I can't believe in late December I could be trying out my new rotisserie on the grill. It's been very mild this winter. I prepared the turkey outside with oil, salt, pepper and some rotisserie chicken spice. The cord is short on the motor and has a three prong plug. I first tried the placing the grill 20 feet from the house but discovered my extension cord did not work with 3 prongs. I gently moved the grill closer to the garage and used a shorter cord that fit. My wife hates the smoke. Once I got the grill going, it didn't smoke too bad. It was a 14lb turkey and cooked about 2 1/2 hours. I checked it with a thermometer and it was about 5 degrees close to finish. I should have taken it off then. Instead, I let it go another 15 minutes till it hit temperature. I should know better. The meat actually keeps cooking after you pull it off the heat. It came out a little dry but live and learn. It was fun and I like the even cooking on a rotisserie.

It's the day after and what a day! Hope everyone had as great a day as we did in the Stone household. The kids are getting older but still get excited for Christmas. I do too. I get excited for the giving and the getting as I did as a child. I try to remember the spiritual meaning of Christmas and I do. I must admit that I still like the stuff, too. Santa brought me a Weber Kettle Rotisserie for my grill. It's mild outside so I hope to do a turkey today. The kids got the video games, guitar amp and iPod they wanted. They had a great day. The big hit was the Guitar Hero game for the Sony Playstation with 2 guitars. My oldest son logged in about 14 hours on it. My wife cried when she finally opened one of her gifts. I reserved a Magic Kingdom backstage tour for the Friday before Lotusphere. My daughter took a printout of the description and stuffed a big box with newspaper. My wife had no idea. I also got here a Sony digital camera of her own.
Here's to the New Year and may all our dreams come true!
God Bless and Peace on Earth!

After several revisions so far and I'm sure more to come, here's my tentative schedule for Lotusphere 2007. I realize I have some conflicts and I reserve the right to change my mind at any time.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

08:00 AM - 10:00 AM JMP402 Introduction to SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) and Web Services
Location: SW 1-2

10:30 AM - 12:30 PM JMP206 Enterprise Integration: Moving Your Data Around to Where You Need It
Location: SW Pelican

01:30 PM - 03:30 PM JMP301 JavaScript and AJAX JumpStart
Location: SW 1-2

04:00 PM - 06:00 PM JMP202 "It Takes Two to Tango" - Learning Java Using the Eclipse Development Platform
Location: SW 10

Monday, January 22, 2007

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM BP104 Worst Practices in IBM Lotus Domino Environments - Learning From the Mistakes of Others
Location: SW 10

12:30 PM - 02:15 PM HND104 AJAX for IBM Lotus Domino Hands-On
Location: SW Osprey 2

01:00 PM - 02:00 PM AD306 IBM Lotus Enterprise Integrator, IBM Lotus Domino Exterprise Connection Services and Your Data - Business Data Where You Need It
Location: DL S. Hemisphere II

02:15 PM - 03:15 PM AD502 Creating Maintainable IBM Lotus Notes and Domino Applications - Writing Readable Code
Location: DL S. Hemisphere I

03:45 PM - 04:45 PM BP306 How to Make IBM Lotus Domino Sites That Don't Look (or Act) Like Lotus Domino
Location: SW 10

05:00 PM - 06:00 PM AD213 Integrating Presence Awareness Using IBM Lotus Sametime Toolkits
Location: DL S. Hemisphere IV-V

06:15 PM - 07:15 PM BOF503 Blogs are Easier than E-mail? Wikis are More Flexible Than Discussion Databases? Discuss!
Location: Y&B GH Salon VIII

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

07:00 AM - 08:00 AM BOF202 Designers Unite: Developing Innovative Interfaces In IBM Lotus Notes
Location: Y&B GH Salon VI

08:30 AM - 09:30 AM BP311 The Great Code Giveaway - Web 2.0 Edition
Location: SW 10

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM BP304 Blog It Up, Baby! Extending the New IBM Lotus Domino Blog Template
Location: SW 5-6

11:15 AM - 12:15 PM ID109 IBM Lotus Notes Hints, Tips, and Tricks
Location: DL S. Hemisphere II

12:30 PM - 02:15 PM HND105 The Ultimate Make-Over of an IBM Lotus Domino Site Using CSS
Location: SW Osprey 1

01:30 PM - 02:30 PM INV107 IBM Lotus Notes and Domino: A Look Ahead
Location: DL N. Hemisphere D-E

