Lotusphere 2007 Poll

For those of you at Lotusphere, does Nomad work on the kiosks?

Technorati: Lotusphere 2007

Domino on 64-Bit Hardware

The Lotusphere Deployments, Performance, & Interoperability (DPI) Lab Blog posted Friday about Domino and 32-bit, 64-bit, 128-bit and Teraspace topics. Being a System i Lotus Nut, I have posted about this topic before: here, here, and here.

According to the DPI blog, Domino runs on the following 64-bit platforms as a 32-bit application:
* AIX
* Solaris
* Linux on zSeries
* Linux x86_64 (Technote #1231920)
* Windows 2003 x64 Edition (requires 7.0.1 and higher)

But then they state that Domino is actually a 64-bit application as it runs on i5/OS. However, from the first comment it appears that this is going to be coming in the future. My understanding is that Domino is only a 32-bit application in its current iterations, but will be ported to 64-bit in Domino 8(.0.1) (but will also have a 32-bit port). So this DPI blog post was somewhat vague until the 2nd paragraph of the first comment (unless I've missed something) when we read "When 64-bit support for Domino becomes available, Domino for i5/OS will also change to use the i5/OS 64-bit pointer and teraspace support."

Regardless, the post also states that "i5/OS only runs on 64-bit hardware and has been enabled for 64-bit for a long time. i5/OS also provides 128-bit pointer capability." Yes, you read that correctly - i5/OS runs with 128-bit pointers! If you read the quote below, you will see that when the AS/400 (System i) architects were designing the RISC processor-based system, they were going to use a full 96-bit address space back in 1990!! but actually decided to scale it back when they went the PowerPC route! Some of these other Operating Systems (Windows and *NIX) have come to the game rather late.

The best quote from my posts is from my second link above which I'll quote again here. This is from an old book I have here at the office titled Inside the AS/400 by Frank G. Soltis. I have the edition from way back in 1997:

"The AS/400 is the first and only system in the world to have completed the transition to 64-bit computing.... The challenge for the computer industry is how to enable existing software to take advantage of the new hardware designs. The AS/400 is the only system to have met this software challenge - all AS/400 applications are fully 64-bit enabled. No one else is even close.... In contrast, the AS/400's technology-independent architecture protects the system's customers and ISVs from such disruptions as they move to the new 64-bit RISC processors. Existing application software can immediately use the full capabilities of the new hardware." (Inside the AS/400, pp. 1-2)

Then on page 206 we find this:

"Our original RISC processor that we started to design in 1990, which we called C-RISC (the C was for commercial), had a 96-bit address. We had the room for this large address in the pointers and decided to go all the way. When we decided to use the PowerPC architecture in 1991, we scaled the address back to 64 bits."

Help With A NOMAD Issue

One of my readers has asked me about an issue he's having with NOMAD. Has anyone seen this or do know anyone who has? (Or can you ask anyone at Lotusphere?) Here are some details from email exchanges:

- Windows XP SP 2 and Windows 2003 SP 1, same behaviour.
- All the USB sticks are of the same brand and model, SanDisk Micro Cruzer 2GB. (This is the same model I have but in the 512MB size.)
- I've tried to format the sticks but still the same so I don't suspect the sticks can cause this on their own. The only other suspect would be Notes but I cannot figure out anything that can cause this, I've check all the files create under the NOMAD installation and cannot find anything remotely to cause this.
- I was just assuming here, that Notes might be related because Notes on USB will remove the icon on the desktop once you stop it.
- The only time all the desktop icons, start menu shortcuts and quick launch shortcuts disappeared immediately was when the USB stick was unplugged.
- When removing a USB stick empty or containing other data, either by just unplugging it or by ejecting it first, this never happens.
- I can only reproduce the whole scenario with Notes install on the USB stick.

Now Playing: "Into A New Dimension" by Divinefire

Domino Designer in Eclipse

Looks like Domino Designer is going to get ported to Eclipse... :) I suppose this will be announced this week (or have I missed something)? Thanks for the small screenshot Maureen!

Surprise Birthday Party

Since she knew I would be expecting it next year for my 30th, my wife put together a surprise party for me last night. I was definitely surprised. My brother - funny guy that he is - got me an Uptown Bill doll. You'll just have to click the link - lol. I had a great time - thanks honey!!

Speaking of President Clinton, my wife got me a lot of books from a discount/used bookstore in town. A lot of them were political and there were a few religious. One of the books was "Slick Willie": Why America Cannot Trust Bill Clinton. I started flipping through it last night after everyone left and saw that it was actually printed in 1993 - before any of the scandals that came up during his White House terms! The chapter on Hillary Clinton was rather revealing too.

