Nickname Too Funny To Pass By...

LOL, I just saw that Rush is referring to my (soon-to-be-ex)* Senator from SC as "Lindsey Grahamnesty"... Too funny! He should continue with his former nickname and call him "Veep Lindsey Grahamnesty"!

* By this, I not only mean that he will no longer be my Senator because I'm a GA resident but that I doubt he will be re-elected in SC.

Now Playing: "Secret Ambition" by David Crowder Band: Cover of Michael W. Smith song

One Down, One To Go

So I guess I'm officially "homeless" for a couple of days as we have closed on the sale of our house in SC yesterday and will be closing down here in GA tomorrow!! What a relief... On Tuesday all of our worldly belongings were packed onto a moving truck (except, of course, for my guitars!!) and will be unloaded on Saturday.

I've been using Quickr some - so cool! Just trying to trap for whether a document is being checked-in for a placebot notification agent. But I don't think this is exactly possible within a placebot...

Now Playing: "Go West Young Man" by All Star United: Cover of Michael W. Smith song.

Every Boat Needs A Name, Right?

boat, originally uploaded by topherssgtp.

I think the name of this boat says it all. It was a great laugh driving down 85 to GA on Sunday!!

Song Redux

One of my favorite bands is Holy 5oldier! I really wish they would put out some new music. Anyway, back in 1995 they released "Promise Man" and they covered Larry Norman's (father of Christian rock) "Why Don't You Look Into Jesus" from 1972.

Well I found copies of both on Youtube, so enjoy.

Here's Larry Norman's (The volume is really low on this recording though):


Here's Holy 5oldier's much more modern redux:


And here's a sample of why I really dig H5. Great music and powerful lyrics in this song!! Their original vocalist, Steven Patrick, is amazing. Does anyone out there have a copy of his solo project Red Reign? I have to find that...:

Great Dinner With Family In NH

I've been working with a client in NH this week and decided to give a call to my wife's uncle Dennis and his wife Linda. They live in Maine only about an hour away from where I am. So I called them up on Tuesday and they called me back yesterday and said they would love to come meet me tonight. I believe I have only met them once at our wedding almost 7 years ago. It was really great to hang out with them. They are involved with their music ministry in their church, so we were able to hit it off talking about that. They're a great couple and really exhibit what Christianity is about (James 1:27). They have taken many kids under their wings - specifically some that may have lost parents when they were young (the orphans) as well as doing some foster care. I really had an awesome time with them!!

Great NOMAD Tip

Judging from my Google hits, I seem to be the Nomad expert. Googling Lotus Notes Nomad yields my review as the #2 site after IBM. So I thought I would follow up with a way I've been using it now as a consultant.

First of all, Nomad is intended to provide USB stick access to the Notes client and it's great. However, you can also install multiple instances of Nomad on larger drives, shares, or local drives. You can check out the full installation procedure from the link to my review above, but below is a modified version that will allow you to have separate Nomad installs for multiple customers (or other needs). This keeps you from having multiple location documents and dealing with cross certificates, etc... It would require you to have about 400 MB free space for each install as well as a bare-bones installation that you would need to use later. Below is a modified installation process.

1. Insert the USB drive into the USB port on your computer and create a "NOMAD\base" folder. This can also be performed somewhere on your local disk. (i.e. C:\NOMAD\base)
2. Make note of the drive letter that is assigned to the USB drive.
3. Extract the C94QIEN.exe file. This is the filename of the self-extracting executable downloaded from IBM. This is just the Notes Client. (The C94QAEN.exe is the Full Client package with Admin and Designer - you can alternatively extract this file.)
4. In a command prompt window, navigate to the folder where you extracted the C94QIEN file (there should now be a setup.exe), and then enter this command to install Lotus Notes on the USB drive:
setup /a /v"NOMAD=1 TARGETDIR=F:\NOMAD\base\ /qb+"
Where F is the drive letter.
The parameters /qb+ allow for the display of the basic user interface and a message box at the end of the upgrade. Don't forget the last quotation mark!
5. Perform the post-install cleanup (from my original review) to free up space.
6. The \base folder now has a copy of the Nomad installation. You can run Notes from here, but I use it to keep a copy of the files.
7. Create a folder \NOMAD\CustomerX.
8. Copy and paste the entire contents of the \NOMAD\Base folder into the \NOMAD\CustomerX folder. This step can be repeated for each customer!!
9. Open the \NOMAD\CustomerX folder and edit the autorun.ini file. You will need to modify the path for the MSI_LOCATION= and MSI_COMMANDLINE= (including the DATADIR= part of this line) options. You will see that they may have F:\NOMAD\Base\... Simply modify this to be the CustomerX path. Save and close the autorun.ini file.
10. The \NOMAD\CustomerX\autorun.inf and \NOMAD\CustomerX\Program Files\Lotus\Notes\notes.ini files will also need to be modified to match the path.
11. Run the command AUTORUN.EXE from the root of any of the CustomerX folders by double-clicking on the filename or by typing the command on the command line. OR
12. Alternatively, create a shortcut to the nlnotes.exe and just run this.

