. Because of that, I can't (and won't) talk about what is or is not getting done in the pre-beta releases and information we're seeing. I won't even hint at it by telling you what my expectations are for the release. I don't want you to glean from me what I think is good and bad in the current ......
  168. 05/14/2008A few life lessons that first-responders learn quicklyFirst responders, medical interns, and all such learn a few things that translate well as good advice for everyone. Some require a little more imagination to adapt as regular life rules, while others are going to click right away when you read them. 1. It's not your emergency. Calm Down. 2. Calm and Panic both spread quickly. Which will you be? 3. Don't skip meals. The alarm goes off when you're least ready. 4. Don't hold off going to the bathroom - see rule #3. 5. Slow down. Don't create your own ......
  169. 05/14/2008The secret ingredient in most of these Web 2.0 social applications is EgoWhere is the real force that pushes people to Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, and other such things? The answer, I think, is made clear in examining how Twitter finds a niche between IRC (Group Chat Rooms), Mailing Lists, RSS Blog feeds, and Instant Messaging. Surely RSS is capable of doing what Twitter does without the need for expensive infrastructure if keeping track of your friends is all you're after. So, what does Twitter add to the mix? Twitter offers the competitive ego a platform that COUNTS how ......
  170. 05/12/2008Ok., I guess I have to give Twitter a try.For those of you who want to, I'll start updating the thing tomorrow. If you are interested in following me, I may follow you back. I do plan to have twitter automatically updated with fire call status from Second Signal. That should be interesting. Who knows what else will get put in there. An auto feed from my calendar could be interesting. http://twitter.com/firefightergeek If you have suggestions on who or what I should follow, send em over. I'll pop Twitter over on a second monitor and see if its ......
  171. 05/12/2008When is it the responsibility of leaders to do some following?Imagine our leadership taking polls, talking with important people, and building support for something big. The big thing is expensive. Its going to be controversial. If all goes well it will change the world. What if it doesn't go well? Of course it will go well. We're big and powerful. We have the best technology and we have the best force for deploying that technology. We know things. Sure, there are dissenters. They don't matter. Our constituency really likes our Big Idea. We'll even bring in some of ......
  172. 05/10/2008At this point, even Hillary Clinton's supporters have to know how bad for her party it would be if she somehow pulled off a win.Imagine for a second the impossible happens, and Hillary Clinton wins the nomination. The unlikely event could only happen through a back room deal at this point that either suddenly convinced most of the "Super Delegates" to vote for her or else she talked the credentials committee into counting the unauthorized primary data from the two state in dispute. I can't imagine it happening, but if it did -- tell me that an entire generation of his supporters won't feel completely blown off. Now tell me she ......
  173. 05/10/2008Place like this really do exist - and I live where I can enjoy them as part of every day livingAri had a soccer game today at Fort Williams Park. It happens there is a field there. It is a park after all. It is also the home of a classic New England lighthouse, breathtaking shoreline cliffs, and an unbelievable view of the Atlantic Ocean. Click any of these links to see the pictures in a larger resolution. For more information about Fort Williams - click here. img.linkImage { margin:.5em; border:solid 1px blue; a { text-decoration:none ......
  174. 05/08/2008What should the Notes desktop really look like?Are you still using the same desktop workspace in Notes that you were 10 years ago? Truth be told, it is a desktop paradigm that even looks ugly when compared to the Mac Finder interface in 1991. Although there have been attempts at a replacement, most of us still use this dog of a UI with 32x32 pixel 16 color icons set into square blocks about 3 times that size. We can organize these application icons any way we like - as long as we like gray on gray in a grid pattern. We can even have folder tabs to ......
  175. 05/07/2008The Urban Dictionary definition of Borked.....is borked.I love this. Tech people use the term "borked" pretty freely now, but for those who actually remember it is a reference to nominee Robert Bork who's confirmation hearings were driven off the rails in the midst of partisan politics. No matter which side you agree with, it was clear that the process itself was totally broken as a result. The argument over the definition of the term, is suffering the same fate. Check out the use of alternate definitions to continue the very same argument. ......
  176. 05/06/2008Iron Man - Best. Comic. Book. Movie. Ever.I took my (nearly) 13 year old as an excuse to see Iron Man this weekend. What can I say that you haven't already heard? it totally rocked. The suit? it rocked. The house? It rocked. Pepper? She rocked. repeatedly. I do wish they'd have have played more Black Sabbath tracks during the film. There were a couple of spots where just a few really heavy guitar licks would have fit. In all other respects -- Awesome. ......
  177. 04/30/2008One of the best quotes I've ever read from "Quotes of the Day"I cant help but really like this quote: In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - George ......
  178. 04/30/2008For the second time in as many weeks, Notes & Domino are getting positive commentary on Slashdot!This story in particular is a good one for the Notes community because it very publically points out how ridiculous the idea of an "Upgrade" to Exchange really is. I particularly like one comment that called the practice of moving to Exchange "Faith Based Computing". I didn't think I'd live to see the day when you could mention Notes on Slashdot and not get deluged with outdated complaints about the UI or whatever. ......
  179. 04/28/2008The part came from Hong Kong, finally, so I was able to fix Ari's Nintendo DS Lite screenAri had dropped her DS Lite a couple of weeks back. Thanks to the magic interwebs I was able to find a replacement part, and today I did the work of putting the new top screen in. It wasn't terribly hard, though some soldering was necessary and the ribbon cable is a pain to get routed through the hinge to the main board. How's this for some fine solder work ......
  180. 04/24/2008A busy week on the fire department side this weekAnother structure fire today. This time all the way in Freeport. That's two towns over. At 15:30 or so both Engine 1 and Engine 3 from Cumberland were dispatched to Yarmouth's North Street station for coverage. Yarmouth had an all hands brush fire going on (it is brush fire season here, from now until when things green up in a couple of weeks). We left our Central station with a crew of three and were almost immediately re-directed to the town of Freeport (one town over from Yarmouth) where they had a ......
  181. 04/24/2008HBO Films John Adams - AmazingI've just finished watching the final part of the HBO Films production "John Adams". What a fantastic mini-series this has been. Though I studied American History (I realize to many of you in Europe this would seem a fairly short course) in school, my understanding of the events immediately surrounding the American Revolution always felt very distant and out of touch. Since moving to New England - and particularly since joining the fire department here in Maine I've gotten to know the places where these ......
  182. 04/21/2008Too many emails makes me rescind permission to send.There are two sites I do business with that I've given permission to email me from to time with updates that I may find of value. Unfortunately, these two sites have confused this permission with what they seem to perceive as a desire to get these emails daily -- or sometimes several times a day. As a result, I'm removing this permission from both sites. The idea of "opt-in" email updates is a good one, but companies need to understand the difference between "Yes, send me an update if something good comes ......
  183. 04/17/2008Speaking Nightmares -The old Water in the Laptop trick...The biggest nightmare I can foresee would be to immediately follow Paul & Bill’s flying circus. Fortunately I’ve never had to do that. I have had some….challenges, however. At the H&T Verlogs conference in Munich a few years back, about 3 minutes into a presentation that included live demos on integrating IBM DB2 with Lotus Domino, I managed to knock a 5 ounce glass of water directly into my Dell laptop’s keyboard. The laptop shut down, and when it tried to boot came up with the fantastic error message ......
  184. 04/15/2008Playing with fire -- and learning to not like CAFSCAFS (Compressed Air Foam System) is a fairly new technology for the fire service. Some people swear by it, and other people don't like it at all. Until today I held no real opinion as I hadn't used it, though I'd expressed some trepidation. At just after 4 this afternoon, Cumberland toned out for our RIT to respond to the next town over, Yarmouth, for a possible structure fire. By the time we were on the road, Yarmouth had gone to the All hands, and about the time we got there they went to a 2nd Alarm. ......
  185. 04/12/2008How many times a week does having access to the internet save your bacon or change your life?My oldest daughter, Ari, tripped and fell while carrying her Nintendo DS-Lite. This is something she saved for for a long time. A broken top screen led to tears. Because we all know that I'm way too soft when it comes to such things, I told her I'd see if it was something I could fix. Enter the Internet. Within seconds I'd found multiple sites with instructions for replacing the top screen of a Nintendo DS-Lite including a full write up at Instructables. The instructions even recommended getting the ......
  186. 04/11/2008Cars left out of the sunshine for too long burst into flame in Portland, Maine!Early this morning, the city of Portland, Maine was busy. Within a few minutes and all within a few blocks of each other 8 or 9 cars burst into flames. Three buildings -- at least one apartment building -- became involved and more than 20 people are left without their home and belongings. Fortunately, there are no reported injuries. At 4am my fire pager went off with a Box 700 for Ladder 7 and Squad 1 (our heavy rescue) to cover Portland for their 3rd alarm fire. This happens a couple of times a year. ......
  187. 04/10/2008Scary Fire Stuff -- probably the scariest blog entry I've ever posted.At last night's officers meeting, one of our deputy chiefs presented a follow-up from a fire in Price William County, Virginain which a firefighter was killed. Its something we do as part of training, so its not that it was unusual but this one really hit home for some of us. This was presented in much the same way as the last one we did (the tragedy in Charleston, SC). We listened to the audio recording timed with photos showing the fire's development and some 3D models showing the layout and the heat ......
  188. 04/07/2008Ok. Memes being what they are... How the hell did I ever get into Lotus Notes?It's always been about the collaboration for me. I'm a geek, but it isn't what I'd planned to do for a living. I'd gone off to University of Arizona to study a program that I hoped would eventually take me to veterinary school so that I could take care of horses. That was, I admit, a vague idea at best. Mostly what I was studying was living with my girlfriend. School was a distant second. Although I'd been into computers for a while they weren't more than tools and toys at that point. Then my cousin's ......
  189. 04/03/2008Lotus - The Mike Rhodin YearsBy now, if you don't know Mike Rhodin is leaving the Lotus organization and being replaced by Bob Picciano from the DB2 side of the house, you probably aren't someone who cares and will want to skip this posting. I don't know anything about Mr. Picciano other than what I've read on other people's blog posts, but it seems he comes from a technical sales and executive background and has very high credibility within the IBM organization. Those are good things. While I didn't agree with Mike Rhodin in some ......
  190. 04/01/2008Happy Birthday MomThis isn't an April fool's joke. My mother's birthday is in fact April 1st. I also know that she tends to follow this blog -- probably because I am otherwise absolutely terrible out getting pictures and letters about the kids out to her and she lives a very long way from here (in so many ways). If I'm following correctly, she is now 39. Still. I realize that's odd given that I'm 40, but one doesn't question these things. By the way, if you think its unusual to have a one parent born on April 1st, consider ......
  191. 03/30/2008IdeaJam Remembers You! Now powered by NCT Remember Me! To celebrate, I've made it cheaper.It's finally happened! NCT Remember Me! is now up and live on IdeaJam! You won't have to re-authenticate just to vote any more. Just check the box. The product, NCT Remember Me! provides true Domino session based authentication credentials. Its not a trick where an anonymous user is recognized and their name pops in. Reader Names fields, Database ACL's, and the other things you associate with being logged into Domino on the web are all supported. NCT Remember Me! is for sale. You can use it on your own ......
  192. 03/30/2008Lotscript Error Handling LibraryThis is a cleaned up version for your use -- in my own case, its a bit more complex as I use a logging database to log much of the agent activity I do. In that case, the script library opens that database and automatically creates a document with fields for database name, agent name, start time, end time, etc. It also writes logging output to that file in any agent using with a debug_print() function used instead of "print" or "msgbox" throughout the agent. My version also handles the functionname as a ......
  193. 03/29/2008A shout out to Kohler - yea, them.A bit of a plumbing job that I had to do went much easier thanks to some good support from Kohler. In our master bathroom, we have faucets and valves from the Kohler Fairfaxfamily. The bathtub valve was dripping, but I couldn't find a replacement cartridge at any of the hardware stores I frequent. When I called Kohler, I found out why. They don't sell replacement cartridges. They give them away. Simply through my call, within 5 minutes I was talking to an expert who agreed with me that it needed ......
  194. 03/27/2008A couple of comments on some recent teapot scale tempests in the Domino communitySorry I've missed playing in the latest round of who has the biggest ego. I've been working hard lately -- mostly to make up for a dreadful second half of 2007 while I worked on Second Signal and therefore didn't do enough consulting. It wouldn't be a good meaningless argument however, if I didn't weigh in. Here's an invoice for my two cents.... Grand Ruckus #1: Volker Weber posted a carefully aimed groin-kick of truth in the form of his "10 common beliefs in the Domino community", to which Nathan ......
  195. 03/27/2008Spring? I suppose.I took this picture today, March 27th at 07:39. As you can see, the pool's location can now be accurately determined beneath the remaining snow cover. The diving board is poking out just a bit, and the slide is almost fully visible. No sign of the pool cover yet, however. This is obviously in an area fully exposed to direct sunlight most of the day and not impacted by snow plows or anything. Its just natural snow pack. Just think, only 5 weeks till this is opened up and ready to swim ......
  196. 03/24/2008Where have you been? I haven't heard from you in days! This post will ramble some, but I'm in a good mood so I'll share.Has it really been 10 days since my last post? Wow. Its been busy around here. To begin with, spring is trying to sneak its way in. Its less than 20 degrees (Fahrenheit) tonight, but during the day its been up around forty and little by little we're getting rid of the snow pack. There is still upwards of two feet of icy remnant left in many spots, but in sunny places in the center of the yard there's ground showing through. We had a white Easter. We had a white Christmas. We had a white everything else in ......
  197. 03/14/2008Some good old back to basics Domino code this weekThe nature of my practice is that I focus on the real specialty stuff and don't really get to do basic web apps very much. The last few days I've enjoyed working on classic Domino web app though. With all the time spent focusing on Javascript fanciness, AJAX, and pages that don't look like pages you can forget what a joy it can be to just let the server do the work. Some of the built in features have come a long way since the last time I used them. Embedded html views with selectable entries and buttons ......
  198. 03/12/2008Follow-Up - My take on Open ID - It takes us the wrong way. This is a problem that already has better solutions.Open ID is an attempt at the concept of an ID Vault for browser based access to web sites. As a vault, it gets fairly close. Unfortunately, it's storing credentials that are themselves inadequate. If the open ID method of sharing credentials could be applied to the storage of real credentials, it would be much more powerful. I've looked into Open ID a bit more since I started talking about it in a previous blog entry. I've come to a few initial conclusions about it that are fairly disappointing. It isn't ......
  199. 03/08/2008Is there any interest out there in an Open ID implementation for Domino?Open ID (http://openid.net) is an attempt to allow you to use the same credentials to log in on many web sites without having to remember different id and passwords. The idea is that you authenticate with any site that accepts Open ID based on credentials that you control. Your AIM address, for example, can be used as an Open ID. You may have many Open ID's, but a single Open ID can only be owned by one person. This site explains it better, I think: http://janrain.com/openid/ Anyway, I don't think it would ......
  200. 03/03/2008Creating an SSL Certificate for IBM Lotus DominoA great many people have asked me for a simple How-To on creating an SSL certificate for your Domino server. Here's a very clear step-by-step guide that should do the job for you. ......
  201. 03/02/2008Guess what's getting added to IdeaJam?Bruce posted this on hisideaJam blogtoday. Who else needs to automatically re-authenticate users when they return to a secure web ......
  202. 02/27/20086 More inches of snow tonight. This time, the heavy kindIt doesn't sound like much, but you have to understand different kinds of snow to get it. I'm glad the key remaining parts for the snowthrower came in today. It took me about 90 minutes to install the new friction ring and plate, drive clutch spring, and drive clutch cable. The machine performed like a champ with tonight's 6" of new snow. I know, 6" doesn't sounds like very little compared to the snowfalls we've had this year. Those were mostly lighter, more powdery snows that you get in really cold ......
  203. 02/26/2008SmashLab == Cool Technology, Juvenile ImplementationsI've been watching Discovery's new series "SmashLab". I've watched enough now to give it an official Geek Review. The concept is simple enough. Take some gifted people with complimentary backgrounds, give them some new technology and a safety problem to solve with it, and see what they can prototype to try out the idea. Now, lets break down how the show stacks up: 1. The Technology. Extremely Cool. In the shows I've watched they've used Aerated Concrete in an attempt to show down runaway cars, a kind of ......
  204. 02/25/2008A Happy DaySome good things grace my desk today. To begin with, I got the letter from the bank today with the title to my car. I'm finished paying it off now, and it still has a few years of excellent driving. Those who've read this site for some time, may recall that my last car burned up in the garage in February of 2005. Since then, I've been stuck with a car payment. Once again, I am car payment free. Oh happy day. If I were a good planner, I'd keep making that payment into savings for the next car, but it ......
  205. 02/24/2008- CORRECTION - Having just wasted a good bit of the afternoon, here's a technote on setting cookie expiration dates for IE* Corrected on Feb 24. Many of you super JavaScript programmers already know this, but since I didn't have it quite right I thought I'd post it here so that if someone else is searching for information they'll have an easier time of it. When you set a cookie in JavaScript, you make it 'permanent' (make it last through browser restarts) by setting a parameter called "expires". There are web pages all over the place that will tell you about lots of different formats you can set that expiration date in. Many ......
  206. 02/23/2008NCT Remember Me! Just got even easier to useDrop two html tags onto any page on your server, and your users can Auto-Login to Domino when they return to your site. I've been playing with the code for NCT Remember Me! today, and I came up with the easiest deployment method you can imagine. Here's the code you can add to any web page: Or you can get fancy, and do it this way:' cellStyle='border:solid 1px black; background-color:black; color:yellow; padding:1em '>The optional parameters in the second example, will result in a "Remember Me" checkbox ......
  207. 02/21/2008Does anyone believe that this was the only anti-satellite trick up Uncle Sam's heavily armored sleeve?If you haven't seen the newsyet, the U.S. Navy used a "standard" missile launched off a navy cruiser with a special 3rd stage which is effectively a self-guided hunk of mass (a big rock) designed to home in on the target in an airless environment and simply slam into it using the differential in speeds between an orbiting body and the missile itself as the kinetic energy to cause the destruction. Does anyone believe that plans for this sort of thing haven't been in place for quite a while, and that the ......
  208. 02/17/2008Imminent unplanned satellite re-entryHave no fear, FEMA is here. Our government is protecting us from the imminent unplanned satellite re-entry. Here you'll find the documents forwarded through our incident management chain of command. For those of you reading this story from outside the U.S., you can likely follow the same procedures. Guys, I've seen this in the movies a dozen times and I know just what happens. You may wish to acquire this critical information to supplement your skills if the worst happens. ......
