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Where Did I Land?

I promised a follow-up posting of where I decided to land after searching for months in the Covid technology landscape ( and we have to admit some wasteland of companies that fell). I am happy to say I am now at HCL in a unique role. It all started thinking about the Domino community, the changes and advancement in the technology and the growth to the platform HCL has eagerly provided.

Airplane landing


After learning more about wide range of areas in HCL opportunities, we found that an even better fit for my background existed than just the collaboration space. As of Feb 1, 2021 I started as Continue Reading here" Where Did I Land?" »
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    On Wednesday, February 10th, 2021   by Chris Miller        

Where have I been? (and where am I going)

I took a much longer break in blogging, podcasting and videocasting than I originally anticipated.  Of course, the world pandemic extended it a bit further when Covid-19 changed how we work.  Let me back up toward the end of 2018.

Blog is warming Back Up

After 20 years at Connectria, it was time to take a sabbatical and relax the mind.  I took six months to travel, rest, reflect and look ahead. Continue Reading here" Where have I been? (and where am I going)" »
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    On Tuesday, January 26th, 2021   by Chris Miller        

Reboot.Rinse.Repeat

It was time to evaluate direction with plotting and planning of paths, postings, podcasts, webcasts, conferences and more for IdoNotes and the Spiked Studio brand.
Reboot style=

I had to consider quite a few things:
After I typed that I realized it isn't important at all as a number.  What started as a random idea to blog became a hobby, passion and then hobby again. It expanded into my crazy idea of multiple blogs.  Some of those were merged back together (TheSocialNetworker and Social Stalking for example).

Spiked Studios LLC launched a few years ago as an umbrella to bring together all of the video work I was starting to do and I decided to fold all of the blogs under that banner. That video path became a passion moving even the IdoNotes podcast to video shows only and then expand in directions I could never imagine.   Amazon Top 1000 reviewer, live on air at CES twice, on stage at SxSW twice and then product ambassador opportunities.

So what does this blog post mean? Look for expansion in content here at IdoNotes.  I announced I am an IBM Cloud Champion for 2018, my first time not being a IBM Collaboration Solutions Champion since the program inception.  I will be full force covering Domino 10 and adding more cloud related content.

Plus my job expanded and you should expect to see a lot on data taxonomy, analytics and dashboards.  It is simply a reboot that took some planning and thought.
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    On Wednesday, August 8th, 2018   by Chris Miller        

Reading tiled interfaces - I dislike staggered rows

Recently IBM has been sending more newsletters with a tiled interface. While cool looking with images and bold text, the boxes stagger and make it so hard to read.
Image:Reading tiled interfaces - I dislike staggered rows
In this example the tiled rows all start even at the top. But they allow different sizes so soon there is no semblance. Making sure you read everything turns into a column approach. Now in some cultures that is acceptable. But for most you read left to right, row to row. Not down, scroll up and back down.

You then even end up with huge wasted space at the bottom s one column goes longer than the other.  I will let the above image speak or show for itself.
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    On Thursday, February 2nd, 2017   by Chris Miller        

Memorial Day 2015 in St Louis, MO events


Each year there is so much to do in St Louis, MO for Memorial Day you often lose track. Here is a growing list of 2015 Memorial Day events with a live Google Map showing the events and links. A summary of events on the growing map is as follows: Each site on the map has links, times and URL links where possible.

Note:
I do not organize any of these events but wanted to share a growing list of places you should visit this weekend. This list is nowhere near inclusive of everything and I am adding to it all the time.
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    On Wednesday, May 20th, 2015   by Chris Miller        

Is St Louis now only known as Ferguson?

As we watch the story unfold about the shooting in Ferguson, MIssouri many think it is a major part of  St Louis. I finally decided to write a post showing the scope of size of Ferguson inside St Louis.
Image:Is St Louis now only known as Ferguson?
On the right of the image is the entire State of Missouri which covers 69,709 square miles.  Next to it on the left is the cutout of St Louis County which covers 524 square miles.   Inside of that left image is Ferguson which covers 6.2 square miles.  Yes you read that correctly.  All of the news events take place inside of 1.183% of St Louis County in Missouri.  A pindrop in scope.
Continue Reading here" Is St Louis now only known as Ferguson?" »
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    On Thursday, August 14th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

Freelance Graphics - I miss you

I miss Freelance Graphics. The simple and easy to use presentation package that was part of SmartSuite.  Even the installation size (shown below) made perfect sense.  Just let me make slides, that is all we asked.
Freelance Graphics installation


As you can see, Freelance Graphics took up an amazing 23MB of space for the default features.  Let us say you went nuts and installed everything you could.  What would that be? Well under 50MB. Yes at that time it was a lot of space to consider. But the functionality was still awesome.

Why did this come up? We found Lotusphere presentations from 1995-1999 on CDs and wanted to peek at them.  Of course they were all in Freelance Graphics
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    On Tuesday, July 2nd, 2013   by Chris Miller        

LotusLearns.com might be using your content without permission - beware

LotusLearns is a Blogger based site that is apparently aggregating numerous blog and IBM content and republishing exact duplicates in mass.  While after Nov 2011 they started putting a small link at the beginning of the post to the original content, they are then reproducing your entire blog post or technical information in theirs with no other attribution.

Humorously they often leave information in the posts that specifically state not to do so like this from Bob Balaban found in this posting:

Continue Reading here" LotusLearns.com might be using your content without permission - beware" »
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    On Friday, April 20th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

Well that makes over 2000 blog posts for IdoNotes blog



There is always the ability to do the year in review type posts, but I wandered a bit when making it as my attention was drawn to how often I write across my blogs. I saw the dip in 2008-2009 and that is when I was writing the book instead, so it all made sense.  With the 118 podcasts here it has been a learning experience.  There have been about 3 blog redesigns with another to come.
  • 192 blog posts in 2011
  • 214 blog posts in 2010
  • 155 blog posts in 2009
  • 180 blog posts in 2008
  • 316 blog posts in 2007
  • 277 blog posts in 2006
  • 227 blog posts in 2005
  • 264 blog posts in 2004
  • 188 blog posts in 2003

Top postings groupings are always around Lotusphere, as people dig for news.  However my top postings dealt with Saying Goodbye to the Notes client with Project Vulcan and Enterprise Twitter clients (two part)

I also took a peek to see what posts I abandoned and left in draft mode for one reason or another and I am happy to see I have only 34 that never published and a handful will go live after the new year.  I don't like leaving incomplete ones.

Over at TheSocialNetworker I have just under 500 total posts between the Wordpress and older Domino version before it moved.  Expect to see much more there in 2012.
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    On Friday, December 30th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

IBM new beta - Virtual Forbidden City

Don't ask, I just blog.  Apparently SecondLife was not enough so IBM and the Palace Museum seem to have gone back in time and created a Forbidden City to celebrate the Chinese culture and explore by creating a character and dressing them up.  From there, wander around at will.  It is impressive and an impressively large download.

Image:IBM new beta  - Virtual Forbidden City
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    On Friday, October 10th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

Seeing if I am back on PlanetLotus before posting mroe missesd goodies :-)


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    On Friday, March 14th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

A moment of blog silence today

Image:A moment of blog silence today
A person who defined much of who I am today passed away mid-day on Dec 31st.   To the person that taught me about travel, starting your own business and how not to drive a tractor wheel over someones toes.  That and the billions of other things

Grandpa, you will be missed.

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    On Tuesday, January 1st, 2008   by Chris Miller        

A perfect video to ending Halloween time


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    On Thursday, November 8th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

News story dumps I have been meaning to mention

I find myself making notes of articles I want to comment on and never get completed.  So today was clean up the desk and finally talk about a few of them as time permits.

1) Network World- Tagging, no longer fun and easy
                   I wholly agree with this article in figuring out how to properly tag my entries.  Do I use spaces, no spaces, weird wording strung together?  Soon you have a list of tags longer than the posting or never to be found by such things as Technorati or Digg.  What if the parsing on the site doesn't like spaces or ampersand signs?  How does the string get split for tags?  Worse yet, is it considered over tagging to use notes8beta, Domino 8, Notes 8 and other variations when talking about the same thing?  My guess is yes, it is.

2) CIO Decision - Information Security : Are We There Yet? (free login required)
                    How many of your enterprises have a clear path and understanding of what should be managed under information security?  Most sites I visit do not, at all.  They encrypt certain mail messages and data stores yet allow open public IM messaging that is not filtered and no VPN or SSL software for web access.  Most of the reasoning relies around lack of knowledge and funding.  I don't buy lack of security specialists at all.

3) Flurry, free email and news feeds for your phone.
                Well if Blackberry was not on your radar, take a look at Flurry.  News feeds and the ability to grab email from multiple accounts rights to your phone.  You need a Java equipped phone but it looked nice and was a free service.  Worth the 2 second effort.

4) Messaging News - Corporations Cannot Hide Behind Employee Blogs: When is a Personal Blogger a Corporate Commentator?
                  I think the answer here is simple.  When you cross the line and mention trade, business or customer information in your public blog without consent.  Disclaimers are goofy and who is to say what you write does not reflect the company.  My blog is hosted (and read) by people at Connectria, but they can search away and never find a customer name or company info provided unless it was in a press release.  Companies have Internet use, sometimes email use and never instant messaging use policies.  It is time to catch up and add a blogger use policy.  Discussing intimate company details makes you a commentator.
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    On Tuesday, March 27th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

Well I was going to be quiet, but this was too good to pass up

Good Charlotte live.  We walked up on this live concert promoting their new album and grabbed a spot above them in the restaurant to eat and then watch.  I made a video and converted it to avi from the Sanyo HD1A.  The local quality looks much nicer in mpeg4 format :-)

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    On Friday, March 16th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

Interesting music site I found and how it is provided

As many of you know I am a music fiend and always looking at new ways to hear/listen/filter.  I have the local collection (way to big to hear it all) and also the Yahoo streaming with a custom channel.  Well I came across a site today that I found quite cool and a neat way to navigate moods/tempo/etc.

It was called Musicovery and I happened to stumble across it.  You can select year ranges/tempo/mood/genre and all of that in a sliding connected image that let's you choose paths.  There is like 18 genre's and then sub moods then a sliding bar for year coverage.

Image:Interesting music site I found and how it is provided
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    On Saturday, February 3rd, 2007   by Chris Miller        

Thanks to all for the compliments on the presentations.... and the SMTP slides are coming

This one took me by surprise and almost made me blush...
Chris Miller rocks - If you are an admin DO NOT MISS his sessions.  Look at his blog...... Keep up and you will learn a lot, but it is somewhat like encountering a knowledge hit-and-run, so you WILL have to download the slides to commit most of it to memory. So, do that and love it.

So again, thanks everyone for the emails, IM's and blog postings.  The slides for SMTP will be up shortly.  I had to clean them and PDF them for you.

Back to our schedule of replication versus synchronization.
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    On Wednesday, February 1st, 2006   by Chris Miller        

testing some Technorati

Technorati Profile
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    On Monday, January 30th, 2006   by Chris Miller        

Article on cell phone radiation levels

Yes I use a headset like I really believe everyone should do.  For numerous reasons.  With the most simple reason to be along the lines of stopping people from being oblivious to life while talking.  This article shows radiation levels across numerous phone types, quite cool.  And scary.
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    On Monday, January 9th, 2006   by Chris Miller        

The IdoNotes blog year in review

I had not done one of these before, but as with everything else, there are always changes and new ideas to be completed.  I wanted to hit some highlights of the IdoNotes blog for 2005 and what I am thinking of for 2006.

Searches:
 I run both tracking for Google hits and blog searches.  I can easily say the top 2 for blog searches was
  1. Replication Topology (this was generated from the article series I did)
  2. ndyncfg or Dynamic Client Configuration (this was generated from the article series I did)
Now the rest I didn't bother to count since these were so far ahead, but coming close was Sametime and IM and then the notes.ini settings

Google hits were a bit tougher to gauge.  Long ago I used an image of gremlins for some posting, and that hit the Google image cache and I still get hits today for that.  So narrowing down the list was hard.  I was in the middle of making a new view and ran out of time getting the laptop ready for the new hands-on lab for Lotusphere.  So I will either guess in a bit or finish the view.

Changes:
  1. I had added the feed from DeveloperWorks onto the left frame, but they recently had some performance issues which was killing my load times.  I left the section but disabled the feed until they fix their issue or I want something else.
  2. I have started importing as much of my old E-Pro content I can find to make it available for searching.  It will be up shortly with the link on the left finding the keywords I embedded into each for a good listing of stored entries.  I am trying to get them in the publication date order also
  3. I added Skype contact links to the blog and I am enjoying goofing around on the video beta.
  4. I do not see the design changing soon, even though I have been tinkering with a rather cool design change, I like standing out with the blue and silver and the framework finally works the way I desire
  5. In-line comments are coming, for demand only.  I prefer the pop-up personally for that piece.
  6. Spam comment filtering will be on shortly.  I am starting to get a few scattered around
  7. Plazes was a cool thing and I added the gvisit link and Trazes link to the page.  I enjoy seeing the map of travels and where my visitors come from more than you do
  8. My links section needs to be cleaned up and maybe moved to it's own page.  I can then shrink down the number of postings shown also to make the page smaller, with less scrolling available.
  9. The Sametime integration never caught my attention, but yes, I need to get that done

Suggestions:
I get a few every now and then but more than welcome any that you have.  I really do think about them, but as an admin, design changes are slow for me to deploy and test unless I get in the mood.  I can develop myself out of a paper bag, but plastic would be an issue (if you get that joke)

So there you have it, a quick overview of the IdoNotes blog.  Everyone have a safe New Year's evening, as I plan on seeing everyone in a few weeks in Orlando.  Ok, or at some other city I will be in shortly.

