Two of my favorites have some events this coming week on Sirius satelite radio, Jimmy Buffett and Trey Anastasio. Here's the quote from my weekly email:

"Jimmy Buffett returns to his country roots on his upcoming album, Take The Weather With You. He'll personally world premiere the record, track-by-track, Wednesday... exclusively on his own SIRIUS radio channel, Radio Margaritaville.

Last year, former Phish frontman Trey Anastasio took over Jam_ON for a day: it was a blast, so we invited him back. He'll control the boards and the playlist all day Tuesday on Trey Day Vol. 2 (he'll also do acoustic versions of songs from his latest, Bar 17). "

I'll be listening!

Woke up early this Friday morning to find that Google totally changed the RSS Reader overnight. At a quick glance, it looks a lot like the Feedreader I used to use with more features. I didn't like how the old one hid the previous read items because I often re-read them. This interface looks like an improvement on that. Now I can keep track of my favorite bloggers better. Hope the rest of the day goes as well.
TGIF!

Oh, my... I can't believe what I found when I Googled my name. LOL. There's a book series with "Curt Stone" as a Private Investigator. The quote on the cover says "Li-Na made pleasure her business. Curt Stone gave her the business - and then some" I can't make this stuff up. Too funny ! Seems I have a very interesting life as a mystery thriller character. James Bond has nothing on me.

I can't believe it's been 20 years. One of my college roomates sent me a link from my college Alumni page. To my surprise, I'm in the picture. I showed the picture to a bunch of people at work and few recognized me. I still have all my hair so I'm not sure what the difference is. At least my mom could still recognize me. See if you can pick me out.Look here

Chapter 47 of "Lotus Notes and Domino 6 Programming Bible" is titled,"XML, DXL and Domino Data". This chapter is an intro to DXL, DTD, Schema and developing custome XML output. Some of the highlights of this chapter for me are:

- Explaination of ReadViewEntries URL command and the use of some powerful commands. They use a working example that shows two types of XML links in a view. The first link when clicks creates a single doc in DXL format. The second link creates a DXL document representing three documents in a category using DXL parameters. They show the column formula's that produce this output.

- There's an explanation and intro to the DXL Utilities in Domino Designer. This includes the Exporter, Transformer and Viewer. These utilities are useful in exporting DXL for Domino design elements like forms, views and others. You can use these tools also to testing the development of stylesheets for DXL transformations.

- There's a working example of creating custom XML from Domino documents. You create a form with embedded XML tags around your fields. The form also contains XML declaratin statements and XMl element tags. The form property "Treat document contents as HTML" is used. You create a view with a form formula equal to this custom form. The listing of documents in the view then will use this custom form to display the custom XML.

Next chapter will continue the custom XML creation by using Lotuscript and some of the new DXL classes in R6. Cool stuff!