  209. 02/16/2008A few days of sunshine, then back to workFor the next few days, I am on Captiva Island in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida. What a difference 12 hours makes. Thursday night I was in 20 degree weather lighting a scene for the town of Falmouth where they were dealing with an overturned oil truck dumping 1700 gallons of Kerosene into a river. The coast guard, epa, everyone got to play. Now, I'm in 80 degree sunshine with a beach and pool within eyesight. Forgive me if I hold off the blogging a ......
  210. 02/11/2008Snowthrowers age at about the same pace as dogs.We had three snowstorms last week. During the first, my old snowthrower (which at one time looked a lot like the one pictured), broke just as I was finishing my driveway. It took me about an hour or so to disassemble the drive system and make a workable repair. The repair held for the next driveway - a neighbor's as he's injured his shoulder, and the following two storms as well. It won't hold forever, but I've got replacement parts on the way that should put it to rights again. When I went to order the ......
  211. 02/05/2008NCT Remember ME is official!Automatically log-in returning Domino usersNCT Remember ME!True Lotus Domino CredentialsInstalls in Minutes to existing or new web pagesDoes not require a DSAPI filterFully Supports ACL's, Reader Names, Groups, etc.Fully Supports Multi-Server Session Based AuthenticationFind Out ......
  212. 02/03/2008Congrats to the NY Giants - What an amazing football game.I don't watch football that much (not the American kind with an odd shaped ball anyway) as I prefer the other kind -- played with a FOOT and a BALL. Still, even though being in Maine I'd have loved to have seen the Pats win, I can't begrudge New York that win one bit. They managed to shut down Brady's offense so consistently that he almost never had time to do anything. I've never seen him so hammered. Credit where due, the man continued to use every opportunity given him until the end -- he just didn't ......
  213. 02/02/2008NCT Will be announcing a new product on Monday, and many of you will want it.Consider this a pre-announcement and offer via my blog since I have yet to integrate the blog with the home page. The official announcement will be on Monday, for a product called simply "NCT Remember Me". This will be a "nearly instant" drop in solution for Domino based web sites that allows you to add "Remember Me" functionality to your site with almost no effort. Users who return to your site will be recognized and re-issued valid Domino session tokens. They will actually be logged in users -- this is ......
  214. 01/31/2008What if it all just goes quiet?On February 17, 2009 all the analog TV signals transmitted in the US are scheduled to go dark. After that time, its digital or nothing. Just consider for a second, how few of us have ever lived in a place where we were not under constant full time exposure to transmissions measured in thousands or even tens of thousands of watts from the analog TV stations at VHF radio frequencies. Just consider this for a second. What if they shut all the stations down, and a whole bunch of stuff that we had no idea was ......
  215. 01/31/2008Nuclear Duct TapeFrom the department of "I gotta get me one of these!" (Will Smith, Independence Day) Hillas Packaging, Inc. offers the followingproduct:Item Number : Nashua 357 Red Nuclear 3" x 60Yd ETDescription: Duct Tape, Nuclear Grade, 3" X 60 Yard Et, RedProduct SpecificationsMSDS (Materials Saftey Data Sheet)Presumably, this is for HAZMAT response but if you're going to get some serious duct tape, why not get Nuclear Regulatory Agency specification approved duct ......
  216. 01/30/2008Please jump in here - A debate question about an XPages concernPlease chime in on this one, as I know it’s a heavy topic in Westford as well. A very smart friend of mine has a concern about XPages. I think he’s wrong. More specifically, I think he’s making an origami mountain out of a map around a molehill. Even if you normally just ‘lurk’ here, I’d like to see as many people chime in here as possible. Here’s the issue as my friend sees it: There is not any 1:1 relationship of an XPage to a specific document. There may be zero, one, or many data notes or other kinds ......
  217. 01/28/2008XPages: The Most Important New Feature You Didn't Know You NeededHint: It isn't all about the UI features. XPages are not a secret any more, but I think you'll find a perspective here that you may not get elsewhere. XPages: The Most Important New Feature You Didn't Know You NeededWriting anything in conjunction with the IBM Lotus people can be a real exercise in frustration. This is the third or fourth time I've done it, and will likely be the last attempt.this ugly page.Back in mid 2007 as part of a design review team I was given the opportunity to see XPages for the ......
  218. 01/28/2008Too Much Availability; Follow-Up from Lotusphere; Plans for the next few monthsA good Lotusphere this year. Despite some minor disappointments with the priority on announcements this was a great Lotusphere. The message, for the first time in many years, is all about the core products and their various accessories -- which is how I still think of Sametime, Quick'r, et. al. I realize that bothers some, but I can only call it like I see it. Best of all this year, as in almost every year, was time spent with good friends. There's always a bit of a let down after Lotusphere for me. It ......
  219. 01/22/2008Why the Opening General Sessions fall flatI've been thinking about what happens in the planning process that lets this happen. Particularly in a year like this where there is so much to get excited about, it left me slack jawed to see how badly stepped on the excitement was. In years past, they built excitement only to step on it hard at the end. This year, they avoided the problem by building little or no excitement. So what happens? You bring in a production company to help you may a big exciting event. They don't have ANY idea what the stuff ......
  220. 01/22/2008Some things done right in the LS2008 Opening General SessionComplaining about the OGS is like a favorite sport, and while great fun, isn't all there is to talk about. There were a few things done pretty well so I thought I'd talk about them. Kudos #1 - To begin with, Mike Rhodin's talk was much better done than in years past. Sure, if you're a geek it wasn't what you wanted to hear so it seemed long and boring. That's his job, to say long boring things to geeks that the money people care about. What he did right, was to keep it reasonably brief and not jump back in ......
  221. 01/21/2008What a shame. The OGS compressed Maureen's content into a few minutes that should have been the lead. 4 minutes for Designer in Eclipse. 15 minutes for F'ing Portal.This year's OGS leaves me a bit sad for the missed opportunity. Anyone within range of this text needs to get to the Designer sessions at LS to see the exciting things that just didn't get shown at the OGS. Apparently, the people organizing this thing still haven't learned how to decide what is and isn't important at all. I get angry most years about the OGS. More so this year when there is SO MUCH NEW and LONG AWAITED being built and ready to show in Designer now that its in Eclipse. All the editors, all ......
  222. 01/21/2008What ever happened to Lotus/IBM and their big Second Life Plans? Lets take a look. It isn't pretty.I'm in the second Opening General Session. As I had nothing better to do while Bob Costas was speaking to the 20% of the room who both know who he is and also care, I decided to pop in on Second Life and see who was watching from the Lotus venue on IBM's island. Remember that from last year? Well, after downloading the updates to Second Life, I 'flew' over to the Lotus venue from last year. It was nearly empty. There was one person outside -- not from IBM of course, and fast asleep. An abandoned avatar. I ......
  223. 01/21/2008Impressions from the "Salon" at LotusphereThe conference is big enough that the opening session -- the big draw -- is being split into 2 groups. The "Salon" is a demo and panel discussion led for the other group as a side show. They've got these "artists" and "thinkers" in the "web 2.0" space. Impressions: 1. Although I've nearly completed Web 1.0, I may play it again and go for a higher score. I'm not seeing a good reason to upgrade to 2.0 yet. I also can't get anyone to tell me what the upgrade license costs rather than just buying it straight ......
  224. 01/17/2008Greetings from Orlando!Here's the story in Orlando..... #1. I'm here, and you're not (well most of you). #2. It's very hot here. This evening, dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO) fell from the sky in LIQUID form! I'm fortunate to have gotten under cover before being burned. #3. It could be the heat, but I think something terrible has happened to the snow here. It all green and fuzzy -- like its covered with some kind of mold. I think the heat and humidity have caused it to go bad. Maybe they can get it all nice and clean and white by the ......
  225. 01/17/2008It is amazing to me how many supposedly tech-savy people fall for the same B.S. over and over again.A simple article about the iPhone supporting Notes (through iNotes I think) generated yet another long list of people who want to talk about how much they don't like Notes based on using many years old versions, and completely ignoring the facts of vendor lock in and proprietary vs. open data access models. http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/17/iphone-putting-on-a-lotus-notes-suit/ How can anyone who is locked into Active Directory + Exchange + Outlook + SQL Server + Sharepoint + Win2k3 servers serious ......
  226. 01/16/2008Even if you're not going to LS, don't miss seeing the Opening General SessionThis year you're going to see the payoff for all that work and all the overhead associated with running Notes 8 in Eclipse. Usually, either live or shortly after, there is a way to view the Lotusphere Opening General Session. Do not miss this year's OGS. The Notes 8.0 client has a huge potential for new stuff, but you're not seeing too much use of it just yet. I liken it to having a brand new high end sports car that came with a governor set to 55 miles per hour. This year you'll get to see the payoff ......
  227. 01/15/2008The Y2K+38 Problem - It could be your opportunity this weekendFor those who don't know, Y2k38 is "short" for 1/19/2038, when many currently used computers and devices will again have a problem with digits. This time, it is because most Unix based system store dates as the number of seconds since January 1, 1970. Many of those numbers are still stored in 4 byte (32 bit) integers. Since dates can of course exist before 1/1/1970, the 32 bits must be used for both positive and negative numbers -- meaning the most significant bit is reserved as a +/- indicator. So, ......
  228. 01/15/2008The Shirts Have Arrived in Orlando!According to UPS, the shirts are at the shipping depot in Orlando, waiting for me. There are 36 boxes, at 40 pounds each. Yes, over 1400 pounds of ......
  229. 01/15/2008If you are reading this, and will be at Lotusphere 2008 .....Please make sure to at least wave and say hi. There is only one real reason why most people blog. Ego. If someone says otherwise, they're full of crap. To blog regularly, you have to either truly believe that what you have to say carries some kind of importance or you have to not care a bit. Either way, blogging is a clear indication of someone with an ego. NOTHING makes a blogger happier than to hear from people who read their mindless, poorly written drivel. If you read mine, let me know. Finding me at ......
  230. 01/15/2008Weekend Update: Finished, thankfully, with my drywall project; 14 inches of new snow; Countdown to LS08New Snow Fourteen inches of new powdery snow fell Monday. That was enough to cancel school, giving us a three day weekend. More snow is expected on Friday but I should be fine getting out on Thursday afternoon in time to pick the shirts up in Orlando on Friday. I've scheduled the flight early enough that in a worst-case situation (like last February where Jet-Blue abandoned Portland, Maine for over a week due to the storm in New York) I can drive. It's about 21 hours straight driving, so I'd sure like to ......
  231. 01/11/2008Are "CAPTCHA" losing their value for security? New bypass method completely avoids the problem of reading them.You might be a hacker. If you've ever been asked to read an image of distorted letters and numbers, then type them into a field on a web form, you're using a Captcha.The thing is, even though the programs that make the images are keeping ahead of the programs that read them, it is quickly loosing its effectiveness. Hackers are now using YOU to do the work. Suppose a comment spammer wants to automate adding stuff to your blog, but you've got captcha codes set up. These spammers are resourceful people. ......
  232. 01/11/2008Slingbox -- It isn't about T.V. over the internet. It's about my OWN T.V. over the internetI mentioned a few days ago that I got a Slinboxwith the gift certificate Barb gave me for Christmas. I'm really enjoying it, with all the time I spend waiting for the kids at one practice or another. What's interesting, is that lots of services are offering video over the internet, and most of what I'm watching I could get in other ways. Most of the networks offer their stuff a few days later for on-line viewing, iTunes sells the stuff, etc. The thing is, its a pain the backside to use those things. When ......
  233. 01/11/2008Want to learn to do surface mount soldering and repairs? Hands down, this is the best 8 minutes you could ever spend to learn how to solder properly. http://www.curiousinventor.com/guides/Surface_Mount_Soldering/101 The video is zoomed in super tight, the speaker is very clear, the demo is relevant, and the advice is both practical and accurate. He shows soldering and de-soldering of small, surface mount resistors, larger chips, and chips with very small ......
  234. 01/11/2008How to kill your own network.I woke up this morning to no network connectivity here in my home/office. Given that I have both a cable and dsl connection, with failover managed through my sonicwall firewall this is an extremely rare event. How did it break? I broke it. I recently moved from two servers at Serverbeach to a single more powerful server at The Planet. Having put the order in to cancel the two at the beach, I'd forgotten about it. My firewall, however, did not. It is configured to monitor the two connection paths by ......
  235. 01/10/2008Someone is picking on Gab. Not fair! Gab Davis, who is one of the most gifted Domino admins within our light cone has made a resolution to blog more. Only a few days in, some "Friend" (as if) has told her she should "tighten up" her style. Apparently this person thinks she should write less and edit more. Go check out Gab's blog and help us give feedback to whoever this person is, that they need to go get their own blog, and leave Gab free to say what's on her mind. I think if this person would give less advice, and spend more time reading ......
  236. 01/09/2008CULT Shirts 2008 Preview + Many Changes to the Lotusphere Wiki!Don't miss going to the Lotusphere Wikifor lots of stuff related to the conference. I've just added preview images of the 2008 CULT shirts, and a full 1280x1024 transparent background image of the "Don't Hate Me" logo suitable for desktop and presentation use. Have at it people. ......
  237. 01/08/2008Slingbox Rocks!Here's a tease for you. I'm in my car, parked outside the indoor arena where Ari is practicing her soccer. I've got the EV-DO card turned on, and am connected to my brand newSlingbox. I'm watching Jon Stewart and the clarity is perfect. I did adjust the buffer to a full 15 seconds, because this is a kind of bursty connection. In the first minute or so of the stream, it can be a little jittery, but slow the buffer fills up and the picture gets better and better as the "slingstream" uses the available ......
  238. 01/07/2008My most hated home repair jobs - wallpaper removal and drywall patchingWhen I was very little, I would not finger paint. The reason for this, discovered later, is that I have an aversion to any kind of dust, fine powder, or things that feel like they're coated with dust. This includes newsprint, chalk, and even dry soil. The idea of purposely spreading talc on ones body makes my skin crawl just to think of it. The idea of working with and even sanding down dry wall joint compound is enough to send me into full procrastinate mode for very long periods of time. Interestingly, ......
  239. 01/04/2008Microsoft Patents Frustration Detection System - so I've created a User Interface for it.According tothis article, Microsoft has patented a software and biofeedback based "Frustration Detection System". From TFA:I can't imagine anything more annoying then my PC waiting for me to get frustrated, then at just the point where I'm ready to toss it against the wall it interrupts me with a modal dialog ......
  240. 01/02/2008Video - Come for a Drive in the Snow! Bonus: Pics of my kids an Barb playing the snow!img {margin:3px; border:solid 1px blue;Today we got about 10 inches of perfect snowman snow, on top of 8 fresh inches of dry powdery snow just two days ago. All that went on top of a base of maybe 6 inches of older, icy stuff. The little boy in the picture is our neighbor.Just in case you've forgotten what it's like to drive in this stuff, take a look at this video, or just click any of the thumbnail pictures to see it larger. The driving was done just as the second storm was getting going, so all the snow ......
  241. 12/31/2007New Year's ResolutionsNew Year's Eve is here, and its as good a time as any to reflect on the stuff you know you should be doing but haven't been. Resolutions aren't so much about sticking to them like an iron clad contract. If we could do that, we would already have done those things. They're about thinking through some of what's going on with you and what you can do to make things better. In that light, here are some of mine: #1. Refocus on some of my core business products. Resisting the temptation to endlessly tinker with ......
  242. 12/28/2007Finally picked a replacement phone. Its almost a smart phone - and it wirelessly synchs my DOMINO mail, calendar, and contacts ......
  243. 12/24/2007According to the BBC, The UK is set to release beavers back into the Scottish Highlands.Barb had a funny reaction to this article. According to the article "Plans are in the pipeline for beavers to be released into the Scottish wild for the first time in 500 years." Reading further, it seems the beavers they'll be using will come from Norway. Barb got a very concerned look on her face when she heard this. From Europe, to Scotland, about 500 years..... she asked "they're not going to name the first one 'William' are ......
  244. 12/24/2007Christmas Eve Day here at TheNorth.comMerry Christmas to all of you. Even those of you who don't celebrate Christmas. No harm in wishing you a merry one. Here at thenorth, Barb and the Kids are already up at her parents place. My tradition is to put a good movie on, sit and wrap gifts, and wait for the FedEX and UPS trucks to bring the last of the last minute fun. Most years that works out. One year it didn't. At 9am on the 24th one year a fire call came in that kept us busy until late into the evening. Here's hoping that doesn't happen this ......
  245. 12/22/2007I'm thinking of unifying at least two of my three web sites, what do you think?I have three sites I try to maintain. This blog site, the main NCT site, and my Second Signal web site. I don't think I'm quite ready to fold in Second Signal yet -- it probably needs its own identity. Do I really need to be all that distinct between NCT and my blog? Many of my peers spend a great deal of time making web sites that look like they're big consulting agencies. I know one guy who's web site almost makes you think he's one of the big analyst firms. I can't imagine that the charade holds up for ......
  246. 12/22/2007The state of the cell phone market. What happened when I went shopping.I need a new phone, as I've stated before. I use a Motorola e815 and generally like it, but if I have to buy another phone (I have to replace one for my daughter) I thought I'd check out Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Motorola, and so on. I spent hours on this yesterday and came away disgusted. I tried the Blackberry 8130, and I liked its size and form factor. The typing for text messages was pretty great even with two keys per button -- I did have trouble finding the period when doing a web address, but I ......
  247. 12/21/2007Shit Happens - A old favoriteThis is an old favorite of mine, I thought I would look up and re-share. As we reach this time of such religious fervor in the U.S. and around the world, it will be of value to understand each other's viewpoints a little better. This is the shortest comparative religion course you can ever take. Taoism: If you understand shit, it isn't shitHinduism: This shit happened beforeConfucianism: Confucious say 'shit happens'Buddhism: Shit will happen to you againZen: What is the sound of shit happening?Islam: If ......
  248. 12/21/2007Sounds like they need a really really big VACUUM cleaner!10,000 Earths' Worth Of Fresh Dust Found Near Star Explosion ScienceDaily (Dec. 21, 2007) — Astronomers have at last found definitive evidence that the universe's first dust – the celestial stuff that seeded future generations of stars and planets – was forged in the explosions of massive stars. Check out this ......
  249. 12/20/2007A December for the books, surely.I just went out and took these pictures to show you that yes, we got another 6-8 inches of snow today. It is getting hard to find places to put all the snow, allowing the UPS guy to get to the door. img { margin:10px; border:solid 1px blue ......
