Brief Recap of This Week

For most of this week I was at a client outside of NYC. This being my first time there, I had to go to the city. On Monday night I drove to Lower Manhattan. The drive down FDR was an experience in itself - not to mention the time I got turned around... I took some pictures that you can see here. I basically walked around the Seaport and then walked up Fulton St. to see Ground Zero. That was really crazy. You'll see one of my photos was a plane flying above two flags where the towers used to be. I can't believe it's been nearly 6 years and can't imagine the chaos...

I purchased a stubhub ticket to the Yankees/Red Sox game on Tuesday night. But Curt Stone really came through in the clutch and was able to get 4 tickets for free!! So I sold my ticket and got 1/2 of my ticket cost back and was able to hang out with Curt, his bro-in-law, and my client. Definitely some points there. Curt has a recap of the night too with a picture of him and me at the stadium and here are some pictures I took. Enjoyed it pal - thanks!! Everyone told me that getting out would be a nightmare (yes, I drove to the game too - the client thought I was either crazy or brave for driving to the city, twice!), but it only took me about 50 minutes from the time I got in the car to get to the hotel (which would normally be about a 35 minute drive).

And on Wednesday night I met up with Mitch Cohen in Teaneck, NJ. He's that Lotus Connections guru... :) We met for dinner and talked forever. He's a great guy and it was good to put a face with the name - thanks for hanging out Mitch!

Things went great and I ended up staying pretty busy in the evenings too. It was so cool to hang out with a couple of bloggers while I was there!

Go Yankees!!!

P8280028, originally uploaded by topherssgtp.

This pic wasn't just grabbed from the internet... :) More later... Thanks Curt!

Exchange Server Has Viruses - Claims Microsoft

exchangeviruses, originally uploaded by topherssgtp.

One of the things "we" like to point out is that Lotus is more secure when it comes to viruses. Well, according to Microsoft's Exchange site, they have "Viruses" built-in to their Exchange product. Check out the scrolling banner... :)

Happy Birthday Mom!!

Mom's Birthday, originally uploaded by topherssgtp.

My parents came to town this weekend and we celebrated mom's birthday. Happy Birthday Mom - we love you!!!

The Shiny New Notes Client - Back To The Future!!!

The opening paragraph from the upgrade Redbook (Page 21) states it all:

The Notes ... client interface has been completely redesigned. This interface looks and acts more like a browser, and integrates the regular Notes client function with access to the Web better than it did before. Many of the things you used to do in the Release ... client are now only one mouse-click away.

Oh I'm sorry, I was reading from the wrong Redbook. That was the Notes/Domino R4 To R5 Upgrade book from March 2000. Let's see what the ND8 team came up with at the Interface page (as I've also seen written elsewhere):

It’s here! IBM® Lotus Notes® and IBM Lotus® Domino® 8 software showcases a modern, Web-like look-and-feel in a familiar Lotus Notes client format. Updated to help you work smarter, the new user interface presents the tools you need, when and where you need them. It’s visually appealing, highly consistent and feature rich. That means you get your job done faster, and easier. And, you enjoy it along the way. Who says work can’t be fun, too?

Sorry...I had to.

Notes and Domino 8 are so far beyond R5, but both releases were significant in their own right. Hopefully I got a laugh out of some of you! Congrats to IBM on ND8!

Consider Shopping At Circuit City

win98ccity, originally uploaded by topherssgtp.

As you can see from this demo kiosk at Circuit City this past Saturday, they may need some more revenue to upgrade some systems... ;)

A Response To Volker's Latest Issue With Notes

I have posted this as a comment at Volker's post * on IBM Technote 1267071: Changes in Lotus Spreadsheets document do not save

Regarding the issue Volker raises here, I believe I have found the problem and there is a VERY simple workaround and this issue is probably unlikely to be seen in most real world uses.

If you create a new spreadsheet or open an existing one, go to a cell and type something. If you click into another cell or hit tab or enter and then click the "x" to close the spreadsheet, then you will always receive the prompt to save the spreadsheet. If you just type something in a single cell but don't navigate to another cell, then you will not receive the prompt to save the modification. A bug indeed, but the IBM Technote should be updated. I will also be notifying Lotus via a response to the technote with how to reproduce this and also to hopefully modify the technote with a note to tab out of the field to receive the prompt for saving the modifications.

* It's ironic that I'm responding to someone who is "neither a business partner, a design partner nor a customer" of the Lotus products, but this is how Volker describes his involvement with Lotus products. I felt that since so many people will see the issue he raised that I would also let you know how to easily avoid the issue that was pointed out by someone who claims to not be a user of the product.

Getting Lotus Connections 1.0.0 To Work With Domino LDAP

If you haven't seen already, Mitch Cohen has documented an infrastructure with Lotus Connections talking to Domino LDAP for authentication. Check it out!

Notes 8.0 NOMAD

According to IBM Technote 1265230, "Notes on a Stick" will be supported for the Basic configuration in 8.0. They hope to allow the Standard version to run from a stick in a later release (threads in the Public Beta forum mention 8.0.1). I can't imagine that Standard would run too well from a USB drive, though.

But, I guess we'll find out in a couple of days if Basic runs well on a stick.

Quickr and Sametime Presence Awareness Issue Resolved

Nathan and I wracked our brains over this issue! We could get presence awareness going for about 30 seconds and then it would go away. Well today we got past that in the strangest fashion...

The basic setup was a Windows Server 2003 box running MS Virtual Server with a Quickr VM and a Sametime (7.5.1 CF1) VM. Nothing earth shattering. We decided to re-allocate that server for an installation of Lotus Connections, so I shutdown the VMs and moved them to another server (same OS). It was actually the same hardware specs but with less RAM (Connections needs the RAM!)

After bringing up the Quickr and Sametime VMs on the other server, presence awareness was working like a champ! Never saw that one coming!

No NSFDB2 for System i

Ever since NSFDB2 was announced, the System i faithful have been waiting for support on the i. We were told to wait for 7.0.1 or 7.0.2 to then be told to wait for 8.0.x. It's official that there are no plans for it, so we can all stop waiting. Details in the comments from Rob Ingram at the Domino Blog:

There are no current plans to provide this feature on iSeries. We have other very important database work we have committed to reduce NSF data storage and other database optimizations. These improvements should help all of our customers, including those on iSeries.

and

we made our plans in conjunction with many groups, including the iSeries team. This resulted in us facing a tradeoff with other very important storage cost reduction efforts which are being planned for the core NSF database. We always do try to prioritize delivery of new capability to as many Domino customers as possible and we expect that all customers, including those on iSeries, will benefit from these future capablities.

We've known all along that the DB2 UDB implementation on the System i was very different from that on other platforms. Perhaps future releases of i5/OS will remedy this.

Happy Anniversary!!

Just want to wish a Happy Seventh Anniversary to my wife Jen! The traditional gift for 7 years is wool or copper and the modern gift is a desk set. Wonder if the desk she got along with our new bedroom suite counts towards this? ;) We've been together nearly 10 years now!! It's been a great road so far with two wonderful kids and many life changes. It's sure to be an exciting future too!

Love You Honey!!!