I've been stressing over the problems my daughter was having with her 1 year old Compaq Presario. We bought this for her birthday last year and she gets a lot of use out of it. The problem started when Windows XP would not boot up. I tried doing a Compaq recovery from the boot up recovery method. It appeared to work but alas, it did not. I tried a Windows recovery program and it told me that a windows system file was corrupt. No luck there. The next choice was a "Destructive" recovery which I was sure was a Format and reload of Windows. I was angry with my daughter that she'd lost the Windows recovery disc. So, on a different night, I contacted HP Support. I guessed that I still was within my one year free telephone support. I spent the next 30-40 minutes arguing with them as they said my support ended in April. I also learned that they don't supply a recover disc any longer and that they wanted me to buy one. I hung up and dug out my receipt. Would you believe that I bought the computer exactly one year from the day I was calling? I called them back up and then had to spend another 30-40 minutes convincing the first screener and the tech support guy that I was within the 1 year. I agreed to fax the evidence and he finally agreed to help. By this time, I was so frustrated and tired that I agreed to do the destructive recovery. I wasn't concerned with much of my daughters content except some poems and stories she wrote and now lost. Looking back, I should have demanded a recovery disc. After getting Windows back up and running, would you believe I could not get the wireless adapter USB card to work. She could use the computer but no Internet. Her bedroom is way to far for a wire.
I was impressed that HP took the time to follow up with me but they were useless again. I explained that the computer will not boot up with the Wireless USB connected and the mouse and keyboard lock up when I plug it in. He told me that this was not something they would support and I told him that's exactly why I didn't bother calling him back. I'm two for two with support people telling me to format my hard drive when there were other solutions. Arrgh!!!
The funny thing is that at the same time he was being useless, I was having some success with some chat support on their website. Over the course of a week, I started 3 chat sessions. We installed a chipset driver and a BIOS update. All of which made sense but did not work. Yesterday, I set the computer up next to the router so I could test the internet connection with the wire. Before I did that, I noticed that the printer was connected by USB. I must have missed this all along and I remember the BIOS update mention that the update was to correct a USB conflict with a printer. Would you believe that the wireless adapter worked straight away when I hooked it up downstairs? I was elated and figured it must have been the printer conflict. I don't know why because it's the same printer she's had for a year. I'm not sure what finally resolved the issue. The printer even worked after I got it all set up back in her room.
Divine intervention?

I browsed the family email today and found this jem.(I usually leave that chore to the wife). A new Jimmy Buffett album is due out on Oct 10th called "Take The Weather With You". Check out the pre-order with song lists and description.

From the description,"Take The Weather With You combines a variety of styles and sounds from Nashville, New Orleans and Key West. It's a smooth sail for Buffett."
Jimmy's last studio cd was awesome, "License To Chill". That one contained many guest country artists. It seems the new cd will cover some country songs, some originals and contains a guest spot from Mark Knopfler. I'm excited about the Mark Knopfler collaboration. I have several of Mark's solo cd's and just recently picked up his cd with Emmy Lou Harris, "All The Road Running". I really like this cd too.
Gotta have your Jimmy CD collection on "My Island"!

There's a great example of a dynamic table in the "Lotus Notes and Domino 6 Programming Bible". I finally got a chance to use it in one of my applications. In Rocky Oliver's chapter 15 example(p210-217), he uses this example to show a cool use of a list box interaction with some edit fields all resulting in a nice ui to add, subtract and change values of a table. It uses all @formula language. There's a sample database you can download to save yourself a bunch of typing. One thing I had to work on today was getting the list box to show the values when you print. The user's always print this particular document so this was important. To my surprise, a list box does not reveal it's values when you print. They show on the screen but not when you print. A quick trip to Notes.net and I found a solution. I created a Computed When Displayed field for the values when in Read mode. I actually did two fields; one for the labels and one for the values. This way, they lined up nice. Next thing to tackle will be looping through the values to figure out the line that is the "Current" line. It will be the one where today's date is in between two of the dates in the row of data.
Fun and games. Thanks goes to Rocky for putting a cool technique in a standard kind of book. It's cool to me that I'd find this sort of technique in this book.

This was one the subjects in today's email from SearchDomino.com.
Here's the text from the email
"FAST ANSWERS TO YOUR LOTUSSCRIPT QUESTIONS

Lotus Notes developer Cregg Hardwick is here to unravel all of your
LotusScript woes. From basic use to debugging and validation, Cregg
Hardwick will discuss and explain many of LotusScript's finer points
in his blog. For two weeks, he will also be offering answers to your
LotusScript questions from EAC users. Be quick, though, Cregg's stint
ends on Friday, September 22!"
http://go.techtarget.com/r/552383/575224

I sent Cregg a whopper. It's one I put in Notes.net last week and did not get an answer. It will be interesting to see if he can handle the onslaught.

Haystack
Originally uploaded by Curt Stone.