Hmmm, maybe a travel schedule like Rob Novak does might help....
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    On Friday, December 30th, 2005   by Chris Miller        

A holiday entry.... Companies eating bandwidth while employees shop online

Of course it is the mad rush to get the last minute gifts, but Network World (amongst others) had an article on the amount of shopping being done from work and when.
From Akami's Net Usage Index for Retail, we get a report that the top time is 4:30pm across 200 sites that Akami servers for content delivery in the retail sector

That means a heck of a lot of you are surfing right before you head home.  As they referred to, it makes sense to allow some shopping to keep the employees closer and not rushing out for long lunches and traffic around the malls.  We don't block those kind of sites at all, does your enterprise?  Or just sites that pose legal or ethical threats?  How many of you act as Big Brother and watch where people shop?


Update: Controls Caddy tackles the ethical and legal side of my posting
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    On Tuesday, December 20th, 2005   by Chris Miller        

It was the feed from DeveloperWorks slowing the blog down, removed it for now...


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    On Monday, December 19th, 2005   by Chris Miller        

I think this DeveloperWorks Feed is slowing my blog now

It seems when it gets to that point it just hangs forever.  I might remove that for a bit and see how it does.
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    On Monday, December 19th, 2005   by Chris Miller        

An interesting and wonderful talk with another blogger this morning

I happened to get a ping from Ben Rose this morning to my surprise.  What started as a brief hello turned into a conversation on home audio systems, server connectivity, port tunneling and deciding what music to play in what room of your home at what time.  Worse yet, it bounced from topic to topic and interwove them numerous times.

The point is that even though there is approximately 6753.396344791372 kilometers, or  4196.3659384142675 miles or even 3646.5423028031164 nautical miles from each other, it is amazing what people have in common.  This blog thing might just take off yet in the world


P.S.  I have to thank the Western Conference Research Lab of the USDA for the link that does all that conversion with Latitude and Longitude and distance between.  You can find the link under my tools
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    On Monday, October 31st, 2005   by Chris Miller        

Issue semi-resolved, thanks to the respondents

Well reviving the drive itself failed, so I fired up a copy of Knoppix to mount the drives and FTP the data off.  Being time consuming, I grabbed another machine donated by a co-worker from the hidden stash of under someone's desk test machines and did a simple file copy of all the data from my dead one to the temp site.  I will start rebuilding and reloading, a dreaded thought but nice to get a clean machine.

Thanks to all, now back to work so I can post some tech tips.
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    On Sunday, October 2nd, 2005   by Chris Miller        

Since my guest bloggers apparently abandoned me and I am flying to a customer site

I am back (semi) from my technology free week.  I have a two day trip to San Antonio for a customer then a couple more days of rest before I am in full swing.  Here is a quick rundown of what being technology free earned me this week:
  • A jump out of an airplane at 12,000 feet on my birthday.  I dragged the wife kicking and screaming with me.  Ok, she never kicked or screamed at all but it was fun seen her about 100 yards away looking back at me with the expression that if we make it down she was kicking my ass.  One of the best things I have even done!!!  Of course, I thought they told me I was on the place to go scuba diving.  Nevermind the parachute, I thought it was air tanks. :p
  • Family barbecue time over the holiday.  Playstation 2 was in full effect on the big screens for the teenagers and I took great pride in whooping some of their butts in a few games.
  • A chance to catch up doing things in our new house.  It is amazing at how simple it should be to move into empty space right?  Well tell that to the new furniture people, cable installers, sod layers and about every other industry that exists.
  • A chance to sleep.  A lot.  The blog title itself should have let you know I planned on that.  Nothing like getting up at 11am with nothing better to do
  • No cell phone ringing nonstop.  Turn it off for a couple days, you will feel better.  More time to sleep
  • No computer staring in my face.  There was wiring as I finish the way I want the network, but I did not put much effort into that, more naps instead.
  • Hanging out with the family and actually cooking how I really like to.  It seems right after work never allows for some of the fun things.  Quickly heading to the grocery store and local produce stand was quite the treat that I miss doing more often
  • Heading out until all hours of the night at will.  This of course leads to those late morning sleep ins.

There is plenty more but I just typed as I thought.  So welcome back everyone.  I mean welcome back me.
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    On Friday, September 9th, 2005   by Chris Miller        

Guest Blogging - Birthday, Relief Efforts

Hope everyone wished Chris a happy birthday over the weekend, while he was on vacation.
Also happy birthday to
Alan Lepofsky (they share a birthday!).

We'll be back to your regularly scheduled Notes/Domino advice soon (at the latest when Chris is back), but since Chris was talking about how Connectria is helping the Katrina victims in his last posts on Friday, I thought I'd continue in that theme and talk about a very few of the interesting relief efforts. You probably all know about the basics: give to the Red Cross, volunteer your time if you're local in Houston, etc. But here are some folks who're getting creative:

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    On Tuesday, September 6th, 2005   by Libby        

Survey on consumer mail addiction out, let’s do our own..

A survey was sponsored by AOL it seems on email usage.  Here is the excerpt and link.  Let's do our own survey that I will publish.  Plus I have a few additional questions that I want to know.
The average e-mail user in the U.S. has two or three e-mail accounts and spends about an hour every day reading, sending and replying to messages, according to the survey, conducted by Opinion Research Corp.

E-mail dependency is so strong for 41% of survey respondents that they check their e-mail in-boxes right after getting out of bed in the morning. The average user checks his in-box five times a day, according to the survey, which polled 4,012 respondents at least 18 years old in the 20 largest U.S. cities.

About a fourth of respondents acknowledged being so addicted to e-mail that they can't go more than two or three days without checking for messages. That includes vacations, during which 60% of respondents admitted logging into their in-boxes


1.        So as for our survey, how many accounts do you maintain?
2.        How much time do you think you spend reading?
3.        Do you check when getting out of bed?
4.        How many times a day do you check ALL the mailfiles?  Not just automated checks of some like we can in Domino
5.        Can you go an entire vacation without checking?

Additional questions

1.        Does RSS save you any time on checking email now?
2.        How many times a day do you check the blogs?
3.        Do you read the blogs while you are on vacation?
4.        How many blogs do you maintain (yes some of you have work and personal ones) ?
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    On Tuesday, May 31st, 2005   by Chris Miller        

If you haven’t seen this thread on Ed’s blog

Then by all means go peek and give some input.  You might get lucky and get heard.  In Domino blogs I think it counts for the longest comment count.
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    On Friday, May 6th, 2005   by Chris Miller        

So to close out the perks topic

I received an email with an interesting picture of a company basement.  Plus I heard some places providing parking and also high speed Internet costs back to employees.  All these sound great!  Now what would be the best choice of all those things people have been saying their companies offer?  If you have not read the comments from here, then you need to!

Here is the picture

Image:So to close out the perks topic
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    On Friday, April 1st, 2005   by Chris Miller        

Yesterday I asked how the company kept you happy with perks, some answers

That was an interesting one,  plus a side chat on AOL about it.
  • One comment said they had no idea coffee was a perk.  Well yes!  We had a choice here since there are not as many coffee drinkers, that one is a small 'club' of people that pay.  In return we get unlimited free soda and some juices plus free water dispenser.  Water you ask!  Well our building does not offer water service anywhere but near the central elevator core.  So that means coffee must be made and water added and the drinking water from the tap was awful.  So we opted for the big bottles.
  • Pool and an indoor golfing range was another comment. that came in.  Indoor golf range?!?!?!  Now that is something unique and new to hear.  Of course if it is one little putting cup with electronic return that was not funny :-)

So are the days of in-house massages and crazy outings and food delivery gone also?  What about small perks like paid parking, Internet access or health clubs?
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    On Wednesday, March 30th, 2005   by Chris Miller        

How does your company keep you happy?

I was (once again) reading a quick article on the web.  This one covers how technology employees are kept happy with the new realities.  I like one certain quote in particular.
"You won't see air hockey tables or free massages anymore. But you do see greater emphasis on cultural issues,"

Now I know we had a ping-pong table at one time.  But, I cannot recall a time that anyone came to an interview with our company and got hired when they showed up wearing less that business attire for the interview.  I have seen a short where companies are hiring temporary help, with the offer of full-time employment if both sides like each other.

I think that is a strong indication that the demand has dropped beyond unreasonable salaries, perks and the "must hire" ideology.  Meaning you are on the hunt for certain skills and will pay whatever it takes.  There is far too much talent out there, and those willing to learn a new task, to just hire someone because on paper they say they have the skills.

So to cut costs, what does your job do as side perks?  The article hints about bringing dogs to work and we know that won't happen.  Too many allergies and who knows what else.  How about ballgames?  Free soda and coffee?  Do tell.
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    On Tuesday, March 29th, 2005   by Chris Miller        

AOL responds about today’s blog

Here is an article with an AOL response...
America Online spokesman Andrew Weinstein, however, maintained that AOL does not monitor, read or review any user-to-user communication through the AIM network, except in response to a valid legal process.

Weinstein told eWEEK.com the clause in question falls under the heading "Content You Post," meaning it only relates to content a user posts in a public area of the AIM service. "If a user posts content in a public area of the service, like a chat room, message board or other public forum, that information may be used by AOL for other purposes," he explained.


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    On Monday, March 14th, 2005   by Chris Miller        

Would you want more time off or more money? new survey results

This is something that affects everyone.  An updated survey came out on personal time versus wealth basically.
Given a choice between a $5,000 raise and the equivalent in time off, 39 percent of respondents picked the personal time in a survey conducted in November by compensation specialist Salary.com. Three years ago, 33 percent of respondents to a similar question opted for more free time rather than more pay, according to the company.

I know in today's times that is a toss in the air.  There are benefits to both answers that we do not even have to go into.


I know I haven't hit the technical as much but I am trying to get ready for Lotusphere plus end some projects. So hang on dear readers.
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    On Tuesday, January 18th, 2005   by Chris Miller        

Blog Creation, Readership Rise in 2004

The first line of a brief article on blog readership.
Twenty-seven percent of online adults in the United States said in November they read blogs, compared with 17 percent in a February survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Earlier in the year, politics was what drove readers to blogs.

Though blog readership jumped, the percentage of online Americans who write blogs grew only slightly - to 7 percent in November, up from 5 percent early in the year. Blog creators tend to be male, affluent, well-educated and young; 70 percent of them have high-speed connections at home, and 82 percent have been online at least six years.

Despite the attention to blogging, a large number of Americans remain clueless - only 38 percent of Internet users know what a blog is: online agglomerations of ideas, information and links, usually presented with the most recent postings on top, and often offering a mechanism for visitors to post comments.

Software tools developed in recent years have made blogs easier to create and maintain.


Are you finding use of all these Domino blogs?  Do you get value out of the daily postings all over?  Do you use RSS exclusively?
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    On Monday, January 3rd, 2005   by Chris Miller        

Since we have worked with the e-rate program, I found this article interesting

I was reading this article on the changes applying to the e-rate program.   For those not familiar with the program
in 1997, as a corollary to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the FCC implemented a revised universal service provision (USP) that essentially subsidizes Internet-related services to elementary and secondary schools and public libraries.  USAC has disseminated more than $11 billion in so-called "e-rate" funds since 1997.

So this means that the schools started getting money to fund Internet services.  However, this just came out.
On Aug. 16, the FCC notified the USAC that it was drastically tightening up accountability standards for e-rate funding. In particular, the FCC required the USAC to have the money in hand before promising it to schools - a 180-degree reversal of the way the USAC had been operating for the past six years, during which the USAC would promise funding based on estimated future contributions by telcos.

The USAC responded Aug. 19 by informing thousands of schools and libraries that it could no longer promise funding for fiscal year 2004, which started in July.

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    On Tuesday, October 26th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

Some site searches I can’t help you with dear reader

Now I know this will simply add an entry when doing a site search (not Google as they are different beasts) on my blog but I cannot assist with the following:
  • Interliant
  • Navisite
  • Trillian hacks
  • notes hacking

Interliant and Navisite, kind of one in the same now.  They have their own sites out there.
It seems people are always looking for Trillian Pro hacks to get the code for free.  It is only $25 for an awesome client, I say buy it.
Notes hacking?  Are we serious?
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    On Monday, August 9th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

Apparently didtheyreadit.com is hot in Canada

I am getting Google'd like mad from numerous ip addresses in Canada for information on didtheyreadit.com and Exchange.  I think I hit a hotspot for some people or there was a recent article or story on the 'service'

Otherwise I am headed out of town for a soccer tournament so schedule will resume Monday everyone!
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    On Friday, June 4th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

Back home and exhausted. Let’s recap Admin2004

Admin2004 came to a screeching halt on Friday afternoon.  The week started full and remained so, but when it ended it was like a brick wall.  People were walking around with parts of their brain bulging from being too full.  That is how you want it to end.  Personally I delivered a three hour jumpstart on Sametime Tuesday to start it all off.  I had 84 live Sametime servers running in the room.  An awesome setup job by the team of The View.

Then as Ed has so fully documented, the Workplace launch kicked off during the show, which drove up attendance in the workshop given by Jason Collier (of CertFX) on Workplace Messaging 2 beta.  It was a hands-on lab where everyone had a laptop and got to play with a master server in the room.  I went to a couple of those since I eithered followed him with mine or he was after me and I hung around.

I met some great people in my SMTP configuration workshop and thank those on Thur that hung out an extra 20 minutes just to talk about theories about being an administrator.  The conversation after the workshop that time was a breath of fresh air as it wasn't cold hard facts about what box to check, but what you need to do as a person to be the best administrator you can.  I did the workshop 4 times and by the last one there was the largest crowd.  My Domino Web Access architecture session had to be repeated due to demand and I thank everyone for that also.  The Sametime Tips and Tricks get a special thanks to Carl Tyler for being on-line at just the right time for live stlinks demo and behaving himself in the live chat.

