Andrew Pollack's Blog

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  1. 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 ......
  2. 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 ......
  3. 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 ......
  4. 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, ......
  5. 07/14/2007Andrew J SimpsonCreate your own at ......
  6. 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 ......
  7. 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 ......
  8. 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. ......
  9. 07/03/2007Upgrading from Visual Studio.NET 2003 to 2005 ......
  10. 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, ......
  11. 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. ......
  12. 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 ......
  13. 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 ......
  14. 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 ......
  15. 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 ......
  16. 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 ......
  17. 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 ......
  18. 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 ......
  19. 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 ......
  20. 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. ......
  21. 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 ......
  22. 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 ......
  23. 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 ......
  24. 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. [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] ......
  25. 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 ......
  26. 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 ......
  27. 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", ......
  28. 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 ......
  29. 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 ......
  30. 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 ......
  31. 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 ......
  32. 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 ......
  33. 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 ......
  34. 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 ......
  35. 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 ......
  36. 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 ......
  37. 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 ......
  38. 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 ......
  39. 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 ......
  40. 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 ......
  41. 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 ......
  42. 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 ......
  43. 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, ......
  44. 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.. ......
  45. 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 ......
  46. 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 ......
  47. 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 ......
  48. 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. ......
  49. 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, ......
  50. 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 ......
  51. 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. ......
  52. 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. ......
  53. 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 -- ......
  54. 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 ......
  55. 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 ......
  56. 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 ......
  57. 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 ......
  58. 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 ......
  59. 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 ......
  60. 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 ......
  61. 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 ......
  62. 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 -- ......
  63. 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 ......
  64. 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 ......
  65. 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 ......
  66. 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 ......
  67. 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 ......
  68. 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 ......
  69. 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 ......
  70. 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. ......
  71. 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). ......
  72. 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 ......
  73. 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 ......
  74. 11/09/2006Microsoft is sending out presents. Should you open them?I'm not sure if I dare, but ......
  75. 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 ......
  76. 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 ......
  77. 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 ......
  78. 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 ......
  79. 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 ......
  80. 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 ......
  81. 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.... ......
  82. 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 ......
  83. 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. ......
  84. 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 ......
  85. 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 ......
  86. 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 ......
  87. 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 ......
  88. 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 ......
  89. 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. ......
  90. 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 ......
  91. 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 ......
  92. 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 ......
  93. 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 ......
  94. 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 ......
  95. 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. ......
  96. 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 ......
  97. 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. ......
  98. 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 ......
  99. 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 ......
  100. 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. ......
  101. 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 ......
  102. 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 ......
  103. 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 ......
  104. 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 ......
  105. 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 ......
  106. 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 ......
  107. 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. ......
  108. 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 ......
  109. 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 ......
  110. 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 ......
  111. 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 ......
  112. 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 ......
  113. 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 ......
  114. 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 ......
  115. 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 ......
  116. 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 ......
  117. 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 ......
  118. 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 ......
  119. 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 ......
  120. 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 ......
  121. 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 ......
  122. 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, ......
  123. 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 ......
  124. 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. ......
  125. 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 ......
  126. 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 ......
  127. 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 ......
  128. 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, ......
  129. 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 ......
  130. 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 ......
  131. 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 ......
  132. 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 ......
  133. 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 ......
  134. 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 ......
  135. 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 ......
  136. 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 ......
  137. 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 ......
  138. 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 ......
  139. 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 ......
  140. 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 ......
  141. 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 ......
  142. 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 ......
  143. 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 ......
  144. 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 ......
  145. 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 ......
  146. 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 ......
  147. 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 ......
  148. 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 ......
  149. 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 ......
  150. 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 ......
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