Phone Goodness

I really enjoy my phone. It’s not a Blackberry, but it’s close enough for me. I’ve had my LG Rumor for about 3 months now and find it can do just about everything I want it to. It doesn’t have push email but I don’t get that much important stuff that I need to know immediately when I get a message. The keyboard is great for sending messages and texts (although I’m still not very fast at it because my thumbs are big). I can access Facebook from it and can send Twitter messages and receive Twitter direct messages (that’s all I want at this point). I downloaded the Gmail and Google Maps apps and they work really well. It can play music and videos and takes decent pictures and accepts a micro-SD card for added space. It’s a “smart phone” without being a “smartphone” (which would cost more each month).

I wish it could upload pictures to Facebook or let me send them via email, but I think that is more of a Sprint thing than a phone thing.

I also got an Invisible Shield to protect the screen. VERY worth the investment in my mind.

I don’t know why I wanted to post this. I guess just to say I appreciate the constant advances in phones.

Summer Vacation

Gregg has been bugging me (as friends will do) to post about my own Michigan summer vacation adventure since we went to one of the same places he did. We also went to Mackinac Island but were able to spend more time than Gregg’s family did. It is an annual trip for us (8 of the last 9 years) but this year was different because my Mom and my sister and her family were there with us.

We went up on Sunday and stayed a night in Mackinaw City. That would let us decompress from the trip and the kids could swim in the hotel pool. Plus it would get us over to the island earlier and in a less stressed state. We took Shepler’s over because they tag the bags and send them directly to our hotel: The Island House. We’ve found Shepler’s to be the easiest for us to deal with (but the Arnold jet-powered catamarans are pretty cool), and we love the bed and breakfast package at the Island House (they have a really good breakfast buffet).

Since we’ve been there so often, we definitely have a routine. We brought lunches for everyone and ate in Lafayette Park (at the base of the Fort), then the kids played on the small playground that is there. We got three adult bikes (we brought the other six bikes with us) and started around the island for the first time. Our daughter just learned how to ride on two wheels and she was excited to be riding around on her own. We all rode around the island 5 times while we were there and she made it between 2 and 3 miles on her own each time – pretty good for a 5 year old! Then I got to pull her using the Trail-Gator (and answer the usual dozen questions about “where did you get that?”).

We have a spot we stop about halfway around the island so we can rest and stretch. And skip stones. Find a flat, round stone of reasonable weight, snap your wrist and see how many times it skips. Tuesday was probably the best day because the water was so calm. I think I hit 15 skips with one stone. Wednesday was fun too because it was really wavy, so we tried to skip from one wave to the next.

Dinner one night is at the Ice House, the casual restaurant at the back of the Island House. It is good food and reasonably priced – plus it is out of the way so is not very busy. The second night, we go to 3 Bros. Sarducci for deep dish pizza. Really good stuff! Then, of course, there is fudge!

We didn’t go up to Arch Rock this year. We just didn’t all feel like climbing the hills. But I took our daughter through Fort Mackinac for the first time. I hadn’t been in MANY years, so it was interesting to me too. The kids even participated in a bit of a marching drill. Pretty funny watching everyone try to keep up.

We have a good time every year we go up. Gregg will attest than I have lots of information to share about Mackinac. I’m glad to share if you want to take a trip yourself.

Weird @TextToTime Behavior

This isn't really a Show-n-Tell Thursday post, even though it is Thursday. I'm having a problem with a @TextToTime formula and I can't find any documented reason why. When I pass it the string "R. Marshall" it returns 3/1/2008. In fact, if I pass it "Ma", it returns that date. As long as it doesn't have "ma" at the start of any word in the string, it returns nothing (which is what I'd expect).

Has anyone else seen that? Can you duplicate it?

Don't Do This in Notes 8

I started writing this the other day but gave up because I wasn't sure what caused this to happen. I'm still not positive, but I have a better idea.

I'm running Notes 8.01 on Windows XP SP2. If I turn on the LotusScript debugger, go to my client and open a composite application, like my mail database on the 8 template, I get a debugger window. So far, so good. If I say "Oops, I didn't want the debugger for that" and click the Continue button, the debugger is replaced with a window of my first mail message. That has a title bar and a menu bar but no toolbars, and there is no way to make it go away. I have to kill the client processes and restart to fix it.

This only seems to happen (so far) with a composite app. And I haven't done exhaustive testing (because I'm trying to get my projects done!) to know if there is something specific that is a trigger or if it is just something weird about my installation (see my last post for Sametime oddities).