Otherwise there was a ton of other things to type about the week but you get the drift. The evenings were made for hanging out and catching up with other speakers like Novak, Kathleen McGivney (thanks to her for assisting in the jumpstart as additional hands for issues) and Libby.  My files will be posted on the right in the download section for those of you looking for them.

Next on the blog, the install of Workplace 2 beta 3 begins!!  Hmmm, I want to make sure I have aspirin handy in case.
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    On Monday, May 17th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

Setup day for Admin2004 and you learn things even in setup

After a wonderfully uneventful flight which I got on stand-by, the day turned long as we checked laptops and made changes and final configurations for the Jumpstart sessions tomorrow morning.  Everything is always as it seems when dealing with Domino.  Meaning the error is there for a reason, not just to tease you.  Sure it might taunt and even stick out it's tongue, but the darn error doesn't just come up for giggles.  The moral of that line is that if you see an error, Domino is trying to tell you something.  It is not always apparent when first looking, but treat it as you would any other known error and take the time to troubleshoot and fix the issue.  Had we let it simmer and skipped over it, the session more than likely would have failed tomorrow morning.  It revolved around DNS and gateways, but spelling it out isn't the point here this late evening.

But to end this on a higher note, dinner was in great company with Carilyn (of The View), Libby and Kathleen.  Then later at the bar with a bunch of other attendees and presenters seeming to come together out of nowhere.  I took some pics that I will download off the camera after my Jumpstart tomorrow!!
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    On Tuesday, May 11th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

Do you work too much since you are always connected?

I ran across this article stating how Microsoft (UK) thinks it's employees may work too much since people are always connected


It has got to the stage where Microsoft has even issued guidance to its UK employees on when they should disconnect from the Internet at home or turn off their mobile phones.

"The provision of a smart phone in no way requires users to either view or respond to business related emails or calls out of office hours," Steve Harvey, Director of People and Culture at Microsoft told CNN.


"Individuals are not skilled in setting the boundaries between work and home (and) colleagues fail to respect other's rights to free time."


How many of you think you work too much away from the office due to pagers, cell phones, Internet connectivity over wireless and even high speed


Speaking of
high speed, they have set the new transfer record across Internet2


Researchers have set a data transmission record over the Internet2's high-speed backbone.

The record, announced Tuesday at the Spring 2004 Internet2 member meeting in Arlington, Va., was for transmitting data over nearly 11,000 kilometers at an average speed of 6.25 gigabits per second. This is nearly 10,000 times faster than a typical home broadband connection. The network link used to set the record reaches from Los Angeles to Geneva, Switzerland.

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    On Tuesday, April 27th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

a mini vacation is always welcome

Image:a mini vacation is always welcome

I had a great trip out west to LA this past weekend as I mentioned.  There is tons more to tell and a follow along discussion tomorrow about a posting Chris Pirillo made (that was pointed out to me), and how he ranted that no one should use the Notes client.  I have some things to say more there after reading it.

I was able to sneak some time in around doing slides and such to pop into Chinatown.  That was a nice shopping spree.  I only took a handful of pictures but linked the slideshow.
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    On Wednesday, April 14th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

Books I finished recently and forgot to tell about

The latest Harry Potter - Order of the Phoenix (had to finish the series)
Chuck Palahniuk -
Invisible Monsters
David Baldacci -
Last Man Standing (great read twduff picked up later)
John Welter -
Night of the Avenging Blowfish (loved this one)
Brad Meltzer -
The Millionaires
Tony Hillerman -
The Sinister Pig  (good storyline)
Clyde Edgerton -
Where Trouble Sleeps
Bagely Desmond -
Windfall   (fast story, moves along well)
Bagley Desmond -
Running Blind (read on the flight on the way out Fri, great story placed in Iceland)

So on the flight back I started one more and knocked that one out too,  
Bleachers by John Grisham.  Not his finest and I was not impressed in the least.  Ok, back to regularly scheduled programming.
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    On Tuesday, April 13th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

I have respect for what these guys do..

I came home this evening after a fund-raiser (American Cancer Society)/celebration for my friend that passed of cancer in January to find a building in the condo complex that connects to my main street on fire.  Well one building was.  I know Andrew Pollack is a volunteer firefighter who must look much like this at the most unfortunate times.  Twelve (yes 12) units were destroyed in this blaze that had over 14 trucks, including a ladder truck, involved on site.  As I write this many of the trucks are leaving the scene and driving right in front of my house as they go the back way out and around since there are so many cars, police and Red Cross down there.  I took a few shots but these two stood out.

Image:I have respect for what these guys do..    Image:I have respect for what these guys do..
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    On Monday, March 15th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

redo (I am all for eqality in virus writing)

Sorry about that, something in MIME conversion or some other random affair messed with the formatting inside the Rich Text, let's try again
*********************************************

Apparently they made an arrest for one of the better known virus writers a couple weeks ago.  I was unaware of it so it if is old news....
Belgian police arrest female virus writer  By John Leyden
Posted: 16/02/2004 at 14:01 GMT
The Register Mobile: Find out what the fuss is about. Take the two week trial today.

A 19 year-old female technology student suspected of being the infamous virus writer Gigabyte was arrested by Belgian police last weekend.

The woman was charged with computer data sabotage offences, Belgian daily La Libre Belgique reports. Her alleged crimes are punishable by up to three years in prison and fines of up to 100,000 Euros.

Police confiscated five of the teenager's computers and shut down her Web site. The 19 year-old, from Mechelen (30 kilometres north of Brussels), was released on bail pending further police inquiries.

"She was preparing to publish new viruses on this site," Belgian Police Inspector Olivier Bogaert told La Libre Belgique.

Through her gender and youth, Gigabyte stands out among the virus writing underground. She is credited with writing the first virus to use Microsoft's C# language.

She was also well known for frquent run-ins with ubiquitous AV spokesman Graham Cluley over his sociological analysis of virus writers. In anti-virus circles, Cluley is well-known for describing virus writers (VXers) in less than flattering terms, once memorably saying they only wrote malicious code because they were spotty teenage nerds who couldn't pull. Gigabyte took exception to remarks like this, even going as far as writing viral code that mocked Cluley.

According to TechTV, Gigabyte began programming aged only six years-old. Gigabyte reportedly began writing computer worms aged just 14 but has always maintained she only did this for "research purposes" and that she never released viruses herself.


Well someone will soon be offering her lots and lots of money to come work for their security company won't they?
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    On Friday, February 27th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

Catching up posting on the recent books I read

No one reads more than Twduff as far as I know, but somewhere each day I take at least 15-30 minutes to read some pages of the book of the moment. Recently I completed the following due to my wonderful flight schedule the past few weeks:
  • Night of the Avenging Blowfish: A Novel of Covert Operations, Love and Luncheon Meat  by John Welter (from year 1994).  This book had me laughing the whole way through only because the author is sarcastic as can be.  A top secret baseball game between the CIA and Secret Service are one of the many plots twisted up in this book.  If you ever wanted to see the president eat Spam this is the book for you.
  • Windfall by Bagley Desmond. Takes place mostly in Africa and gives you a good lesson on geography to keep up. The basics is a large sum of money has been left by a dead man in Jersey (not the US but the country) and ends up going to a nonprofit organization in Kenya.  How and why is the race to find out.  A very believable character set makes the book move along.
  • The Millionaires by Brad Meltzer.  Fast read and I found it entertaining. How do you steal unclaimed money and not get caught by the FBI or Secret Service?  Not his finest book, but it moves fast.
  • Last Man Standing by David Baldacci.  A team leader of the Hostage Rescue Team freezes on a job and the rest of his team gets wiped out.  But he is left.  Who did it and why is the chase of the book with a small love subplot mixed in.  it was a nice twist towards the end, something you don't get as much in recent books.

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    On Wednesday, February 25th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

sorry for the Lotusphere slide posting delay..

I am offsite (as most of you have read the past few days) and do not have the Lotusphere PDF files with me.  But, is everyone interested in the PDF or the native PPT type file?  
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    On Thursday, February 12th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

I hadn’t been to Niagara/American/Horseshoe Falls in years

It had been since I was a teenager that I visited the falls so Dave and I took advantage of another productive and busy day at the client, to eat dinner up towards Niagara and make his first trip into Canada.  I kept telling him they provide strip-searches at the border for anyone over 6'1" but he didn't buy it.
       So it was nice to see all the lighting of the falls and shots of Ontario from the Skylon Tower that sits over 520 feet above the falls.  So, I have started another photo album that you can find here of the shots so far.  I will add more to them as the week continues.  It was quite cold out and there weren't many people nutty like us around, so it made moving around easy.  The snow wasn't very helpful as you will see Dave standing on a snow mountain that were all over Goat Island.  This is a shot of the lights they use through the mist.  The next is a shot from the tower.  The album linked above has them all.

Image:I hadn´t been to Niagara/American/Horseshoe Falls in years
                          Peeking at light through the mist of the falls

Image:I hadn´t been to Niagara/American/Horseshoe Falls in years

This is a great shot from the top of the tower of the falls in the white light.  They use numerous colors to keep changing the appearance every few minutes.  The white was the best picture but the red made it look quite menacing.
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    On Thursday, February 12th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

I think they are trying to kill me here with food

Once again we hit the evening streets of Buffalo with Alex (of the customer site) for a fantastic dinner.  This time they had to bring the wheel barrow to roll us out of there.  The Friar's Table is a steakhouse that Dave managed to eat a massive 32oz hunk of some form of beef.  I went easy with the pecan encrusted catfish over wild mushroom risotto.  But the apricot honey butter for the bread made us devour a couple baskets of that before the seafood chowder arrived.  Dessert again was the killer.  Huge pieces of butterscotch cheesecake and macadamia flan pie.

The other side, we went in to dinner with cloudy skies and came out with snow snow everywhere in a matter of an hour.   I think this might be a two posting night as I have a technical topic also to type up.

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    On Tuesday, February 10th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

Thanks to Alex for a great reception in Buffalo

After a horrendous AA flight day for Dave and I:
  • After taxing to the runway we were notified that the plane did not have the "proper papers" which we presumed meant not the right toilet paper.  This was remedied after 20-30 minutes.  This in turn gave us the chills since we only had 42 minutes between flights at O'Hare with gates in different concourses
  • We actually arrived and made our way down to the gate at about boarding time.  Of course only to find out that the plane we were to take had some unknown mechanical issue.  The issue was a passenger door that would not close and seal.  We offered duct tape and to even hold the door shut during the flight, to no avail not humor of the flight staff.  After updates that become further apart they finally moved us to a new plane and a new gate.  So in all we sat an extra hour or so which put us behind in the queue to get out of O'Hare.
  • The good news is that we ended up doing 655 MPH to Buffalo due to the Jet Stream behind us.
The hotel is full wireless access anywhere.  Heck, I am even seeing 5 access points above 50% strength that I can connect to right now.  So that is a huge bonus.

As for dinner, Alex from our customer site took us to Tsunami in Kenmore, NY.  Now that was an excellent dinner.  Appetizer was small sashimi presentation (the large was far too much after seeing the tray) that included a Hawaiian Bluefish and a side salmon dish that the chef prepared over rice that was incredible.  For dinner I selected Hawaiian Butterfish since I had never had it before.  Dessert around the table had a creme brulee sampler (four tiny different flavored ones), a chocolate lava cake with cinnamon ice cream and I had a Mango Cream Cheese Spring Roll.  I had to roll myself out of there.
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    On Monday, February 9th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

hitting the road again tomorrow

Tomorrow brings another fun filled day of travel and straight to the customer site when we land.  Dave (from my office) and myself are headed to Buffalo, NY for most of the week.  So if anyone is in that area and wishes to have a dinner or give us god places to eat let me know!!  The temperatures are actually just like here, while the amount of snow on the ground currently is nowhere near what we have here.

Image:hitting the road again tomorrow
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    On Sunday, February 8th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

as I see in some google searches and emails....

 I will post the updated slides from Lotusphere tonight as they are on my laptop still and I didn't bring it to the office with me.  Thanks again to everyone that is looking for them slides and has been asking questions.  I am scared to check my Netscape mail still today. As for other news, look for my post later today on my client upgrade to 6.5.1, I ran into an interesting thing with Smartupdate.
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    On Monday, February 2nd, 2004   by Chris Miller        

Alive and back from Lotusphere, and the pictures are up

I finally uploaded all the pictures I took. (ok most of them, some will not be uploaded to protect the innocent or those that think they are) Not all have captions of who is in them yet, or what they are of, but no matter!!! Take a view of the slideshow by clicking right here.

Shark banging at Universal

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    On Saturday, January 31st, 2004   by Chris Miller        

side note, guess this means there will be a Lotusphere next year

If you take the very cool online survey that they put together for end of the Lotusphere survey, they ask about how many you will be sending next year and something about the economy.  I am guessing this means another year for sure!

Now the interface could have been much better since the submit link was the size of a small field mouse at about 80 yards on a foggy day hidden behind a hill.  No instructions when you first log in, I just guessed I click the silly link to the left to start the survey.  Then they do tell you to type in your unique badge id and case doesn't matter.  Now I don't know about everyone, but each person I quickly asked had ALL numbers for their badge id.  Hmmm, didn't know numbers had case.  well here is 1-10 in random case order for you  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

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    On Thursday, January 29th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

Excuse me while I sleep.....

