The official Grateful Dead site was appearing well, dead, for months. First, I noticed no monthly download live releases. Second, not much in the way of news. I then learned that Rhino Records bought the rights to The Vault. I believe Rhino will operate the web site too. Yesterday, I got an email of a new live release coming in January. Today, the flash site is gone and it looks like the web site is in for an overhaul. Finally, I can add to my long list of live dead cd's. :) Can't wait to see what Rhino will dig out of the vaults, dust off and clean up for our listening pleasure. Go get the new Cow Palace release.

It's truly an all American holiday we all can celebrate. It's a time to share with family and friends and reflect on what we have. Here's my short list:
1. Our Health - I'm thankful that I'm healthy and my immediate family is too. I pray for others who are struggling with health issues.
2. Awesome wife and kids - I'm thankful for the wife and kids who are great in all the things they do! Wife keeps it all together and the kids are excelling in school and activities.
3. Supportive family - I'm thankful that I have wonderful parents and in-laws.
4. Good career - There was a time when I hated my work and I pursued an opportunity in application development. I'm very thankful of the opportunity.
5. Local community - I'm thankful for my church, karate studio, schools and athletic opportunities for the kids. It would be very difficult to leave this community if forced to.
6. Lotus community - I'm thankful for the Lotus and IBM bloggers who share their ideas, code and friendship. I'm excited for Lotusphere 2007!
7. America - I'm thankful that my ancestors came here to build a new life in hope of prosperity. I'm thankful that our forefathers had the strength, courage and wisdom to create a system of gov't with it's checks and balances. It amazes me, as proven in the latest national election, how our system works as designed by our forefathers over 200 years ago.
8. The Troops - I'm thankful for the people in uniform who fought and are fighting for our safety and freedom.
9. Freedom - I'm thankful to live in a country that is free. 'Nuff said.
10. Prosperity - I'm thankful to be allowed the opportunity to pursue happiness as Thomas Jefferson so eloquently described.

Just noticed that the Lotusphere Sessions page has links for details on the sessions for Lotusphere 2007! Hooray! Now you can go and figure out what you can see and one's you'll miss.

I get up early on Tuesday to download the new Neil Young cd from iTunes. First, I notice it's $11.99. Huh? For 6 songs from 36 years ago? Granted that 2 of them are long jams but still, $11.99 for a download. Second, I notice the CLEAN tag added to each song. I don't want the CLEANED version. I'm 42 years old. I can handle a couple swears. I've just swore several times while viewing this selection. #@$%@! I decide to buy the cd on my way to work. I try Barnes & Noble thinking maybe they're open early. Nope. I go over to Walmart but then I'm thinking they're open but they'll most likely only have the clean version. They don't have it yet on the shelf. Big surprise. I'm so busy at work, I figure time will fly and I'll get it at lunch. I go to B&N again. They've got it hidden on the shelf and it's $18.99. Forget that. Aren't new releases suppose to be on sale? I got to FYE which used to be Strawberries and they have it for 13.99. Sold. The clerk there was funny and interested in my version of Neil Young's career and why I was excited about the release. Maybe I turned a young guy on some cool classic rock. Hey, they've got no cool bands of they're own, so why not? And as you may have guessed, there's no swears on the disc that I've noticed. The packaging sucks and adds nothing to the purchase. I should have downloaded it from iTunes in the first place for $11.99. Crooks that they are. Oh, yeah "Down By The River" kicks ass!

Julian Robichaux of NSF Tools and Taking Notes(Lotus Notes Podcasting) fame(among others), has published a very good article on Web services on IBM's Developer Works titled, "Practical Web Services in IBM Lotus Domino 7: What are Web services and why are they important?". The timing was great for me because this is a subject I've been focused on as of late. This is the first article of a three part series and the first part is a generic explanation of Web services. The following articles will be more directed to the Domino developers. What I find great about this article, besides the timing, is Julian's ability to take a subject that could be very technical and explain the technology in a very simple to understand manner. He doesn't try to impress me with all the lingo(and there's a ton). Instead he uses common examples to explain the terms. For example, his defining of the term "Namespace" is typical of the tone of the entire article:

"XML allows you to use something called a namespace, which lets you predefine the expected structure of a particular named element in the file. For example, you could define a Price element that is always a floating-point number or a PersonName element that has FirstName and LastName sub-elements that are both strings.
Namespaces also allow different elements with the same name to have different definitions, if necessary. For example, a StockPrice element in one namespace may have a ticker symbol and a price, while a StockPrice element in another namespace may have ticker symbol, price, daily high and low, and 12-month high."

To me, this is a term that's not difficult but some writers could make the definition difficult to understand. Julian goes out of his way using many examples to help us with understanding the terms.

To further make my point, I like Julian's comment on the pronunciation of WSDL:

"The WSDL acronym is often pronounced as "Whiz-dull."