  250. 12/20/2007Certified Unofficial Lotusphere Text!A new wiki has been set up to help people plan and have fun around Lotusphere. It won't work if you don't go play. Everyone gets to be an editor! http://ls2008cult.pbwiki.com/?full_access=sBKGMIyPKI&l=S Go make good things happen, ......
  251. 12/20/2007Northern Collaborative Technologies Recognized by IBM for Second SignalSecond Signal has been named as a Finalist for "Best Industry Solution" in the 2008 Beacon Awards!Second Signalis helping save lives and property by improving response to emergencies by fire departments.Find out more"This is the third time I've been recognized by IBM as a finalist or winner in these prestigious annual awards. This kind of consistent industry recognition is a huge achievement for any sized consulting organization, and an even bigger one for a small one like ours."Andrew Pollack, President ......
  252. 12/19/2007Oh Joy - More snow tonight, tomorrow, and then again this weekend...I like snow, but enough is enough - its only December! We're set up for another 6-10 inches of fresh snow tonight. That will make something like 25-30 inches in the last two weeks. Our winter doesn't usually get started this way. December in Maine is not normally a heavy snow month. Its a few cold days and some warm ones, with January getting really cold and February being our big snow month. No so this year! I'm off to get my stuff together, we're staffing the station again tonight -- the third time this ......
  253. 12/18/2007Quick, call for the Dread Pirate Roberts!Scientists have discovered that there really are ROUS (Rodents Of Unusual Size) living in the jungles of New Guinea. According to this BBS article, "A giant rodent five times the size of a common rat has been ......
  254. 12/17/2007Another Storm, Another Fire, & Driving a Bus in the SnowSome of you who've worked with me have commented that I tend to be very quick to change direction if things aren't going the way I'd planned. I don't marry an idea. I try hard to know when its time to go in another direction. Last night's events are a case in point as to why that's not a bad way to work. This has been a heck of a December for snowfall. I don't think we've seen the front yard uncovered since the beginning. We got another 8 inches of very cold, very dry snow yesterday which was then covered ......
  255. 12/15/2007O.K. I've relented and got rid of the ugly CSS. At least I hope so. You'll have to tell me if this is better. What this has really been all about is an update to the site. Aside from generally cleaning it up, standardizing the fonts, and other such junk, I've built in a bit of a color scheme management feature. I can now create and save color schemes using a form (as in the picture below). Then, in a configuration record for this blog site, I can switch between them using a simple radio button to pick between the defined color schemes. The CSS for this ......
  256. 12/13/2007Ho Ho Ho --- Holiday CSS colors on this site now.[Updated 12/14/2007 at 23:55] - I couldn't take it any more. I've decided to roll out some new design a little early. I recommend squinting a bit, and maybe shielding your eyes. Nathan in particular may be off his lunch for a while after viewing. The whole point of CSS was that you could over lay different looks without rebuilding the site. I thought I'd give it a try tonight. Maybe I'll give up on it and go back really ......
  257. 12/12/2007Ok, time for a new cell phone, so I'm going to solicit some e-pinions here...I know there are a ton of you people using crack-berries. I also know some prefer the Windows CE devices. The CE has an advantage to me in that writing apps for it will be a trivial change for me given that I'm already pretty comfortable in vs.NET. Still, crackberries are all the rage. Let me tell you what I currently have and what my goals are -- then you tell me what to look at. Right now, I have a Motorola e815. Its your basic clamshell phone, but a good one. It has the "Get it Now" from Verizon and ......
  258. 12/08/2007WWRD?WWRD? What Would Raj Do? Mary Beth Raven is talking about the latest "persona" they've created as part of their user-experience work. Raj is a Notes Developer. He's not real. He's what's called a "straw man" -- a stand in for the Domino Developers and Notes Developers out there. He's how the user-experience folks will be thinking about the day to day work process from the standpoint of someone doing that kind of work. When I'm writing code, I frequently have a real person in mind for the user. I try to ......
  259. 12/08/2007Existential Server AdministrationI've arranged for a new server, and while getting it set up have noticed something interesting. You start out by getting a login name and password, which you can then use to open a secure command shell session on your new server. We're talking about remotely hosted machines here, where access is primarily through a command line shell, or maybe a browser utility you like. Even though the operating system is what you asked for, the configuration is somewhat different than what you're used to. Your favorite ......
  260. 12/04/2007Some snow pictures after the stormIt wasn't exactly the "Storm of the Century" as the various T.V. panic people were talking about, but we did get a fair amount of snow. About 9 inches total over the course of around 20 hours. Take a look. a.picture { border:none ; margin:5px }Click any of these to see the picture ......
  261. 12/03/2007Headed for Philly tomorrow. Anyone feel like getting together?I'm flying in for a client site visit Wednesday and Thursday, and staying up in the Malvern / Valley Forge area. Anyone feels like getting together drop me a ......
  262. 12/03/2007Snow Day!Its a Snow Day here at Northern Collaborative and at Second Signal, our wholly owned subsidiary (yeah, they're both just me). We're expecting between 10 and 16 inches of fresh snow by tomorrow morning. So far we have around 4 or 5. Yesterday, I took the spouse-mobile (a 2004 Honda mini van) down to the fire station, pulled Engine 1 out on the ramp, backed the spouse-mobile in, closed the bay door, and swapped the regular wheels and tires for snows (on the van, not the fire engine). It was nice to be able ......
  263. 11/23/2007Posted some ideas to IdeaJamIf you haven't checked out IdeaJam yet, you should. I've posted three Ideas to get started. Bruce has done a great idea with the concept and it looks very workable. Use RSS feeds to keep up with new ideas, then vote them up or down. inwidth = 500;inheight = 150;id = "3C0AB5C09EADFDA08625739C007FF0C2";//-->inwidth = 500;inheight = 150;id = "935851559D016E708625739C00807A4B";//-->inwidth = 500;inheight = 150;id = ......
  264. 11/22/2007It looks like the session schedules are already starting to get filled in for LS 2008If you haven't already gone to the Lotusphere Sessions site and picked your preferences, you should really do so soon. The schedule is built based in large part on which ones you say you're planning to attend. Gab and I are doing our Jumpstart on Domino Security again this year, and that one is already scheduled with a big room and a repeat. I'm sure the Jumpstarts are easier to schedule as they have specific slots to deal with, so that why its in there so soon. The preliminary schedule looks like Gab and ......
  265. 11/20/2007Domino 8 on Linux - CentOS 5Well, my test platform ( allSpark ) had to undergo a reinstall. The Domino version 8 install won't run properly on CENTOS 4, which is what I had on there. CENTOS 5 works fine though. I'm sure with enough digging I could have found what was missing and added the right packages. I think it was java related. In any case, neither is a "supported" platform so it may be a bit of a moot point. For those who follow such things, I can confirm that CENTOS 5 does provide all the goodies the Domino 8 server needs. ......
  266. 11/20/2007My Lotusphere Sessions with their official links & descriptionsFor those of you looking forward to Lotusphere 2008, here's the official summary of my sessions. For those of you not looking forward to this event, or not planning to go -- if you're doing work with Notes and Domino, you're very foolish not to be there this year.Understanding Security in IBM Lotus Notes and Domino- Gabriella Davis & Andrew PollackSecure your environment. The Lotus Notes and Domino product suite offers an extensive array of features which work together to provide a strong, flexible, and ......
  267. 11/19/2007Interesting Day - I finally got around to starting my testing with a new version of Asterisk Domino administrators are spoiled. A new version comes out, we upgrade and it works. Its gotten so you barely have to test even a major revision. Backward compatibility is part of the QA process. The rest of the world is not that friendly to upgrades. A few months back I put a new linux based test server together. Its been sitting and waiting for me to start testing ever since. You may recall that I named my new server "AllSpark" after the device of the same name from the Transformers movie. Its a 64bit ......
  268. 11/18/2007Question for any Prius or other Hybrid car owners.I want to know. How many of you have driven with the headlights off a bit longer than you would otherwise do? How many have turned off the radio - or just turned it down? What else have you done while driving, secretly hoping to extend the time on the batteries and make it just a little further without that engine starting ......
  269. 11/18/2007Found a new RSS feed reader I really like. Its called AlestiI used to use Sharpreader, but that doesn't share well. Foxmarks is good in theory, but it seems to loose track of updates. The RSS reader in Notes 8 doesn't make me happy, and paying for a better one isn't my style. I'd sooner write one myself. In looking around, I came across "Alesti" http://www.alesti.org/ , and I'm back to keeping up with RSS feeds again. Its web based, but doesn't feel like a web application. It uses a three pane interface, with bookmarks on the left, titles in the upper right, and ......
  270. 11/15/2007Reviewing the Charleston, South Caroline fireA tough evening last night. As part of our monthly officers meeting at the fire department, we listened to a good portion of the radio traffic from the tragic fire in Charleston, South Carolina last August. We also had some photographs and location markers to see where things happened. In that fire, nine good men died. Before I talk much about what seems to have gone so terribly wrong, I want to point out a few things. 1. It is much easier to criticize the incident after the fact, than to manage it as it ......
  271. 11/13/2007The template for presentations at Lotusphere 2008 isn't ready yet. So I took a guess today.Ok, this is fake. I made it as a joke, based on templates from the past. This one hits all my "Favorite" things about Lotusphere slide templates. Anyone else want to take stab at ......
  272. 11/13/2007Product Recommendation - Philips SHE9500 Ultra Sound In Ear Headphones ......
  273. 11/08/2007A shout out to Tom DuffTom Duff sent me a book he wrote abouton his blog. The content is right up my alley.Its a solid technical look at how hardware interfaces are used. It is a strange thing, because there are some topics in there that are really old hat -- the software side of the interfaces and communication protocols in particular. Some of the hardware I'm fairly comfortable with as well. I'm not exactly new to the use of a soldering iron. Then there are places where the content is totally new. I've never built a digital ......
  274. 11/03/2007We are a soccer household... ......
  275. 11/03/2007Come see me at Lotusphere 2008 - Here are the 3 sessions I'm doingI'm going to be giving three sessions this year, and I'm really excited by all of them. I really hope you'll come see them.Linux for the IBM Lotus Domino Administrator-- Zombies & daemons aren't just for killing! This session is updated from last year and its my new favorite. So many people are using Domino on Windows servers more because they aren't comfortable with Linux than because they've made a choice that they like Windows better.This session is designed to give the Linux newbie everything they need ......
  276. 11/02/2007The most insanely sick picture of lightening I've ever seen.This pic is copyrighted and being shown on a site that probably paid for it, so I'm linking to it by not displaying it in line. Link to Lightening PicWe're expecting some heavy weather here in the next 24 hours. It should be a fun day on the fire ......
  277. 10/31/2007Finally figured out an oddness in Notes 8 that I've had for a good whileI've used the keyboard shortcuts for "Create Mail Message" and "Create Mail Reply" for years, but since upgrading to the Notes 8.0 BETA I didn't have them. They simply were gone from the menus.I knew these were a function of a check box on the property settings of the forms in the mail file, so I assumed when I checked that design that they'd been accidentally left off by development during the beta. When I upgraded to the Notes 8.0 client, however, they didn't come back.I checked the properties box on the ......
  278. 10/30/2007Designing your web site for YOUR target browsers - Not just "global" standardsSecond Signal's web site has been the focus of a great deal of my time recently. I'd love to use all that screen real estate on the right side that my laptop's wide screen shows, but before even attempting that I needed to understand what other people would see. There are lots of sites out there declaring that most people are using 1280x1024 screens now that LCD panels have been standardizing on that at 17" for so long. Other sites say the majority are 1024x768 still. Pretty much nobody is running at ......
  279. 10/27/2007Laptop Performance Quest - An affordable way to use SSD (Solid State Disks) in my current laptop.Solid State Disk -- essentially big flash drives in the shape of and with interface level compatibility with internal laptop drives -- is here. They don't compete for size with traditional spinning drives, and won't soon for anything close to the same cost. But they can be used effectively. What got me started this time was realizing that I had this modular drive bay in my Dell D820 that is currently filled with a CD/DVD that almost never is needed. I found a $50 unit that goes in the same bay, and is ......
  280. 10/25/2007Domino 7.0.3 in ProductionJust a quick heads up on the newly released Domino 7.0.3. I've had it up in production for several days. All is well. Performance may be improved. Of most value to me is the ability to reduce the time a users credentials are kept in cache. Since new users to Second Signal get added to groups as they join departments, updating the cache sooner has a distinct impact on their experience. This should also help with password changes and password refreshes (user forgets password so a new one is sent) being ......
  281. 10/22/2007Web access and logs are, in the end, about people.After the press release last week, and today's announcement of a referral program, I've been keeping a pretty close eye on the log files for Second Signal's public web pages. To do that, I've built a view that really limits what is shown. It only shows specific documents that are on the web site. It shows no image requests, and filters out nearly all web crawler robots. It also filters out my own addresses. What I'm left with is a very clear view of what pages people are actually reading, how long they're ......
  282. 10/22/2007iRobot Roomba 560 vs. 3 Kids, 2 working parents, 1 cat, lots of mess.The short verdict - its a keeper. For a nice change, the product actually does pretty much what it says it does. It isn't perfect, but the carpets and floors are cleaner with it than without it. It isn't entirely effortless, but the combination of cool factor and function do result in the job getting done better and more often than before. I've been very skeptical of these things. They're small - more akin to a little rechargeable dust buster than a full sized vacuum. They're self-roaming -- I had little ......
  283. 10/19/2007What old favorites live on your hard disk? How old is your oldest? Can you still remember what they do?Some of these may be older than some of you reading this blog. I was going through the file system on my laptop as part of generally cleaning it up. I do that once in a while -- removing old junk, uninstalling software I tried once and didn't like, generally putting things to rights. Anyway, as I was looking at the file system, I came across a directory I've copied from machine to machine for quite a while now. In fact, I've copied this little directory full of utilities through more upgrades than I can ......
  284. 10/18/2007Second Signal - Today's press release starts up the big pushThis press release went out today. It marks an end to the tinkering and the first real push to get this thing out in as many places as I can. I don't usually do "sales stuff" on this blog, but it seems pointless not to put up my own press releases. Second Signal Helps Small Town Firefighters Save Lives and PropertyUsing cutting edge technology, Second Signal is helping fire departments across the country better respond to daytime emergencies.Thursday October 18, 8:43 am ETCUMBERLAND, Maine, Oct. 18 2007-- ......
  285. 10/17/2007Attention IBM Partners - Domino 7.03 is now out for distribution -- or so I'm told -- but don't wait. Partnerworld is going down AGAIN at Noon Eastern US time on Friday the 19th.Apparently, it is our responsibility to "Please Plan Accordingly" IBM Partners who want access to IBM software, must pay IBM $795 a year. For this, they get access to the worst download interface I have ever come across and a web site that just shuts down for a few days at a time whenever they decide to perform "Maintenance" on it. IBM Partners have been screaming about this kind of garbage for years, but mostly in forums with limited access. There has been little response from the Partnerworld program ......
  286. 10/16/2007My Mother-In-Law the ComputerPeople have histories that you never really consider deeply enough. I had a really interesting conversation with my wife's mother over the weekend. She had asked about the route I'd planned to take, as I needed to go from her place on the coast up to Bangor where Coryn had a soccer game. I answered that I didn't know; I'd just plugged in the field's address on the GPS, and it told me I'd need about two hours to get there. I would do what it said and get there within a few minutes of that estimate. Instead ......
  287. 10/08/2007The results of the Falmouth Fall Classic (Soccer)Cumberland's U14G division 2 team (Coryn's team) beat Saco again, dominating most of the game and winning the finals! Cumberland's U14G division 1 team (Ari's team) beat the other Saco team then faced Gorham in the finals. Gorham beat PAYSA 6-2 in their semifinal and was considered by all to be the heavy favorite for the win -- and the overall win at the State Cup level when all is said and done. The final went 1-1 through over time and into sudden death where at the last minute Gorham scored, ending the ......
  288. 10/07/2007Tommorrow is Andrew Day. It is a national holiday. Banks will be closed. Schools will be closed. The Government will be closed (but who can tell). Many people will be home from work. Why? Columbus day you say? Nope. Tomorrow is Andrew's Birthday. Here's a hint, it's a big one, and the least significant digit is a zero. ......
  289. 10/07/2007Soccer Update -- Coryn's U14G Division 2 team won their game today, leaving them #2 in their grouping.Oddly, finishing second in their group puts them in the finals against the the very team they beat today. The game was close and it could be anyone's game tomorrow. That's what happens when they're only one group in your division I guess. Ari's team plays in the Semi-Finals at 8:30am tomorrow. If they win that game -- and they should, as they've beaten that team twice before -- they play in the finals against their arch rivals from Gorham who have an extremely strong team and beat them 2-0 last time they ......
  290. 10/07/2007Another holiday weekend, another soccer tournament - Ari plays with an injurySoccer, soccer, and more soccer. Caitlin has been playing at the AYSO level. AYSO -- the "American Youth Soccer Organization" is an "everyone plays" recreation level league. I've actually done coaching in this league. They teach parent-coaches the basics and it really isn't hard to do since you're really just teaching the basics of the game and keeping the kids happy, safe, and excited. AYSO's principals are great for getting kids into the game. The league tracks kids and coaches carefully. No favorites, ......
  291. 10/04/2007Is Transparent Aluminium Here?"New Material is extremely strong — and TransparentThe stuff is really strong, really stiff, and lasts a long time. It isn't porn though, it is a polymer. From TFA: "Science Daily — By mimicking a brick-and-mortar molecular structure found in seashells, University of Michigan researchers created a composite plastic that's as strong as steel but lighter and transparent."TFA: ......
  292. 09/30/2007Congratulations to the German Women's World Cup Team!My daughters and I have been watching the Women's World Cup by tape delay over the last couple of weeks. Although we were disappointed by the loss of the USA team to Brazil last week in the semi-finals, it was still great fun to watch the games. Brazil plays with all the passion and heat you'd expect from Brazilians. They have some amazing talent, including a 21 year old who is possibly the best woman playing the game at present. Marta as so amazing to watch that you can't help but appreciate the way she ......
  293. 09/28/2007If your union runs your benefits, who do you strike against?Health Care costs in the U.S. are driving the costs and decisions of nearly everything else now. Companies like GM which have obligations negotiated over past decades in this area are finding these costs strangling as they have to compete with newer manufacturers that build plants in non-union states or have contracts negotiated more recently that manage health care differently. GM cites a $10 per hour per employee cost difference as a result. Enter the most recent negotiations with the UAW. GM has managed ......