I had quite the honor of presenting a couple well attended sessions but had NO idea the impact my LDAP session made.  It became very clear though by the time I reached our pedestal on the vendor floor about 45 minutes after I was done answering questions.  Since that time I have had people:
  • simply grab me in the halls complimenting me on the session
  • yelling for me to stop for a second to discuss an LDAP issue
  • come by our pedestal, leave cards and return a few times to track me down.  Now this shows some serious interest and I have had some great talks with people on what they are doing and their needs.  This includes a wonderful lady from Germany that took the time to work with me on drawing it out so I could give her my insight and opinion.  The vendor floor was quite loud and she was bringing in my session on Workplace Messaging also since they will be using a centralized LDAP and an existing Domino environment.  And this is one darn large organization.  I saw her name badge and was stunned to see her talking to me about this.
  • had a gentleman find me in my one trip through the Lotus Stuff Store, he kindly went to wait at our pedestal so I could finish some quick shopping
  • had a gentleman yell loudly last night while at Universal Studios that is was one hell of a session, didn't sugar-coat or pull punches.  This of course was while he was two feet away and holding two beers, lol
  • and finally, a phone call to my room to set a time to talk with him and his team for a few minutes.  I have no idea how big this team is, but after I finish sleeping soundly (from being out way too late again for the 5th night in a row) I will be right there since I don't have a session to get to for a bit

****************
I appreciate all the comments on the session from everyone that has asked to talk to more or even simply caught me in the halls to say what they thought.  It was a great time to do it, lots of laughs in the session and left the door open for plenty of talks in the future I hope.
****************
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    On Thursday, January 29th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

Ahh, we think we are positive about the guest speaker and more news

We debated, heard the rumors, battled over it and well gosh darn it, we saw the proposed guest speaker checking into the hotel last night.  I definitely don't want to ruin it for any one that might read this blog before the time, but I sure as well get a picture for everyone.  Engage dammit, engage.

As for yesterday, great sessions at Business Development Day.  Some of the Jumpstarts were a little less technical than the description said, but we can live with that.  The Welcome Party was nicely done, the crowd being smaller these past few years actually lets you wander around easier and find people.  But the days of 10,000 crammed into that area are well missed and talked about often from multi-year veterans.

Ok yesterday's picture was the dividing wall in the new BlueZoo restaurant that is plexiglass and has light shooting through it changing colors.   Here we go with today's trivia picture.


Image:Ahh, we think we are positive about the guest speaker and more news
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    On Monday, January 26th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

Daily image quiz, name that site at LS2004

Here is the first one, who knows what it is?

Image:Daily image quiz, name that site at LS2004
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    On Saturday, January 24th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

A moment of blog silence...

My friend for 20 years now finally lost the war with cancer this weekend after winning the first battle two years ago.  But he fought the whole way.

Image:A moment of blog silence...




Thanks Scott for all that you brought to me and my family since we were kids together growing up.  And thanks for being one of the friends that stayed a true friend all these years.  For his wife (if she logs on anytime soon), you were the reason he fought on day after day, he would gladly do it all over again to spend a few more days time in your arms at the hospital.
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    On Monday, January 19th, 2004   by Chris Miller        

For those that don’t know..

...I love to cook.  Just about everything.  I am proud to say I am not half bad so I was happy as can be with two Christmas presents I received this year.
  • A breadmaker.  From 1 to 2 pound loaf sizes, 3 different crusts and my favorite part of all, the delay bake timer.  It was wonderfully nice to toss the ingredients in there yesterday, set the delay timer and walk in the door to not only the aroma but a nice 2 lb loaf of fresh sourdough bread yesterday.  The only other kind I made so far was a chocolate chip bread.  The honey wheat is to come later this week when I finish this current one.
  • A class at the Viking Culinary Arts Center for making sushi was the other one.  I also managed to get a ton of supplies to add to my collection for making it, but the class was an awesome idea from my brother.  He actually listened for once to what I like to do and came up with this when he was taking a pizza class they had and saw it on the list.  The first one open was during Lotusphere so of course I had to move that to February (not Lotusphere but the class) to take advantage as soon as possible.  I found out they have an Asian Noodle Bar class too I might take advantage of.  It seems the sushi class covers:
    • Nigiri (Hand-Pressed with Shrimp, Tuna and Eel)
    • Futomaki (Fat Roll)
    • California Roll
    • Hosomaki (Thin Roll)
    • Tuna Roll Temaki (Hand Roll)

    Otherwise there was the normal stuff, clothes and all but those two really made my day.  I needed it since I have been sick for almost two weeks now.  Forget the 12 Days of Christmas, I was celebrating the 12 Days of Death by Flu.

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    On Tuesday, December 30th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King review

Well I went ahead and saw the midnight showing of the movie last night.  Myself and about a billion other crazies; which made it much more fun as people cheered, laughed and clapped throughout the movie (we won't cover the beer drinkers and other oddities that went on).  There is a special treat in the beginning telling a short story of Gollum and how he became what he is today.  Tons of humor interlaced in the movie and great action.  The ending was stretched a bit more than the book to give some artistic closure on what happened to the characters.  Overall one of the best movies I have seen in a while.

Image:Lord of the Rings: Return of the King review

The Lord of the Rings games can be found here.  I have played one, pretty cool.  The Hobbit game just came out in November and they showed some scenes from the game in the previews, for those of you that like the RPG and adventure games.
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    On Wednesday, December 17th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

need to play with someones machine remotely?

This should be fun around the office

Avocent has announced LongView Wireless, an 802.11a-based keyboard, video, and mouse extender that can be used to wirelessly connect monitors, keyboards, mice, and audio devices to a computer up to 100 feet away. LongView Wireless features video compression and protocol technology that supports the transmission of 24-bit color up to 30 frames per second.

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    On Tuesday, December 9th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

This Weekend was all about Entertainment

First up this weekend was a chance to see Eric Idle in concert.  Most of you know him from Monty Python.  He came to do a small venue concert for us on the Greedy Bastard Tour.  A great show.  Many new pieces of comedy and a lot of revisited sketches from Monty Python and his earlier years.  He does a lot of songs, of course, and his group with him were all talented.  If you get a chance to catch this tour, then do it!!  It isn't often they come around for stage performances on their own.  By the way, bring some small bills and look for the 'Encore Bucket' (I won't say anymore about that, lol).  And to top it off he is keeping a journal (ie blog) of his whole trip on-line.  Here is St Louis.  But you must also read the follow-up he writes the next day since it talks about how the show went.

Image:This Weekend was all about Entertainment

Next up for the weekend was Matrix: Revolutions.  I am not sure where to go with this one.  I won't tell anything about the story for those that haven't had the time to see it yet.  The animations and computer generated things were of course amazing, and it ended for the most part like I thought.  But not quite what I wanted. If that makes any sense at all.  I know Rocky will haved plenty to say on this topic.  Here is Agent Smith gettin ready for his big scene.

Image:This Weekend was all about Entertainment

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    On Monday, November 10th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Paris pictures are up!!

Click the picture for the slides

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    On Tuesday, November 4th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

California fire pictures

My cousin from Las Vegas sent over a few pictures from the California fires saying that the residual smoke was drifting to them already from California.  Best wishes to all of those in the area and affected by these fires.

Image:California fire pictures  Image:California fire pictures  Image:California fire pictures
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    On Friday, October 31st, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Dining locations and readings from the trip

I wanted to finish up postings about the trip for such things as where I ate and what I finished reading so we can get back to technical stuff. I just have so much information it was taking me some time. I am amazed at all the places I was able to visit and see in what I consider such a brief visit. If it wasn't for my gracious hosts from GSX, Philippe and Louisa, then I wouldn't have accomplished all of that in Nice and Monaco.

So let's start with restaurants and food items

  • This is the non-alcoholic beer I tried over in Amsterdam. Not the best choice I have ever made. Actually the one from Guinness is the best I have had (yes Guinness has one, get your jaws off your desk!!)
  • Saturday night in the Red Light District landed us at a bar with a band playing old American Big Band Music. Quite a cool club called Paleis van de Weemoed. They served a 4 course meal, that we only managed to get the dessert from due to our tardy arrival and finding it purely by accident looking for restrooms. :-)
  • Somewhere in here we all went as a group for Indian food at Ghandi Restaurant in Amsterdam for such good food we went twice. Plus it was close to the Red Light District.
  • Then there was dinner Monday at Tomo Sushi Restaurant. Some of the best sushi I have had anywhere.
  • Dinner Tuesday was at Pizza Pino
  • Dinner Wednesday was at a Mexican restaurant, I can't recall the name, but I had Sopa Maiz (spicy Mexican corn soup) and Pez Espada (grilled swordfish). MMMmmmmmmmmm
  • Lunch Thursday was at La Saliere Ristorante in Monaco. Some awesome Risotto.
  • Dinner Thursday was at a tiny restaurant , La Barachois, that you can see in my pictures I posted. They had the entire menu on a whiteboard and everything was Reunion style food.. They had some choices but for the most part the menu has not changed in 20 years. It is owned by a husband and wife and contains only about 15 tables. Getting a table is the hard part.
  • Friday I decided to skip lunch by sleeping 13 hours. He who says you should be out seeing everything hasn't fallen asleep with the patio door open to the sea breeze blowing in after no sleep in Amsterdam.
  • Friday dinner was incredible. L'oursin Bleu, located in Villefranche Sur Mer in Nice, France was the restaurant of choice for the evening. The pictures of the coral in my photos are taken from this restaurant. The owner had a passion for growing it himself. Amazing.
  • Saturday dinner was at a combo Chinese/Thai establishment located in the Quarter near Saint Germain des Pres. Unfortunately they use MSG and my head felt like it was in a vice from a Bugs Bunny cartoon. The picture of this place will show up when the Paris photo album is entirely uploaded and open for viewing.

OK, so that was the dining experiences. I did manage to finish two books also.

  • The first was Digital Fortress by Dan Brown. That was a good read. Quick, kept you interested and covered encryption lightly in the plot which added to my interest in the story. There was codes, ciphers and all sorts of twists to keep you guessing who was doing what to whom in the story. Written in 2000
  • John Welter gave me the next read called Night of the Avenging Blowfish. Not a recent book but a fantastic one if you love heavy sarcasm throughout. It had some slower parts around the romantic interest subplot, but still kept me turning pages in the eBook. Written in 1994.

So for now that will do it, a long winded, hugely linked posting that I hope you enjoyed. Now to go look for the sea breeze to take another nap.

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    On Tuesday, October 28th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Monaco pics are complete!!!! technical topics to resume shortly

It took me a bit and some of the pictures still won't upload for some reason.  I am not sure why yet, but I want to get those last 4-5 pictures uploaded that were giving me errors.  I will finish the Paris photos the next couple days.  But for now you can find the Monaco and Monte Carlo photos right here.

Image:Monaco pics are complete!!!!  technical topics to resume shortly
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    On Monday, October 27th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

The Amsterdam photo albums

Click the image to go to the slideshow of the conference pictures!!!
Schiphol Airport

I went ahead and made photo albums out for Amsterdam.

Note:
there is an adult album also for those that gain the interest of some images that one can only find in Amsterdam.  I made that slideshow a link
right here.   (I had to fix the security on this, try again please if you got a bad link earlier and complained endlessly about not being able to see these images, LOL)

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    On Wednesday, October 22nd, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Every one loves to return with amazing blog entries

So let's start this out right.        I have nothing earth shattering from the conference in Amsterdam, but more than just boring blog entries for sure.  Just good stories, pictures and tidbits to pass along and explore with you as we go through this week.

They are in the same boat we are here.  Lots of Domino 5.x shops (a few stragglers at 4.6x) and slow movements through Domino 6 codestreams.  Tons of confusion on Workplace but even more on the simple sides of Sametime.  In my Sametime admin session, 95% of them had it running in some capacity but were looking for easier management and news on version paths and migration.  Rob Novak can answer the QuickPlace information they wanted as he had both dev and admin session on QP.

On the positive side, the products were being embraced and in theory, treated as mission critical.  Now they didn't have the infrastructure, but they certainly had the drive and the thirst for knowledge.  I enjoyed meeting everyone and all the presentations.  I have some things to upload which will be found at the right when they are ready.

But to start, here is a picture of the RAI Convention Center and then Rob Novak trying to figure out why QuickPlace won't load on his new digital camera with a 256MB card.

Image:Every one loves to return with amazing blog entries               Image:Every one loves to return with amazing blog entries
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    On Monday, October 20th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Wondering where my guest bloggers vanished to?

Hey all, I see my guest bloggers are taking a break so I needed to fill in form Amsterdam.  The conference here is running very smooth and quite well.  Five session presentations done.  For those of you reading this that attended, thanks for coming.  Everyone was incredibly nice and asked great questions at each session.  I have a bunch of pictures I am taking so I grabbed one of some of the speakers in the Speaker Lounge room prepping for the conference.  As for technical news, I am actually tired as can be and was concentrating too hard on the sessions. I did learn some new bits of info talking to attended here though I want to share.   I will also have a list of restaurants we went to the past few days.  Some great food locations to visit if ever here.

Pictured from left to right are Kevin's wife (sorry don't recall her name right now), Kevin Marshall, Benny Dicecca (vp of conferences for The View), Libby Schwarz and Debbie Lynd.
Image:Wondering where my guest bloggers vanished to?
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    On Wednesday, October 15th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Alive and well in Amsterdam

I made it through 2 stops on the way to present at Admin2003 overseas.  One in Chicago and one in London-Heathrow.  Both went extremely smooth and on time.  I have taken a bunch of pictures already and will post some shortly when I download them off of the camera.  It seems Mr Novak always has his face in his camera as we toured Amsterdam Central last night taking pictures and having dinner.

