Arbitrary, Incidental, and Accidental Musings...: January 2009

What this tells us...

Is that the people of New York State have terrible taste.

NHL Skills Competition

Big let down this year. They need to get rid of the breakaway competition
where the players do crazy moves trying to score. Sure, the moves are
neat, but nobody ever scores.

I like the elimination breakaway contest. That's a nice touch. However,
the accuracy shooting seems too easy these days. Only three people had
ever hit 4 for 4 until last year. Now, three people have done it in the
last two years. They need to move the shooting line back a few feet.

Hardest shot is still entertaining, but fastest skater is too fast and
boring. The young stars game had no hitting.

The greatest crime of the whole thing, however, is the presentation style.
It went so fast. The graphics we're non-existent. If the sound wasn't on,
you would have no clue what was going on. The clock on the scoreboard
wasn't even synched up with the feed. Not a great showing in Montreal.
Here's hoping the game will be better.

Amount of times i've had to reboot my blackberry?

I'm guessing around 3 times a day on average. Not good.

Thank God for the shift key

If it weren't for the shift/multiple select function of my BB, I can't even
imagine how long it would have taken me to delete those 6,000 messages I
received last night.

At least blackberry got something right here. :)

Currently at MCO waiting for my flight which still appears to be on time.
It will be nice to get home.

Bubba Gump Shrimp Company

I haven't been there since New Orleans in 2000 and I have to tell you that
I rather enjoyed every second of it. In fact, it could have been the most
fun dinner I had the entire trip. I even had the drink special to get the
souvenir glass. That is very unlike me.

Peel and eat shrimp (Cajun style) may be my new favorite thing although I'm
sure my colesteral just shot through the roof.

Wrapping up Islands of Adventure, Dueling Dragons was fun, but terribly
organized. The Hulk was Better and no line, so we went on it plenty of
times. Express Pass is a must buy, and Suess Landing was surprisingly fun.
Although, I suppose it would have been even More fun If I was 3 years old
or did drugs. Avoid the Sinbad stunt show at all costs.

Overall, great trip. Probably my most fun Lotusphere ever. It went out
with a bang.

Now, to have a Mickey waffle and head to the airport.

The Hulk

Is my favorite roller coaster. It has everything. Shoots you to the
start. Loops. Fake finishes. Goes underwater. Fake decapitation. Yep.
Everything.

Dr. Doom's free fall? Not so much. Lame.

Spiderman is awesome though.

More to come...

What I learned about blogging this week...

Is that blogging is exceptionally easy and convenient from the blackberry.
It will be even easier with a full size keyboard. I'm going to have to
work on that.

Anyway, let's see If I can keep it going. Off to Islands of Adventure!

Lotusphere Overall

As mentioned in my last post, a solid lotusphere.

The highs:

Bob appears to be a solid, no nonsense VP/GM. Great turnout. IBM spent a
lot of money this year. No downtime. Every minute was filled with
something going on. I haven't seen much of my room or my TV. Good product
announcements. Great speakers. Great venue. The food was kicked up a
notch over previous years. Blackberry threw a good party. IBM held a
tremendous dinner. And of course, I learned a lot.

The lows:

Not a lot of lows, actually. Almost too much to do. I'm getting too old
for this and it is starting to wear on my body. I suppose the constant
exercise is a good thing though.

In summary, I think IBM puts on a better show than Microsoft. MS isn't far
behind, but lotusphere continues to improve and doesn't feel like a cold,
hard, unfeeling convention. Also, the sense of community is almost unheard
of. I still find myself shocked at the amount of great people i've met
this week.

Bottom line: 9.5 out of 10

Closing session

I got here early and got great seats. Just picked up my conference T shirt
and the software said I had already gotten one. Impossible! I said. I got
one anyway. I should go back later and try to get more. Actually, I
shouldn't. The shirt is kind of lame and only comes in XL. I'm probably
going to have to give it away to a very large friend or sasquatch or
something. What is IBM trying to say anyway? That all is tech geeks are
fat? I mean, a quick look around kind of proves they're right, but
still...