One of the other books was Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation from 1984 by President Reagan. The text written by Mr. Reagan was actually just an essay and can still be found in its entirety at The Human Life Review's website. I started reading some of it this morning and the foreword by J.P. McFadden states that Dr. C. Everett Koop "warned long ago that infanticide would follow closely after abortion because it would be 'justified' for the same reasons." The sad thing is that, 20 years later, we don't have to worry too much about infanticide because of how far technology has progressed. With karyotype tests, which we elect to not even have, doctors can check for Down syndrome during pregnancy. And 92% of those pregnancies are terminated if the test(s) returns positive. Forget infanticide, we'll just take care of "the problem" during the pregnancy!! And what of the false positives? I know of a man who said the doctors told them that their child would have Down syndrome and that the doctor recommended the termination of the pregnancy. Two years later, the man said, the child is a normal, healthy, smart 2 year-old!

Now Playing: "God of Wrath" by David Crowder Band

Sorry for no posts...

It's been almost a week! Nothing much going on for me in Lotus land right now. Just moving users to the Notes 7.0.2 Client and preparing to fire up our new System i boxes! Finally got some UPS stuff straightened out and power is being pulled tomorrow.

Oh, and I believe I have contributed to an OpenNTF project (not as a chef - just a taste-tester). Vince Schuurman (et. al.) have released OpenNTF Mail Experience 702b. He posted about one of the new features I'm pretty excited about. I may even roll out the template because of this addition! It's the "Memo size restriction" feature. Users and admins can set a preference or Notes.ini parameter for the maximum size of an email. I posted the following at Vince's site:

I've thought of doing this before, but never got around to it. As an admin, I think we should be able to have this as a "policy" that users cannot edit. Of course, if it's an ini parm, we can set it via desktop policies and the users wouldn't know where to change it anyway.

We have a 50MB email limit, but I still have people trying to send 75-100 MB+ files in their email. The problem is that if you can send it and then get a failure from the router, then the message is still in your sent items.

Also, the message is not only in your Sent items, but the delivery failure from the Router contains the attachment as well!

Regarding my "contribution" to the project, Vince was asking for verbiage for the error message and apparently liked my suggestion (which was just an expansion of his suggested message). I have downloaded the template but haven't looked to see if I made it officially! ;) My suggestion was:

Sorry, this document is 5343 KB. This is larger than the allowed size of 1024 KB. Please review the size and number of attachments to make this document smaller.

30 Minus 1

On Wednesday, January 17, I will be 29! If we weren't a base-10 system next year wouldn't really matter too much.

How Have The 7 People Responded With The "5 Things"?

I tagged 5 people in my initial post and 2 more in another.

I have seen 5 responses so far:

Chris
Bryan
Greg
Chad
Phil

Update: I finally have seen Ray's 5 things, and they are here... :)

But, I have not heard from Angus yet, but he has AS/400 Syndrome!!

New Open Source BlackBerry Site!

I just listened to the latest Taking Notes Podcast regarding BlackBerry development. This was a really good Podcast. Bruce and Julian are doing a great job - keep it up!!

In the Podcast we learn of a new Open Source BlackBerry applications site that is similar to OpenNTF. It is openCOD.org - check it out!

How To String A Guitar

The following PDF is one that I created as an easily printable reference from the steps at this website. I take no credit except for making the PDF.

From the author:

When customers come to me complaining of tuning problems, improperly wound strings are the number one culprit. If the string is not properly wound around the tuners post it will slip, when you loose tension you loose tuning. This is also the reason locking tuners were created...to reduce string slippage at the tuners by gripping the string firmly (of vital importance to tremolo users).
If you wind your strings as shown you will have much of the advantage that comes with locking tuners.

PDF: 5 Step Guide To Winding Strings Properly Around The Tuner

There goes that theory for stem cells!

Let's really hope that there is some promise to this...

A Source of Stem Cells Without Controversy?

"Dr. Anthony Atala, of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, who led the current research, writes:

It has been known for decades that both the placenta and amniotic fluid contain multiple progenitor cell types from the developing embryo, including fat, bone, and muscle.

We asked the question, ‘Is there a possibility that within this cell population we can capture true stem cells?’ The answer is yes."

TAG, You're It!

Since I've posted my 5 things, I can tag anyone else...

OK, you guys asked for it, so Ray and Phil, what do we not know about you??

Now Playing: "Closer" by Charlie Hall

Five things you may not have known about me

I was wondering when I would be called out for this. Thanks a ton to Mr. Curt Stone!!!

1. My favorite band is Tourniquet. From their speed/thrash metal in 1990 to their slower acoustic and near-pop-rock of the mid 90's to their latest quasi-prog albums. They are phenomenal!! I'm hoping they decide to kick out another disc soon.

2. I used to be in the handbell choir at a past church. I was actually in the first handbell choir that church had. I'm not too much into it now, but I have filled in at my current church before. Let's keep that between us... ;)

3. I was the statewide President for the Baptist Student Union for South Carolina during my senior year of college (1999-2000). It was great to meet so many people. I set up a website and Yahoo! group , but I think that kind of ended after my year. As part of that, I was privileged to sit on the Executive Committee for our State Baptist Convention. While many people may think those organizations are strictly business, I would love to say that that is far from the truth for this one.

4. We just got some new System i servers in and are in the process of installing them (don't get me started on that...). We got two 570+ models! We will consolidate 4 model 820s and 1 model 270 to 3 LPARs on one 570 and 2 LPARs on the other. This includes our Domino cluster. We will be going from a production Domino server with 3250 CPW to right about 8000 CPW. Needless to say, we will have a blazing Domino server!