Ben, Lindsay and I made a trip last weekend up to Haystack Mountain in Norfolk, CT. It's only about a 30 minute trip. The hike is not to long or steep and the view is fantastic. This picture is looking towards NY State. The State recently renovated the lookout building. When the kids were small, I told them it was Dracula's Castle to entice their interest. Some kids from my baseball team I coached gave me a gift card to Dick's Sporting Goods and I bought some binoculars for the trip. After this we went over to the Farmington River to watch some fly fisherman near People's Forest in Barkhamsted. All and all, a nice relaxing day.

Ben and Hosker
Originally uploaded by Curt Stone.

Fidelco is an organization that breeds and trains seeing eye guide dogs in Bloomfield, CT. The organization was founded by Charlie Kaman. Charlie is an engineer and inventor of many helicopter parts and the ovation guitar. They have about 100 dogs in training. They live with foster parents until they are about 14-18 months old. The dogs then go through about a 6 month training to learn their skills as guide dogs. Both Ben and I had a lesson on what it's like to be blind and guided by the dog. The trainer took us through a small obstacle course with cones, barriers, turns and crosswalk steps. The number one rule is to stop when the dog stops. For me, it felt like he was walking too fast but that's mostly because I'm not used to moving with no sight. I love dogs and these are the most behaved, ready to please dogs I've ever seen.
We also enjoyed a tour of the kennel and demostrations. We watched the CT State Police K9 unit and dog obiedence demo.
Ben and I really enjoyed our day at Fidelco.

Got Sitemeter working on my blog today. It was very easy. I signed up for a free account weeks ago but I had not yet gone through the directions to add the tags needed in my blogger template. All I had to do was go the "Manager" section and choose the directions for Blogger.com. I was able to log on to my site and click a button to add the tag to my site. It appears on the bottom,left column. I came into Blogger.com and republished my blog. All done. It immediatly recorded the activity including hit counts, a world map of where I came from and etc.. Cool!

Love my Sirius radio and it's only getting better. Yesterday, they announced a new channel dedicated to "The Who". They'll even play live broadcasts from the upcomming tour. I just love the variety of content on the satelite radio. I'm not a huge Who fan but I'm glad I'll have the choice and with no commercials. Just hurry up and give me my Grateful Dead channel and I'll be in heaven.

Details Here

This looks interesting and I'll be checking out. I got this in an email from IBM Developer Works.
Sept. 28: Using AJAX with Domino Web applications
Learn how AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) can improve the performance and usability of your Domino Web applications. You will also get an overview of how you can modify your Domino Web applications to make use of AJAX.

Details Here

I've had a bunch of things crap out on me this week. My van(had to take a day from work but I fixed a brake fluid leak), my digital camera memory stick would only hold three pictures(I figured out how to format the memory stick), my daughters computer wouldn't load Windows XP(had to fight with tech support and succumbed do a destructive format and now the wireless network card causes the keyboard and mouse to lockup), my Sirius boombox won't work(no power except batteries). And... at work they want me to hide id and password on a lookup to Oracle and a couple of my agents are user generated which means I'm having trouble hiding the password.
Arrgghh!!

Anyway, have a nice day.

With the recent posts by Julian and Ed Brill about selling what we can do in Notes, it got me thinking. We can build all kinds of great apps but will they come? One of the things I didn't expect when building Notes apps is that I'd have to continue promoting them after they were built. Take a workflow application as an example. Do people resist change? I can give my cats a bath easier sometimes than get a salesperson to start a workflow. You know how cats are when you try to put them in water. They use all four legs to kick, scratch you and straddle the tub. Managers may get excited about the increased efficiency, reporting and storage of workflow activity. But, the guy doing the data entry sees it as just another chore. There better not be any bugs to prevent smooth data entry. They'll flog me at the public square. I can relate to their feelings. I mean how many of us IT guys like doing their time reporting?
As a Notes developer, I find myself doing my own BA work, marketing and follow through to get the most out of the finished product. I actually enjoy being this close to the project.
The nature of many Lotus Notes applications make them catalysts for change in an organization. The bigger the audience, the tougher the change. If I were building a Rating system that simplifies many calculations or a data entry system that has people who's job is to enter data, no issue with getting them to adopt the applicaton. Try and get someone to participate in a discussion database and they don't see what's in it for them. The applications I've seen that are the most successful are the ones that are tied to the participants compensation and yearly review.
Maybe this is another reason it's hard to sell Notes? The masses aren't open to change?