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the closing session. Who is the speaker?
What stats do they want to show? What videos will they play? What time is
lotusphere next year? Will it be in the Dolphin and Swan again? Your
guess is as good as mine. :-O

I just discovered a pack of sheets with the lyrics to Beethoven's Ode to
Joy under my seat. In German. This is not a good start. I don't know
what you've got planned for tonight, Homer, but you can count me out.

There is a grand piano on stage. I'm sure that's there for a reason. I
hope it's Demetry Martin or something.

Yep, I made the video from Mooney's session. That's a first.

Bob is back out. I like him. Seems very confident and really seems to
take the gloves off. Just showed a graph where we pegged all the bandwidth
available on Monday morning. Talking about LotusLive again and all the
other announcements.

One person had a golden ticket in their bag for a free trip to lotusphere
next year. Cool. Lotusphere is the 17th to the 21st next year. Guess
where?

He just claimed that he and his team will "break their asses" to exceed all
of our expectations. Nice.
This marketing video is terrible. Bring on the entertainment!

Eh. Ben Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic. Crap. This looks
interactive. I shouldn't have sat up front. I think he just subtly
praised Obama. Glad I didn't overeat at lunch.

We just sang happy birthday to some random audience member. Okaaay.

Alright, it wasn't as bad as I thought. I've certainly seen worse (and
better for that matter). It was very motivational. A little too happy
cheery and unrealistic sometimes, but I felt better and entertained when I
left and isn't that really the point of the closing session? I'll give it
a 7 out of 10.

Overall, a solid Lotusphere. I'll wrap up with some overall comments.
Then, it's off to Emeril's and City Walk. I can't wait.

Things that need to be downloaded when I get back

Domino Configuration Tuner

DAOS space savings estimator

An application that can change all of the error messages in the Lotus Notes
client and push them out via policy

Any slide deck by Paul Mooney

Actually, any slide deck pertaining to ID Vault, DAOS, shared login, ini
variables, etc...

Optional: there was something about installshield that Robert might be
interested in

Univeral Studios

Last night's party was, as usual, a good time. A 28 degree good time, but
a good time nonetheless. A worker there said it was the coldest day
they've had in Florida in 13 years. Wow.

Simpsons ride was fun, the Mummy was shorter than I remember and they
seemed to completely have revamped Disaster since I was last there. It now
includes Christopher Walken and The Rock. Good stuff.

These parties keep seeming to get shorter and shorter. We only got on four
rides total after eating. I did, however, see a costumed Woody Woodpecker
and scolded him, "you know, If you had gone straight to the police, none of
this would have ever happened". That made my night.

I wonder what they have planned for this afternoon. I'm sure I made the
wrap up video after one of Mooney's sessions. Speaking of videos, we may
have to order one or two to keep around. Good stuff this year.

Shared login

Looks like IBM is strongly pushing this service over single client logon.
Guess we'll have to force 8.5 client rolllout after all.

Except... They don't have an answer for internet passwords. Although,
multiple machines are not an issue If ID Vault is enabled.

The Notes security expert looks like Count Rogan from The Princess
Bride. ... And appears to be every bit as dead.

You should not rely on NSL alone. You need ID Vault or password recovery
or both. Disk backups are nice too. Otherwise, encrypted data will stay
encrypted, just like If you lost your ID completely.

Did I mention I'm looking forward to going on the Simpsons ride for the 3rd
time tonight?

To enable and manage NSL, it is all done through policies. Users can turn
it on and off If you let them and once enabled. This is done through the
user security preferences. You can customize the text that they see when
they enable it.

This guy is talking so slowly, I think I could actually transcribe him on
my BB. I'm expecting him to say something about voodoo economics next.
These people are the anti Paul Mooney.

So... Domino SSO... Still not integrated with Windows yet. The are
announcing that it will be in the next version. Great. Another example of
Lotus being at least 3 years (or more) behind the curve. Killing me.

And now we're talking about Kerberos. I wonder what else is playing right
now... Back with more later...

Adminblast was awesome

We will have to follow those tips one by one when I get back.