5. I have a lot of theology books. That's a list of 71 that's kind of outdated. I've read a lot of them and you can probably tell that F.F. Bruce is one of my favorite authors. He was one of the greatest minds of the 20th century and is rumored to have been able to recite the New Testament... in Greek! If there are 3 books I would recommend, they would be by him. They would be "The Canon of Scripture", "Paul, Apostle of the Heart Set Free", and "Jesus: Past, Present, and Future"

The ball is now in the court for Chris, Bryan, Greg, Chad, and Angus

Get Ready for JAMFEST 2007

In honor of all those at JamFest 2006 who had "Nothing at all", I salute you!!! I hope this years' turns out to be just as fun.


Via Paul Mooney at Flickr

By the way, I almost plugged in last year, and here is the proof:


Via Paul Mooney at Flickr


Via Phil Randolph at Flickr

My 2006 In Review

2006 was mostly a great year for me. One of the major highlights was in January when I was able to speak at Lotusphere 2006 on "Domino for iSeries Administration Best Practices" My other speaking engagement came in September at the COMMON User Group Conference on Domino Domain Monitoring. Both of these times I co-presented with Kim Greene - a true Domino Diva! I went to one other conference in March, but it wasn't tech-related. It was "Thirsty" - an awesome Christian worship conference. We are planning on going again in May and I just found out last night that a guy who lived in my house in college will be going too. We, unexpectedly, got to hang out some last night - so that was great since it's been a while since I saw him.

Anyway, I will try to put together some coherent thoughts together below related to what I've blogged about this year. There has been a lot of things happen that I haven't blogged. For instance we have some great friends from church (I actually went to college with them before they were "them") who are now a military family. He signed up at the end of 2005 and is now a Lieutenant. They'll be moving later this year and will be sorely missed, but they have a higher calling both nationally and spiritually!

I could probably ramble some more about some of the great friendships I cultivated at Lotusphere. All of you bloggers are great and I'll miss you later this month - have fun at Kimono's!! But, here we go...

Things I Received
- On May 2, I got to enjoy a great family trip to Disney and received the joy of taking a 2 1/2 year old to Disney! It was awesome!!!
- On May 29 I finally got a Gibson Les Paul! I'm still loving it! I just need a tube amp now...
- The next day I became an uncle! He's such a cute kid and is (sort-of) crawling around now.
- Then on June 21 we found out that we are having another child! And it's a boy - Oliver Thomas

Things I Lost
- Starting in February I set out to lose some weight. By June I had lost 14 pounds. But I've fell off the wagon since then and gained about 6 of it back. So I'm lighter than I was last year, but plan on going back to the cross-trainer. I did go Saturday.
- On November 5 I lost my Aunt Cassie and then on December 19 I lost my "Nanny". It has definitely been a long couple of months for my Dad's side of the family since he and his 6 remaining siblings have lost a sister and their mother. I just want to thank all of you again who have offered your encouragement and support through these times.

Sports
- I'm not a huge sports fan, but I love Gamecocks football!! This year we beat our arch-rival Clemson and also won our first December game since 1960! We've won some January bowls since then, though, so that helped out with that number in our minds.

General Lotus Stuff
- At Lotusphere I passed my first Lotus Development exam (623). At COMMON I passed the Domino for iSeries Technical Solutions exam. Then in October I updated my 6/6.5 Domino Administration certification to 7.0. I still have one more exam to take for the "Advanced" certification (PCLP).
- In August, I posted about how to drive site traffic in the Lotus community. I plan on trying to keep that up this year with end-user/administrator perspectives on new technologies from Lotus that affect me. The graph in that post shows up through July - I posted in June about the Sametime 7.5 client being (prematurely) available in Beta 2 and the next month I was the first to post some screen shots and thoughts about the newly available Notes Client for Linux. What the graph doesn't show is the affect of my lengthy post the last day of September on Lotus Notes NOMAD. That one actually increased my October site traffic about 33% over the previous high in June.
- As an aside, my most popular Google search is for my Domino Web Access Warning post. I would like to see that number decline due to Lotus working harder to prevent that error. Looking at my post, though, you can see that a ton of things can potentially cause this.
- Also, I have been working on reviving the Charlotte Lotus Notes User group with Susan Bulloch, Brian Good, and Mike Robinson. We didn't have a meeting in 2006, but I'm hoping that we get one in 1Q 2007!
- For Show-n-Tell Thursdays I posted 17 times! It was a mixed bag of development and administration.
- I have upgraded to some of the latest releases as well. We moved our Domino servers to 7.0.1 and then to 7.0.2. We had some major issues with 7.0.2 - see here. But it's all good now. I still have 3 servers to move to 7.0.2 and will probably do that really soon. I also upgraded to Sametime 7.5 - that was a breeze!! All of our Notes Clients are at 7.0.1 or higher. I will probably get Chris Moody to push out 7.0.2 quickly this month.