Today we hooked up on the wireless across at the Novotel Hotel across the street from where we are staying for the conference.  Not bad.  A little flaky at first but once we all got connected we worked great.  Imagine a bunch of the presenter geeks in the lounge area holding laptops with antennas and wireless cards everywhere.  We managed to run off a couple groups of smokers sitting around.  Let's see if
Libby finds time to place a new blog.  Give her trouble if she doesn't.
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    On Sunday, October 12th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

I knew the ’shift’ key was important

Once again from Bas himself....BMG came out with a protected music cd to ease the RIAA.  Well you know it didn't take long, as a matter of fact that same day it showed on the Internet for download.
According to this report from P2P.net , the much ballyhooed copy    
protected BMG album "Comin' Where I'm From" is a hit on P2P, but not
because folks want to listen to the latest from BMG. Supposedly,    
within hours of its release, tracks were available ad nauseum on    
file sharing networks because the protected cd was cracked.          
Especially embarrassing to Sunncomm that conducted an "external      
testing phase" prior to the release, "with the intention of          
determining compliance with the official test procedures and        
guidelines for protected content recently outlined by the Recording  
Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International        
Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPA)," They should have    
added "it's no fair if you push the shift key when you insert the    
album".The challenge to say you can't copy this album was more than  
most people could bear. Even for the Dept. of Computer Science at    
Princeton.

Apparently they found that by holding 'shift' while inserting the cd caused the device driver not to load on the PC that has the protection.  Or if someone did not use auto-play.  Better yet most Mac's don't support the driver either.


So right about now I imagine BMG is saying "Which foot shall I say I shot myself in?"
 Image:I knew the ´shift´ key was important
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    On Tuesday, October 7th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Who is watching you while you travel?

Once again Bas has enlightened me with some information.  This time it comes from a story in the LA Times (free registration required to see the whole story) about the software that picks people out for screening while they travel.  I imagined that those of us that travel often.  Yes this means Rob Novak, Ed, Libby and myself and some others I didn't list, don't get screened at the fate as often due to our frequent flier statuses.  Unless our name resembles a known or suspected terrorist as the article mentions.  I grabbed some excerpts and then my quick thoughts that await your comments.
 
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, creating an effective system to screen out both
known terrorists and would-be hijackers and plotters with spotless records
but nefarious intent  from millions of airline passengers has become a top
priority in the war against terrorism.

In the face of such challenges, the federal government has embarked on a
costly program to create a second generation profiling system designed to
verify the identity of every passenger and analyze their lives through a
"black box" of government intelligence and law enforcement databases.
Though details of the system are secret, security experts believe that more
than 100 factors will be used to sniff out terrorists based on telephone
records, travel patterns, law enforcement files and other sources.


No computer-based system has ever verifiably thwarted a hijacking or
bombing, according to federal and private security experts. But given the
enormousness of the task, the airline industry's current system , the
Computer Assisted Passenger Pre Screening system, or CAPPS , has
occasionally shown flashes of brilliance.

Its greatest success may have been on Sept. 11, 2001. In the 24 hours
leading up to the hijackings, CAPPS would have checked more than 1.8
million passengers. It actually flagged six of the 19 terrorists later
involved in the hijackings, according to the national commission on the
Sept. 11 attacks. About 92,000 innocent travelers were also singled out.

Unfortunately, only a brief luggage check for explosives and weapons was
required. The hijackers, and the then legal box cutters several were
carrying , were all welcomed aboard their flights.


Well there is so much more to this article but I didn't want to paste it all in.  Basically it covers the thoughts that not everyone gets screened for the right reasons or better yet, stealing the right identity NEVER gets you screened.  The best quote comes from Offer Einav, the former director of security for Israel's airline, considered the most secure in the world....
"The U.S. is so much oriented toward a technology [solution] that the
people are serving the technology. They are dealing with enemies who are human beings. Human beings will
always beat the technology."


Like other aviation security experts, he views
computer profiling as beneficial only if paired with seasoned security
officials who exercise common sense and conduct their own psychological
assessments of passengers, not part of the U.S. program.


So where does all this lead?  Better staff at the airports and more ideas on screening.

HINT: Two students from Harvard and MIT did a study referenced in the article that raised the eyebrows of the airlines.

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    On Thursday, October 2nd, 2003   by Chris Miller        

thank you for calling SBC, can we help you

My normal list of e-bills arrived this weekend for the month end but Southwestern Bell had a small surprise waiting for me inside.  Not the kind of Christmas gift you anxiously  await to show up under the tree.  This was the kind of gift that gets slipped under your door in the middle of the night, then they ring the doorbell and run.
Image:thank you for calling SBC, can we help you
Oh yes, an unknown Internet charge.  After a few minutes on the phone with customer service she thanked me for getting DSL with SBC and that was simply the charge for my new router.  I kindly reminded her I have had DSL for almost 4 years with them and have never had a new router.  Pause, Pause, Pause, "hang on a moment please."    She kindly came back and informed me, "Oops"


Apparently when I changed phone packages and my number they took it as a new install in the system and charged for normal setup stuff.  Needless to say they immediately reversed it.

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    On Monday, September 29th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

The castle is being raided!!

It started with a thumping sound, some loud crashes and a scurrying of footsteps.  Was it an early Christmas?  A late Easter Bunny?  Then out of the corner of my eye a person goes past a window.  I was being raided!!  Raise the drawbridges, call out the arms!!!

run for your livesOk actually it was the guys there to do my new siding from the massive amounts of hail damage I had received.  But it entirely looked like a scene from The Two Towers when the castle is being stormed and the Orcs are raising the ladders to climb the walls.  They were laying ladders up, running to the roof and securing the massive grid pieces for the other workers to get started.

  Needless to say the dog was not pleased being awaken so early.  Did he challenge and charge to the rescue?  No.  He went to a closet and climbed under a clothes rack to go back to bed.
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    On Thursday, September 25th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Microsoft Watch blog entries

Microsoft is starting to talk about it's support of RSS 2.0 and apparently the internal list of Micro$oft bloggers is growing at a substantial rate.  Too bad all of the links are mainly outside blog hosting providers.  Maybe we should offer them Domino blogs?

As for recent Microsoft-Watch entries, they have a nice little web page you can find here that shows the most recent 150 entries about Microsoft news.

I picked up this little bit of info from the list...oh my Christmas is soon coming

Microsoft's setting the stage early for its holiday marketing plans for Xbox. On Monday, Redmond rolled out a $179 bundle of Xbox, two games and a two-month Xbox Live trial subscription. Microsoft and archrival Sony are expected to engage in an all-out gaming-console price war this holiday season.

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    On Wednesday, September 24th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

taking interest in one of Ed’s blogs on RSS hits

I went ahead and pulled stats from September and wow, there are a lot of RSS hits that are running.  I find that awesome that there is so many blog feeds we want that we have to revert to feedreaders.  And yes, weekends drop like a rock.

Image:taking interest in one of Ed´s blogs on RSS hits
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    On Tuesday, September 23rd, 2003   by Chris Miller        

a couple Isabel pictures

Thanks to Scott Russo for sending these pictures of now Tropical Storm Isabel over today, quite amazing.  Picture 1 is from the Space Station and the second is on a ship as the hurricane comes at them.

Image:a couple Isabel pictures

Image:a couple Isabel pictures
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    On Friday, September 19th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Going to the Olympics? Bring the wireless

So where does everyone want wireless access while they travel?  Just the hotel and airport?  Or like what they did here in St Louis and have it all over downtown for free?  Who sees Lotus Instant Messaging (Sametime) being part of the craze (demand)?

From some recent news in the IT Wireless Insider...
The resort town of Whistler, B.C., is installing a Wi-Fi network that visitors and residents can access from local hotels, shops, and venues. The Canadian ski locale will be home to some Winter 2010 Olympic Games and has 2 million visitors each year. Just another sign of the continued broad rollout of public hot spots.


In another section they showed some interesting stats,
According to an international survey of business travelers released by Intel, 71% of business travelers are convinced that Wi-Fi hot spots will give them a communications advantage over their competition. While only one in 10 road warriors has tried Wi-Fi, nearly 90% see wireless computing in their future. While business travelers predictably identified airports (77%), hotels (76%), and airplanes (60%) as the places where they most need hot spots, they also expressed a desire to have wireless Internet access in automobiles, trains, and hospitals. This certainly does sound encouraging, but because the numbers from from a vendor with a vested interest and the actual survey method is unknown, the results should be taken with a grain of salt. However, the numbers do reinforce studies by various analyst firms that public hot spits are attractive to business travelers.

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    On Monday, September 15th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Thanks to all my guest bloggers and then some

Well I took my annual no technology week.  No cell phone, no computers.  Not even web page browsing for movies.  I used the good old newspaper and telephone to get showtimes.  I do this each year for the past eight years now at my birthday time.  It leaves me a little more refreshed and ready to get back at it.  I managed to read a few books, see a few movies and sleep.  There was also some sleep in there too, in case I didn't mention it :-)

Thanks to Ed for some great posts about pizza and googles.   I had never checked to see some of the weird google searches that were done and how they came to find my blog.  I have seen the search for  "how to apply a sleeper hold"  though.  That all came from one posting I did long ago.  And yes I am bad about self gloating and my recent article was published in E-Pro on the new features in Domino 6.5 (page 27 for those of you with hard copies).

Tom (aka the Duffster) gave a great topic on viruses

Libby on the other hand went and outed my birthday :p as well as some info on iChat and my favorite topic of IM.  I am waiting to try the new Trillian 2.0 beta.

Now snap back to attention everyone, IdoNotes is back in charge (and I better change the darn ACL after getting jacked again last night by Libby, lol)
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    On Tuesday, September 9th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Carl and I should have some fun speaking about some recent IM events

Microsoft has taken a stab at trying to stop the proliferation of IM clients that log into their network that are not MS Messenger.  Interesting theory that a free service (that brings more registrations through these other clients) wants to start selling licenses to the third parties that develop the other IM clients.  Since the user must still register a username on the Microsoft Passport site, they are not losing marketing information.  But!!! They are losing marketing through the IM client itself.   Pop-ups or little banners and the like.

They also take the stance that they cannot control the other clients.  They spoke to Lissa Gurry, group product manager of MSN.

"Ideally, we'd know the folks on the network," Gurry said. "The way third-party services are being built without our permission, we don't know who is on the network."
Last week, Microsoft began notifying some of the affected third parties about the change last week, but Gurry said the company doesn't know the full extent of other clients and services connecting into its IM network.

If the third party client uses the same authentication across the same protocol, they are darn sure who is on the network.  Right?  There is even a cheesy little
on-line form that they wish potential license buyers to fill out.  So if they use the same protocol you don't know who is accessing, but I hardly believe that Microsoft hasn't built something into the client like Notes does that shows version.  Think about it, as soon as you hit one of the public IM networks, they tell you there is an upgrade available when you use their clients (and have that turned on), so I would tend to think they know.

Then again we can't argue as Sametime started and remains an enterprise IM client.  Where Messenger, Yahoo and AOL started as public IM and are now moving into the enterprise space.  I don't even imagine Sametime in the ever appearing in the public forum, even after splitting out the IM only piece from the conferencing.


The article states they tried to reach my wonderful
Trillian people, but no comment  from them.  As an FYI, they are now 3 years old and are doing the beta for 2.0 of the paid version.  Some cool new features.
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    On Wednesday, August 27th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

a referrer today..and a 6.5 M3 note

I spent some time last night doing a post on Ed Brill's personal blog while he was out.  You can of course find it over there.

I did find for the Milestone 3 release of 6.5 there is already a Router patch that must be applied.  So if you have your hands on the server code, make sure you get the patch also.  I am applying that now and will do a full post on the upgrade.  I just didn't get to mine yet working that post for Ed :-)
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    On Wednesday, August 20th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

IM Survey and curiosity

I was reading an article about the choice of the IBB (International Broadcasting Bureau that handle things like Voice of America and Radio Free Asia broadcasts) and their recent need to restrict consumer IM access and move to a standard.  They found that after turning off access to the consumer IM that employees, well they basically threw a fit.

So the IBB went and looked at enterprise grade IM.  After much soul searching they chose Bantu's Enterprise Instant Messaging (according to the article due to their 'experience' with government like the Army and Navy.  I thought they used Sametime but that is another topic).  Now the next step was decide if the server should be internal or hosted.  They chose hosted from Bantu.

So that brings me to the point, I read the Osterman Research reports and participate in them constantly.  But I wanted a mini-survey on just us Domino geeks (and the few others that read my blog).  So....post your replies and I will group the results.
  • Have you standardized on an IM package?
  • Is the package run in house or hosted?
  • Do you allow consumer products on the network still?
  • Do you filter the consumer IM products in any way?
  • Do you log or archive any chat communications?

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    On Wednesday, August 13th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Now that was a good concert

I leave you with a few words. This was an incredible show all the way through. I won't go into an actual review until someone wants to know, but if this manages to come to your town, take the time to see it. I have more pictures right here.
Blue Man Group

Blue Man Group during the show

and the opening acts of:



Tracy with Blue Man Group laying it down

(Pictures were taken with a Canon Powershot A-70 with 10x digital zoom turned on.)
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    On Friday, August 1st, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Anyone see the Dominopower article from 7/12 ?

        I had this sitting in my inbox for a couple weeks intending to blog about it, but it never quite got to the top of the stack.  This semi-recent DominoPower article on blogging caught my eye.  I was hoping for a nice, relatively long, yet editorial type review of what is going on in the Domino blogging world.  Maybe some comments from some of the bloggers on why they continue on, a larger description of the blog templates in use and maybe some insight into what the author feels.
     Yes this is coming from me, an author, but I still love reading other people works, thoughts and ideas.  Hmmm,
Libby just tagged me for another article with this blog posting.

        Update: This afternoon while running through the blogs, I see NotesTips.com has picked up on the same article when he posted this afternoon.  I wish we could merge this type of thing.
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    On Monday, July 28th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

new color opinion?

        So does anyone have an opinion of the new color scheme?  Tomorrow I will be trying a whole new look and feel again with a new site design.  So let's get some input!!

        In other news, the LWM installation is finally complete and running in testing mode.  I am thinking of writing a day by day log entry into secitons to allow people to read what had to be done.  Is anyone interested in that for Lotus Workplace Messaging?
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    On Tuesday, July 22nd, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Friday!!!!