03:00 PM - 04:00 PM AD303 Extreme Makeover – IBM Lotus Domino Application Edition
Location: SW 10

04:15 PM - 05:15 PM BP101 Designing the User Experience: Why Your Interface Matters
Location: SW 10

05:45 PM - 06:45 PM BOF507 OpenNTF - An Open Source Community
Location: Y&B GH Salon VI

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

07:00 AM - 08:00 AM BOF205 Dynamic Interfaces with XML
Location: Y&B GH Salon V

08:30 AM - 09:30 AM BP308 Leverage DXL and OOP to Build Powerful Tools
Location: SW 3-4

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM ID212 How to "Sell" IBM Lotus Notes and Domino Inside Your Organization
Location: DL N. Hemisphere A-C

11:15 AM - 12:15 PM AD402 @Formulas Meet AJAX
Location: SW 5-6

01:30 PM - 02:30 PM AD505 DevBlast - 30 LotusScript Tips
Location: DL N. Hemisphere A-C

03:00 PM - 04:00 PM AD309 Enhancements to the Mail Template for IBM Lotus Notes 8 That You Don't Want to Miss
Location: DL N. Hemisphere A-C

04:15 PM - 05:15 PM BP205 The Integration Revolution: Microsoft Office 2007 with IBM Lotus Notes and Domino
Location: SW 1-2

Thursday, January 25, 2007
07:00 AM - 08:00 AM BOF508 The Lotus Software Blogging Community (Not Just Bloggers!)
Location: Y&B GH Salon VII

08:00 AM - 09:45 AM HND113 Measure Twice, Cut Once - Using Low-Fidelity Tools to Achieve Success: Hands-on Version
Location: SW Osprey 1

08:30 AM - 09:30 AM BP305 From Retro to Rocket: Retooling R5 apps to IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 7 and Beyond
Location: SW 5-6

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM BP312 Trap and Manage Your Errors Easily, Efficiently and Reliably
Location: DL S. Hemisphere II

My daughter and youngest son participate in Puppettude at our church. We do puppet shows with a Christian attitude. They have a ball putting on the shows and the audience has a great time too. We put on two shows this past weekend at nursing homes. The first was at Valorie Manor and the second at Wolcott House. The people love to see the puppets and the kids perform. They clap and sing and want to hold the puppets after the show.(does my heart good too). One lady fell in love with one of my daughter's puppets and I thought we might not get her back. In this picture, my son is one of the lambs and my daughter is playing both haystacks. The song was "Happy Birthday, Jesus". As you can see, we pack'em in where ever we go. This Christmas season we did shows at 3 nursing homes and 1 daycare. Great job Puppettude!
Technorati tags:Puppets

I've not seen any discussion on this topic in the Notes community yet. We've begun a project to mitigate the problem in all are systems. Here's the problem as stated in the Lotus Technote:

"The United States and parts of Canada are extending the period of Daylight Saving Time (DST) beginning in 2007. From 2007 onward, DST will commence on the second Sunday in March (three weeks earlier than previously) and end on the first Sunday in November (a one week extension). "

I just read this note quickly but the first priority is to get your operating system patched for users and servers. Seems we better get started now so the our calendars don't get messed up in March.

You'll find links in this note to assist with calendaring and applications. In the application document, there's some code to help if you don't have the OS correct for documents already impacted.

Does the fun ever stop?
Technorati tags:Lotus Notes
Daylight Savings Time

I spent some time yesterday planning the sessions I'd like to attend at Lotusphere 2007. Ben Langhinrichs
has posted his annual planning database and it's a great tool for this. I took a first pass and I'd say overall that I'm pleased at what I was able to schedule. The annual problem is that many sessions I want to attend have conflicts with other sessions. This year, I'm concentrating on stuff I want to learn/focus for next year. Let's be real. The likelyhood of me getting an opportunity to work with the latest and greatest is slim. I'll focus on integration(web services, lei, MS Office and etc), Lotuscript, AJAX and web ui techniques. That should keep me plenty busy. I hope the opening session gives me all I need to know about Hannover/Notes 8 because I most likely won't need to know much about that till the following year.
My first pass, I tried to review each time slot and set my schedule. Then I took a look by speaker and noticed a couple I missed. I went back in and adjusted. There is so much to choose that I'm sure I missed something on the first pass. I hope I don't run into someone during the show and they say, "Did you see So and So's session?" and my response is a "Oh, damn!"
I'll keep checking the list most likely right up to the day of the show.