I'd be interested to know if anyone else can reproduce this problem.

Have You Seen This in Notes 8.0.1?

We have a few people who have moved to the Notes 8.0.1 client and are planning the rollout to the rest of our clients. However, we have been seeing some problems in the client that we can't explain and want to try to sort out before continuing on.

The machines we have upgraded are our developer/admin machines, so they had the Notes, Admin and Designer clients installed (all 7.0.2). We did an upgrade rather than uninstalling 7/installing 8 and none of them had an 8 beta installed. These are all Win XP machines. We also had Sametime Connect 7.5.1 installed and I'm not sure if that was uninstalled before installing 8. The one thing we may not have done that is in the installation guide is to stop all other Windows programs before installing.

What we are seeing is that the embedded Sametime client does not always start correctly. It will be OK sometimes, but other times will not login and will not allow us to login. Other times it will login but the system tray icon will show as "disconnected". Sometimes when logged in, it will not open a chat window. Restarting the Notes client usually resolves the issues.

We can't figure out if it is something to do with how the client was installed on these machines, if it is related to how our environment (OS) is secured or something else. We did have local admin rights on the machines when we installed the software.

We're worried about the impression these kinds of things will leave, and we really have no desire to remove all traces of 7 before installing 8 (that seems to resolve the problems) because of the extra work it will cause everyone in setting up their Notes environment again. Any thoughts would be appreciated - no idea is too crazy at this point.

Shatner Really *is* Speaking at an IBM Conference

Got an email today about the Rational Software Developer Conference and saw that William Shatner is one of the keynote speakers. He's been rumored to be at Lotusphere so often that it's become cliche.

I've enjoyed the music at the Lotusphere OGS the last couple of years but I'm a little jealous that the Wallflowers are playing the RSDC. Maybe next year....

This is a good idea?

So Delta and Northwest are going to (try to) merge. Two airlines that not too long ago were in bankruptcy. The CEO of Delta came from Northwest and the CEO of Northwest is going to "retire quietly". They are planning to keep all nine (nine!) of their hubs. Their pilots still haven't come to agreement on their seniority issues.

There are obviously a lot of details to be worked out and made public but early on this has the look of 1+1=1. It will be interesting to see where they are going to find the cost savings to justify this. I'm a little worried about smaller airports like the one where I live since we have both Northwest and Delta flying out of here to Detroit, Minneapolis and Cincinnati (and, for a time, Atlanta). I foresee higher prices and fewer choices.

SnTT: @Transform Goodness

If you went to Rocky's session at Lotusphere 2008 on Formula Tricks, you heard about the @Transform function. It lets you take a list of values and run a formula against it to change some or all of the values in the list based on your criteria.

I've used it in two places recently and it works far better than anything we could have done prior to the function becoming available (which was in Release 6). In my first example, I have a list of dates and a list of numbers. I want to sum the numbers only for the dates that are in the future. For example, say the fields are:
SchedDates is 3/24/08:3/31/08:4/7/08:4/14/08
SchedDays is 5:5:4:5

If I look at this on 4/4/08, I want to end up with 9. This is the formula I run:

@If(SchedDates="";0;@Sum(@Transform(@Text(SchedDates) + "~" + @Text(SchedDays);"x";@If(@TextToTime(@Left(x;"~"))<@Today;0;@TextToNumber(@Right(x;"~"))*8))))

That takes the two fields and joins them (eg. 03/24/2008~5:03/31/2008~5:04/07/2008~4:04/14/2008:5), then replaces each one with 0 if the date portion is before today or the number portion if not. So you end up with 0:0:4:5. When you @Sum that, you get 9. Cool!

The other time I used it recently was to make sure that a name was placed in a field as long as it wasn't already in that field or five other fields. That formula looks like this and is in the Input Translation of a field (in this case Level5):

reqNames:=@Name([Canonicalize];"James Q Public/MyCo/US");
@If(reqNames*=Level0:Level1:Level2:Level3:Level4:Level5;@Trim(@Transform(reqNames;"x";@If(@IsMember(x;Level0:Level1:Level2:Level3:Level4:Level5);@Nothing;x)):@ThisValue);
@Trim(reqNames:@ThisValue))

The reqNames field can be multi-valued. If any of the values in the field are in any of the listed fields (Level0, etc.), it replaces that value in reqNames with @Nothing. When all values in reqNames are checked, it prepends the remaining names to the field where the formula lives. If not, reqNames is just prepended to the existing field value, making sure there are no blank entries in the list.