I will make this quite simple today as I wish to go to sleep under my desk for hours on end. Two points for this cloudy, raining Friday afternoon.
  • Under no circumstances shall network administrator coil and kink Cat5 cable and cram it into a rack. NOTE: TCP/IP packets do not pass faster through osmosis.

  • Under no circumstances shall Rocky Oliver ever be allowed to IM me using a light blue background and pink letters again.

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      On Friday, July 18th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Only from BAS....

I love the articles that Bas sends over....this one made my day

French Government bans email From a correspondent in Paris July 10, 2003

THE French government, in a bid to turn back the tide of English words in the field of technology, has banned its civil service from using the term "email" instead of its approved French equivalent, the culture minister announced.

All government ministries, websites, publications and documents must now use "courriel" - a shortening of "courrier electronique" (literally: electronic mail) - when they are referring to the messages sent via the internet, the ministry said in a statement.

The move, made law by its publication in the official government gazette on June 20, will put the French administration out of step with the majority of the French public, who still prefer to use "email" to communicate between computer accounts.

Agence France-Presse


What is next? Domino will only be allowed to be called White tiles with block spots

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    On Thursday, July 17th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Certification article feedback

I receive a lot of newsletters like many of you. Some I enjoy more than others. But I found this quote from a recent InformIT article interesting (there are about 12 sections to the article):
A survey of IT certifications I conducted in mid-2000 counted more than 630 such credentials available (today's number is around 750 as a best guess), across a bewildering array of topics, tools, and technologies. For nearly every conceivable IT job role and for many products or platforms, you can be fairly sure that some related IT certification is likely to exist

They lost their mind

Does anyone find the number mind numbing. How does a company sift through and find the most qualified person balanced with real world knowledge? Can a young teenager start amassing these certifications and walk into any job they want somewhere at the end of college?

Libby has covered pieces of certification questions in her blog, this was just another area where as IT managers and leaders we have to ask ourselves which the best certification for me and how will it apply in the future?

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    On Monday, July 14th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

How was the holiday everyone?

Image:How was the holiday everyone?   As many of you know, Domino 6.02 CF1 and Sametime 3.1 are now released and out the door.  So as expected, the request to upgrade right away has been issued by customers.
   I am doing the first machine in about 20 minutes, I will let you know how it goes.

   Also, the IM blogging is working great as you can see above.  I like the ability to quick post and have it show as thoughts come to mind during the day.

        The upgrade went well, we are now in testing mode.  The overlay to 6.02 CF1 had the normal -115 error, so we set the service to manual and rebooted.  It then went through.  I hate those DLL files that get left locked.  The Sametime upgrade to 3.1 found the previous installation and went right in without error.  Let's see how the testing goes.
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    On Tuesday, July 8th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

new blogger

Who gave Carl Tyler a copy of a blog template for gosh sakes  :-)   Didn't we all agree not to do this in the back-room blog writers meeting?  Please tell me no one taught him the secret handshake yet?

Also, someone did a nice Google search looking for how to do the sleeper hold and found my page.  I knew that the blog wasn't that exciting, but actually grabbing hold and putting you to sleep?  LOL

I also will be taking Monday off, see you all on Tuesday!!
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    On Saturday, July 5th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

changes are a coming to the blog....

Or better known as.. And now for something completely different.
I am going to make an attempt to take this to another level of fun, or another level of broke site, whichever comes first

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    On Thursday, July 3rd, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Spam statistics

        We went and purchased the full SpamJam software from Granite Software yesterday.  Here are the stats just running it for two weeks for 15 people as a test
  • We blocked over 5000 messages over the 14 days
  • the majority were deny phrases in the subject line (we added quite a bit to the standard list)

Most importantly the users and company president are happy, that makes my life so much happier.


I just updated to DominoBlog 2.1.1 and all looks great.  The download link is on the right to get the new template or visit the DominoBlog.com site itself !!!

more to come today...just wanted to start the new posting month

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    On Tuesday, July 1st, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Our hero returns, the saga ensues

        In the search for greater good and ease of installation of LWM, our hero looked through the recent catalog of new products and encountered this cool gadget.  Worth the money??  I am not quite sure about that.  It is suggested to be $295 USD when released.  Only 2MB of memory, not quite enough nowadays.

      AS for LWM, well I went to do the LDAP configuration but now the Domino server seems to think there is a TCPIP Listener error.  Now it would be nice if it said what port was in use!!!


more shortly.......


Our hero has been sabotaged, they want the test server back for a customer, OH THE HORROR !!!

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    On Tuesday, June 24th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

I am BACK !!

        Well to start out I hope everyone had a fine few days.  I am back from the E-Pro (Penton Media) Editor Conference.  I am happy as can be after winning the Gary Guthrie Award for Excellence in Technical Writing for my E-Pro article on "Troubleshooting Internet Messaging in Domino" !!!  I have tons of pics to resize and put up shortly.
       
Libby did an awesome job of guiding us through the editorial calendar process.  I was amazed at the amount of work that went into that.  I knew they had planning to do, but a year in advance trying to decide hot topics and new technologies was a twist.
        I will be doing a Webcast for E-Pro in July, more info on that to follow.

               I also managed to almost finish book 2 of Deathgate Cycle - Elven Star.  I am loving this series so far.  This book is not only entertaining but the story flows far better than the first (Dragon Wing).  It might be due to the necessary character development done in the first one also.

        I am also introducing you to Mel Beckman and his blog.  He does a fantastic job for Penton Media and wrote a great tip book on networking linked form his site.  A small compact network tip book that just gets to the point.  It is around 100 pages with about 50 tips I think.  I made sure to get one myself.  His blog apparently will start talking about all those fantastic things.

       I will be loading
Milestone 2 of 6.5 now that I am back, let's see how that goes. Ok, the upgrade from Milestone 1 was not as pretty as planned.  Once again there is a weird error 115 or something.  Which means, yes, some DLL files won't get upgraded.  A reboot and still no go.  I realized that the sync software is running.  I shut that down, rebooted and no go still.  So I renamed the DLL's, got about halfway done and said, whoa!!!  Lets make sure this is clean and see if they changed the install screens again.  So I uninstalled 6.5 M1 and redid the install.  It went smooth and there was a couple new boxes.
        One thing I don't like is the new group name they force you to use if you want to add it to all templates.  That just leaves the door open for other things if you cannot specify your own group naming standards.  Sure you can rename it later, but what happened to the good old days of making it what I wanted on install???
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    On Monday, June 23rd, 2003   by Chris Miller        

First night of conference

        After scooping up Libby at the airport and arriving safely at the hotel (a nice selection I might add), I managed to sneak in a quick nap and a brief walk around the area.  I took some great pics and want to shrink them down in size some before I upload them all.  I went crazy and picked the best resolution, way too big.  Tonight was the welcome reception and dinner.  Good company, food and amazing rootbeer that was on draft at the bar.  I think I had 4 glasses of it already.

       I am eager to get back to also load some Sametime Bots and start playing with those.  I see it as a simple way to generate more usage out of the IM environment.  Amazingly employees will use the public clients all day but look dumbfounded when you say use this one for internal and customer talks.

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    On Thursday, June 19th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

out in Denver, sorry for the delay posting

        Well I am out in Denver for the E-Pro Editor conference.  So I will post each evening to catch up.  I can say that the delayed flight today due to the stall warning computer failing made for a long trip.  They arranged a new plane and changed the gates, but it all worked out in the end.  In the grand scheme of things, I think I really want the computer that tells the pilot when there is an engine stall fully functioning correctly.  Might just be me :-)

      After talking to
Granite about SpamJam some more, we made headway.  We re-enabled the main spam profile and half the users to start but left the daily digest agent turned off.  So far so good so I enabled more users to build the load.  When we get back to full swing there I will start adding one profile at a time and then the digest agent and see if we can reproduce the error again.  Once again good marks to Mark at Granite for working hard on this.

      Ok, dinner with the family here in Denver and then some good catching up.  Talk to everyone tomorrow. Thanks to Scott R for the humorous pic today.
 

Got a hammer?
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    On Wednesday, June 18th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

A break...

        I am taking a well needed Advil break from LWM.  I was able to escape Level 8 and move on to the next step of utilizing LDAP with it and figured this was a fine time to take a break and get some other things done.
     So I installed the evaluation of
SpamJam the past two days.  While the only bug I uncovered was in the installation of multiple users (it had an error that wouldn't let it put one of the forms into the mailfiles) it was otherwise pretty simple.  I complied some suggestions that I am forwarding on, but I can say one thing.  Their support (email) was excellent and quick, even for an evaluation copy.
                               UPDATE: I diabled spamJam due to constant crashes over and over since enabling the software, will give more info later.  The volume seems to be killing it.


     As for links to start discussion topics,
here is one and another from the infamous BAS himself.  NOTE: BAS in no way agrees with this line of thinking, he was being informational.  Who thinks that a person should give up their domain name (via litigation) when they registered the domain name before a word term copyright (read link) was issued??
     I say if you bought it before any copyright was issued, and you are not competing with this name by selling competitive products and had no bad faith they can prove by obtaining the link, who can say you give it up?  Did that make sense?

    for this posting

    On Friday, June 13th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Who needs that virus software?

        A quick poll, who of you loads your anti-virus software AFTER you get the virus in your email infrastructure?  Most people it seems.  It always gets put off, but as soon as a virus hits the network, the executive chain demands some protection.  You kindly mention that it has been proposed to the company numerous times, but due to budget constraints (or someone had indigestion that afternoon from too much fried food at lunch) it was promptly denied.
        Well that hit a managed customer of ours.  We have mentioned the need for a multi-server virus software install, but it never quite made it through a final signed Statement of Work.  Let that be a lesson :-)

        I had an interesting call this morning with Cobra Technologies and Brian Rowe about their bot technology for Sametime.  Something we are looking into for a customer.

        Lotus Workplace Messaging (LWM) is on table this afternoon to be installed.  I am making this my internal test server, so I won't be performing a multi-server install, but instead linking it to an LDAP server from our existing domain so we can play with the directory extension and ability to reach those deskless workers.  We don't have any real deskless workers, but the theory and testing is a nice idea.

more after lunch....
    for this posting

    On Friday, June 6th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

the new month

       Since it seems I never post anything personal on here, this is one I will share for all of us.  I just spent the weekend watching a lifelong friend (since we were 14) get told that the prostate cancer he fought last year and had beaten, has spread all over, unknown to the doctors.  The outlook?  He was told weeks, maybe a couple months if he is lucky.  I spent the whole weekend either there at the hospital or just thinking about how much the guys I know, all of us in our low 30's in age, laugh at the thought of those exams.  Well this permanently changed my mind.  While he continues to say he will be up and moving shortly in his well tuned and incredible sarcasm (hence a reason we are lifelong friends), you can see the real story in his eyes every times he moves in the hospital bed.  The simple act of moving his leg has turned from the days where he skated like a fiend just a year ago, to now not being able to pull it up to turn on his side.

*************************
      So enough of the depressing information.  The blog hosting agreement is still up and people are sending them in.  Look for new blogs shortly!!!!!
You can find the agreement information here
    for this posting

    On Monday, June 2nd, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Lesson for the day

com pac tion - (n) The ancient Ninja art of applying seemingly random flags to a Domino server command.  Only Ninja Masters ultimately reclaim freespace without incident or error.  Unfortunately our customer was still a grasshopper.

P.S.  Blog hosting document done, unveiled tomorrow!!!
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    On Wednesday, May 28th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Non-productive day..

The About Me page is here!!!!  Well ok this is the first run but 80% done I think.

       This was a non-productive day entirely.  I happened to get two things done.

1.        I started the About Me page for all of you.  The first draft is finalized and ready to go, now to link the darn thing. It is not cooperating at all !!!!!
2.        I assisted Tom Duff with a SMTP and DNS error.

       Heck, that was far more than I anticipated.  I am starting to host a few new Domino bloggers next week who beta-tested my program for hosting, so I will let you know who is new to our world and give the outline for blog hosting!!!  It is done!!


Sorry for the short blog, there is too much daylight above my desk.  Back under it I go.

    for this posting

    On Friday, May 23rd, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Lotus Workplace Messaging (LWM)

        Lotus has fired off the announcement of Lotus Workplace Messaging (LWM), not to be confused with Lotus Instant Messaging (LIM = Sametime) and Lotus Understood Messaging Previously (LUMP).  Ok, I am kidding on that last one, really I am.  Go search for yourself.
        We are one of the launch partners for the product and low and behold, we have a request for a hosted implementation now that it is an official product.  So I am off firing up servers now to reach these specs for the new environment.  With that said, the product has intrigued me from the beginning when we had beta code.  We proposed this package idea almost 3 years ago at the briefing center in Cambridge to Lotus people.  Yes, some of them happen to be involved with this very product (and I won't say names).  we wanted for the hosting side a scalable, low maintenance, high performance, messaging only environment.  Of course we never anticipated that far back the integration with DB2.  Just the ability to parse out the Domino server tasks.  This is close.  With LDAP we have directory integration and now the scaling is what we want to see.  So off to firing it up and of course, blog updates on it.
       
        Eli Harris (another Admin2003 speaker on Sametime) and myself are on the path to getting Sametime to allow multiple directories without the users being able to see each other.  Anyone have an interest in that idea so partners and customers could be in different directories not be able to look at each other names through the Connect client?  It seems no matter what you do locally with ACL or Enforce Consistent ACLs it doesn't stop the Sametime server from retrieving the lists from all directories.  Hmmmmmm
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    On Thursday, May 22nd, 2003   by Chris Miller        

More old days

        Chris King had asked in comments what the link was for the archived Internet pages.  Well to humor everyone even more, to the right is the Nov 1996 IBM homepage also, minus a couple images they didn't grab from the top.  The link that should take you to the homepage for the archives is http://web.archives.org where you can toss any address you wish in and hope they have it.