Have I mentioned it's really cold down here? Must be in the 30s at some
point last night. Not like home, of course, but still.

8.5 Domino performance enhancements. Let's see what's interesting in this
class...

30% database size compression over 8.0. More effective use of memory.

Seriously, does no one get to a session on time anymore? I'm sitting by
the door and the draft is killing me every time someone walks in.

Transactional logging improved. Needs to be created by putting a line in
the ini. DAOS claims to save about 50% or more on mail files.

Router optimization. Scalability restrictions removed in 64 bit. New
workbench modelling for load. More realistic for what today's users do.
Oddly, the new mail DB size that they used was smaller in 8.5 (175 MB)
because of new ODS and compression.

They always talk way too much about the methodology behind their stats and
not enough about the stats themselves.

IOPs reduced by 22%, disk data transfer by 31%, CPU by 13% on Windows.
More on Solaris and Linux. I know, you care. :)

Okay, I'm done relating stats. Back later...

Catch up from last night...

Blackberry party was cool, but I couldn't stay long. They were giving away
chances to win blackberrys, but no one wanted to go up and play guitar hero
to get one. Weird.

Shula's was excellent. Thank you IBM! I was shocked at how many people
were there. Over 90 people from the Northeast alone. I can't even begin
to imagine what that cost them. Steak, lobster, etc... They spared no
expense.

Met some wonderful people and sat with 5 IBMers. Some high placed people
too. Seemed very interested in my concerns about the product. Good to
know they listened. Whether they do something or not...

Anyway, starting the morning at Adminblast! Where a hungover Mooney will be
presenting (as opposed to drunk Mooney). I have a feeling this is going to
move way to quickly to blog. I'll bring the slides home.

Finally!

Someone is throwing a party with Guitar Hero. I was wondering what was
taking so long. Good job, blackberry.

Drag and drop in administrator

I don't think I realized that you can drag files and users onto tasks and
servers. Cool.

Lotusphere Idol

Oh God. Mooney and Gabriella are judges. And our host appears to be Ed
Brill. This can't be good.

Ed brill is a PC. If he says "brill out" then I'm out.

Contestant #1... Andy Donaldson on installsheild tuner. 300 pound dude who
just called himself "eye candy". Good start.

Starting to get boring. I'd this was the gong show, there might be a hook
out there right about now.

Wow, that was quick. I guess this is more about the judges than the
content. Not getting great reviews so far. No comments by Mooney. No
reason for that.

Contestant #2... Two college students from university of Nebraska on... I'm
not sure. They're good with the jokes, but I don't know what they're
presenting. They brought clippy along for the ride though. Way too stand
up. Where's the heart? Still no clue what they're presenting. Any day
now.

Okay, they're presenting on Symphony. Specifically a plug in that works
with quickr and sharepoint.

Funny, but not a lot of information. Judges?

They like the humor, but don't like the party stuff.

Contestant #3... Michelle Snow and developing AcquTrack. No idea what that
is. Turns out it's been around for 10 years and she works on it. I guess
she's getting free advertizing here.

This is clearly the most professional of the presentations which means
there's no way she can win.

Boring, but that's what conferences are about. Slides seem a bit crowded.
Judges?

They feel there is a nice structure to the presentation. Good confidence.
Bob Balaban is the Paula Abdul of this group. One judge does not like.

Contestant #4 is apparently Alan Lepofsky presenting on Locust Fear. Oh
no.

Great slides with biblical references and pet care tips. Can eat their
body weight every day like Bill Buchan. Mmmm... Locust taco.

Mooney gave him his vote. Done. Gabriella talked about the sexual tension
between Ed and Alan. Wow.

Contestant #5: angel figgeroa and some other dude on flexing lotus domino.

Really boring, but I think that's really the subject material too. Judges?

The judges think it was too technical and that they were too nervous.
Also, they felt it didn't relate to Domino much. Mooney wan't listening
because it was about development. Lots of bad feedback. I don't think
they're winning.

Final contestant is Andrew Brew from Australia on replaceable parts.