If you haven't already, be sure you take a look at @Transform.

Technorati: Show-n-Tell Thursday

Written Language Foibles

I am accused sometimes - mostly by my wife - of being "Mr. Language Person" because I spot and comment on potentially odd phrases in written or spoken words. I saw this one this morning:

SEATTLE — The FBI is analyzing a torn, tangled parachute found buried by children in southwest Washington to determine whether it might have been used by famed plane hijacker D.B. Cooper, the agency said Tuesday.

I know what this is meant to say, but it could be read three ways, two of them unintended:
- The way it is meant, that the children found it.
- That there were children buried nearby (ewww).
- That the children buried it.

I don't know why I notice those things, but I do.

UPDATE: The version published in my local paper reads:

SEATTLE — The FBI is analyzing a torn, tangled parachute that children found buried in southwest Washington to determine whether it might have been used by famed plane hijacker D.B. Cooper, the agency said Tuesday.

Much more clear that way.

Multitasking

I hear a lot about the "new generation" being able to multitask far easier than past generations, primarily because they grow up doing it. I always used to have the TV or music on when I was doing homework, and I still have music on during the day when I am at work, but it tended to fade into the background when I focused on what I *should* have been doing.

Today I was looking at some code that I need to enhance and I had a podcast on (after last week's vacation, I am a little behind). I found I could only really concentrate on one or the other because the podcast was one where I might actually learn something (it wasn't just for entertainment).

So my question is, can young people now really focus on two tasks like that (working/studying and an informative podcast or TV show)? Or is the multitasking they are talking about studying and IMing friends? I can do that, by the way.

What I Got From Lotusphere 2008

As usual, there was a lot to see and do this year. But, as Gregg Eldred and others have said, the Lotusphere experience goes beyond the sessions, Product Showcase and receptions. It really is about the community: sitting at lunch with the people who develop the products, meeting people you have interacted with online, sharing knowledge to resolve that nagging problem. Maybe it’s because I am in a small shop, but knowing other Notes/Domino administrators and developers who I can bounce ideas off is really helpful. There may be communities around other software products, but it seems the bond is stronger within the Lotus community because “community” is what Lotus Notes has always been about.

So what did I take away from Lotusphere this year?

• Developers need to learn Java or make friends with Java developers. That isn’t to say that LotusScript is going away – it isn’t – nor will it become a second-class citizen as an application development language – it won’t. It just means that taking full advantage of the Notes 8 client and the capabilities it can provide will require Java knowledge.



• Widgets (and – maybe – Live Text) will go a LONG way toward making the Notes client the one application people live in all day. The thing I have yet to get a clear picture of is how they will function in a restrictive environment (eg. behind the firewall).



• Designer 8.5 will transform how we develop Notes applications. Yes, there are some paradigm shifts and there may be some syntax issues (do we help Notes developers learn Eclipse terminology or change Eclipse to Notes/Domino terms?), but the tools and flexibility in the new Designer will be phenomenal. I should have spent more time looking at XPages but I think those will evolve into a powerful tool for client applications.



• It will be interesting to see how Lotus Mashups and Bluehouse evolve over the next year. They looked pretty cool “on paper”.



• SpeedGeeking is a must-see. It grew this year vs. last year and I expect it to grow more next year. It is a chance to hear knowledgeable presenters up close and personal as they shred their vocal cords. More importantly, you get a lot of tips on a variety of topics in a short period of time. It is well worth attending.

The last two years have seen IBM Lotus playing offense in a confident manner. There is a lot of positive energy around Notes/Domino 8 and the roadmap is clearer than it has ever been. To be sure, there are things that could be improved: make it easier to do advanced UI tricks (like using layers), control client and application appearance by merely editing CSS files, Symphony programming and integration (some improvements are coming). But overall, the future looks bright.

Why Is This?

It takes months to get into shape but only a couple of weeks to get out of it. I did my usual BodyPump class on Monday after missing two weeks (one at Lotusphere, one with the flu) and my legs have hurt all day today. I'm going again tomorrow because I know that although they will hurt, they will actually hurt less after I work them out again. It's really annoying though that it only takes two weeks to undo a lot of prior work.

Lotusphere Tips

This is probably better written BEFORE Lotusphere, but I am going to put it down while these things are fresh in my mind.