  294. 09/25/2007Common cold, or geek let down?Since getting back from IBM in Westford on Friday night, I've been pretty under the weather with a low grade fever and stuffed up head. It could be just a common cold (when will they finally cure this?) but it could be geek let down after two days of some really good future tech. I don't do fever well at all, so I'm mostly sleeping it off. I'll write more on the weekend once this thing is ......
  295. 09/23/2007The Domino Server and Lotus Notes client have an exciting futureI (and some others) had a recent opportunity to participate in some long term future discussions with the IBM development teams. I can't talk directly about anything specific that I've been shown, but I cannot help but report that the future has more cool stuff in it than I'd thought possible in a much shorter time frame. The IBM teams are focused on making the product more robust, much easier (and less expensive) to support, and much more easily integrated with -- well, pretty much everything. The ......
  296. 09/15/2007Government is not formed from the top down.Nation Building is a 20th Century idea and it’s time to move on. I’m speaking of course about what we’re trying to do in Iraq, but the discussion is much larger than that. The whole of the 20th century with all its fantastic advances in health, wealth, and happiness for the world’s wealthier nations has been a disaster defined by nothing so much as the – sometimes unintended -- consequences of our misguided attempts to bring our brand of success and values to the less successful and less powerful. The more ......
  297. 09/12/2007Certified Unofficial Lotusphere Tee-shirt -- Sponsors Requested!Certified Unofficial Lotusphere Tee-shirt Once again it is time to sign up sponsors for the annual C.U.L.T. As always, we’re running late. Rocky will be posting this year’s top-10 poll soon, meanwhile I need to start setting aside sponsorships and planning for the number of shirts. One of this year’s goals is to create a fun shirt that people will want to wear – The design will be something a little bit less gaudy but still fun. This year’s theme isn’t a secret (though of course the final top ten list will ......
  298. 09/02/2007All I want for Lotusphere 2008 is a.....Its months away, but the planning is in gear so I thought I'd jump in here with the top item on my wish list. I've given feedback like this privately to a few people; but its time to ask for in a more public way. ( EDIT NOTE: I am specifically referring to using the Eclipse Based Lotus Notes client to access data stored on a Domino Server) I want to go at least one, maybe as many as three serious sessions about creating new style applications for Domino in the Eclipse Framework. Here's the rub though -- I ......
  299. 08/31/2007Some countries can no longer access my servers.I've been going through my logs. Not just web server logs, but also SMTP logs, firewall logs, etc. I did some quick analysis of IP addresses by country, and created a simple ratio of friendly hits to unfriendly ones. By unfriendly I mean password hack attempts, spam attack attempts, exploit attempts, probes, and all the other ugly shit. Based on that, I've blocked all IP addresses in some countries. All of them. Entire countries. In most of them, there was not a single "Friendly" hit compared to thousands ......
  300. 08/30/2007School Has Started!7:30 and already there is peace and quiet. Having a home office is great. You can be there for your kids when needed, work after hours, take care of home stuff during working hours, and general make whatever use of time you need. Its also terrible. It mixes home and work time in the worst possible ways. The balance can be hard to manage. If you ask Barb, I don't manage it terribly well. Today is the first day of school here in Cumberland so for the next two days I have several hours of peace and quiet. Of ......
  301. 08/29/2007Things I didn't know about most current laptop batteriesBattery technology changes fast right now. Most current laptop models use Lithium Ion batteries. These are really odd things. They store an insane amount of energy for their mass. Any time you have that kind of energy density its dangerous. These batteries have complex electronics inside their packaging that's designed with a number of fail safe circuits so they don't just burst into flame. As we've seen recently, they haven't always been successful. I'd forgotten how long this laptop could run without a ......
  302. 08/28/2007On a lighter, and more important note -- Help me pick some SF classic films to show a friend.I have a dear friend who's in many respects as geeky as the rest of us, but who has a horrible sad lacking when it comes to classic science fiction films. We're doing some work at the same client and its within driving range of me, so I thought I'd bring some films, a projector screen, the lcd projector, some descent speakers, and a dvd player and play catch up in evening. With some help from a couple of others, I've put some top picks in a list here, but as long as I've gone to that much trouble now is ......
  303. 08/27/2007If someone made these statements to you, in the order shown, would you find them deceptive?Yes, I'm still going on about this. These people deliberately told me something would ship overnight, but only when pressed would admit that they couldn't commit to when it would actually ship. Sure, they'd ship it overnight once they shipped it, but it could be 8 days before that actually happened. Keep in mind, I'd already been promised the item overnight 3 times and been shipped a package without it. "The replacement order will be sent to you overnight." -- but then when pressed to find out WHEN it ......
  304. 08/25/2007Dell no longer wishes to do business. They're a mail order company that has forgotten how to mail things. Now off my recommend list for good.It’s a good thing Dell is starting to sell via Wal-Mart. That’s where they are headed anyway. They’ve just lost my business, and I can no longer recommend them to anyone. It is now finally completely clear to me that Dell simply doesn’t want to do business. I have posted here about my issues dealing with Dell’s extremely bad customer service before. I’ve had shipping problems, I have had sales people refuse to give me part numbers so I could order them directly, and I’ve had their corporate sales people ......
  305. 08/24/2007Software Complexity Peaking AgainLotus Notes 8 is a huge step forward in what developers will be able to do. I’m already seeing the first posts in partner forums and on blogs showing simple side bar applications that make use of some of the extensibility. These remind me of the first wiz-bang buttons and actions in Notes 4 that used Lotuscript. In those days, that kind of work was considered very high end development for Notes. Today of course, most Notes developers think in LS and forget how easy formula language is to work with. In a ......
  306. 08/21/2007RIM should be embarrassed by their failure to support customers. RIM may be the darling of the wireless communications world, but from where I sit they’re not treating customers very well at all. They’ve created a situation where customers can easily find themselves locked out of the system for hours or even days though what would otherwise be acceptable business practices. I’m involved in a project right now that includes a goal of building a redundant Blackberry configuration for disaster recovery. People rely on these things now for doing important work, and an ......
  307. 08/16/2007Facebook -- the fastest I've ever dropped a social contact website.Someone please tell me what possible value is to be gained from this other than a nightmare of constant message pings telling me this one has added me to a "friend list" or that one has left his bedroom and moved to the kitchen or no longer likes the color blue. Who cares? Are they trying to re-create the seventh ......
  308. 08/15/2007Its new stupid meme time! Which Transformer are you?According to this site, I'm 73% Optimus Prime I AM 73% OPTIMUS PRIMETake the Transformers QuizOptimus Prime is the heroic leader of the Autobots. He is the personification of courage, strength, and integrity. His personal motto is that “Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.” Like Optimus Prime, you are good by nature. But beware because mischievous thoughts sometimes tempt you. You are inspiring, confident, and a natural leader. The Autobots have chosen well. In addition, you use technology when you ......
  309. 08/15/2007What's the most boring show on cable you get sucked into for reasons you'll never understand?Cable TV brings us new heights of insanely boring TV we can't stop watching I'm sitting here completely fascinated by one of the most insanely boring programs I've ever watched. I realize that doesn't make sense, but that's the way it is. Its worse than watching golf and yet somehow I can't turn it off. If you're really, really board, check out Ice Road Truckerson the history channel. What's the most boring show on cable you get sucked into for reasons you'll never ......
  310. 08/15/2007So which campaign is Karl Rove going to?Karl Rove is leaving the White House. If you hadn't heard that by now you aren't someone who cares. I can think of three reasons why he'd do that other than the ubiquitous "to spend time with my family" answer they all give. Some say its because some new scandal or a resurgence of ugliness related to an existing one could put him in in the same place as his buddy Scooter. I don't buy that. If that was going to happen it would have already. The Libby pardon was held back as long as it could be to allow the ......
  311. 08/13/2007Ear Bud Pads -- by the bagfullEar buds, those little headphone things that come with iPods and similar products have these cheap foam pads on them. They come off. Now the ear bud isn't useful or isn't comfortable. You can buy more expensive ear buds, cheap replacement ones, or a Belkin 5 pack of pads for $10 (ouch). I win. I found a place that had a bag of 100 of them for under 20 bucks. HA. Now I can use all the old ear buds again whenever I ......
  312. 08/10/2007More really bad travel thanks to US Airways and their horrible serviceThe flight to Philly was terrible, but at least there was a flight. On that one, though having booked in advance and having selected a seat in the isle near the front, I found when I checked in at Boston that my seat had been taken away and I was forced to take a last minute back row non-reclining one. Then, this airline actually took the time -- mid flight -- to get on the PA System and give a minute long scripted pitch for their credit card, including walking down the isle with the brochures. This is ......
  313. 08/09/2007CNN -- Back off Bob Murray a bit Bob Murray is the part owner of a mine where rescue operations are underway right now. The men trapped 1500 feet below the earth may be alive, may be injured, or may be dead. These kinds of stories are always a huge draw for news programs like CNN, and in my memory the owners of the mine are usually faceless companies represented by expensive PR machines. CNN is operating in full "gotcha" journalism style when they interview this guy. We, out here in opinion land, can't possibly know what caused the ......
  314. 08/08/2007Late to the JSON bus - In a nutshell, its a simplified hack that is easy to work with even in its ugliness[] Many people in the blogging community around Lotus Domino have been pushing JSON for a while now. These are mostly user interface oriented people who do a lot more front end web site development than I do. I'm late to the table with this technology, but on investigation it looks like the best workaround to a bad situation I've seen yet. I want to talk more about JSON in the context of some suggestions for the Domino server rendering useful data. I'll do that in another post, but for now, here's a very ......
  315. 08/06/2007I promised pictures yesterday -- well, here they are. All taken on Saturday late afternoon.These were all taken in or off the coast of Friendship, Maine. Friendship is a very small fishing village far enough off the tourist track of Route 1 as to be largely filled with people who either live there year round or returning summer after summer in established communities. Barb's parents have a really nice place up there on Davis Point looking onto the bay. They're terrific people, and her brothers as well are great to be with. This summer Barb has been taking the kids up there most weekends while I ......
  316. 08/05/2007Where, exactly, is Cumberland Maine anyway?I get asked all the time from people, "Where is Cumberland?" so I decided to post a couple of pictures from Google Earth. Its pretty far Northeast -- about as far as you can go and still be in the US (though people here call it "Southern Maine". I've marked on the map both Cumberland, and further up the coast Friendship, Maine. The next posting has a bunch of pictures taken in Friendship from my In-Laws' place there. This post should add some perspective. ......
  317. 08/01/2007Is a 'System Engineer' really an Engineer?Do you call yourself a "Software Engineer" or maybe a "System Engineer"? What happens when the stuff you "Design" doesn't work? A network goes down? Maybe a few users don't get their email? Today we see a reminder of what happens when an ACTUAL engineer gets things wrong. Maybe you really want to rethink using that word unless you're up to doing the math that would have prevented this. ......
  318. 08/01/2007Have you ever wished you could replicate non database files on your servers?I've been using a tool called "unison" to keep the files on a pair of linux servers in synchronization. Its available for Windows as well though. This is a command line utility that works very much like Domino replication. A hash database is used and compared rather than a simple look at file dates and names, so renames, deletes, changes, and new files are all replicated effectively. I'm using it at the file system level to keep not just the files in the domino/html directory in sync, but also several ......
  319. 07/31/2007Geek of the week at ServerBeach Look who got to be the marketing chimp for last week's "Geek of the Week" at SeverBeach! ......
  320. 07/26/2007What Are Chrysler's engineers thinking?From the "WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY THINKING?" category.... In a classic ADD moment, I left my car keys at the hotel in Tampa this morning, and didn't discover the loss until I was at my car in Boston. Given that the spare key is at home home in Maine about two hours away, I thought that I'd try out that AAA membership that I've had for years and have used for nothing other than a discount on hotel bills. The call to AAA was quick, and they called a locksmith who assured them and me that it would be no ......
  321. 07/25/2007Second Signal welcomes its first out of state department on-lineYou know how much time I've spent bringing the Second Signal venture to life. Today is a big milestone, because they're a department with no affiliation to me other than this, and thousands of miles away. They received their equipment today, and once plugged in it immediately started relaying audio and tone notifications as it should. The remote support tools also worked right away and the periodic "ping" updates to my servers happen like clockwork so I can see if there is any problem. So....Welcome to the ......
  322. 07/24/2007What should you be doing now, to get ready for that big upgrade later this year or next?Notes 8 is due out soon. Some of you will perform your own "Zero Day Upgrade®" while others will wait six months or more. This isn't an upgrade like any in recent history. This one is big on user-focused change. That means the upgrade planning is more important no matter how smoothly the "Wizards of Westford®" make the technical process. There are things you should be doing right now, to make sure you have the tools in place to do the job right when it comes around for you. You're going to want to manage ......
  323. 07/24/2007Hello from Florida! I'm at a client site for a change, and having a great time there.Some clients are a pleasure to work with. Today was one of those days you get to enjoy working with people to get something done. As a matter of policy I don't disclose most client names here, but since I know that at least one person there reads my blog, let me say in a most public way "Thank You". The client purchased NCT Simple Sign On, and asked me to come down to help them quickly get it integrated with their project. Though they'd already gotten the demo version up and running quickly, time pressures ......
  324. 07/22/2007The best detail all year longEach year, Engine 1 gets assigned to help out neighboring Yarmouth on the Saturday evening of the annual "Clam Festival" for the fireworks. We stand by in case things get out of hand or the fallout lands on something dry. Not much chance of that tonight with all the rain we've had unless they're using napalm. Chief Fairbanks over there always takes good care of us and this year was no exception. He tends to give us a spot right up close but just slightly ......
  325. 07/20/2007"Is it fear or courage that compels you, fleshling?" - Megatron Ok, I admit it. I liked the movie. Yes, from an artistic, intellectual, scientific, and aesthetic perspective it did truly suck. At least it wasn't a chick flick though. It was an hour too long, but it was fun anyway. Oh, and aside from the best line in the movie, courtesy of Megatron, I also got the name for my new linux server. It will be called ......
  326. 07/15/2007Valuation of productivity measurments as cumulative minutes saved by employees -- do you buy this?Someone I know was recently talking about a paper that could potentially explain a pretty huge annual savings by saving each of thousands of employees a moment or two each day. I personally don't put much credence in these kinds of savings unless we're talking about people who are essentially a fully utilized resource pool like a call center or production line worker and then only if the time savings happens during their core productive time and not on breaks or as they're getting started. In that case, ......
  327. 07/14/2007Andrew J SimpsonCreate your own at ......
  328. 07/13/2007What is your Minimum TTL for productive work?When I'm programming -- not tossing off a quick bit of script but really working hard on something new -- there is a minimum amount of time that I have to be able to devote to the process or it isn't worth bothering to sit down at all. For me, it is probably something around two hours minimum but three is really better. If I can't put at least that much time without being interrupted into the work than its as if I am starting over after each break. How about you? Do you build a model in your mind of the ......
  329. 07/08/2007Techo-Karma, and I'm on the payback side for a change!A few months back I had a week go by where everything I touched broke. That's unusual for me. Nonetheless, it happened. Software didn't work, I went to clean up a PC and killed the motherboard, it was endless. It cost me a few hundred dollars to put things right, and then a few weeks later I picked up a new system board -- and went to a lot of trouble to find one that would support the same P4 and ram from the one I broke. Of course, this strange negative karma was still with me. When I put the old ......
  330. 07/04/2007Great product if you support remote machinesPart of the magic of Second Signal involves remote data collecting workstations. I'm using low power "thin client" machines with no moving parts, but they still need support once in a while for software upgrades and settings changes. Since these machines will be sitting behind almost any kind of consumer grade firewall and NAT router you can think of, I needed a way to remotely manage them that would -- most of the time -- not require me to spend time with clients reconfiguring their network settings. ......
  331. 07/03/2007Upgrading from Visual Studio.NET 2003 to 2005 ......
  332. 07/02/2007Web Services - Great everywhere but the web. At what point will we finally put an end the entire load of cap that spun out of the late 1990's and into the software we're stuck using every day. If ever there was an over-engineered, under usable specification, it was SOAP -- the stuff that makes what we call "Web Services" happen. SOAP is an XML based specification that allows the exchange of complex data types between systems connected only in the most loose manner over the internet. A great testament to the senior programmers at IBM, Microsoft, ......
  333. 06/29/2007What about the children?Of course, it's not just me that's been busy the last two months. Caitlin has finished 2nd grade has both parents to herself for three weeks while Ari and Coryn are at an overnight camp. Its one of those classic New England summer camps that I thought only existed in movies. Barb and Caitlin are going up on Saturday to see them and to wish Coryn a happy birthday -- she's 12. I can't go as it is my turn to be the "weekend duty officer" for Cumberland and there is a good chance it will be active around here. ......
  334. 06/29/20072007 New England Regional Fire/EMS Show -- The big Second Signal DebutSecond Signal made its trade show debut in Springfield, MA last weekend. It was a lot of work, but a great time. I drove down on Wednesday with my car fully loaded with all the stuff I needed. Thursday was move in day, and by getting there by 8am I was able to drive right up to the location of my booth and save a lot of hauling. I spent Thursday setting up and getting ready, only to discover I'd left one of my signs at home. I called and had Ari fill out a fed-ex slip and the sign was to my booth by 8am ......
  335. 06/29/20072 months overdue for a bunch of blogging. Man I have been out straight...Figure this for a 'heads-up' blog. I've had a lot on my plate and it's time to catch up. Over the next few hours and days I hope to make up for that with a ton of ......
  336. 05/10/2007Andrew vs. The Mosquito Magnet Part 1 -- An attempt to solve a problem with actual scienceI live in Maine. Mosquitos also live in Maine. Many, many of them. Mosquitos also really like me. I must use up plenty of oxygen and exhale a great deal of carbon dioxide because that's what attracts mosquitos. Strangely, their bites don't irritate my skin much -- rather, the buzzing around my ears and eyes drives me insane. The device to combat these tiny terrorists is the "Mosquito Magnet", The device uses a bare trickle of LP (Liquified Petroleum) gas from a 20 pound cylinder -- your basic grill propane ......