Difficult to understand him. Sounds like Sean Connery meets Crocodile
Dundee. He just ripped Mooney because his presentation is on development.
Awesome. Not a very good presentation. Very basic stuff on templates.
Pictures are hard to understand as well. Judges?

They liked, but thought it was basic. Or... Some of them did. Anyway...

The winner by judges vote: two winners. Andrew and the college kids. Two
half hour sessions on Thursday morning.

Entertaining show.

I'm sad I'm going to miss symphony karaoke tonight. Perhaps I'll be lucky
and catch the end.

Off to more admin stuff.

What's new in the Notes 8 client

Let's see if I can do a live, quick hits blog of this session.

Big room. Small attendance so far. Then again, people were probably
watching the inauguration and this is the repeat session from yesterday.

Hey, everybody, it's Jeff Eisen! Long time, no see. He's still not very
funny despite his best efforts.

Man, do I need new contacts. Even the big screen is blurry. Nice IBM
podium though.

Concentration of this session is on 8.5. And they're angling for applause
already before introducing anything. Never a good sign.

Lot of demos being given with the Mac, btw. I think they're trying to
prove a point.

Is this guy really starting by showing the open menu? I may not stick
around long. At least you can resize the bookmark icons now.

The stars are back for unread documents obviously. Text can be selected
and dragged to a new location in rich text fields. Cool sametime dragging
and dropping from the sidebar. One person applauds. Looks pretty dumb.

Multiple email addresses for each contact supported in type ahead.
Multiple calendars supported like Google Calendar. We should be promoting
that one.

Corrupted calendar documents can now be fixed automatically by the end
user! Praise the Lord!

Contacts has picture support and multiple language support. (cooler than
it sounds). Vcard export support which we have already used. Better
support for contact imports from CSV, which we have also already used.

To do design has been refreshed to the 8 look and feel. We might have to
update that. Journal has been renamed notebook and looks like 8 as well.

Symphony supports mail merge! Wow! Finally!

Improved search bar that can be expanded to other search engines. Notes
can now be set as your default vcard and icalendar client. Finally. One
dude applauds. Different dude.

Better connections, symphony, and quickr support. So, quickr is still
around. Interesting.

INotes has an improved full UI. 7% faster across the board over 8.02.
Better Citrix support. Better Citrix scalability?

ID vault, shared logon, DAOS, dynamic policies, widget catalog, etc...

That's it from here. I'm off to lotusphere Idol. God help us all.

Walking

I brought my pedometer with me. Looks like I'm averaging about 7 miles a
day. That's interesting, but I was walking about 8 miles a day in
Washington.

Btw, I suppose I'd be somewhat remiss if I didn,t mention... Change! Ug.

One thing that strikes me...

This year, lotusphere is connected. There have been several instances of
people using twitter or other sorts of social networking to affect change
immediately.

From the temperature at the OGS to the developers changing the way
attachment handling works in the Notes client, it has been pretty
interesting to watch. I certainly have never seen that at any other
conference. Good to see.

Bloggging seems antiquated at this point, but as long as you're reading
this, I suppose that it,s serving it's purpose.

Javelin

No update on the release date. Blackberry doesn't know. However, I need
one. This Pearl is KILLING me.

Finding it hard to blog

Either the sessions are too technical or I'm talking to too many people.
Good stuff though.

Some quick thoughts though...

DAOS looks cool. Spoke to BoxTone. They look very cool too if we want to
spend the money. Had dinner at IL Mulino last night. Very disappointing.
Had to skip the casino night as it conflicted with the partner showcase.
Love Paul Mooney's sessions. Very funny guy. Just compared Ed Brill's
picture to Dr. Evil. Told developers to go kill themselves. Promised that
the first few rows will get wet and it's possible that he may be drinking
right now. Again, good times.

Actually, he must be drinking as there is a bottle of scotch on the stage
and he asked if IBM legal is in attendance.

Eh, what the hell? I'l try a live blog of "the eleven commandments"
session. There's only 11, right? How hard can it be.

And... Begin:

Paul just got engaged. Good for him. Told a daughter joke about his co
presenter (bill buchan). Ouch.

