POWER6

Sweet CPU announcement from IBM today - IBM kicks out energy-efficient 4.7GHz POWER6 processor. The new System i boxes we got this year are the Power5+ models clocking at around 2.2GHz. They are insanely powerful and fast - can't wait to see these in action!

"The device reportedly runs "twice as fast" and packs four times the cache as the POWER5, and boasts a processor bandwidth of 300Gbps....preliminary testing showed that all four of the 'most widely used performance benchmarks for Unix servers' were shattered by its CPU."

They will probably be introduced for the System p first and eventually make it to the System i. Time for another NotesBench record!

Sametime 7.5.1 Information Center

I have always* found the System i Information Center to be extremely helpful with information about the System i platform. In case you've missed it, there is now a Sametime 7.5.1 Information Center. It appears to be something that all Sametime admins can use for some great information.

* - OK, for those of you who used the i Info. Center before around V5R2, it was pretty bad. But after they got rid of the slow java menus and cleaned it up some more it is much better.

Congrats To The Moodys!

This weekend Chris Moody (the perpetual bridesmaid!)and Lottie got married! Congrats you two!! Here's a link to the Flickr tag I posted and below are three pics I really like followed by some stories.


Chris and Lottie's First Dance


Lottie, Chris, Jen, and Me (After an ordeal with getting Cocky to the wedding in humid Columbia, I changed out of the tux...)


Lottie, Cocky (Go Gamecocks!), and Chris

I've known Chris for about 10 years now! I remember him and Seth Dean coming into FCA their freshman year of college when I was helping out with worship. We lived in the same house my senior year. I had to be on campus early for BSU and was one of the few there when Chris came up early too. I helped him move in and we became really good friends that year. I put in a good word for him and we've been working together for the past 5.5 years and we've been really close the whole time. I'll miss him with the move, but I'm sure we'll be back up this way pretty frequently and will hang out with the Moodys.

This entire weekend was amazing. It was like a mini college reunion. We just had a wonderful time and I won't bore you with all of the details. It was a little sad too because I won't be seeing most of these friends for a long time. One of the highlights was being asked to play guitar accompanied by Billy Robinson. I've never actually played a wedding and we had to talk Billy out of retirement! Billy and I go way back - we were friends in high school and college roommates for 3 years! Who knows when we'll get to perform together again? :( He did a great job with the song and I believe I did too... :) It was a privilege to play for the Moodys on this most special day of their lives as they took communion together for the first time as husband and wife.

I guess about now they are in or nearing Hawaii - he pinged me to say they had a missed layover and were put about 4 hours back... Poor kids! It'll be worth it, I'm sure!

We love you guys!!! Congratulations again!!!!

My Big News!

As I've hinted at, I have some huge, exciting news to share!!

Beginning on May 29 I will start my new job with Lotus 911 as a Lotus Consultant!!! Thanks for the warm welcome Nathan!

This is a wonderful opportunity for my family and me. It will be a major shift for me moving from a position as an Admin/Developer for 7 years with a private sector company to a Consultant position. I am really looking forward to the challenge of that change as well as working with some great talent and wonderful folks!

My family will be in a transitional phase for a while as we will be moving from Rock Hill, SC to Kennesaw, GA. In honor of this and through peer pressure, my wife, Jen, has also started a blog! As a bit of background, I have always had the nickname "Nut" because of my last name. With that said, my wife's blog is "The Nut House" and as she posted in her first post, "watch out Bulldogs - family of nuts and Gamecock fans headed your way!"

Won't Be Making It to The VIEW 2007....

I was hoping to meet a lot of you there, but I won't be able to make it. More on that very soon!!! Big changes coming my way... :)

Sametime 7.5.1 Upgrade Failed

Guess I'll try again another day... I was upgrading on an i5/OS V5R4 box from 7.5 CF1. When I started it back up I got a "Meeting Server: Child Process Died". There were about 2 hits on the Lotus Support site that seemed to be close, but neither of the solutions worked. Well, one was to reinstall PASE but I was not at the server to load a CD and that didn't appear to be the problem anyway. I started the whole process at about 8:55 and was starting it back up initially at about 9:00. After looking into the error for a bit I called Lotus support and waited 30 minutes before even speaking to a human. I hung up with them after specifying a priority 1 (server down) and being told it was callback. This was about 10:30. At 11:00 I decided to uninstall 7.5.1 and reinstall 7.5. I'm back up now and haven't heard back from Lotus and the whole "up to 2 hours for a callback" wasn't floating my boat on something that should have only taken 10 minutes... :)

Have You Offset Your Carbon?