  337. 05/06/2007Wow, what a weekend. Second Signal made it's trade-show debutI spent this weekend with Second Signal at a very small vendor show that was part of "Cumberland County Fire Attack School" (CCFAS). CCFAS is an annual event where something like 400+ firefighters take hands on classes in everything from advanced vehicle extrication to fire command. My personal favorite ever was "Get Out Alive" where I got to dive out second story windows in all my gear. A table at this show is incredibly inexpensive. There were like 15 vendors total -- most selling gloves, tools, safety ......
  338. 05/03/2007A very strange cache difference between LotusScript running in a WQO and Formula Language on a form.I have this form, and on the form is a field. The field is populated by doing an @DbColumn() call to a view in another database. The documents in that view are protected with reader-names fields, which are themselves group names. By adding a user to one of the groups, they see more documents. Makes sense, yes? Now, suppose a user is on page with this kind of field on it, and does a submit or something which cases his name to be added to a group that should let him see more documents from that view. How ......
  339. 05/03/2007Where's Andrew? Why is this blog so slow lately? Ok, I admit it, I've been really slow with new stuff up here lately. Let me give you a run down of the last few months, then we can agree that I'm caught up and move on. First, Soccer season is in full swing here now. Ari's team is out on the grass (well, what will soon be grass) and playing hard. Last weekend, for example, the team was in Glastonbury, CT for their spring warm-up tournament. Ari's team is considered top notch here in Maine, but going south to the soccer capitol of the US they had a rough ......
  340. 05/03/2007I think we've finally crossed the threshold in the attention span of most Americans regarding our policies in Iraq and anti-terror legislationI'm a serious time waster when it comes to television. In the evenings, after my brain turns to mush, I like to sit down and become a vegetable in front of the boob tube (yes, my TV still has a tube). I've noticed in the course of the last couple of weeks that virtually every show you watch now has an underlying message built into it about our policies in Iraq and our acceptance of such overreaching legislature as the so called "Patriot" act (the one that frees the U.S. Government from having to follow ......
  341. 05/03/2007A shout out to Baskin-Robbins, with their 31 cent scoop night to benefit the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation Thanks to LotusGeek for sending this my way...... The National Fallen Firefighters Foundation works to help the families and departments of firefighters injured or killed as a result of their work, and also works to prevent future incidents through training, research, and education. Take a look at their ......
  342. 04/27/2007Notes 8 Beta Reception in Second Life!This comes from an IBM person I met in my early explorations of Second Life. Anyway, I'm passing this along. ......
  343. 04/26/2007Have you considered what the basis for your decision process really is?Since being promoted to Lieutenant in my local fire department, I've had the added joy of being part of a monthly officer's meeting in which policies, procedures, ideas, and plans are discussed. We don't so much make policy -- that ultimately sits at the Chief's desk -- as we have a good deal of input to it and a healthy debate of the issues involved. As a result of this, some very clear ideas come forward as the basis for decisions. Three of these tenets have really come home to me lately, and I wanted to ......
  344. 04/24/2007Firebug -- the best browser add-in ever? If you're a web page developer, it could be.Cmdr Taco, famous of Slashdot (/. -- news for nerds) wrote of this tool in an article I read recently in either CPU or Wired magazine. It's a terrific all in one debugging and page analysis tool that sits in Firefox. It has features I've come to completely rely on. http://www.getfirebug.com/ The most important thing it does, is nothing. That is to say, it sits quietly unless called upon to act. A very small icon in the lower right corner of my browser allows me to open the working tool on any page, or ......
  345. 04/17/2007Storm Stories -- and better formatted pictures from the flooding and rain of power lines...This particular line is the one preventing power getting to my place. Believe it or not, this is a "minor" issue in terms of the priority list right now. Some of you may know that I've spent the better part of the last two days on the fire truck due to the severe storm. If you hadn't heard that Maine was hit badly, it's not a shock. Even though at one point three quarters of the residents statewide had no power, we don't make the news much. Part of the issue seems to be that the weather maps used by CNN ......
  346. 04/16/2007Cumberland flood 2007 - Heavy rains and 50 mile per hour winds mixed with occasional snow does a number on us.Here's some pretty raw snapshots taken from the front seat of my car as I ran around dealing with fire department stuff this morning. Featured are flooded out roads, down power lines, and general ugliness. More rain and wind is expected for the next two days. We're taking shifts manning the station and trucks, with Engine 1 positioned at a construction company garage on the east end of town while flood waters make response to that area from central very slow. [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] ......
  347. 04/13/2007A Rocky Oliver health report!After a brief chat with Kelsey, I am happy to pass along the good news that the Dawg is up and around, home, and walking some with the assistance of a walker. I'm sure within a few weeks he'll be in better shape than we've seen him in a long time. I know many have been ......
  348. 04/10/2007It is unethical and unacceptable to use your security update process to play games against your competitors.For the 99 millionth time, I went through the Microsoft Windows update process, did their required reboot (Linux never seems to need to do that) and when I launch Notes what do I get but the old prompt "Lotus Notes is not your default email program...." dialog box. Yes, Microsoft has apparently decided it is acceptable to set Outlook as your default mail program frequently as part of their "Security" update process. As far as I am concerned, this is unethical behavior. The repeated abuse of this important ......
  349. 04/05/200717 calls in 24 hours as we get 15" of April Snow -- and I go to the city of Portland on Cumberland's Ladder 7Well, we got 15 inches of snow yesterday into this morning. Surprise! The forecast was for 5-9 inches and that was itself unusual for this time of year. This was heavy, wet, "heart-attack" snow that brought down power lines and left cars off the road. There were 17 call outs in the last 24 hours in Cumberland due to the storm, then this afternoon another very unusual event. About three times a year when the nearby city of Portland has a 3rd Alarm fire (which is an escalation from "Still Box", "Desk Box", ......
  350. 04/04/2007READ THIS -- It may save you a big headache with MS Update patch KB925902 !I'm still super busy, but wanted to post this heads up-- I started having major problems after installing patch KB925902 this morning. It is listed as a critical patch -- and for good reason. Unfortunately, it may have escaped early. I've other reports of issues but none as severe as mine as of yet. This may be a specific issue with some add-in I'm running, but since this is a new machine (built 1 month ago) and I'm not running too many weird things, I thought I'd warn you. My advice is wait until you have ......
  351. 03/25/2007Catching up -- Notes 8 and beyond, A trip to Microsoft, AJAX & Domino, Second Signal, Great People, fire trucks & paint ball guns, and hating how I workI have a lot to talk about. So much to talk about that I decided to title this blog entry the way I've seen chapters in old books titled with a list of all the things that happen without enough to ruin the story. I'm not as good at it though, so stick with me. First up, Notes 8 and Beyond. I've completely switched over from Notes 7.x to the beta of Notes 8 on both laptop and workstation. My mail template has been updated and I'm living the beta. I installed and tried the full version in the Eclipse ......
  352. 03/06/2007What ever happened to the concept of “Mine”?To me, it started getting bad with software licensing. You used to buy a software package and you owned it. If you wanted another one, you bought another one. Sometimes vendors would offer discounts for users who had bought their previous ones. If you moved to another computer, you had to re-install your software but you had the right to do so. That’s not all true any more. You’re often not buying software, you’re buying a limited term license to use software on one machine and not transfer it. In some ......
  353. 02/22/2007What a week!Aside from having both my wife's trip and my own mangled by Jet Blue, a fire to help with last week, the big storm, and a bunch of work -- I destroyed my desktop PC the other day. I've been living off the laptop until tonight. It will take most of the day tomorrow to get all my software reinstalled, but no data has been lost. This new machine is sweet enough to be fair consolation though. It's a Core 2 Duo with 2GB of matched dual channel 800mhz ram. The two processors are running at 2.2ghz (on Core 2 Duo ......
  354. 02/12/2007Great way to determine if a user has editor access to a document using AJAXWarning, this post is extremely buzzword and acronym heavy! I'm writing an application for the web right now that is entirely AJAX based, and uses back end Lotus Domino documents for data storage. Each back end document uses "READER" and "AUTHOR" names, but the code itself is all handled through agent calls made from the browser using AJAX. In some cases, I want to display edit controls if the user has editor access to the document where the data is stored, but otherwise not. I tried doing this in the ......
  355. 02/09/2007Well, so much for Dell. I had to tell someone today not to buy a new Dell PC.Like most of the geeks who read this, I'm someone people ask advice on what PC to buy. Often. I'd recommended a Dell machine to someone this week but got an email back saying they could only get the machine with Vista. Incredulous, I checked this out and it is true. Dell will not sell their new PC's to consumers without Vista. When I asked if they seriously would rather me go away than buy my fourth Dell machine, all I got back was "Why do you feel you do not want Vista?" Hey, Dell, how about because I'm ......
  356. 02/02/2007Product Review - HP C6180 All-in-One Printer, Fax, Scanner, CopierAfter finding my Epson printers to be complete garbage and essentially throw away items due to their very poor ink management (leaving clogged heads, wasted cartridges, and a bunch of money by the wayside) I decided to try an HP model this time around. After all, a good friend works there now. http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/pdf/4AA0-4465EEE.pdf The C6180 uses HP's newest ink technology with six individual color units which cost about $10 each at staples. They're not really large, but seem big enough to be ......
  357. 02/02/2007Addressing Changes to Daylight Saving Time (DST) in 2007 for Lotus Notes and Domino* Special thanks to Robert Ingraham at IBM for posting this information for distribution: New and Updated Information for Addressing Changes to Daylight Saving Time (DST) in 2007 for Lotus Notes and Domino is Available! Changes to Daylight Saving Time (DST) in 2007 in the US, Canada and Bermuda will affect the display and calculation of dates and times for Lotus Notes and Domino. To assist you with implementing changes to your systems, communicating the changes throughout your organization, and ......
  358. 01/29/2007VONGO SPAM! I tried the VONGO service as noted here.... and didn't care for it a bit. Since then, I'm still getting 1-2 email spams per week from them. I call them spam because I've clicked their option to unsubscribe on several occasions and still get the mailings. Their mail even disguises the "unsubscribe" with words designed to fool spam filters. Both characteristics tell me that this is unwelcome spam email. VONGO -- you've lost me for good now. There is no chance I'll do business with you for the foreseeable ......
  359. 01/28/2007So you've seen Second Life now. Do you still really want C.U.L.T. shirts there?About a dozen people have asked me for CULT shirts in Second Life. I actually stopped someone doing it themselves as it would have been a copyright violation for them to do it without permission. It is important that I protect that IP and make sure it isn't done unless it is done right. As part of exploring Second Life, I've learned to create a t-shirt for myself that is fairly convincing. It looks just like one I wear all the time around here. That was the point. It is, in fact, more like the actual shirt ......
  360. 01/26/2007The worst thing about Notes 8The question was asked in a panel q&a at Lotusphere ... "What are your favorite and what are the worst things about Notes 8". I've already blogged about my favorites. I'll tell you my least favorite right now. That I don't have it work with right now. That's it. Oh, I'm no fan of the Portal stuff sure, and I'm sure there will be some issues, but mostly I just want it as soon as possible. I didn't realize when I was watching the sessions showing the new user interface features and the new capabilities that ......
  361. 01/26/2007Corporate Presence in Virtual WorldsIf I were to arrive for a meeting at IBM’s Palisades headquarters, it seems unlikely that I’d be accosted and harassed by a pale skinned woman in a black leather bikini with wings and carrying a bull whip. IBM’s security presence would not tolerate behavior like that for long on their campus. Nonetheless, when I connected to Second Life to see IBM’s growing investment in that space I found exactly that going on at their “Theater B” – a gathering spot patterned after an amphitheater. The character in ......
  362. 01/24/2007Some favorite new things in Notes 8I'm in a repeat session of "What's new in Notes 8" and seeing things that are great. Some are long over due, some are new and brilliant ideas, and many are important incremental improvements. Here's some favorites: In views, the ability to select multiple documents using shift-click and ctrl-click on ranges and documents respectively. In rich text (like mail) inline spell check, multiple level undo, and better sections. Recent Collaborations -- I really like this. Just right click on anyone's name and see ......
  363. 01/24/2007Lotusphere 2007 so far -- followup to the first post, plus up to date with how it's gone. Updated (1)First a few more notes from the opening general session: The Band -- They rocked. They so completely rocked that I just had a great time. Lotus, IBM, stop looking. Make these guys a tradition. Make them part of the Lotusphere family. Bring them in for the opening session, as the band for the Wednesday night parties, and maybe even for the closing session. Let us get to know them, and them us. They're so much fun that they could very quickly become just one more thing to look forward to each year. I can't ......
  364. 01/22/2007Lotusphere 2007 - First Take, Opening Session, Overall Impressions so far -- IN BRIEFI have almost no time right now, and will post my usual "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" article at length later. The good news is, there really is no ugly. There's plenty of very good stuff, a few things I still put in the bad category -- but not that bad. Just not interesting and not yet dead. The new stuff is fantastic -- Quickr is going to be interesting, and clearly they have confidence in it. More details on it when I write the longer post. General First Impressions: More People -- there are a LOT ......
  365. 01/16/2007My sessions at Lotusphere listed here.RefreshSunday, 1-21-200708:00AM10:00AMJMP104 IBM Lotus Domino Security Features - A to ZSW 1004:00PM06:00PMJMP104R IBM Lotus Domino Security Features - A to ZSW 3-4Monday, ......
  366. 01/13/2007It's not David Beckham's move to LA that's shockingAny of you who read this site from anywhere other than the U.S. already know that David Becham has signed a 250 million dollar deal to play for a team based in LA. That's not shocking, really. They clearly hope he can fill seats, bring excitement, upclass the sport in the U.S. and maybe improve the players around him. That sounds like a great idea, really. At 31 the man is not, as some would say, hopelessly over the hill. No, what's shocking is this quote from the story in the BBS news.. ......
  367. 01/09/2007Ok, I've been tagged a bunch of times, so here's the 5 things you wish didn't know about meThis is one of those pyramidal memes that runs around blogs now and then. You're supposed to tell everyone in this twisted little community five things they don't know about you already and then pick five people who also should be telling their five things. I don't like to play by the rules (but you already knew that) so I'm tagging first. I'm tagging Vowe, Mother Vowe, Volker Weber, vowe, and vowe. I realize that's cheating but so what? He's avoided taking part so far so we already know he prefers to hold ......
  368. 01/05/2007Code Tidbit -- JavaScript to make all your button and text input elements easily CSS accessible.Ever want to do something in CSS that impacts only the buttons on your page? I came across a nifty bit of JavaScript that solves the problem of CSS applied to buttons rather than all input tags. A button is an input tag, and there is no CSS (current supported versions) selector for buttons specifically. This code, called in the onload() event of the document, will add a class name of "button" to all the button elements on the form, and a class name of "text" to all the text input device. Dustin Diaz had ......
  369. 01/02/2007Some technology is so cool you wish you could make other people use it.Remember that "Jawbone" I blogged about? It really works! YOU NEED one of these for Lotusphere. [] [] Some technology is so cool you wish you could make other people use it. After playing with the new Jawbone bluetooth headset, I really wish I could make anyone calling me at Lotusphere use one. After looking at [this demo] I went and bought one and put it through my own test. In a quick and dirty trial, I called myself and left voicemail using the headset. I was driving on the highway and the stereo was ......
  370. 12/22/2006Here's a helpful little addition to your Domino Development kit....Have you ever been frustrated going to look for which icon from the vast Domino 'icons' directory has which file name so you can use them in your own applications? Printing them on many sheets of paper works, but it's hard to find what you want. I've created this PDF which prints as a single page and lists all the icons in that directory with their file names. To get it to fit, I've excluded the ".gif" extension from the file names. ......
  371. 12/22/2006More great press - Second Signal in the local paperDecember 21st 2006 -- Falmouth Forecaster Software signals shift for firefighters; Volunteer develops automated notification system By Peter Smith (published: December 21, 2006) CUMBERLAND – Fire Chief Dan Small was at the Maine Mall with his wife doing Christmas shopping when he got a fire call – or rather, a fire text message. He rounded up his kids, went out to his truck and called the station. Then he listened to the previous 10 minutes of radio traffic compressed into less than a minute. In short, ......
  372. 12/21/2006This is a must have for Lotusphere. I will find one today if I can. I've never seen a consumer device higher on my "gotta get me one of these" list. [] [] The new "Jawbone" earpiece bluetooth headset for cellular phones is amazing. Take a look at [this ......
  373. 12/18/2006Yes, Christmas trees really do catch fire -- and you will not believe how fast they destroy a homeAnother firefighter send me this 60 second video showing a typical Christmas tree in a living room setting. It is worth watching, because within 60 seconds you would not be able to survive in this room. * At Ben's request, here is a link to information on making your tree more safe. ......
  374. 12/14/2006Dell Brilliance! Not!Part of the solution with Second Signal is a PC running at the local department. Rather than having departments go out and find their own, I thought it would be a nice idea to have an OEM machine built. I've had good luck with my Dell equipment in the past, and I know that Dell has a great deal of experience putting custom part numbers together like this. Thinking it would be a no brainier, I went to Dell's website and found an OEM page. I filled out the form to request contact and hit submit. It failed. ......
  375. 12/12/2006What a week! Another good fire, lots of attention for Second Signal, ..man, I'm tired already.This is a picture from the fire on Tuesday (last). This is the earliest I can find, and even here it shows the structure already collapsed. It was a 3 story wood frame structure with a wood shop, a garage, and an apartment in it. Although we lost the building itself (obviously it was fully involved before we got there) we did protect the house it was a few feet away from. The family never lost a night in their own home. On Monday (yesterday) Falmouth had a garage fire that went up in a similar way -- ......
  376. 12/09/2006Second Signal gets local TV coverage!Today I was interviewed for the 6:00 news on a local station. They showed film of the fire on Tuesday night, and introduced "Second Signal" to our little part of the world. The interview includes a great endorsement by Chief Daniel Small -- a shame they got his name wrong in the broadcast. You can see the video at this ......
  377. 12/08/2006A structure fire, a rolled over tractor trailer, and Second Signal begins to take offSorry for the silence - it has been really busy with the fire stuff this week. On Tuesday evening, just as I was getting ready to take Ari and Coryn to their soccer practice a call came in for a reported structure fire here in Cumberland. The call was on the west side which means Engine 1 (my crew) isn't on the initial response, but when they come in as a structure fire they usually escalate pretty quickly. I looked at Barb who decided that she could miss the Girl Scout meeting she'd planned to go to and ......