He has stuffed monkeys on stage. Okay then.

The whole room just did the wave several times on camera. Guess we're
making the official lotusphere video.

We are now standing and taking an oath to fill out the evaluation and give
them good ratings. We also had to promise to delete 10 users at random and
put localdomainservers into the terminated group.

He just suggested a death match between the developers and admins. Paul
said admins are evil and showed Ned Flanders as the devil. Awesome.

The commandments:

1 thou shall have change control

"It's not that you shoot yourself in the foot, it's how often you reload".
Tremendous.

2 thou shall understand security

Paul looks like a cross between Jerry U. And Tim Quinn.

3 thou shall deploy the ECL

4 thou shall understand your environment

5 thou shall review the catalog

6 thou shall monitor mail usage

Paul just stabbed Bill with a pitchfork and said, "you're leaking whisky"

7 thou shall maintain your servers

8 thou shall not set 300 year lifespans

9 thou shall manage the minions

10 thou shall learn NSDs

In 8.5, the Domino server will restart while the NSD is running! Woohoo!

That's it for now. Will be back later.

ID Vault is simply awesome

Can't wait to implement that when I get back. They even created slide by
slide instructions.

LDAP

First of all, I'd like to say that this place is packed. Not just
lotusphere folks, but also a lot of tourists. I don't think i've seen this
many tourists ever. Also, we apparently have an obesity problem in this
country as well. Jeez!

Anyway, back to the music... I'm here at the swan hating my Pearl and
listening to people in funny accents while wishing they had water bottles
in between every session.

Don't think I'll have anything to post on this session as it's mostly
technical stuff. I'll likely be back for Mr. Mooney's session.

Notes and Domino futures

Yes, this is the big Brill session. Very blurry screens, but no hint of
"the boss loves Microsoft". And yes, I'm following Ed on Twitter. Yes,
i'm such a nerd. Actually, I find that twitter is Better for following
than for publishing, but then again, what do I know?

Packed house. Ed's co-presenter looks nervous. Four presenters. Must be
some kind of lotusphere record.

I think I'm choking on the smug in this room. Ed is so full of himself.

Good numbers though. 300K seat win in India. 25% growth in the last 16
months. Great list of companies already on Notes 8. COCA cola, HSBC,
american century, etc...

Encouraging lots of plug in development, like LinkedIn. Committed to
OpenNTF.org.

Ed went over all of the new and neat features in 8.5. Pretty cool stuff.

However, I may now hate Brent Peters. He just said, and I quote, "I told
Mike Rhodin that if all I get beat up about in Notes 8 is performance, then
I'm doing a good job."

Really?! Really?! Oh man, I'm going to have to take this guy out in an
alley. They just don't get it. Or more specifically, they get it... But
they get it several years too late.

Okay, back to the show... Directory independence. Services APIs. DAOS and
domino configuration Manager improvements. SSO between IIS and domino.
Improvements to the client including more roaming solutions. Blah, blah,
blah, boring. Not a lot of faith in Notes 9 now. Seems like they are
putting a lot of effort into LotusLive Notes... SaaS.

Improvements to the translation process for templates. Improvements to
Notes Traveler for other devices.
You know, I didn't just burn the roof of my mouth, I burned the living shit
out of the roof of my mouth! Ow.

Cool live iPhone demo... Nothing official, don't get excited.

Brent is at least funny. I still need to beat him though.

Atlantic is now Alloy and future improvements are on the way for symphony
et al.

LinkedIn preview looks cool. Possible partnership with Salesforce.com.

New designer (duh) and support for Xpages.

New left sidebar? Don't know about that, but who knows.

Notes 9... Improved search, group calendars, inbox subscriptions,
intellegent server side archiving, contacts and mail federation, unified
task management.

Task management demo. Looks cool, but also looks like it uses embedded
forms (yuck). Looks very much like copy selected as table. And yes, this
session is running waaay over. Might miss some of my LDAP session.

Contacts have pictures (finally), and there are colored labels like in
Google Calendar. Contacts are shareable (applause).