It seems that the latest rage is "carbon offsetting". This is where you can buy a credit (around $50 per year per vehicle) and something environmentally friendly will be done with that money (like planting a tree or preserving current forestation). Al Gore does offsets, so I guess anyone who wants to "live green" should be OK doing it too, right? :)

According to the Save the Planet website, six 25-year old pine trees can absorb 1 ton of CO2.

About 20 years ago, we planted about 1,000 pine trees on my parents' property:



This means that (when they are 25) they will absorb 166 tons of CO2 annually. My sedan accounts for about 4.6 tons and our SUV accounts for about 6.6 tons. So at 6 tons average per vehicle (depending on mileage, of course), the 1,000 trees we planted are more than covering the carbon footprint for all vehicles in my family. Actually, this covers about 27 vehicles per year until the trees are gone!

I just feel really good about myself knowing that I'm "green" as far as my vehicles go.... Hopefully you can see the humor in this - if not, then go out and find 6 pine trees to call your own so that you can live green too. That's a whole lot cheaper than buying a "green" car and it's officially sanctioned by our former VP!

Speaking of "green", I saw a car the other week with one of the "Live Green" banners on the bumper. Was it a Prius? Nope. It was a 1995 Mustang GT - the little V8 must be green, eh? ;) Maybe the lady found some pine trees!

Updated Sandbox Application

One of the first applications I downloaded from the Sandbox was the "Staff Whereabouts". It's basically an in-out board to see the status of a workgroup. We actually got the application to replace an AS/400 based! signout application. I have commented at the sandbox that I have reworked the ui and have web-enabled the application. I actually web-enabled it a while back. We only have one or two people that may use it on the web, so not much time was invested in it (it's mostly if you need to signout in a pinch). But about a month ago I completed changed the colors of the ui. It could stand for a complete overhaul, so forgive me if it still looks like a Notes application. :)

Here's what it looks like now:



If anyone's interested, post a comment. I don't want to link directly from here since it's not really my application.

Bella (The Movie)

Thursday night at the Thirsty07 Conference, we were treated to a screening of the movie Bella. Described at the website as "a heartwarming story about friendship, family and our capacity for love in the face of the unexpected," this film was the 2006 winner of the Toronto Film Festival. This puts it in some great company of past winners.

This is possibly the most moving film I've seen since "The Passion of the Christ." But don't just shrug it off as a "Christian" movie just because it was screened at Thirsty (or because I'm writing about it). It really is about our "capacity to love" and all people will benefit from it. The friendship between Jos and Nina is challenged and the way that they make it through is truly amazing and inspirational. I don't want to really talk about it here because the plot would be ruined. I will say, though, that this film has been worth it because two lives have already been saved!!

My Donation To The Lotus Museum

I "donated" the picture of Notes "Express", Release 3.30 for OS/2. Thankfully, I don't have to manage any more OS/2 boxes!

Four out of Five Complete

Whew... we've migrated 4 out of 5 of our physical iSeries servers over into LPARs on 2 physical System i boxes. The first server we migrated was our Domino cluster box and I started/completed that on 1/27/07. Since then we've migrated a dev server, Domino production box (twice...), and yesterday moved our MiMiX box. This last one will take longer as we have to migrate our entire user base from 5250 "Green Screen" to Webfacing.

This slow process will likely be why I don't post much new Domino content. But I'll try to come up with some stuff...

Now Playing: "Upon The Face of The Waters" by Tony Palacios

Lotus Museum

If you're in the mood to check out some of the history of Lotus, check out the new Lotus Museum. I've already made a donation and am waiting for it to show up online. I'm relatively new to Lotus, so this is a great site for me to brush up on some history.

I'm digging the Nurf Football and the Sametime Coaster is pretty nice! But the Captain's Hat is maybe the sweetest item!

So little time...

Heading to Alpharetta Tomorrow for Thirsty!

I'll be heading to Thirsty 2007 tomorrow with my wife and our worship leader, his wife, and their daughter. We went last year and it was awesome. It's a really refreshing conference with a tremendous focus on Worship. Can't wait!

I'll have my corporate mail off, so gmail me if you want at chris.whisonant.

Now Playing: "Peace" by Third Day