  378. 12/02/2006Can Windows Vista finally give me real screen size virtualization so we can stop using "large fonts" as a setting that doesn't really work?There are some things Vista could have that would really draw me in. Sadly, I can’t seem to find out if any of these are part of the product or not. In posting this, I’m hoping someone can either answer or point me to an answer for some of the questions. Number one on my Windows Vista wish list is that they virtualize the screen more. What I want is actually very simple. I want to tell Windows – in one place – that my screen resolution is not 72dpi, but is in fact 125dpi. Once that is accomplished, all ......
  379. 11/27/2006I AM.......excited to be telling you more about this year's C.U.L.T. shirt!As Rocky has announced on his blog, for this year's shirt we're bringing back the "I AM" theme from the R5 launch. We all had fun with that theme back in that day, and it really just radiated the excitement around the new product. Unfortunately, the campaign was short lived and many people just didn't see enough of it for the message get through. Still, it's one of those themes you can have a great time with. We're now collecting ideas for the Top Ten Alternate Responses to the "I AM ......" statement over ......
  380. 11/25/2006Black Friday? WTF? Are you that damn stupid?Every year I am stunned to see the idiocy of this whole nation. "Black Friday" -- so everyone has to line up at ridiculous hours to get into these stores to do what, spend money? With the rare exception caused by some idiot failing to meet project goals, just about anything you could buy today will still be available for most of the next three weeks. It won't be more expensive and they won't run out. If you let yourself get manipulated into this idiotic shopping rapture just so you'll get caught up and ......
  381. 11/24/2006New car toy has been orderedI'm not a huge music collector, and don't have a big portable music player. I do listen to audio books on long drives though. I've been using a Belkin FM transmitter to hook my cheap little MP3 player to the car stereo. The problem is, the airwaves are crowded as hell. You find a blank spot, dial the FM transmitter in and listen but less than half an hour later you're having to go through the process again -- and that's in rural Maine. I can't imagine how it's acceptable in a city. Of course, for me any ......
  382. 11/22/2006When is it too much security information?Between working on our Lotusphere Security Jump-Start with Gabriella Davis and doing a recent "Penetration Test" at a client site, I have been reminded of some really important steps that all Notes users should be taking to ensure their private stuff remains private. The thing is, if I start blogging the steps I take to poke into things I shouldn't, I risk providing the mental munitions that could fuel our own form of "script-kiddies" in the Notes world. I have no desire to do that. Nothing I'm talking ......
  383. 11/22/2006Car maintenance has changed a bit In the last week or so, a couple of things have really hit home how much different maintaining a car is from what it used to be. We still change the oil, but there are changes in virtually every other aspect of the car. While driving the other day, my car informed me through the dashboard console that one of the four tires on my car was low. Yes, it actually said "1 of 4 tires is low." I suppose simply indicating 1 tire would have left the total number in some doubt. It politely but insistently requested ......
  384. 11/17/2006Flakes on a Plane -- The next time I buy tickets on a US Air flight, someone slap meI hate this airline. I hate it more every single time I have the miserable misfortune of flying on it. Sure, all airlines have trouble from weather. The way you handle it, however, makes you a good or bad airline. As always, US Air handled it badly. I should have driven. All I wanted to do was fly home from Philadelphia yesterday. I was earlier than I'd planned, so the night before I'd forked over their $100 extortion fee for changing tickets -- itself more than a ticket on some airlines would have cost -- ......
  385. 11/17/2006Do people routinely send you mail prefaced with "Urgent:" or "Important:" on the subject? Here's something to try....Do people routinely send you mail prefaced with "Urgent:" or "Important:" on the subject? Do you know how often? Does it work? I have to tell you it makes very little difference to me on how soon I read the mail unless it isn't something I've ever seen that particular sender do. My immediate reaction -- one I've learned to control most of the time -- is to purposely ignore it and make an effort not to respond any faster. There must still be something left of my teen years deep in there somewhere. I did a ......
  386. 11/14/2006HOLY NOT LOOKING, BATMAN! Readers - you have an assignment, QUICK!* Updated: I was shown to be completely wrong here -- but in the interest of honesty in blogging I'm going to leave the post as it was. If you care to see, just view the comments. I'm staying at the Marriott West Philadelphia tonight and tomorrow night. I just was down at the front desk paying for some Doritos (I hadn't met all the parts of my food pyramid yet). The staff were all looking at the clock hanging behind the main lobby counter. Though it had been hanging there for years, it took a 5 year old to ......
  387. 11/14/2006And now, a new entry into the top 10 things you do not want to get for Christmas...This may not be the shower radio / shaving mirror you want to get for a present. There's a message in getting a gift like this, but I'm not sure I want to know what it is. Click here to find out ......
  388. 11/14/2006Dodge Charger for a Rental -- and the verdict is......So I rented this Dodge Charger from Avis in Philadelphia today. I'm here to do some security work for a big Notes shop (yes, I said Notes, not Domino). The verdict? It's a Charger -- in both the good and the bad sense of that. My rental is an under powered version, but frankly so were most of the Chargers ever sold -- and almost every one I ever drove. Like the three Chrysler products I've owned (which I mostly like) this is very hard to see out of when backing up. Charger improves on that, and is hard to ......
  389. 11/13/2006Web Site Design - softer topics are important tooAs someone who reads this site you know how much help I need when it comes to designing attractive, usable web sites. Technically I can make a site do whatever I want. The problem is making it do all the wrong things. I picked up Steve Krug's book "Don't Make Me Think" to get some perspective on this issue. It's pretty good, and about 90% of what I wanted it to be. The only thing really missing from my perspective is any discussion of color schemes and font choices. I've got that information from other ......
  390. 11/12/2006So wait a minute. Who is this 'Batman' guy, and just exactly who is copying who here?In the past few posts I've been working on Second Signal's new logo, and with your help I'm pretty happy with what I have now. The final straw as was that I now have a name for the logo itself. I'm calling it the "Hat Signal". A bit tongue in cheek maybe, and it isn't something I'll make formally part of anything, but it does bring to mind a question that has been bugging me. Who is copying who? In may of 1939 some guys named Bob Kane and Bill Finger started writing and drawing this "Batman" guy. So, as I ......
  391. 11/12/2006Internet Explorer v7 - First ImpressionsAfter allowing Microsoft to install this "Priority Update" which moved me from IE6 to IE7, I've played a little bit on both my laptop and my workstation. Overall, it's a step up but feels very unfinished. It's also extremely annoying in a few regards. Some problems I have with it.... 1. I f#cking hate "cleartype" which on my nice NEC 19" monitor makes text look vague and fuzzy even after using their free "tuning" tool. My Dell Laptop as well, looks like shit if cleartype is enabled. It may work better for ......
  392. 11/12/2006Still working on this -- you guys are great. Here's another stab at it.Update: A final logo was chosen. Click here to see it. Going back a step or two here. I'm trying to resist the temptation to add more and more complexity to the image. It's easy to fall into the trap of trying too hard to make it say too many things. ......
  393. 11/11/2006Yet another logo evolution, and yes, I'm still begging for feedback.Update: A final logo was chosen. Click here to see it. Great feedback so far. Since I love to push my luck, here's the next evolution in the logo design. The changes aren't based as much on specific suggestions as on what parts of the previous attempts were clear to everyone and what parts had people really confused (meaning my imagery didn't work). ......
  394. 11/10/2006Looking for opinions on this logoUpdate: A final logo was chosen. Click here to see it. Tell me what you guys think of this possible logo for "Second Signal". I'm too close to it. I've spent way too much time working on this to have an objective ......
  395. 11/10/2006C.U.L.T. 2007 Sponsorship is now briefly open -- more than 50% of sponsorships are now spoken forIt's once again that time of year to sign up sponsors for the Certified Unofficial Lotusphere T shirt! Last year's sponsors got first short at this year, and we already have several of the slots filled. This year we're going to have even more fun with the shirt and that gives us a few more options. If you're interested in sponsoring, you should read this and get back to me ASAP. I will update this page with the number of available sponsor slots periodically. Currently, there are 7 sponsorship slots left ......
  396. 11/09/2006Microsoft is sending out presents. Should you open them?I'm not sure if I dare, but ......
  397. 11/09/2006I've been accepted to speak once again this year at Lotusphere 2007, and on all new topicsThis year, I'm doing a session with Gab callled "IBM Lotus Domino Security Features - A to Z" as a jumpstart. It should be a good session, and Gab is brilliant to work with. I'm also doing one called "Moving IBM Lotus Domino to Linux" which is designed to give you the things you need to know in order to migrate a server successfully and then manage it remotely under Linux. I'm also doing something new for me. A hands on lab. Check this out and tell me what you think. Would you go? Mail Routing Mastery - A ......
  398. 11/09/2006Is the Iraq war really so different from the Vietnam war? In an argument on Volker's site, someone made the claim that they're nothing alike, and I should "look at the differences in our losses!". Well, I looked. Take a look what I found. In terms of non-mortal casualties per year, there are more in Iraq than in Vietnam. True, there are less deaths. We've gotten much better at patching up kids before they die. I'm all for that, but let's not kid ourselves that Iraq is mostly going well and it's just the media overstating the violence. The only thing I've seen ......
  399. 11/08/2006IMO, here's the real reason for Rumsfeld's resignation announcement todayWhat I don't hear much comment on is something I've seen this administration do over and over and over. They've succeeded in changing the conversation from their huge loss yesterday. They haven't been completely successful, but they have drastically reduced the volume of that loss and replaced it with something they have the control and focus on. It's a brilliant move, really. It steps on the press the Democrats are getting really really hard. If he was going anyway, what a great way to handle it for the ......
  400. 11/07/2006Notes 8 -- aka Hannover -- Install options. This is a GOOD thing.Over on Volker’s site, the discussion of Notes 8 installed as a standalone client versus the full installation with the Eclipse package and its features is leading to the same old trap of suspicion and critique before the product has even launched. Is it any wonder that these decisions are kept so quiet for so long? I like Volker and generally respect his opinion so please don’t assume I’m slamming him here. In this case though, I think pointing criticism at something that doesn’t exist yet and isn’t ......
  401. 11/07/2006New blog feature....I've made the "reply" box draggable. You can move it around if you like, so that you can see what is underneath. Try it, you may like ......
  402. 11/07/2006Mary Beth Raven thinks it's time to get rid of double-right click to close a Notes client window!I almost never link to someone's blog site and ask you to post there -- but in this case, friends of mine, I must beg for your help. Mary Beth Raven thinks it's time to get rid of double-right click to close a Notes client window! Please, for me, go to her site and pile on with the others of us all pleading for the feature to remain. It has been there for as long as I've been using Notes, and would be greatly missed. http://www-03.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/marybeth?entry=right_double_click_to_close ......
  403. 11/06/2006If you're reading this and a citizen of the USA If you don't vote, don't bitch. The image below represents the approach taken by those who don't vote, preferring to simply hope things get better on their own.... ......
  404. 11/06/2006Pseudo fairness - a true mark of unthinking bureaucracy.It should be no shock to anyone that school systems annoy me almost as much now as they did when I was in school. Today it's all this talk about responsibility without actually giving the kids any and this idea that kids are born with a set amount of "self esteem" and anything you say to them could rob them of this precious commodity. Of course, that's bullshit. Kids are not necessary born with either enough or not enough of this mysterious "esteem" stuff. Kid's can build CONFIDENCE which is really what ......
  405. 11/06/2006Two hour jobs that take two daysDon't you hate those fairly straightforward jobs when everything that can go wrong does? Between games -- and mostly on Saturday -- I took on the job of replacing an old, noisy bathroom light and fan fixture. At the same time I put two coats of "Killz" on the ceiling and then a coat of nearly white semi-gloss paint. Over the years, some mildew had gotten into the old paint on the ceiling. The new high volume (low noise) fan and the fresh primer and paint (both with newer anti-mildew additives) should help. ......
  406. 11/06/2006Soccer Tournament Results!Cumberland (Ari's team) met Bangor first, and we were surprised by how well Bangor played. Ari started and played a defender of some kind (some kind of "double sweeper defense"?) The game went 0-0 through double overtime and Cumberland ended up winning by 1 on penalty shots. Ari played really well, making a goal saving hard run to shut down a play by taking the ball out at the last second at the goal line -- but was tripped (a real, no-bull, on-purpose, back foot kick kind of trip) for her trouble and came ......
  407. 11/05/2006Happy Birthday Ari!Ari turns 13 today -- and plays in her semifinal game against Bangor, then (we hope) the finals for the fall season. They're the #1 seeded team. I haven't posted pictures of any of us in a while, so here you go. As usual, just click one of the smaller images to see it full ......
  408. 11/04/2006Just let Domino do it! Sometimes we work too hard.Following up from my earlier post about xml and utf-8 encoding, I found "a better way". The earlier post talked about how embedded characters were messing up my xml feed. I spent a lot of time writing a complex formula to handle this. There is a better way. The feed for this site is generated on a "Page" design element with embedded computed text fields to pull in the data to populate the feed itself. I had done all that work to clean up the embedded data, but I didn't need to. The easier way to handle ......
  409. 11/03/2006The new blog design is now up, your comments are welcomeI spent more time than I'd expected, but the new blog site is now 90% in place. What isn't done is the new search form - which will be ajax powered. Some things to note: * No more new window for comment entry. That's done as a layer with an ajax style submit -- I opted to refresh anyway so your comment shows up. Let me know if you agree or dissagree with that. * There is a click to show comments, but no screen refresh. If you turn them on, they stay on -- saved in a cookie -- as your preference when using ......
  410. 11/01/2006SNTT (seriously geeky) - Some helpful @Formulas - clean up your XML, and convert from hex value strings to decimal numbersIn working to improve this blogsite, I found some challenges in creating good XML when the source data can be variable. The problem is that in formula language lacks easy tools for doing this. There is no simple XML transformation process that works the way @URLENCODE works. It sure would have been easier. First off, as you put together your XML string, you want to make sure to replace the "reserved" characters that are valid ascii values but still can't be in your content. By these I mean the greater than ......
  411. 11/01/2006Notes from the HAZMAT Refresher -- how much Benzene did you breathe today?This month’s HAZMAT refresher course, taught by Al Nygren of Training Technologies International, gave us a valuable new perspective on how our metering equipment works and the mechanisms behind some of the dangers we face. The course was a change of pace from the usual HAZMAT classes which focus on the decontamination process and identification of specific hazards. It had a heavy emphasis on the chemistry behind many of the fuels and oxidizers we may run into at any time. ......
  412. 10/31/2006Verizon Wireless - Broadband access for the Portland, Maine area is now active!You heard it here first -- Notice the last line... Cell phone reception at my house is terrible, but the rest of town is covered well. For several days I've been seeing the "EV" symbol start appearing in my cell phone display but haven't been able to actually connect to the EVDO broadband network until tonight. If I am able to get on with it from here with 1 bar and get 350kbps, that means almost everywhere else around here will give me close to 800kbps as an average useable speed. For those unfamiliar ......
  413. 10/30/2006Blog changes - finally. I've allowed the first mods to get out. Threading is still there, but you won't need to click and open new documents to see all the comments. Give it a try. There is a known bug (known to me) that I'll try to fix tonight. Obviously, there are no replies here so you can't see what I've done unless you click this link to see an old ......
  414. 10/27/2006Finally, we are getting very close to EVDO here in MaineI've been talking about how much I like Verizon's EVDO service for internet connectivity via the cell phone system. With a card in my PC, or with a bluetooth connection to my cell phone as a modem, I can connect and get DSL speed connectivity in most major service areas around the country now. In the rest of the places, I get 1xRTT service which is in theory up to 250kbps, but in reality works out to be about like using a dialup modem. The thing is, here in Maine I've had no EVDO service. It's well over a ......
  415. 10/25/2006Upgraded to Firefox 2.0The best news so far about this upgrade, is that there is no news. The upgrade was smooth, the product is slick and user friendly, and the new features work as expected. I am very pleased so far. From a performance perspective, it "feels" snappier though I've done no ......
  416. 10/24/2006Should I quit pretending that I'm going to have time to update this blog site and switch to Domino Blog?Ok, you tell me. I know some of you really don't like the UI on this blog design. I'm tired of it too -- but the idea of using some canned software doesn't thrill me. I've put off doing it because I have some big ideas for the site. So far, as anyone can predict, I've had no time to do anything about them. Tell me the truth -- does this design suck so bad I should dump it as soon as possible? One advantage to this one though -- no ......
  417. 10/24/2006Annoying as hell dialog boxesDon't you hate dialog boxes that offer no option? Here's a new one that really pissed me off yesterday.... Notice that there is no option here. You cannot close the dialog box without using the "Finish" button. You cannot deselect the option to restart the computer. The dialog is "Modal" so it will not go away without you doing what it wants. And it wasn't necessary, since I wasn't using the driver I'd updated. A simple warning telling me to reboot before I use the device would have been sufficient. ......
  418. 10/17/2006Cut the bullshit - the REAL real cost of leaving Notes is........the fact that you don't have it any more. That's right. If you win, you lose. You lose a secure, scalable, stable, redundant, standards compliant, and extensible platform in favor of.....what? Richard comes close to saying this in his blog. So what the hell. Discussions on several other blogs and sites recently about this topic focus on the costs of moving functionality out of Notes and onto some other platform. Some call this vendor lock in. That's wrong. It's a functionality lock in. The reason it is ......
  419. 10/16/2006Second Signal begins to become more publicAs of last friday, visitors to http://www.SecondSignal.com are seeing some early information about the service. Not all the details are there yet, but as there is press on the way it was time to put a bit of a teaser in place. ......
  420. 10/15/2006Small Town - Big Circus, great timeThe circus is in town, and just for a couple of days. Portland isn't a big place. Here in Maine, it's been years since the big top came to town so at the last minute I decided to take Coryn and Caitlin. Ari had other plans already. This is the same big circus that does the three rings in big stadiums -- but here in small town USA it's just the one ring. What a treat to see this show in so small a venue! Before the start, all the kids & parents gathered around the ring for a pre-show right there on the ......
  421. 10/13/2006Excellent History Channel Documentary on Fire Fighting 8-9:30pm tonight.According to several people, this is an excellent and realistic look at firefighting. History Channel Documentary on Fire Fighting 8-9:30 Pm tonight. http://www.history.com/minisite.do?mini_id=51524 About 'Into the Fire'Academy Award®-winning documentary filmmaker Bill Couturié goes beyond the firefighter hero image and into the hearts and minds of the self-proclaimed "ordinary" men and women who perform extraordinary acts to keep us safe. Through intimate interviews with firefighters from big-city engine ......