This can provide a good deal of flexibility and gives you a clean Notes install for each customer!

In Honor Of The Silver Surfer Movie

Since it's coming out in theaters today, I believe I will be spinning this album on my iPod for a while!

surfingwithalien, originally uploaded by topherssgtp.

Quick System i Tip

Updated - see information below. I've been meaning to post this for a while, but I'm either crazy busy or just slack. :)

If you're installing Domino (or anything for that matter) on a System i, then you should make sure that your joblog is generated when you signoff. Simply prompt the SIGNOFF command and use *LIST for the joblog option. I think just SIGNOFF *LIST will work. Doing this will make sure that you have a record of all the commands processed during your job. For instance, installing Domino does a lot of background stuff with the RSTLICPGM command you have to use. If anything goofy happens you'll want a copy of the joblog to send to support.

UPDATE:

Thanks to César for a quick clarification to this tip:

I prefer the DSPJOBLOG OUTPUT(*PRINT), perhaps because I’m a developer or because I still use the same session for more things.

What I do not suggest is generate a joblog with the SIGNOFF *LIST when you’re removing Domino from your system, due to some functionality of the system I’ve seen “weird” things appear on the joblogs (you know, *MSGF is deleted and joblog is generated/built afterwards).

Regardless, make sure you get a joblog of the install/uninstall... :)

Great Weekend With Family

On Thursday night my wife and our 3 year old came to Kennesaw to look at houses with our wonderful realtor, Myra Brown! She's been extremely helpful! Anyway, I believe we have narrowed the field to just a few and are working on a contract for one! I knew once SWMBO (she who must be obeyed) came to look that she would be able to find what "we" needed... ;) She's on her way back now and I had a tremendously great time with them. We decided that house hunting wouldn't be too easy with a 3 month old, so it'll be about 2 weeks until I see OT when I head to Rock Hill this weekend. Till then I'll be hanging out in some free wi-fi spots... This Starbucks isn't too bad and the Strawberries & Cream was great for this hot day!

lol, I just overheard a lady say "There are things on that iPod I should be made fun of for, but that's not one of them!" Hope they don't look through mine... By the way, the new Dream Theater album is great and has been spinning a lot on my iPod this week. And I think I'm going to order the Rush of Fools disc. Should have done that while I was sitting here - duh! OK, I'm rambling - catch you all later!

For Those Of You Who Embed YouTube Videos...

Hat tip to the desiringGod blog for this one.

Because of a new YouTube feature, when you embed a video, your users can watch related videos on your site. This is, of course, risky for anyone who wants to be in control of the content of their site. (Wouldn't that be everyone?)

If you want to, you can disable it by adding &rel=0 to the end of the video's URL when you embed it.

That can be kind of scary if something "related" isn't exactly what you wanted to have other people see when at your site. Just the other night while at a Barnes & Noble looking at a magazine I saw where a seemingly orthodox preacher in New England somewhere (I think) was actually fired because of some links from his personal web site. It turns out that he had some links to some occult sites so that people could get information about certain groups. But from just a couple of clicks people at his site could order shirts, etc... from these groups. It appears that the church he was at saw this as something they didn't want visitors to their pastor's site to be able to do so easily.

The moral is, along with the YouTube issue above, that you should probably be aware of what you're linking to and what people may perceive about you.

Now Playing: "Repentance" by Dream Theater

Great First Week

Thanks to those of you who emailed or pinged me about my first week at Lotus 911! It went well - just getting accustomed to things and jumping in where I can. The team is awesome! Of course you all know about Nathan and Tim, but they're just the tip of the iceberg (pun intended!) there. I know I have a lot to learn from everyone and I'm glad to be able to dive right in. It's like a cool geek family (and it's wild knowing that if I need to ask Nathan or Tim something that I can just walk over to their stations - a little surreal).

On the personal front, it's a little tough being away from Jen and the kids during the week until we can all get back under the same roof, but we've seen some great "God things" happening that I hope to write about soon... They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I'm really beginning to see that. It's kind of wild.

I'll try not to be so slack here at the blog, but I've said that before!