That's it, I'm outta here. Heading to the Swan.

I'm listening to Tesla now

And suddenly, everything is alright.

They gave Ed the big room. I guess this session is getting huge.

I feel compelled to post this part of the ogs

IBM announced compatibility with LinkedIn today. Looks like it goes on the
sidebar. Now, those of you know that I loathe social networking (see:
Orlando, Suzanne), but I can't help but think IBM's partnership with a
corporate social networking tool will reap big dividends for them in the
collaboration space. Note I wrote "for them". We'll never know, will we?
Sorry, that's espn club talking.

Ed Brill's session in less than an hour

Can you feel the excitement? Yeah, me neither.

I will miss Steve Spagnolo

And I'm sick of this Brett Farve retirement watch. Enough already. Every
year with this.

Espn club

Life saving clam chowder. That's all there is to it.

Actually, they've stepped up the food big time here. Much better.

In a brilliant marketing move, they started advertizing food and drinks
during the commecials of the espn broadcasts. They've also expanded their
beer selection.

I think i've eaten nothing but fish since i've gotten here including an
amazing jalepeno roll at kimonos. Wonder how long I can keep that streak
going.

Side note... Espn just announced a mount rushmore of sports. I vote for
Gretsky, Jordan, Ruth, and Montana. Although Montana could very easily be
replaced by Tiger.

Big afternoon ahead. More to come.

Kimonos and the OGS

So, I finally decided to go to the after party at Kimonos last night. Met
two cool guys and we got great seats for the Karaoke. And yes, of course I
went up there. Good times and the Asahi was smooth. Very disappointed
that Ed Brill and Alan Lepofsky didn't get up there to sing.

Speaking of Mr. Brill, I have no need to live blog the OGS because Ed and
Paul Mooney are doing it so well. Check out their blogs for updates. So
far, we have Blue Man Group and Dan Akroyd.

Other quick hits... I love the Yacht Club and I need a BlackBerry Curve.
This blogging from a Pearl is terrible.

Looking forward to day 2. If day one is any indicator, this should be
awesome.

I would like to apologize to the Eagles

Well done. Makes me less suicidal about being a Giants fan. They still
sick though. Go Ravens!

Opening party

Empty so far. Blues theme. One screen showing football. Very cold for
Florida. Found an outdoor heater. You would think that with as cold as
it's been in CT the last couple of weeks, I'd be used to this. I guess
not. More to come...

Here at Big River

Enjoying a pale ale and the game. Okay, I'm not really enjoying the game.
Both of these teams are terrible, but I suppose I'm happy for Curt Warner
for some reason.

Took forever to get my bag and I'm driving a Chevy Impala, but other than
that, everything is as it should be. Feels like I never left.

The conference theme is "resonance" which means I'm going to be thinking of
Tesla all week when I see the signs (no pun intended).

Off topic: I just saw Rock Of Love Bus and Tool Academy on the plane. I
have never seen two complete train wrecks that I could not tear myself away
from before. Wow... Just wow.

Speaking of train wrecks, back to the Eagles game!

Sitting at HPN

I am curently sitting at Westchester County Airport as the snow comes down.
The whole scene is beautiful and looks a little like something out of Die
Hard II. (man, did I hate that movie thank you very much Reny Harlin)

So far, my flight is not delayed, but the snow continues to fall and the
planes are being de-iced right outside the window.

The airport is surprisingly empty, but that could be due to people having
issues getting here in the snow.

I am looking forward to the opening Lotusphere party and the 60 degree
weather (hey look, I'll take anything I can get after the last couple days
around here).

The guy at the ticket counter told me to have a splendid day and that
sounds like a great idea... Assuming my flight stays on time.

ESPN Club, here I come!

Live Blogging Lotusphere

I'm going to attempt a live blog of Lotusphere 2009 this year. This will
very likely be my last trip to the Sphere and I would like to document it
accordingly. Hopefully, my BlackBerry will make blogging easy. We shall
see. It all begins tomorrow.

Arbitrary, Incidental, and Accidental Musings...

Monday, January 26, 2009