  422. 10/11/2006Latest conversation with my 7 year oldTalking with my youngest daughter has always fascinated me. She's a geek in all the good sense of that word. She may be the most natural engineer I have ever met. Here's a conversation from this morning, word for word: Caitlin: Can you open the garage door? Use the special button. I am pretending it only works for you and nobody else. Me: Actually, there are things that work that way. It's called 'biometric security'. It means things that only work when they can identify something unique about your body. ......
  423. 10/10/2006Piece of crap inkjet printers - The last Epson I will ever buyI own an Epson Stylus C86. Correct that, I own two. I also own another Epson all in one unit. The all in one sits by my desk, while the two stylus units sit with my kids in their rooms. By buying three which use the same ink cartridges, can keep a pair of each color on hand without having to have a distinct stockpile for three different printers. All three have had ink flow problems. Mine required a simple cleaning process -- it wastes about $10 worth of ink to do it, but it worked. One of the stylus ......
  424. 10/08/2006Have you checked your backup power supply lately?Today I was going through the fall chores, and one of those is testing the backup power and redundancy plan I have for my office and servers here. After changing the oil, filters, and spark plugs on the 12kw LP Gas generator outside, I ran a full power down test. That means walking over to the breaker panel in the basement and shutting off grid power to the house. Within 60 seconds, the house was automatically up and running on power from the generator. That's as it should be. The test confirmed the ......
  425. 10/06/2006Got my vmware server running on linux -- a very sweet setupIt took me a bit of work because first I had to make CentOS 4.3 recognize my AC'97 sound card and the drivers from RealTek wouldn't compile. I wanted sound in my VM's so that had to be resolved first. Once done, I downloaded the vmware server in "rpm" format and installed it. After spending a few minutes looking for what happened to it, I found the vmware executable and the configuration script and was up and running. The vmware configuration script isn't very smart. By default it wants to place your vm's ......
  426. 09/29/2006Tip: Log a user into a Domino website without a page refresh with this simple javascriptThese two functions are all you really need. The trick is in the ultra-simple first function listed below. The function uses the xmlHttpRequest made so famous as the core of the "Ajax" programming style. By doing an Ajax style 'Post' of the credentials to the Domino server, the results you get back which normally redirect you somewhere else, are caught by the request object. You can discard them (or display them if you really want). In this function, I've used the ultra-small icon file "onepixel.gif" as ......
  427. 09/28/2006Rocky needs your help.Yep, the Dawg is buried with work and other stuff -- so much that he hasn't blogged since September 11th. I've talked to him and he's fine -- he's not sick (some of you asked) he's just got so much going on in his world that nothing has made it to the blog. So here's the plan... I want everyone who reads this to write a blog article for his site, and send it to him -- by Friday at noon. Get to ......
  428. 09/25/2006Wow, do I hate web browser programming.I spent the better part of two days now, building a framework in which the next generation of a key website will run. It doesn't actually DO anything yet. The framework provides all the underlying functionality to provide a tabbed interface, and "ajax" based interaction between the multiple form objects and back end data. So when I say it doesn't do anything yet, I mean the tabs work and they change the displayed things as you'd expect -- but there's nothing on them. The ajax backend code works, and can ......
  429. 09/22/2006Help me understand what problem we really have with Hugo ChavezHugo Chavez, current President of Venezuela, seems to be going to great lengths to express his distaste for the current US Government. There doesn't seem to be any love lost on the part of our government for him either. But what has he actually done that's so terrible? From before his election, he's been criticized pretty strongly by US politicians. There were gloom and doom predictions made pending his election, and it almost seems as though he was written off as a lunatic in this country from the outset. ......
  430. 09/21/2006The Republican Party Belief SystemThis was sent to me the other day, it's funny. If someone has one crafted as well to make fun of the Democrats, send it and I'll post that too. WHAT YOU NEED TO BELIEVE TO VOTE REPUBLICAN Jesus loves you, and shares your hated of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton. Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him, and a bad guy when Bush needed a we cant find Bin Laden diversion. Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country ......
  431. 09/21/2006Some good ideas, from what we're hearing about Microsoft's iPod competitor "Zune"I've had half an eye out on this new thing from Microsoft called the "Zune". They are looking for it to be an "iPod Killer" which sounds a little ambitious to me. Something like 3/4 of new cars next year will have built in iPod support available. That, plus the huge add-on products market for the iPod make it a very strong competitor. Microsoft have done some innovative things, from what I hear. Of interest to me is their take on licensing. Apparently you'll be able to use an easy link method (maybe IR or ......
  432. 09/13/2006Had to perform and ugly hack today - to allow Domino web usernames with @ symbols.I have a client who has a web based solution in which the users are passed from an outside system. The NCT SSO works great, but the usernames from the other site are actually EMAIL addresses. Domino will allow them to be logged in since the NCT SSO creates the token for them -- but putting email addresses in groups does not work for ACL's. To get around this, I broke one of my cardinal rules. I modified the Domino Directory. Worse, I modified the most important view in the databases (or one of the two most ......
  433. 09/12/2006Have you tried Google Calendar?It's not new, but for the first time I've tried out Google's calendar application. I like it a lot, and not just for work. Barb and I both work full time. On top of that, I have the fire department work that keeps me busy with meetings and training; between my three kids we have school, tennis club, 3 soccer teams, karate, and Brownies. I travel about once a month, and Barb travels about twice a year. To keep up with just our family activities -- coordinating transportation for the kids mostly, requires a ......
  434. 09/11/2006What should the US do about it's relationship with Iran?What is the US supposed to do about an Iran that is developing seriously dangerous weapons? First, let us assume for this discussion that Iran really is developing the capability to produce nukes, or to supply that technology to others. We have, after all, set the stage in such a way that it makes sense for them to do so. In international politics, having nukes lets you sit at the special table. We've made it clear that if we could do so without fear of repercussion we'd already have invaded. If you don't ......
  435. 09/11/2006Remembering fallen brothers todayOn September 11th, 2001 I was not yet a firefighter. It was something Barb and I had talked about, and on the 14th I got in touch with someone she knew in the department to discuss joining. The first meeting I attended was less than a month later. Five years ago, I didn't really understand yet what a close brotherhood the fire service is. I didn't know that I'd feel personally connected to every firefighter in the country in a very real sense. Thousands of people survived the attack on September 11th ......
  436. 09/10/2006I am furious at hearing of this MYTH that those who are not US Citizens are "Not Entitled" to the rights under our ConstitutionWhat part of the following statement in the Declaration of Independence is unclear?     We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;...   If you haven't read this brief document recently, go read it again. It won't take long. I've been watching "KOPPEL on Discovery" -- a fantastic program focused on the balance of security ......
  437. 09/05/2006Remembering Steve IrwinSteve Irwin, aka "Croc Hunter" died in a freak accident while filming a "soft" segment for a kids show. Listening to an interview with his friend and partner on CNN, it seems that the segment was just a bit of light film to be used for the kids show -- not even a part of what they were working on for the documentary they were filming. Apparently, Irwin had been cooped up inside the boat during bad weather for two days. According to the friend, Irwin "didn't do well" being cooped up indoors. Stingrays are ......
  438. 09/04/2006A New Product Launch ParadigmSoftware products are released as complete and supported, or as beta with the expectation of bugs and little support. For now, there is very little between these two paradigms. The idea of “Release Candidates” is getting more common as are “Gold” releases but something is still missing. IBM launched Domino 7.0 with the DB2NSF functionality marked as “Limited Availability” at the last minute. The name is wrong, really. It’s not the availability that’s limited; it’s more accurate to say that there isn’t ......
  439. 08/28/2006The C.U.L.T. 2007 shirt theme has been picked!Ok, it's still a secret at this point but I can tell you that this will be one of the most fun years for the Certified Unofficial Lotusphere T-shirt. In an exhaustive series of intense meetings and complex negotiations -- we talked about it around the pool at the Marriott Desert Ridge Resort -- NotesDawg and I along with help from good friends Gab & Tim have hashed out the theme for this year earlier than ever. People -- we're stepping it up just a notch. Look for announcements here and on Lotus Geek's ......
  440. 08/25/2006Weather for the Advisor Summit looks great!Weather in Scottsdale at 101 degrees is going to be excellent. Not the 120 that you sometimes see in Arizona, but overall warm and sunny. It's going to be hard to stay away from the pool to attend ......
  441. 08/24/2006IBM have some explaining to do about the cost of Lotusphere 2007As a pricing plan and strategy, this shows an amazing lack of market sense. I'm not saying a price increase is out of the question. The value of the conference is definitely higher than the $1295 many CLP's have paid in the past. The increase in cost to a minimum of $1695 is an increase year over year of $400 -- roughly 30%. To make matters worse, if you fail to sign up before October 14th it goes to $1895 and by December 9th its $2095. Given the number of attendees tends to be somewhere near 7,000 each ......
  442. 08/23/2006All my demos are done for Advisor, loaded on the laptop, and backed up to the spare drive. This may be the earliest I've ever finished. I'm usually working on demos right up to the session. The new laptop helps. It has 2GB of ram in it, so my DB2NSF demo has lots of elbow room. I've set up a windows 2000 virtual machine inside the laptop with 1gb of ram. Its running Domino 7.0.1 and DB2 8.2.x along with the full set of connectivity parts. I'm planning to do a live demo showing two databases with different documents, and a third that has no documents of its own, yet displays a view of mixed data ......
  443. 08/20/2006Advisor Conference at the end of August looks like a mini-Lotusphere!Advisor's conference in Arizona is looking like a MUST SEE. The speaker's like is like a Lotusphere All Stars team with very deep IBM participation on top of my favorite 3rd party types. Advisor's fall conference in Scottsdale, Arizona is almost here. I hear there is still some room open for this and it's going to be a great conference. As a speaker, the thing I like most about the Advisor conferences is the one on one nature of a smaller venue. I get to talk in great depth to people about the issue ......
  444. 08/18/2006Technote update -- Undocumented function @LocationGetInfoAn a post a few weeks back I went into detail about the function "@LocationGetInfo" which I used to help Rocky solve a programming puzzle. He needed to get the current location document's name so that he could do things with that location document. After doing a dxl export of common system files I found some parameters and using those we came up with formula language to get what we needed. Just this morning a response by Jens Winkelmann added a new parameter to that function. [FullName] . I've tested it, ......
  445. 08/17/2006Flew home yesterday from Heathrow to Boston -- its good to be backI had a good time in London, but it's good to be home. The travel day was a bit long but better than expected. First off, I had no trouble at Heathrow. I arrived 3 hours before my flight, having stayed at the Hilton attached by a long tunnel to Terminal 4. On arrival, I was directed to a short check in line for bag drop and within 20 minutes or so was through that. I had checked my large "Swiss Gear" computer backpack inside my luggage and borrowed a 2004 Lotusphere laptop case from Gab. It was a very ......
  446. 08/15/2006BA cancels all flights!Take a look at this image, sent by a client of Gab's who is in the travel industry. ......
  447. 08/14/2006Now not flying today, but will be trying again on the 16th.Arrival at the airport today was interesting. There are people milling about like cattle in the car parking structure as they cannot get into the terminal. The terminal is simply full. BA -- who has staffed the parking area with their own employees as BAA (the company who runs the airport) can't be bothered -- advised that in all liklihood they could simply not get me onto the plane today and have rebooked the next available which turns out to be Wednesday the 16th at 11am. The good news, is the "Home ......
  448. 08/13/2006Cowards, Alarmists, Manipulative Power Seekers, and Terrorists -- the whole lot of them on both sides can go screw themselves.As I will be traveling back from London to Boston tomorrow on British Airways and because some cowardly, manipulative, power hungry men (along with some terrorists) have forced an untenable and ultimately futile set of security measures into place I will be entirely and completely out of touch for pretty much the entire day on Monday. Beginning 4-5 hours before my flight when I check my luggage until the flight actually leaves (probably late, if at all) and through the completion of the flight and my ......
  449. 08/11/2006Hello from London. Yes, I managed to pick August 10th as the date for a planned trip to the UK.I'm here in Gab Davis's offices in London. While we're waiting for a download, I thought I'd talk about the trip. I'd left the house at 0400 on Thursday without catching the news and listened to an audio book for the drive. My first indication of any problem was walking through the pedestrian walkway from central parking to the international terminal in Boston and seeing a bunch of video remote vans in the parking area. I assumed some politician was on the way into town and would cause me a delay. A few ......
  450. 08/08/2006A weird java problem in Domino leads me to this challenging call for help. Anyone?I have a client application out there that kicks off a number of threads. The agent is failing to open some databases -- in a consistent and predictable but otherwise nonsensical pattern. When we spotted the pattern, it looked like we had it figured out. Lets assume the databases are db01, db02, db03, ...... db50. The agent would consistently fail to open db03, db06, and so on -- but not in an every 3rd database pattern. Here is the pattern of skipped databases: 3,6,9, 14, 17, 20, 23, 25, 28, 31, 34, 36, ......
  451. 08/08/2006Great lightening storm! I'm downstairs waiting for the pager to go off...Its 23:56 and I'm waiting for the pager to go off (oh, just went once, but for the west side of town...) The large red blob in the yellow "Watch Box" is a fantastic electrical storm which is going to pass right through town. Gotta love the new "Weather.Gov" radar ......
  452. 08/07/2006Be honest. Have you ever avoided doing a perfectly legitimate search because the keywords might attract negative attention?The use of search engines is now ubiquitous. Whatever you want, start with Google or Yahoo or Ask. I wonder though, as we live in an increasingly paranoid and monitored culture how many people have now started rethinking their use of these tools for legitimate purposes because the terms they're interested in might look suspicious to someone. If you read about the training I did for the Explorers last week, you may recall that we ran into a problem caused (we think) by the residue from tear gas or pepper ......
  453. 08/07/2006What would explain Landis's odd doping tests from the Tour de France?I've been wondering about this a bit. What kinds of things could make a test like that come up with results which we interpret incorrectly? Set aside the obvious nonstarters, that either he cheated or that the test was flawed or tampered with. They're all more probable than anything else, but make for boring discussion. One thought I had goes back to some articles I read a few years back about the role of testosterone in decision reinforcement. If I recall correctly, when you make a good decision -- or are ......
  454. 08/06/2006(UPDATED - SOLUTION) I hate applications that don't obey the Windows Large Font settings. Anyone know a good utility to rectify this situation?The one thing my laptop doesn't do well, is display text large enough for me to actually read. The "native" screen resolution is 1920x1200 -- on a 17" display. I use Window's "Large Fonts" and that works in most apps at least somewhat. Sometimes buttons are skewed or dialog boxes don't fit -- but mostly it's great. The high res with larger text makes works look like they're printed on paper. Products like Skype, Trillian, and that ilk suck though. I haven't found a skin for trillian that fixes the problem ......
  455. 08/04/2006Well, I tried VONGO -- the subscription video on demand thing. I think this picture says it all.Notice the time stamps on the 3 messages from ......
  456. 08/04/2006100 degrees, 80% humidity, turnout gear, and tear gas -- Training Wednesday was TOUGHOn Wednesday of this week I took the day off work to organize the “Roll-Up Scenarios” class for the Cumberland Fire Department “Explorer” Academy 2006. The academy is 5 days where kids participating in the “Explorer Scouts” program from six nearby towns live at the station and learn all aspects of firefighting as a career. Wednesday was the fourth day, and time to put all the skills they’ve gotten so far into practice. “Roll-Up Scenarios” is an all day class where the kids go through six “evolutions” which ......
  457. 08/02/2006Cumberland Fire Academy Week - Today I'm out teaching all day.Some of you may remember me talking about Last year's academy, where we take a group of kids involved in the "Explorers" program through a 5 day live-in program at the fire stations. This year I'm doing a little more to help, and I've signed up to run the "Drive Up Scenarios" day. This is the day we run them through everything they've learned. There are five groups of kids, so we run five scenarios (called evolutions) so that each group tries a hand at each job. Today is also the hottest day of the year ......
  458. 07/25/2006Busy, busy, busy.... Real engineering data from a tech helps me fix the pool heater -- oh, and the new Engine 1's first few calls.I can't believe its been 10 days since my last blog entry. I've been running around like a crazy person since then. I'll try to post more often now that things with the new truck have settled down. I fixed the pool heater today. After having the burner cleaned, it wouldn't run. The guy who takes care of the gas appliances for me from the energy company (I draw the line on DIY when it comes to playing with LP Gas) saw that my previous wiring work was up to snuff and figured I could save a ton of money by ......
  459. 07/14/2006I got to call the Engine 1 into service today. How cool is that?Bringing a new fire truck into service is way more complicated than it should be. Every truck is a custom work of art, unique from the word go. That leads, of course, to a debugging phase on delivery that any software developer would recognize. I've spent a good part of the two days working to herd the new truck through this process. I've spent hours loading equipment and writing up status and location reports on the equipment. Today was the payoff. With both the Chief and Captain unavailable today, I got ......
  460. 07/12/2006List of things to go wrong in the last two weeksIs it just me, or is anyone else having a strangely long list of things 'break' in the last few weeks? Here's my list: Pool Heater -- Still not right, I have a second appointment to have it looked at on Friday. As near as I can tell, the burner needs to be cleaned. Fire Truck -- Engine 1 finally died just a few days before we were ready for the new one to go in serviceWashing Machine 1 -- Died two weeks ago. It took until Monday to get a service guy out to pronounce it DRT. Washing Machine 2 -- Delivered ......
  461. 07/08/2006So the secret is out - I have been in Phoenix for a couple of days. Surprise! Well, it was to me.A family member in Phoenix was admitted to the hospital early Wednesday morning. I didn't hear about it until that afternoon, but decided to try to get out here if I could. There were some complications to this however. First, I can't travel without being ready to do some work if a client has an emergency. If you've been following this blog, you know that Wednesday morning my new Dell Laptop was delivered (which rocks, by the way). That means I was about a quarter of the way through loading software on it ......
  462. 07/06/2006Got my new laptop -- its fantastic. I am very impressed with Dell's work on this D820. Some humor though -- I tried asking a question on their chat tool. Transcript here.The new laptop I ordered finally arrived on Wednesday. I was actually not sure I'd like the screen -- At some point, resolution beyond a certain depth is too fine for me to use for long periods. In this case, the crispness of each character on the screen is amazing, and the aspect ratio being as wide as it is means I have some huge amount of screen real estate while opening easier on airplanes because it isn't as tall. The machine is fast, not too heavy, fast, elegant, and the magnesium case is rigid and ......