• Register early and stay at the Swan or Dolphin. It is SO much easier to be able to get to your room quickly and easily, especially if you hang out with people later in the evening on the Boardwalk. If you can't or don't want to stay there, plan to pay for cab rides: the Disney transportation system is good but it will take 30-45 minutes to get from the Boardwalk or Swan/Dolphin back to one of the other resorts.


• Plan your travel to arrive by Saturday night and leave Thursday night or Friday. That way you can attend the full day of JumpStarts and take in Gurupalooza, Meet the Developers and the Closing General Session. Look at the Closing Session like dessert: it doesn't add to your technical knowledge, but is a reward for all the energy you've expended earlier in the week. My first year, I missed the Thursday afternoon sessions because they weren't mentioned anywhere that I saw. Now you know.


• Try to get in early enough on Saturday to get registered at the conference. Then you have time to review all the materials you get and make sure your agenda is set. Of course, using the Sessions database that Ben Langhinrichs puts together helps with that, but getting registered Saturday lets you transfer all that information to your pocket agenda.


• Find shortcuts among the Swan, Dolphin and Yacht & Beach. This will come with experience and exploration. Go outside to get between them (go through the pool/beach area or out the end of the Dolphin past the dining hall), go out the main Swan doors and along the sidewalk to get over to the conference areas, and find alternate entrances (I can't give away ALL my secrets :D ).

These are just a few ideas in addition to the other tips you can find. Hope you can use them.

What a Game!

I will admit that I thought the Patriots would blow past the Giants, but that it might take until the second half to do it. Even after the first quarter, I told my wife if the rest of the game went the same way, the Giants would win time of possession 40 minutes to 20 minutes but still lose 28-12. Boy, was I wrong!

It was a pretty entertaining game all throughout and Eli proved he could handle as much pressure as Brady and still perform. I didn't really care much who won, but I'm not unhappy to see the Pats go 18-1.

Oh, and I think my favorite commercials were the Tide-to-Go (talking stain) and the Bud Light fire breathing, with the Thriller-dancing lizards a close third.

Flu Sucks

It took until Sunday evening, but I think the 'SphereFlu caught me then. The doctor confirmed it Tuesday; luckily, because it was within 48 hours, I could take Tamiflu (boy is that stuff expensive!). Finally, by Wednesday evening, I was feeling at least OK. I'm still pretty tired but at least am able to do some work (from home, luckily).

Now I just have to get healthy and keep the rest of the family healthy so we'll be ready for vacation at the end of next week.

Dude, Where's My Plane?

I was about 90 minutes late getting home from Chicago last night. Part of it was weather related (breezy and snowy so they had to de-ice; there were lots of planes to de-ice then the heater broke in the truck right as it was getting to us). But the other part of it was that someone got on the wrong plane.

We were at a gate that was able to load two regional jets at the same time. They loaded one then started loading ours. By the time I got to the turn to the other plane, the door was blocked by a rope. Apparently a fellow traveler got there early. So he probably screwed up two flights at once. No one booed him when he got on, but I really wanted to.

At least I got an enthusiastic welcome when I finally made it!

Lotusphere: Last Two Days

The days down here are very long, I'm not staying in the center of the Lotusphere universe and I don't have wireless. All of that makes it hard to do timely posts. Anyway, here is what I saw that I haven't summarized yet.

SpeedGeeking was really good. I don't know what the selection process was but Rocky may need to get some help because a couple of the presenters I talked to said they found out very late that they would be presenting. The presentations were done well but it was hard to hear and see sometimes because there was such a large number of people. Maybe small stages for the presenter tables? Or larger monitors? Or just elevate the computers? Not sure what to do about the sound though. Coming up with 12 small speaker/mic systems (even if USB-powered) could be tough but is a thought.

Andrew Davis and Brian Leonard did a nice (and humorous) session on widgets and live text. Widgets are a cool addition in the Notes client and will help make the client even more "sticky". I'm anxious to see what happens in our environment since we're behind a proxy and I have had trouble in the past configuring the client to get past it.

Messrs. Buchan and Mooney were themselves in their "Best of" Worst Practices session. At least until the end. Duffbert came up and roasted them about some of the things they did getting ready for ILUG 2007. It was obviously uncomfortable for them but they handled it well. Face it, we all know what to do but we all know there are times when we don't do what we should.

Using Web Services Features in ND8 was a little bit dull in the presentation but still had some good information, including a nice explanation of the message type and SOAP format. I'm looking forward to trying out consuming a web service.