Ok, off to lunch then more updating to the patch I received for LVC today...........................
Image:More old days



       Ok, back from lunch and I receive from Lotus another hotfix for LearningSpace Virtual Classroom (LVC).  This time though it isn't for the exact issue we are having.  But from their testing on our server here, they saw some audio/video issues so they sent a small 3 file patch.  We are going to put that on our internal server also and see if we get better performance from the audio meetings.  If so, every hosted Sametime 3.0 FP1 server will receive it and all the other accumulated patches we have now for stconf.nsf across all the open incidents.  I am crossing my fingers for a solid build we can duplicate across all of our managed/hosted servers.  Then of course we will start over with Sametime 3.1 soon.

        I hit a dealy in my doc on the blog hosting because of an automated billing question, but we have it now!!!


       If anyone doubts that they may be hearing voices at odd times, read what
these airline pilots found each time as they landed.  Now that explains those voices in my head :-)
        Also, another spinoff site making fun of the new Microsoft and Linux announcement.
    for this posting

    On Tuesday, May 20th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Remember these days?

    I was surfing the web and found a site that maintains a history of old webpages.  The oldest Lotus page I saw was Nov 1996.  Wow, this brings back memories.  Thinking back to the days......
  • install HTTP as a separate piece of product
  • running the SMTP gateway for Notes 3 on an OS/2 server
  • the dreaded SMTP MTA for Domino 6 and all it's woes (oops some of you still run it)
  • typing @Internet just to send mail outside the Notes domain

 
IImage:Remember these days?

        But I digress, back to work on the layout for the hosting.  I just found this to be too enticing to pass up.  (I do have the larger screenshot of the image on the right, but for download times and speed...... )
    for this posting

    On Sunday, May 18th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

A couple pre-weekend items

        First things first, I need to get a few more pieces of input on my posting a couple days ago.  Those of you that have sent me interest in Domino blog hosting, I finished the outline of what we provide, I just need your thought on type of Domino 6 server.  Post the comments here or on that blog entry below.  Look for me to post it all on Monday!!

        Second, Reuters reports most people don't know how to share directories properly with the peer-to-peer sharing programs.  It took computer experts to tell Congress that this week. (thanks Chas for the link)  I imagine half of Congress's kids download music that way already.   Heck there is even a website formed by a group of companies to show you how to do safe web surfing and sharing.

        Third, the dreaded LearningSpace Virtual Classroom topic that has bombarded my blog postings has been escalated and is moving to crit-sit with Lotus.  Support expired it's resources in trying to help and did a great job, but we have moved to development on the issues and hope for some daylight to show.

and where did they find the time to bother with this one?   http://www.lebonze.com/nushakeitbabe/   beware it is funny and starts simple but can quickly build a ton of windows on your machine.
    for this posting

    On Friday, May 16th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

New Word for the day

con fig a pho bia - n.   The fear of changing the configurations on your Sametime server.  Commonly found in Domino administrators throughout the world.

If we cross-reference this with the medical dictionary we find that there is no known cure for this ailment and more and more seem to catch this at an unusually fast growing rate.  While we have gotten over this fear, we wear protective garb while dealing with new sites that may be affected.



Side Items

Lunar eclipse tonight     http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/LunarEclipse.html

and I was googled today, love this one  ---->  http://www.google.com/search?q=why+do+people+drool+at+sleep%3f
    for this posting

    On Thursday, May 15th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Blog Hosting input

        Input Needed on below (Chris King made me change highlite color, lol)

        I am debating one portion of my structure for the blog hosting.  Thanks to all that showed interest so far in it through IM's, emails and blog comments.  Would everyone rather see a Domino 6 hosted org type model or just a shared Domino 6 server with dir links for protecting directories?  Post the comment here, IM or email me again.  Currently the server is a straight Domino 6 server that is shared.  Otherwise I have the rest of the specs and wanted this last bit for user input.
    for this posting

    On Wednesday, May 14th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

LVC will be a major facet in upcoming days

       
          I am finally finding the cause of the issues on the LearningSpace Virtual Classroom issues.  We have narrowed it down to the print capture facility for pdf files that are then used in live sessions and a large pool of questions that is too big for the product.  Even though it lets you create them.  It seems to want to run the create session agent but it always fails.  BUT, it still creates all the temp files and folders, over and over and over until you kill the pending session.  Can you say bye-bye diskspace?
                 
 Image:LVC will be a major facet in upcoming days

        Thanks for all the comments yesterday and keep them coming.  As for the pricing guide for blog hosting, let me do it tonight everyone.  Please read some of the recent comment threads even if you read them when it started.  I think there is some good dialogue that we should follow on.  I am writing this while on the phone with Lotus support still (and she is doing a great and fantastic job by the way) so I didn't have time to type up the pricing.
        Who has the aspirin?  I also just finished reading The Summons by Grisham, not a bad book but I found it predictable all of the sudden in the middle.


    for this posting

    On Tuesday, May 13th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Something non-Domino today

        I was actually out doing a Google search today and came across an interesting blog on spam on this site.  It actually moves on to state the email spam is not the new future, but something we have been discussing on the Domino blogs for a while now.  RSS feeds are the new spam delicacy being served.  The prediction in the referenced article states ...
a combination of blogging and news aggregrators will largely replace B2B email marketing within 5 years.

        Imagine the time in the future where your spam is not filtered in the email, but spoon fed from channels to which you subscribe as ride along advertisements.  Kind of like inviting your brother over for dinner and he brings the drunken friend that won't be quiet.  You didn't ask for that guy to come, but he had a free ride to the food (money) source.

        The FTC held a nifty session last week as a Public Spam Workshop.  Now I am not one to whine about going to conferences, but 3 days of bulk email vendors lobbying around gives me the creeps.

        Otherwise I continue on my quest to get LVC for this one customer up and successfully operational with Lotus' support help for some non-documented issues so far.
    for this posting

    On Thursday, May 8th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Admin2003 is all over and I am back

       The Admin2003 conference went quite well.  I went and watched jumpstart sessions on Tue.  Libby was doing two in a row, which translates into 6 hours and about 300 slides for those that need the mental image.  I then had my session on Id and Password Maintenance on Wed.  I loved giving that session.  We had lots of fun and lots of laughter.
      Thur on the other hand was full of fun, laughter and pure exhaustion.  I participated in the Birds of a Feather with Libby and
Jason Collier on certification.  Then I had my packed house for Managing iNotes right after.  Immediately following that session was my attempt at solving sleep deprivation with an in depth talk about LDAP and Domino.  After we snapped the little wake-up tubes under everyone's noses I had another BOF with Eli Harris on Sametime issues.  I had no voice for the rest of the night :-)        

      I will have some stories and such to share, but I wanted to give a quick update and get back in the swing.  I am scared to look at my inbox even with the Cisco Wireless Network I was using while at the conference.  They even offered wireless network cards to check out, but I stuck with the Toshiba E740 PDA most of the time for connectivity and the ability to roam.  Well ok, the other issue was that my laptop refused to use the wireless connection even after installing it.


       For those of you there at the conference,
here is the first RAR file of the iNotes Visio digrams I promised!!!  Some have more than one page, so make you see that.
                                       

    for this posting

    On Sunday, May 4th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

First day of Admin2003

        The first day of Jumpstart sessions went well here at Admin2003.  I watched a few of the presentations and fought a tough battle getting the wireless card to work as they brought the network up.
        Libby had a long day with back to back 3 hour presentations.  Rob Novak had one this afternoon and enthralled the audience as usual.  They were still drilling him with questions well after the session was over as we passed by his room.
        The location is pretty good, very busy as you have to cross the whole casino floor to get to the convention center.  Not bad is you sneak the whole way outside around the pools though :-)

        Ok we are off to dinner as this is one of the only free night to relax all evening.  I will get some images for everyone.
    for this posting

    On Tuesday, April 29th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

First things first.....

        Libby prompted me that I slacked the past couple days. One was I had some family emergencies to deal with, all is well there.  Secondly, I was hoping for some more input on the previous post, but ahh well.

        Well here we are, the Friday before Admin2003 and I just don't feel like everything was completed.  I am on patch #3 from Lotus for Sametime 3.0 for numerous customers.  We have now patched, patched and newly patched Stconf.nsf trying to remove error after error.  Currently we fixed the little pop-up window that didn't used to go away.  Some of you say Ah Ha!  Either yours always goes away or for some of you it doesn't.  Well I can definitively say the answer to fix it is, well unknown to them also, LOL.  It is different each time for each customer we have.
        The current environment has a hostname that differs from the actual WWW name because it is a hosted server.  Then they use an alias name.  The WWW is a C Name entry in DNS, the alias name we entered as an A record in DNS.  So guess what, different results.
        Secondly, multiple NIC cards.  Sametime has the uncanny ability to bind to the first card in the operating system order.  Well we build with the backup NIC first because well, we like to make sure backup works before it goes live.  So the production NIC goes second.  Disable NIC, install, re-enable NIC? Yeah right, lets just fix this issue.  Editing the sametime.ini file for every server does not bode well inputting hostnames and addresses under [config].

        On a side note, if you wish to read a true/fantasy/we don't really know blog, then the link at the right for FlightRisk is for you..hmmmm.  Start at the bottom of it and read up to follow the story.  DO NOT start at the top, you get stuck in the middle.
    for this posting

    On Friday, April 25th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

comment on editorial

        In my email I received my usual dose of e-letters, updates and other trivial mail that seems to haunt you forever.  I actually have one subscription that the service website says is out of order yet I get the emails from them daily.  Sounds like a new rule for the inbox to me.  But I digress...

       This editorial was from Mark Jones at InfoWorld that was passed on to me by the infamous Chaz from up east.

Collaboration technology suddenly finds itself split into two
camps: those who get it and those who don't. Groove gets it,
IBM Lotus gets it, Sun Microsystems is trying to prove that
it gets it, but Microsoft is off with the pixies.

My reasoning is pretty straight forward. A company gets it if
it meets two requirements for collaboration platforms: dead
easy to use and widely available.


       So does everyone think that
Groove and Lotus get it?  Both are widely available in some essence.  Groove has had a free version that had most of the functionality of the paid version. Now they just have 'preview' for 90 days.  Lotus, well Lotus has never been free, but widely available yes.  NO NO NO I am not saying that Lotus should be free for all of you that just jumped on the train in the wrong direction.  I am referring to how each of these two makes itself a collaborative technology.
       Lotus has certifiers, cross-certificates and other Internet cert ability to let you collaborate securely.  Even SSL of course.  Groove on the other hand is client driven but gives the awareness and other features after everyone installs some software instead of a browser.  
Here was someone that used to think YahooGroups was awesome (free in nature but widely available through the web browser)until they discovered Groove 2.5 and what it could do.  It goes on to state "Groove provides a whole new way of collaborating on-line, while providing the best ideas, features and facilities one could have ever hoped for."
       
       I know I just rambled on and on, I should stop for some air and comments.  Hmm, maybe this blog thingy will be a new medium in collaboration.  A simple search of blogs and bam, there is info.  Of course I wouldn't let certain people upload and share files on my servers, LOL

Comments please??
    for this posting

    On Wednesday, April 23rd, 2003   by Chris Miller        

short spurt

We are now live on 2.1.0 of DominoBlog!!  I have to add the RSS Feeds and play with the new site templates, but from my side there are some cool new features I will get ready for you to read shortly!

        Well this was 'Hope you have good memory of configuration screen' Day apparently.  We host a large tire company's LearningSpace environment.  Multiple servers that covers several global geographic regions.  Well they wished to enable SMTP mail routing and relaying for the LearningSpace servers to send mail notifications.  Unfortunately since it runs on modified Domino DNA, there is no server console so you must cheat and launch the local Notes client on the machine.  Well the issue arises in that they also run this in numerous languages.  So configuring the necessary documents for SMTP, domains and configurations in Portuguese became a learning(space) experience.  I am happy to say that we think mail is routing fine.  That or I am sure I ordered a rebanho de vaca.  If anyone asks, the herd of cows were a total mistake in shipping and I wanted just the milk.  :-)

      It seems Steve over at
DominoBlog will be putting out a developers edition template and a new version with RSS feeds and a few other tidbits.  Now that is something to get excited about.  I am looking forward to applying the template.  He also tossed in a new layout to his site that is very slick.  Jump over and take a peek.
       
BY the way, I found this niftly little information on RSS Feeds.  Good reading to give you a baseline.  Not sure of the date, but I found the info good knowledge and there are links at the end for some more brain food.
    for this posting

    On Monday, April 21st, 2003   by Chris Miller        

(insert title here) hehehehe

        Not knowing if  theGuttedGeek caught it or not, but while on his page he has a referrer from Yahoo searches.  So out of curiosity I wanted to know what they were looking for....LOL.  This is it.  I don't know quite what to say.  He was #4 on the list.
      Today I found a new toy for synching flight information and stuff things to my Notes calendar and handheld CE device.  Infotriever.com does them all for your flight info.  I am fully impressed.


       I am double blogging today to catch the missed day.  I started this one in draft mode thinking no problem, it will get done in a bit.  Sure enough, that nasty IM creature took hold of my leg and drug me, kicking and grabbing on everything, to the server room.  So this next entry will cover the recent perils of yours truly, now for a cool character name....

    for this posting

    On Thursday, April 17th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Monday and all is, well it is just there

        Welcome to Monday everyone, please come in and have a seat.  Watch a movie while I finish this nap if you desire.  May I suggest the new Flash files by Lotus for Domino 6.  Actually they are pretty cool.  After watching two of them I found myself in some dazed pro-Domino mode wanting to upgrade what few customers we have left on R5.  :-)

     
Libby is back so no more guest blogging for her, at least as far as she knows at this time.  I might have to sneak in and make some more entries.
      Everyone make sure you drop by
Jess' page as she is all alone with no Matt for a bit and even posted she needs some virtual company.  I dropped the IM welcome basket on her door and ran today.