My Karate studio website posted a cool note and website for tracking goals.
Ever have a problem getting yourself to do things you know are good for you or not doing things you know are keeping you from your goals? Check out this simple but effective and fun-to-use goal tracking website: Joe's Goals.


Technorati tags:Goals

On the list of topics to learn more about, XML and Domino are at the top. The first source I'm going to study/review is contained in Ch. 46-54 of "Lotus Notes and Domino 6 Programming Bible" by Brian Benz and Rocky Oliver. I'm proud to say I have an signed copy. (Pil Sung, Rocky) I'll read through the material, run the examples and comment here.

Ch. 46 offers an intro to XML. The chapter explains how XML facilitates data integration. XML provides a transport to send and receive data in a common format that multiplatform applications can understand. XML may look like HTML because of the tag format but XML describes structured and unstructured data. HTML only tells the browser how to display data.
There is a specific structure fox XML consisting of Elements, Attributes, Text, Comments and Empty Elements. DXL is the format that Lotus has created to format Domino data in XML. They've created a DTD and Schema for DXL describing data formats and to insure data adheres to a predetermined format. I believe we've created enough acronyms to be a valid IT subject.:)

In an activity, we create an XML document from a Domino document by using the DXL Viewer utility in Domino Designer. They mention Parsing and Transforming XML and leave the details for later chapters.(Can't wait :) )

In the next chapter, we'll start to use some of the Domino Utilities for XML and play around with the supplied "Quote" database.
Yea!


Technorati tags:Lotus Notes
XML

What a turnaround ARod has made as of late. He went on a rampage during the last home stand. The Yankees can withstand a slump like his and enjoy the rebound when it happens. They have so many players capable of "carrying" the team. I can dream that he took my advice, "See the ball, hit the ball".
Curt's Advice for ARod


Details on ARod's Player of the Week award

I was searching the internet for some Lotusphere content and I came across my picture on Technorati. So, I decided to update my profile and add this blog.
A requirement is to add the below link.
Technorati Profile
Technorati tags: Technorati

In reviewing Ed Brill's recent post of 2 PHB whitepapers, one feature of the next release of Domino code-named Hannover jumped out at me, Mail Recall. I don't remember this feature being mentioned at all at this past Lotusphere. It's a feature I think we've all long gave up on. I remember reading how Outlook claims they have it, but it only works if the user has not already read the note.
Quote from the whitepaper:
"Mail recall—For those times you wish you hadn’t hit “send,” IBM intro-
duces the mail recall capability to Lotus Domino server. Users can recall sent
mail by simply finding a message in their “sent” view mail and clicking the
Mail Recall button. "

Can't wait.

Technorati tags:Lotus Notes
Hannover

I like Julian's post promoting what most of us Notes developers already know. I often see applications in other platforms or hear my business partners with collaboration issues and I think to myself "I can do that in Notes". Makes me proud of the work I do and sad that many others don't know this capability exists in Notes. I want to do a presentation at work about all the electronic collaboration tools out there today. Only warning I would mention to Julian (I know he knows) is that not to promote Notes for applications that don't make sense for Notes. For example, relational database apps with high transactions are not suited for Notes. People like to use Notes for their development tool even when it does not make sense simply for it's rapid dev. platform(RAD), security and network capability. Anyway, just like the ad campaign says, Notes sure does a lot. Fun!

Torrington Family Kempo Belt test
Originally uploaded by Curt Stone.

I was just looking through comments on my Flickr account and notice someone had asked if I was still active. The answer is "Yes" and it occurred to me that I'm the only one in this picture that is still active. I'm now a Green belt. Fun!

Happy Birday Ben! Your my #1 super hero!