I really enjoyed a comment made on the recent TechCrunch article comparing Sharepoint and Lotus Notes. "Toolkit" really make some real world points about functionality we take for granted in Notes that just is not easy in the Sharepoint world. Let's just hope innovation in the Notes world continues to keep us ahead of the Sharepoint world.

I've been searching for a memory upgrade for iMac for several months. I just had not yet pulled the trigger on the order. It was about $60 US at crucial.com last I looked. After listening to SWMBO complain again this weekend, I took a look today and ordered a 2GB kit for under $30. That should improve things. Don't understand why they can't add the proper amount of memory for a standard machine. Only allows unknowing folks to complain.

I was over my in-laws house before Christmas and was looking at old pictures of my kids. Man, they grow up so fast. Seems like yesterday my oldest was saying his first words as we laughed at his pronunciation. Now, he's a high school senior. He's been accepted into the Graphics Arts program at The College of Saint Rose. We were very impressed with this college during our tour. Funny how your life can turn and direction it goes. We discovered this school during a national portfolio review day. We waited in long lines to see many of the very popular art colleges. We didn't have to wait in line for the College of Saint Rose and we wanted to hear their perspective of my sons work. Well, the professor that we spoke with was awesome! She was very enthusiastic and genuine. She encouraged us to check the school out during their open house which was the following weekend. My son has been talking about Boston based colleges but we went up to Albany, NY anyway. Again, we were very impressed with the faculty, staff and students who went out of their way to meet and work with us. They are very proud of their students who have gained employment 100% of the time after a year of graduating from the Graphic Design program. They intern in NY city and seem to really gain practical, real life skills.
We're so proud of him and wish him all the success in this exciting field!

Any music fans out there? If Santa brings me a new iPod and iTunes gift card, what should I add to my music collection? I've been hooked on a playlist lately consisting of Ryan Adams, Johnny Cash, Dave Matthews, Van Morrison, Grateful Dead, Mark Knopfler, Wilco and etc... Need to add to it for variety.
I'm thinking of exploring some artists I don't know and/or some cd's that I do know of with newer material.
How about...

Ray LaMontagne - Gossip In The Grain
Coldplay - Viva La Viva
Neil Young - Sugar Mountain(Live) $9.72 on Walmart.com :)
* Neil has a huge 10 DVD collection coming in Feb 2009


Exploration?:
My Mourning Jacket
Wilco
O.A.R
Flogging Molly
Fleet Foxes (Wish I bought this at Starbucks when I had the chance)

Note: Bruce Springsteen has a new release end of Jan 2009!

Any other suggestions?

What a great Taking Notes Podcast from Bruce and Tom speaking with Getting Things Done author David Allen and eProductivity specialist Eric Mack!
Half way through, David makes a point and drives it home like no one I've ever heard on how amazed he is about the lack of respect Lotus Notes gets from end users. I'll offer up some opinions on this. David trys to understand why end users don't know the power the have in their hands. One reason for this, I've found, is that IT folks are not keen on feeding an end user freenzy. They fear the end user application that will grow and need the IT resources to support it. IT resources/costs are watched like no other. We lock down the end users from adding new databases to our servers which limits their ability to collaborate to the magnitude that David envisions. Tools like QuickPlace have emerged for that purpose.

Here's another one: Has an IT executive ever been fired for recommending a Microsoft solution? On the other side of that. People who push alt-Microsoft technologies are taking a risk.

One last thought related to the expanding adoption of Notes overall. The pool of resources available for supporting Lotus Notes is small and getting smaller. Management has little choice but to move to other technologies because they can't find resources for Notes.

Wish I were going to Lotusphere to see the GTD session. I'd love to do some real world Lunch and Learns with my end users. With exception of unleashing the Wild, Wild West of applications. :)

As if the ice storm wasn't bad enough and winter just starting, my Yankees are reeling in some big fish making the wait for Spring unbearable. :) I'm dancing in my cold house as I see the new guys signing up. A.J. Burnett is awesome. My only worry is past injury issues. But, when he's on he's lights out. C.C. Sabathia and A.J. will make a great 1,2,3 punch added with Wang. Hope we can get to a game in the new Stadium this spring. Next, let's sign Andy Pettite. I heard he was holding out for 16 million. Come on! Please see it in your heart to take 10 million. You can get buy even in NY with a little pay cut like that. Just think how cool it will be pitching in the new Stadium with the team that's assembling. I'm divided on Joba Chamberlain. Bullpen or Starter? Of course we want more innings like he's pitched in the 8th. But, we don't want to burn him out. If they pick up one more starter and sign Andy, the question for me is easy. Shorten the game to 6 or 7 innings with Joba, Mariano and whoever else in the 7th inning. Tell you what. I could coach this team to the World Series with that kind of pitching.

Northwest corner of CT is iced today. Many roads closed and power lines down. Weird that the roads were not iced to bad in my neighborhood. I did see 2 trees down in my neighborhood and one was uprooted across the road. I was able to make it to work. Funny thing was, a mile from my house towards work, no ice on trees. Just a bit farther north, they'll be without power for days. I post this for those who don't get this lousy weather like us.

My company nominated and sent 130 people to the Swan in Disney World for improving the "Customer Experience". You had to be nominated by your peers for work you did over and above to improve your customers experience. You then had to be approved by a board of executives. (3,000 employees, 400 nominations and 130 selected) I always want to listen to the customer, feel their pain and fix the issue or create something cool to solve their issue. Love this part of my work!
It was a little weird being at the Swan without Lotusphere going on. Quiet. Spooky.
We had a great time. The Disney Institute worked with us on a Leadership program that was fun and interesting. Hope to share a bit of that later.
Back to taking care of business...

I always enjoy these podcasts. This one was speaking with Sandra "Queen of Lotusphere" Marcus about Lotusphere 2009. Great job Julian and Bruce as usual. One cool idea I really liked coming to Lotusphere 2009. I've enjoyed and got a lot out of the Hands On sessions. Problem is they are WELL attended at first come firt serve. People sleeping overnight at the door.(or it seems that way) If your cramming as many sessions as possible and you have a long walk, your out of luck for a keyboard. They trying something different this year where they'll use a format to show the material and you can then take the stuff home to play. I've done this in the past and it's worked great. Put an app in production a couple years ago this way. :)
Anyway, wish I were going but doesn't seem in the cards this year. Hoping for a miracle.

Of course, I've had many times when I've had to display changes to a rich text item while editing a doc. I needed to bring in a doclink from after picking from a list of docs. I wasn't keen on the last technique I used so I went out to the forum for a look. I came across the best solution I've found and wanted to share(plus I'll check my own blog entry if I forget where to find it again).
Thanks Andre again!

Tip

You know, it's funny, I've had this @Unique field in my supported apps for a long time and I just trusted it did what's implied. (kindof) A unique number for the database docs? How does it do that because the Help desciption is vague.
Without a parameter, returns a random, unique text value. With a parameter, removes duplicate values from a text list by returning only the first occurrence of each member of the list. One wonders: Unique to what?

I'm doing an enhancement to create some related docs in a separate database and I figure I'll use the same technique that my attachment database uses. I did some digging in Notes.net just for *hits and giggles to confirm my use of this and found this explanation :
@Unique uses part of the users name and a part that is generated based on the time. So as long as your unique numbers are generated by different users they will 99.9% be unique irrelevant whether you have access to it or not.
If your unique number is generated by an agent and therefore by one id and if you are generating alot you might run into trouble.
See this post from Andre Guirard (well the whole thread might be of interest to you):
Thanks Marjan and Andre