  463. 07/03/2006The joy of finding a new book that is wonderfully written!As I was needing to take long drive, I tried to quickly pull a book from Audible to keep me awake. It turned out at the last second the drive was cancelled, but I'd already chosen a book. I chose it almost at random. A familiar author had a book out and the reviews (by listeners) were terrible. In one, a comment was made about the terrible narration but the admission that he could be biased since he'd just finished listening to this other book. It was the frankness of that last statement -- as if anyone ......
  464. 07/03/2006First Beijing train reaches Lhasa -- Why Oxygen on it? That makes no sense to me. The problem at elevation isn't the oxygen.So this train goes from Beijing to Lhasa -- covering permafrost and mountains. It peaks over 16,000 feet. I've been as high as 12,000 feet and hiked around a bit without getting too tired, but I was younger and I'd imagine that extra altitude could really do a person in. So, the Chinese built the train with onboard oxygen. This makes no sense to me. The problem at altitude isn't lake of oxygen per se. Its lack of pressure. The amount of oxygen as a percentage is the same, but with reduced pressure, less is ......
  465. 07/03/2006Here's what FEDEX considers helpfulNote on these screenshots, that the overnight package sent on July 1st, was listed as being in Boston at 8am on the 3rd, and scheduled for delivery by 3pm that afternoon at my location -- 2.5 hours drive from that airport location in Boston. Now, after FedEx has "Helped" the package is shown STILL in Boston, and scheduled for deliver on the 6th - a full 3 days later. WTF? I'm fairly sure I could BICYCLE to Boston AND BACK in less time than they seem to plan to take to get this package to me. I am now ......
  466. 07/03/2006Vonage and FedEX Customer Service StupidityTime for a rant. Both Vonage and FedEx have surpassed themselves over the last couple of weeks in terms of shockingly bad support. Vonage, thankfully, I'm nearly through with as I'm in the process of transferring ownership of my numbers elsewhere (to connect.voicepulse.com) but FedEx I continue to have to deal with periodically. First FedEx. It seems that paying the extra 60 dollars for overnight shipping to Dell didn't actually get FedEx to ship overnight. Maybe. You see I can't tell. If I track the ......
  467. 07/02/2006The New Engine 1 was delivered today! Pics and details are here...It is a big event when a crew gets a new fire truck (an Engine in this case, as a "Truck" is for a Ladder crew). Our new Engine is a Ferrara Igniter chassis. Its a Class A Pumper, with 1000 gallons of water on board, class A and class B foam, a 1500 GPM pump, and all the bells and whistles you can imagine being helpful for a fire crew. Even air conditioning in the cab. The engine will stay parked up at our West station for the weekend, then go out for the "On-Spot" tire chains (which operate from a push ......
  468. 07/01/2006Domino Technote - Undocumented function plus cool code lets you get the current location name, thus any data from the current location in pure formula language.I don't post technotes like this often, but rest assured fans of mine, the old man still knows a few things. Someone we all know and love was bouncing a problem off me. He needed to lookup the currently active location document name. @Environment wouldn't work because you can't lookup non-user variables. The tricky part is that it had to be all formula language. He tipped me to an undocumented function "@LocationGetInfo". After dumping the mail6.ntf and pernames.ntf to dxl, I came up with only a few ......
  469. 06/28/2006I missed a fire while I was traveling last week -- but in my own way, I still did my part.On June 22nd at about 10:30am there was a fire at a home in Cumberland. This time of day on a weekday, manpower is at a severe shortage. The initial response was very shorthanded but was able to hold the fire until more personnel arrived to finish the job. The house is still standing and damage was kept to a minimum. I wasn't able to attend, as I was flying to DC at the time, but I do believe its fair to say I contributed. You've heard me talking about "Second Signal" over the last several months. Thanks ......
  470. 06/28/2006Finally ordered a new laptop. That's a big step -I've been considering it for a very long time but not found what I wanted.Based on its top notch performance and expandability, combined with fantastic price & durability -- and topped off by reasonable weight and size numbers -- I've chosen the Dell Latitude D820. The last new laptop I ordered was in November of 2002. That machine has held up well -- a Dell Inspiron 8200. It has been soaked with water, banged around, upgraded, and poorly treated for all that time. The water did force a hard disk replacement, but otherwise its been a rock. Its just not powerful enough any more ......
  471. 06/27/2006SUV Myths and Stupid PrejudicesI'm sick of hearing about evil SUV drivers. Let me post of a things to consider as you people make your snide comments. Note, by the way, that my present car is a Pacifica which is actually much more like a station wagon than an SUV -- though I do miss my Durango. I'm writing this after getting fed up with things like this stupid article. All SUV are too big for their owners and waste fuel? Not always true. While visiting my family a few years ago in Phoenix, I rented a massive Ford Expedition. This ......
  472. 06/26/2006Got stuck in DC last night in the longest thunderstorm I've ever seen12 hours straight of lightening storm. Anyway, I did get these AMAZING pictures at the Udvar-Hazy museum. I got to stand next to the Space Shuttle "Enterprise", an SR-71, Migs, a Concorde, a Corsair, missiles, and even a Kamakaze. Look closely at the Kamakaze -- its actually a bomb. Just a torpedo shape with a detonator visible on the front, a jet engine on the back, and a tiny cockpit. No eject, no landing gear, and very little steering control. Just fast and deadly. I heard there was a stealth bomber ......
  473. 06/14/2006Quit trying to turn your Notes Client apps into imitations of MDI or Dialog Box based applications. That's not where the value is.This is adapted from a response I wrote to someone in a private forum about the Notes client UI and its value. I realized when I re-read it that it would make a good blog topic, so here goes.... Notes 7 gives you power to do UI things in the Notes client. You will not, however, turn it into a Visual Studio dialog box driven MDI application. The further you go toward trying to do that, the bigger hole you're digging yourself from a scale, support, and stability perspective. Notes is Notes. It is not VS.net ......
  474. 06/11/2006Busy weekend for your favorite Lieutenant About once each quarter, every officer in our department has a turn at "Weekend Duty Officer". Basically, this means you're the go-to person for dispatch when there is a question about anything from burning permits to parade details (parade details are done for school teams that win state championships and other celebratory events). This weekend was my turn. This is also graduation weekend. Oh, and one other wrinkle -- Engine 1 has the graduation details each year which include doing the fire watch rounds ......
  475. 06/06/2006Time to repeat some of the best advice on programming I've ever read.A couple of years ago I read something Richard Schwartz wrote about "Second System Syndrome". I can't seem to find the original now, but here's a link to the topic on wikipedia. Since reading it, an understanding of this topic has been directly responsible for saving my backside about a dozen times. The general idea, is that you build something that by chance, luck, and a little skill turns out really useful. As a reward, you get the chance to do it again. You resolve that this time you're really going to ......
  476. 06/01/2006STTN - Store more than 32k of non-rich text on a document, and let it still be visible -- even in Notes 6.5.4 and 7.0.1I don't do "Show and Tell Thursday" all that often. I'm just too heads down right now. Today though, I thought I'd share a tip after having to resolve some customer issues related to a problem that can crop up in newer versions of the Notes client. Background - What is "Summary" data? When you save a Notes document, it cannot have more than 32k of "Summary" data on it. Summary data is all the values stored from all the fields on your forms that aren't rich text. It also includes any noteitems written to ......
  477. 05/27/2006When you REALLY love the game....Ari earns her team's "Man of the Match" award at her first out of state soccer tournament!You know you love the game when you love the game so much that after two of the toughest games you've ever played, playing hurt on the hottest, muggiest day so far this year, you come back to the hotel for a quick swim and then more soccer out in the parking lot with your team. Ari is playing center forward on a "Premier" level soccer team now, a position she'd never attempted prior to last fall. Her Maine Metro Football Club team entered a tournament this weekend. Tournaments break down into divisions. ......
  478. 05/25/2006New microsoft patch is here to [...help me option a licensed copy of windows..]How is this Microsoft "Update" designed to help me, to fix broken software, or to make my system more secure? Doesn't anyone else think its wrong for Microsoft to stick the newest and greatest license validation tool on my system in the form of an automatic system update? Have you checked your system? I'll be you got one of these ......
  479. 05/23/2006Advisor Conference in Scottsdale, August 2006 -- Discount of $100 Available via Bloggers and User GroupsIn what can only be described as the smartest marketing idea anyone in the history of the world has ever had, Advisor Magazine is offering a $100 discount to anyone who registers for the conference and mentions the name of certain speakers. I'm one of then, so when you register, just type in "Andrew Pollack discount" in the comment field and they'll "Take it from there." While it is true there are other people who can give you the same discount, and so far as I know there is no kickback to any of us -- it ......
  480. 05/22/2006Say what you may want to about Ray Nagin, as long as you call him the winner.The guy may have sounded pretty bad on the news. He may have said some things most of us find pretty ridiculous, but clearly he's a hell of a politician. It doesn't even matter if any of it was his fault. How else could the man right up front in charge of his city when it literally became uninhabitable, the man with the plan ....that left hundreds stranded on rooftops and thousands in a worn out stadium with inadequate food, water, power, and sanitation, the man who left hundreds at what was supposed to ......
  481. 05/22/2006Going bedouinReading in Wired Magazine for June 2006, the "Jargon Watch" column has an item titled "Going bedouin" (choice of capitalization is there's, not mine). This is essentially the idea of businesses made entirely of employees and their virtual connections via cell phone, email, VoIP, and so forth. There is no real estate asset. I suppose this differentiates from the solo consultant in that there is more than one person in the ......
  482. 05/18/2006If you live long enough, I guess you get to do just about everythingBruce and Julian interviewed me tonight for their "Taking Notes" podcast. It was fun to do, and yes it is true that this is the first podcast I've listened to as well as the first one I've participated in. I snuck in earlier this evening and previewed a couple of past episodes to get a feel for how it was done. If you're like me in that you don't do "Podcasts" don't sweat it. The audio is just an MP3 link you can click on to hear. It's telling that for a communication tool we didn't use the phone. We used ......
  483. 05/18/2006Podcasting -- how many of you listen them?I've been invited to take part in (or be interviewed on, or something somewhere in between) a podcast this week. I'm curious as to how many of you listen to them. Drop me and email or respond here and let me know. Its an odd medium that I have to admit doesn't hold a lot of interest (as a blogger) for me in its current format. I've never actualy listened to one until today when I reviewed a few of the site that I'll be talking ......
  484. 05/18/2006I always wondered what it would be like to have IBM's full support behind Lotus Notes and Domino. Now we're finding out.Support at IBM for Lotus Notes and Domino is as high now as I've ever seen it, and its fantastic. IBM's renewed commitment to Lotus Notes and Domino first became noticeable with the now famous whitepaper in 2003. For the first time in a few years, you could start talking about Domino inside IBM seriously again. Revisionists will tell you it wasn't that bad, but I'm not about to let them forget. Before Dr. Goyal was able to sift through the competing strategies and oversee the development of a plan to ......
  485. 05/18/2006I love living in MaineYou've no doubt seen the news about flooding in New England as a result of the rain over the last 10 days -- or as I like to call it, point-two-five on the Noah scale. I live about 45 minutes North of where the flooding is, and though we've had rain that's about it. An hour further North its been fairly dry. Well, its true, the National Guard did have to get called out. Not for looting or security, you understand. This is Maine. We don't do that. No, in fact the Guard had to be standing by for safety as ......
  486. 05/15/2006Infoworld Rates Domino 8.7 out of 10!The results are in, and Infoworld rates IBM Notes and Domino with amazing scores. Take a look at these numbers. What more can I say? Link: http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/05/11/78099_20TCnotes_1.html Overall Score: Excellent 8.7 Criteria FeaturesManagementPerformanceEase-of-useIntegrationValue Score 899899 Weight 20%20%20%15%15%10%   IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 7 Cost: Domino Server starts at $1,145 per CPU; Notes starts at $101 per client; Domino Web Access 7 starts at $70 per client Platforms: ......
  487. 05/15/2006Installation of Domino 7.0.1 on Linux - missing a few JVM libraries?When I started up my new Domino 7.0.1 linux server on Saturday, the HTTP task reported the following error: 05/13/2006 06:37:36 PM HTTP JVM: Exception 05/13/2006 06:37:36 PM HTTP JVM: in thread 05/13/2006 06:37:36 PM HTTP JVM: "main" 05/13/2006 06:37:36 PM HTTP JVM: 05/13/2006 06:37:36 PM HTTP JVM: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/70010/linux/jvm/bin/libawt.so: libXp.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory 05/13/2006 06:37:36 PM HTTP JVM: at ......
  488. 05/15/2006I ran into an upgrade issue when I moved from Domino 7.0 to 7.01 this weekend.This lost me several hours over the weekend. It seems that 7.0.1 along with 6.5.4 there are some changes in the backend classes or in the LotusScript interface to those cases when storing data into fields. When moving from Domino 7.0 to 7.01 I ran into a problem which was oddly similar to the one I described last week. In this case, a web application just stopped working correctly. It took me several hours to track down, because it happened that I wasn't upgrading a server, I was installing a new one and ......
  489. 05/15/2006Talk about your ups and downs at work! The BBC follows an amazing day with a really bad one....Late last week, the BBC World News announced their listenership in English around the world was up by some massive number -- 47 million people if I can recall. No surprise, they've become one of the most trusted sources of information out there. Then today a friend referred me to this article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2178097,00.html I especially liked the last ......
  490. 05/12/2006Finally, a great IBM ad on TV -- sponsoring Dr. Who no less!Imagine my surprise at finding IBM commercial on television that (a) was very good, (b) was very well placed, and (c) mentioned collaboration! Of all places, I was watching Dr. Who -- the new series just over from the UK -- on SF channel and a great deep voiced announcer tag came along and said, in 70's style "Dr. Who is brought to you by...IBM. What makes you special?". We then cut over to a pretty good abstract commercial centered around a water cooler in the desert. The quote "Lets tap into a million ......
  491. 05/11/2006Great pictures of my 12 year old kicking butt on the soccer field this weekendFor those who don't already know, my 12 year old daughter Ari has transformed herself over the last year from your basic pre-teen couch potato into a fairly serious athlete. She did this on her own. I never asked her take on more than a general two or three day a week active sport in a noncompetitive way. She opted for soccer and was asked last fall to join our town's "Travel" team. That was more competitive than she'd ever played before in the AYSO or "Rec league" games and it took real effort (and no ......
  492. 05/08/2006Busy, busy busy. Resolution to my earlier field size issue, fire calls, press release work, and half a dozen computer languages over the course of the last four days.Sorry I've been slow to post. Today's debacle was resolved when I stopped using a Lotus Notes text list field to hold a bunch of data and instead write it to a Rich Text field. To do that, I took the array and used "Join()" on it to turn it into one long string of comma delimited entries (there are no commas in the data of this so I was ok). I save the big string to that rich text field which is hidden. When the Java agent runs, it gets the string as one long value and parses it with a String.split() call ......
  493. 05/08/2006Ugly regression bug in Lotusscript - updated** UPDATE -- Thanks to Daniel Nashed... Looks like the regression bug is preventing code from running which may not have run properly before. I'm not sure that's really what happened, as it did seem to run properly before, but thank you Daniel. Meantime, I have updated the product that this "bug" crashed and am using a rich text field and saving the data out then re-importing it later. Ugly, but quick enough. I did some checks. For text items the limit is 64K from API point of view. If you read or write a ......
  494. 05/06/2006Stunningly perfect weather today in Cumberland, MaineToday was one of those days Mainers wait for all through February and March - often standing by the door of their trailers holding lawn chairs and staring out at the snow in anticipation. About 70 degrees, partly cloudy, low humidity and a nice breeze made for a perfect day to work on the yard and get ready for summer. I finished Barb's raised garden and brought in a cubic yard of compost to fill it. Of course, since I can't back the trailer (of course I have a trailer, I live in Maine) back there where ......
  495. 05/03/2006Oh joy, we've got a new I.T. crises to worry about. Lets just go ahead and call this one "BirdFlu2k", as that's how its evolving. The idea is that there's this looming deadline (sound familiar?) only this time its even better because we don't know when it actually is. Its probably at least a year or two away but nobody can be sure. When this deadline hits, it will hit suddenly, and we're all going to have to be prepared to work from home -- possibly without food or power. Yes, its up to our I.T. departments to get their plans in place now and roll out those ......
  496. 05/01/2006A lot of thought and planning, then 9 months waitingA lot of thought and planning, then 9 months waiting and finally I can show you these pictures!           Our oldest is already 22 years old. Its taken years to decide, and months waiting for it to get this far along. Delivery should be within 45 days, but I suspect it will go a bit ......
  497. 05/01/2006Its May Day! A day celebrated by state control freaks and by anachists alike -- who knows why?It is time for all the dyslexic workers of the world to untie, the misspellers of the word brake the bounds of oppression, and for the masses to seize control of industry in the name of mediocrity for all! That's right people, from those who can to those who need. As to the anarchists -- I have no idea at all why they would pick May Day as a day to celebrate. I find it incredibly funny that there is a "They" to even talk about with anarchists. How, exactly, can true anarchists organize? How did they end up ......
  498. 04/28/2006Cumberland Fire Department member Kevin Foster wins WCSH "Teens Who Care" award and scholarship!Take a minute to view this video. Most people will go their entire lives without learning how to be half as good a man as Kevin. I've known him for four or five years now and he just never ceases to amaze me. His work for the community is so tireless that this minutes long TV profile can't begin to cover more than just a few of the things he does. I've never met anyone who has raised more money for more projects, done more physical work on those projects, and been more ready to respond to absolutely any ......
  499. 04/26/2006Release name candidates for the product codenamed Windows VistaI saw this today on SlashDot, it was posted anonymously so the best I can do for attribution is a link. I like your comment on Vista becoming "XP warmed over". But there is a problem. "Vista" is non-compliant with traditional Microsoft OS names. Here are my suggested product names based on compatibility with MS standard naming convention: Windows 2007 Dull but it worked in 1995, 1998, 2000, and 2003Windows XP 2007 XP, new and improved for 2007Windows X[Q...Z] If XP is "extra pain", then XQ is ... Windows ......
  500. 04/25/2006Scott McNealy steps down from Sun Microsystems.Well, Scott McNealy has stepped down as CEO of Sun Microsystems. That's big news. I don't know much about his replacement yet, though I hear he's very P.R. focused and likes to troll the Linux world for attention. The more things change, the more they stay the same I guess. Jonathan Schwartzis the new President and Chief Executive Officer at Sun. Its no secret that I'm not a big fan of what Scott McNealy has done with Sun in the past 10 years. I hope Jonathan Schwartz has an agenda that makes more sense ......
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