      As for myself, I finished the final edits on my
Admin2003 presentations (we hope I did Debbie) and that show is creeping up on the calendar fast.  But after seeing some of the other presentations that are done and knowing a few of the speakers, look for a great show.  Not too late to talk management into spending that training budget that is left over.
      Look for another article from me in
E-Pro Magazine at the same time to coincide with the conference.
    for this posting

    On Monday, April 14th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

another topic for discussion

       While surfing around through blogs I don't normally read (yes that was the intended web trip to expand my reading and knowledge of course) I came across this link for a Wolfgang Flamme post through the news4notes site.  Wolfgang noticed spiders that were crawling through his site and doing some indexing.  While we all know that is just the way the web works, it was what he found when he started digging and a friend sent him an email.
      Apparently the spiders were being done to pick his technical knowledge for one of those pay-per-incident helpdesk services on-line.  They were taking his information and even providing direct links to certain of his pages in emails.


      So here comes the new question, not by any means that we have solved the way a blog is written topic from two days ago though,

But does it bother anyone to think that the technical information you spend so much time learning, tweaking and maturing is then turned around and sold because you posted it in your blog?  We all post to share information, experiences and bring the community together more, or less if you listen to some say there are too many now.  So does the selling of your information, unknown to you, make the hair stand up on the back of your neck?  Or for some a simple hot flash will do :-)


OK, open the discussion board, operators are standing by to take your posts.

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    On Friday, April 11th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Monday brings, well holes

        Ok, I am trying a new font to see how this looks for everyone's eyes.  We are now running the new template from Steve that has a bunch of fixes.  So far everything looks great.  He also took the time to review Libby's database since it was having a small issue, well it was showing a blank page.  Darn fast loading though.  So she is on the new template as well now.
        Tom Duff is moving over to my hosting services.  I have decided to open a shared server to cheap monthly hosting for blogs, supporting virtual domains and Notes access in your own directory.  To make life easy I am doing it on monthly credit card charges only (through our automated ISP side).

        All quiet on the technical front today.  Spent a quick portion updating a test server to Learningspace Forum 3.6 on Domino 5.012 for some quick verification that works.  We host one of the largest virtual high schools and they use Domino for all the course work.  Take a peek at what courses they offer high schools, quite impressive for those schools that cannot get skills in teaching that material.  They are in over 25 states now virtually.  The architecture relies on a clustered Learningspace environment and an administrative/hub server for the staff mail and web access.  We took them over from another hosting provider some time ago and shrunk down their required servers and cost.

        This weekend brought a wonderful new feature to my home, holes everywhere due to ice cube sized hail.  Yes, ice cube.  So it looks like I live in warfare with machine gunfire sprayed across the back.  Not a pretty picture.  Worse in real life :-)
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    On Monday, April 7th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Someone said it was Fri

WE HAVE COMMENTS WORKING!!!!!!!  

      Well I am taking the day off today.  So everyone relax and sit back with me.  If you can't, then I will just double up on the relaxing and have some for you.

      I never post much on the personal side, just the way I am for those of you that actually know me.  But I will share this one.  I took today off to take my daughter out of town to play in a soccer tournament.  Two weeks ago she was approached by a select soccer club to come play goalie for them.  She has worked hard at getting as good as she is.  That might be parent gloating but her personal coach works her hard to get her where she is and they came scouting her, so I guess that says something :-).  So I will have an update on Monday when the tournament is over and I bandage the bumps and bruises.


Otherwise enjoy that weekend and do not dare think I will even touch Sametime until then, LOL


One more side update I just received.  
Steve has found the error in the comments postings, so he said a new version should be out in a few hours to fix it!!  Yeah!!!
    for this posting

    On Friday, April 4th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Template update!

       I went ahead and applied the new 2.08 template from Steve at  DominoBlog and added the comments links.  But also, the comments liks give a page error.  I am working on that, but we are almost there.  It will calm the masses and let people post and save some email time for quick responses.
     
Tom and Libby have both jumped intot posting about the books they read and what is good or not.  Maybe we need to move to a book blog too?  :-)
        And yes Tom, you do not sleep no matter how hard you make us think that you do.  But from reading your blog I see I should have woken you at 2am while at Lotusphere, because then you are up the rest of the evening!   LOL

      Technically today, it has been faily quiet.  Quite a few rip and replaces on IE browser objects with the Sametime upgrades (
here is the technote for your reading pleasures) to make life simple.  Amazing how removing the JNIloader and sametime objects and redownloading them makes all the difference in the darn thing working.

Ok off to the grind for a few..back shortly

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    On Wednesday, April 2nd, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Get the plunger

        Ever had the router that wouldn't flush the messages?  They bottle up until you pour some "Bounce the Server Drano" in them?  Thank goodness for clusters.  Well unless of course they never put a DNS entry in for the other server in the cluster.  This in turn will have everyone hunting like it was an Easter egg for the other server on the network.  Needless to say, some people had no egg in their basket.
        Alas, we used the roto-rooter on the network out there and found out that the phone and network were having issues at their site.  Domino was doing what it should, becoming a marsupial and harvesting the emails.  NEXT!!

        I am anxiously awaiting Steve's new template to come out from the beta release so I can add comments.  I like the emails but some I would like everyone to see and put their own responses in also.

        It seems Tom and I have started sharing what books to read next.  He reads way more then I do, and I thought I cranked through a lot.  Then of course I don't think he sleeps.  Shhhh, I think that is him in the dark corner whispering "...my preciousssssssssssss"   :-)
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    On Tuesday, April 1st, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Who said Monday wasn’t fun?

       Well I can guarantee it wasn't the writer of Sametime technotes.  It seems that the one server I keep talking about has decided that it needs to be rebuilt and not accept the upgrade the rest of them did.  Two things come to mind to force this to occur:
  • The upgrade itself from 2.5 to 3.0 with FP1
  • The change from a stand-alone Sametime server to part of a Domino domain
                Then of course number 3 comes to mind as I type, just that I needed the hammer to get that square server in the circle hole.  Wait, that is a bad memory from previous R3 Notes days.
              We have received a number of inquiries about the
Rapid7 security bulletin.  I am not amused.  If you follow the links through CERT's listings you will see that Lotus Support has issued a technote saying, bah humbug on the result being the execution of malicious code or compromise of the server's security.

              On lighter notes:
  •  Tom Duff is moving his blog at some year to our hosted site.  It looks like he might have finally chosen a template for his Domino based blog.
  • Declan Lynch found a cool hidden feature in recovery information distribution while teaching a class using all Domino 6 server and client that I can put to use.
  • Libby is still making that faux macaroni since last week.  (no new posts)  Takes time to cook the wheat noodles does it?  LOL

              Finally, something we could all use in high school.  
The Periodic Table of Haiku
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    On Monday, March 31st, 2003   by Chris Miller        

It returned!!!

        Nothing to say today since I am busy banging my head on my desk as issues with a couple of the Sametime upgrades have come to haunt me.  I will drop it all in a posting tomorrow.
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    On Tuesday, March 25th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

What does a CLP get you?.....

       This will be a short one today as I am working on a wonderful Domino 6 and POP3 issue.  We have two concerns...one is the memory leak we have found on different servers that run the POP3 task.  It grows and grows.  Mainly around CD to MIME conversions.  Second is the uncanny ability for the server not to let you download certain messages and jam up the whole works.  Yes those users are moving to Notes but when you have older employees and migrated employees, you just have to bite it and coexist for a short while.  I will let you know the outcome of the support debug logs we sent off.

      Topic for the day, what does being a CLP get you?  More money?  Better position in the organization?  More consulting contracts?  I am not quite sure.  But as you might know, or might not, IBM is changing the names for Lotus CLP's.  If you have not heard this or read this,
here is the link.  Basically all the names will start with IBM Certified (place something here).  I personally will become  IBM Certified Advanced Professional: IBM CAP which I am still figuring out if it means a get a cute baseball cap.  But the point of this is not what it gets you, but what some people have asked for in the CLP forum.
      Some people are actually concerned with, brace yourselves, if they will get new CLP pins?!?!?!?  The little thingy you can wear on a collar or shirt or use as a thumbtack for your comics on the wall (and no I am not speaking from personal experience here).  NO, I am quite serious here.  There are postings in the CLP forum asking this very question.

      But back to the point, anyone want to give me input on what the CLP has done for them??  I will cut and paste some responses...


Oh yes, and Cisco to buy Linksys announced, nice twist there, pretty soon you will have huge Cisco switches in your home :-)
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    On Friday, March 21st, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Lots to talk about today...

        First things first, go check out Steve's new template he is taking live today or this weekend that my site runs on.  He added the comments and took a new approach that I had never thought of.  I won't ruin the surprise by mentioning it here.  I am eager to appy the new one to my site.
        Second item of the morning before I have to do some work and come back to this.  I talked to Bruce of OpenNTF last night, yes actually spoke on the phone and not IM, about the upcoming release.  It is getting better and better.  I even had a hand and tossing him an idea.  Let's see if it makes it in.  The idea was generated from my friend Bas about emails with importance flag settings. He believed that if he received an email with high importance then it should be automatically set to go back the same way.  But without modifying the mail templte it wasn't possible.  So I figured if you were going to use a totally different template anyway, why not ask to have that feature in there.
        Third item of the morning, I am finishing my judging for the Apex Awards from E-Pro magazine.  Here is the link to last years winners.  I will have plenty to say when I am done with these later today.
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    On Friday, March 14th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Who wants a public source template?

        A great thread has started, and than ran into numerous areas (and I do mean numerous) on blog templates over here.  I would suggest entertaining reading the long thread if you blog or are interested in the Domino blogging idea.  It is about 60 posts right now.  I believe that an open source template is a great idea but the needs of so many individuals could hamper the speed at which it is delivered and then taken apart and modified anyway.
       
        I am in a good mood today as I found the entire album from an underground performer I heard while in London.  Amazon had the import available and I got it!!!!  Just sharing a quick personal moment :-)
        One other personal moment, while driving back from the User Group meeting yesterday, we saw a truck pull along-side of us on the highway.  On the side of this massive steel truck was a sign in black letters on a white background.  ONLY BANG ON SIDE OF TRUCK WITH RUBBER HAMMER.  Well if I am driving a steel car, I suppose it isn't wise to get anywhere near what they are carrying :-)

        Server reboots, how often and why?  We consistently see sites that reboot weekly, daily, nightly, odd-dates Tuesdays, whatever.  Sometimes without rhyme or reason.  We have even been asked that on RFP responses.  How often do you reboot the servers.  Our normal answer is never unless there is a patch or software installation for something like backups.  Some say for performance, but unless it has been up a very long time and you actually see memory leaks, where is the gain?  Anyone?

Back later after a meeting...
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    On Wednesday, March 12th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

The world got a little smaller today

       I like to peek at the referrers and see where people come to my site from.  And the past two days have been incredibly interesting.  I added some more blogs to my list on the right but the following site was the most unusual to me.
Here is one of them
And I have no idea how I got listed here but I love it

     
I headed to our monthly Domino User Group session today. The topic was on the new administration features in the server and admin client.  Overall a great presentation.  There was around 90 slides I think.  It was presented by Jon Raslawski out of Chicago.  Most of you know Jon as the guy on the Masters Broadcasts.  Heck of a presenter and a friend of mine.
      I have tried to play with almost every feature he showed since the betas were out.  It made the meeting easier to follow since he had so much to cover in such a short time.  I will comment on those features though later, I have to get out of here today, I am late!!!

     

>> But that brings us to today's topic at hand.  User Groups for Lotus.  I see different results for each city.  I am on the national board for Valu, and we get to see how each group functions and operates.  I am amazed time and time again at how some groups flourish and share so much information.  While others are very closed in sharing and die and restart every couple years.  We are just trying to figure out if it is the content or the community in those cities.  Anyone have any input on that?  Email me and I will paste in some comments (anonymous or whatever)
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    On Tuesday, March 11th, 2003   by Chris Miller        

Apparently there is mistaken identity.

       A few people have sent me inquiries as to why I did not tell them about the Webcast I am apparently doing.  Well , ummmm, that isn't me.  :-)  That would be my dual identity that actually works for E-Pro Magazine.  So still get over and watch it but ask pointed questions as to why you were misled into thinking it was me, LOL.  Another side note, I have been informed that E_lluzionz management is unhappy with me for no mention ever in my blogs.  Well if they had a wonderful website and blog I would link away. (hint)
     This weekend here was a wonderfully confusing endeavor of Mother Nature.  It was 77 degrees F on Saturday, dropping late afternoon with Sunday coming in at a brisk 25 F.  Sunburn to windburn.  Makes soccer a little more interesting.  Do you bring hat and gloves or sun-block?


     Technically today we have another blog design update from Steve at
DominoBlog.  This added some cool new features and moves the version number to 2.07 in his quest for distributing free Domino blogging software.  When you see this I hopefully have added some new sections on the right ------> and also changed over to the new archiving feature.  So I will only present the month in the main view with the previous months as links available on the right.  I was contemplating showing a subject link area, but most of you couldn't tell what I write about from a simple subject line.  I will however, create one for categories so you can sort blog's by whatever categories I come up with.

back later....

        ....ok back at 3:20pm CST.  I went and caught up on some blogs just now.  And behold the screen shots of the new OpenNTF template.  I see drool approaching most of you about now.  Those are some very welcome enhancements.  But I did mention to Bruce on that page that I linked you to, that I don't see where we send Bruce the adult version of Yahoo Greeting cards that we know he deserves, LOL.
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    On Monday, March 10th, 2003   by Chris Miller