Yeah, Baby... Love that...

Don't miss the text in the grey boxes on the right margin. Just like many tech books, there's good stuff there too. My favorite is the further explanation of SOAP. SOAP can be implemented differently by different vendors. When I recently worked on a web consuming mini-project(testing), I was wondering about these issues that Julian explains. I found it annoying that I was hunting around with my eyes for the namespace, methods and endpoint. This article helps me to understand I'm "thinking" the right way.

Way to go, Julian. I'm sure your high school/college English teachers would be proud of you. (I know mine would)

Looking forward to the next two articles!

Technorati tags:Lotus Notes
Web services

Garfield
Originally uploaded by Curt Stone.

Three years ago, I began to notice a group of three cats in my yard on a regular basis. We throw out scraps of food for the wild animals and crows. Everyday, I noticed these cats eating the scraps. There was this guy we named Garfield, a female we named 'Mama' and a male kitten we named 'Baby'. It became clear that these cats were abandoned. They all would run fast if I went near. We bought some cat food and began feeding them. We had no animals in our home because my wife is allergic to cats and dogs. We contacted some shelters but they advised the best we could do for them would be to leave them and feed them if we wanted. Garfield was the first to become approachable. It seems to me that he had some interactions with humans and you could pet his head if he was hungry. Otherwise, he would growl and take a swipe at you. It was a good idea to keep your distance. For the winter, we put a house on our deck with hay. He liked to sleep there or in our neighbors shed. They had a path in the snow from the shed to our deck and back door. We became attached to these cats. In the following Febuary, Mama had a litter of 3 males. I learned that cats can have more than one father for a litter. Around this time, we had another stray walking my yard and I believe he fathered one of the kittens as well as Garfield. We called this new addition 'Yoda' because his ears were flat. Garfield and Yoda often fought and sometimes tolorated each other. Garfield was one of the toughest cats I've ever known. He had a half chewed right ear and many scars from battle. He took no shit from anyone. He enjoyed eating a big meal and laying in the sun on our deck.(as seen in this picture from this summer) . He seemed to catch many colds and would often have cuts from fights he got in. Over the past three years he overcame all these obstacles until recently. We noticed his belly begin to bloat. We gave him some medicine for worms but it seems this didn't help. We noticed him not around last Thursday and we feared something happened to him. I checked the box on Saturday morning and found him crawled up inside. He was breathing but not moving too much. We checked on him all day and he continued to decline. I buried him on Sunday morning. It makes me angry that this beautiful animal was abandoned by some ass. I'm glad that we kept him happy during his life and he brought us joy. Not to mention, three kittens that we cherish and they're doing great. Mama and one of her other babies still come to our door. Baby shows up occasionally. They all went to the box to look for Garfield. I believe they knew of his death and sensed it. Mama even came close to me while I buried Garfield.
Garfield, I hope your pain is gone and your in a better place. You brought us joy and we'll keep you in our hearts till we see you again in heaven.

I got the clearance from my manager yesterday and I signed up for Lotusphere last night. As always, I'm very excited to join my pals of Loti Land for fun and learning. This will be my 5th Lotusphere. I'm looking forward to the list of sessions being announced and planning my days. Please say "Hi" if you run into me in Florida!

This goes into the category of "Should have known, but didn't". Even after working in Notes for almost 10 years, I learn something new almost everyday.(as the saying goes). Have you ever had a business customer ask you to "Export everything in the database." ? That's such a vague request that I must just look at them funny and wonder to myself, "How would I do that without building a view column by tedious column?". I was recently asked this but not to this extreme. They actually wanted to export everything from 3 different forms. These forms contain about 300-400 fields. I slept on this one and wondered if there was a method in Lotuscript to Create a view and all the columns in a view. I figured once I created the view, I could loop through all the items of the document and create columns. After finding the "CreateView" method, I preceded to loop throught the items. At some point, I searched Notes.net and found that I could loop through the form and create the columns from the "Fields" property. Nice! Simple, but very helpful. This is new to R6. I had to create two views because the view has a limit around 280 columns.

Dim s As New NotesSession
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Set db = s.CurrentDatabase
Dim viewURS As NotesView
Dim viewURS1 As NotesView
Dim doc As NotesDocument
Dim form As NotesForm
Dim fname As String
Set form = db.GetForm("URS")
fname = form.Name
Set viewURS = db.CreateView("URS Export", "SELECT Form = 'URS'")
Set viewURS1 = db.CreateView("URS Export 1", "SELECT Form = 'URS'")
Dim col As NotesViewColumn

Forall field In form.Fields
If viewURS.ColumnCount < 200 Then

'Create the column
Set col = viewURS.CreateColumn ( viewURS.ColumnCount + 1, field, field)
Else
Set col = viewURS1.CreateColumn ( viewURS1.ColumnCount + 1, field, field)
End If

End Forall