I was hoping for so much more from the session on Bridging Customer Data into Notes 8 with Lotus Symphony. It had a lot of information on WHAT they did but I was more interested in the HOW. I'm sure that will develop over time.

Chris Blatnick and Nathan Freeman did they usual magic in Advanced UI Design Concepts. Even though I had seen about 1/3 of the ideas before, the new stuff they showed gave me a few new ideas. I love the thought of using an editable column to cause documents to be deleted and I can't wait to try it out.

I got a couple of good ideas from Bernd Hort and Thomas Bahn in their Object Oriented LotusScript session. This is a concept that is hard to teach in an hour because it is very different from traditional LS programming. And there are some "gotchas" to be aware of. I plan to download their demo and dissect it and am sure I'll get some ideas there.

The last session I went to was using XML and DXL in Notes design programming, given by Andre Guirard. He is so knowledgeable and creative but it is sometimes hard for him to bring it down to a simpler level, at least when talking (his writing is generally detailed enough). Some good ideas though and he has some tools I know I can use.

To me, nothing too earth shaking happened in the Ask the Developer session. Everyone seemed to be having a good time.

More on the closing session and an overall wrap up later.

I Miss My Family

It's great to be in Orlando at Lotusphere, don't get me wrong. But it can be hard too. I saw a guy yesterday wiping his eyes after looking at photos of his family on his PMP. I'm not at that point, but I am sorry that I missed Fathers Night at my daughter's preschool and my son's first Pinewood Derby.

As great as it is here, sometimes it really gets in the way.

Man, Am I Tired!

Here it is, Tuesday evening, and I finally have time for a Lotusphere post. There just hasn't been time during the day. Anyway, what has gone on so far?

Of the four JumpStarts I went to, the most interesting ones were related to Eclipse. Combined with what I saw in the Opening General Session and a breakout on Domino Designer 8.5, designing Notes/Domino applications will soon be much more fun. Of course, it can start even earlier if you have to develop plugins or know Java (which I don't).

Speaking of the OGS, hearing the Orlando Symphony Orchestra play Led Zeppelin's Kashmir was awesome! Bob Costas was the guest speaker and had a few good stories. I didn't think much about it at the time, but a couple of people said later his stories about baseball and football didn't connect with non-Americans. Makes sense as I look back. It was a VERY full session, and very long. There were a couple of kind of awkward moments, where things seemed really forced, like before the big announcement of Lotus Foundations (or was it Bluehouse?).

Lotusalon was interesting. Three people involved in what I guess you'd call "web 2.0 culture" presented their thoughts on where the online culture is heading. I think it may need a little fine tuning but I thought it was a good idea, just in the sense of helping to think "out of the box".

Andre Guirard and Julian Robichaux gave a good presentation on Features Every Application Should Have. I know mine don't have all of them, so I have things to check out already! Check out the tools on their sites.

John Head and Alex Kassabov did a presentation on Notes 8 and Expeditor for LotusScript Developers. They illustrated what you need to get your new development environment running and how to do it. Coupled with Mary Beth Raven and Matt Hatem's session on customizing the Notes 8 client, they showed we'll be able to do a lot to the client but it will take some work to do it (not a LOT, but more than just changing a couple of text files).

I also went to a session that Rocky Oliver did on formula and LotusScript tricks. I learned a couple of new tricks (check out the @ToNumber and @Nothing functions) and more about DXL. Yes, more things to try out.

SpeedGeeking was tonight as well. It was much bigger this year than last year but was just as good. More about that later, I think.

So far, it's been a good week. Tomorrow will be another long day but I am looking forward to the sessions I've planned to go to. Too bad there are a couple of time slots that have two sessions I want to attend!

Lotusphere Session Evaluations Done Online

I just saw this at Chris Miller's site:

Session evaluations will be completed electronically this year - no more paper forms in the conference notebooks! Attendees will be able to access all evaluations forms by selecting the evaluation icon on any Lotusphere Online laptop, their own laptop or handheld device through a special URL.

As I posted there, this will undoubtedly make it easier to compile the results and will be helpful to those who have their laptops operating in the sessions. But those of us without wireless on our machines (I know: that is SOOO 20th century) will now have to find time to fight the crowds to get on one of the LSOnline machines. Not to mention find the time to do it.

I hope I can get my iPaq to connect - maybe I can do mine that way. <sigh>