Continue reading »]]> In all the new job excitement, I forgot to mention that I will be speaking at BLUG, the Belux Lotus User Group, again!

Jess Stratton and I will be presenting:

Collaboration, Party of One: When You’re Both the Dev and the Admin

When your administrator and your developer are one and the same, and they’re both you, things can get confusing. As the administrator, you’ve got a lot of power. Frequently, the role of administrator is to lock things down, keep the server running smoothly and tune performance. As the developer, you want a lot of power. You want unlimited agents to run anytime you want, as frequently as possible, with little to no limitations! So how do you reconcile these opposing needs when you have to play both roles? Jess and Kathy will show you how to use separate IDs, location documents and other fail-safes to make sure your party of one is successful!

Hope to see you there!

Continue reading »]]> Goodbyes are always difficult.  I’ve worked at my current company for more than twelve years.  I’ve gained many friends and much knowledge.  But like any good code, we should all get refactored once in a while.

I am pleased to announce I will be starting a new position at PSC Group in a couple of weeks.  I’m excited to meet new people and learn new things with PSC.  I am looking forward to joining the team and jumping into this new opportunity.

Continue reading »]]> This, my friends, is a tale of woe and despair.  A story about a woman and her nemesis, the dreaded bathroom light fixture.

It all began simple enough, as these tales often do.  The woman bought a house.  A house which may or may not have been built by monkeys.  At the very least it was built by incompetent morons and then owned by even more incompetent morons.  The woman spent many many hours fixing up the house (you can read some of her earlier frustrations here).  It was finally time to re-do the bathroom.  A simple job.  Paint the ceiling, paint the walls, paint the trim, change out a cabinet, change out a light fixture.  The woman had done these tasks several times before in other rooms of the house.  No problem, right?

Wrong.  So very very wrong.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

The heroine of our story follows the same simple steps she has used before for such tasks.  Go to the store, pick out and purchase a light, bring it home.  Remove the current light fixture, seen here:

So the woman goes to shut off the electric to the BATHROOM.  Looks at the electric panel.  Shuts off the one labelled “bathroom”.  Light is still on.  Hmm… She is aided by her lovely daughter and asks, “how about now?” as she shuts off a different breaker.  “Still on”.  Hmm… she proceeds to shut off each breaker one by one.  Finally, the power goes out to the bathroom.  Thanks to the breaker labelled “bedroom #1″.  OF COURSE.  So begins the curse of the bathroom light fixture.

Next she removes current light fixture.  However, the prior (idiot) owners had placed the mirror frame directly touching the light fixture, and then painted them both, effectively bonding the two together for all of eternity.  So she pries apart the mirror frame (without ruining it, because she actually planned to keep it) and the light.  Having finally broken them apart, she removes the light fixture (by totally destroying it, partly because she had to, and partly because it felt good), only to find the junction box significantly off of center.

Why does that matter to the woman?  Well, as seen above, the previous light fixture was (ugly) a long wide panel, so it didn’t matter where the junction box was, although one would assume a good builder (*cough* monkey *cough*) would put it center anyway.  The new fixture had a (CENTERED) circle plate and branched out.  Now the woman could actually see where the electrician BEGAN cutting the hole for the junction box centered, and then decided to move it over (and did a crappy patch job).  There was actually a stud in the wall at center, and so he had to move the box over (however, he still loses points for not checking for that first as one can tell by the attempted cuts).

Exhibit A:

This does not thwart our leading lady, she returns her cherished light fixture and finds one with a long wide panel for a back. She moves on with her mission and spends a grueling day priming and painting nearly every paintable surface in the bathroom.

Paint dry, room shining like a jewel in the sun, she proceeds to install the new light fixture.  Only to find the hole in the back panel of the fixture is a half-inch diameter and no where near the junction box.  The woman is faced with a decision.  Move the junction box?  Or make a new hole in the fixture panel?  Either way, she knew she would need supplies, like a great adventurer before a … great adventure.  She went to the mega super home buiding supply store place and bought a Dremel.  She could cut holes in metal, saw through drywall, leap tall buildings in a single bound!

Except she couldn’t.  She got home and tried to cut a new hole in the fixture panel.  With sparks flying and bad smells emanating, she chickened out.  Heartbroken, she backed down from the great beast.  But then, like all epic stories, she went to work.  Where a co-worker mentioned he had metal punches.  He punched a new 1/2″ diameter hole in the fixture panel!

Energized by this new twist in her story, she returned home to slay the cursed bathroom light fixture beast.  Only to be thwarted yet again.  This time by drywall anchors.  The instructions said to drill a 1/2″ hole for the mighty anchors.  The anchors of course did not fit in a 1/2″ hole.  Not to be stopped, she drilled a bigger hole and got the anchor in.  Success!  Oh no!  Only to be thwarted again!  When drilling the hole for the other anchor, she hit a wall stud!  “The stupid builder must have left a curse upon this room, causing his stupid to spread!”, she thought.  Luckily, she had spare wood screws and managed to finally get the fixture panel attached to the wall.

Many of you think (hope) this is the end of our story, but alas it is not.  The fair maiden went to put the three glass “shades” on the fixture when CRASH, the box fell to the ground smashing one of the shades to pieces.  Our dear heroine was nearly broken.  To be so close, and now so far.  She called the super mega ginormous home building supply store and asked if she could swap out a glass. Luckily, they were able to help her on her quest.  Returning home, once more, in hopes of triumph, she finally, finally completed the fixture installation.

Her darling, precious daughter then entered the bathroom to delight in the woman’s accomplishment.  “Mom, is that upside down?”

* It is NOT upside down.  Both the picture on the box, and the instructions clearly stated that this was the proper direction.

Continue reading »]]> It occurred to me that I forgot to even bring business cards with me to Lotusphere.  While I met several new people, we seemed to exchange Twitter IDs more than anything else, and usually on our mobile devices.  Occasionally I entered a new email address or phone number.

Only once during the conference, was I asked for an actual business card.  I took one of theirs and wrote on the back of it.

Did you use business cards at Lotusphere?  Or are they becoming a thing of the past?  Did you use a service like Bump or something else?

Continue reading »]]> It’s official. Lotusphere 2012 is over. I’m sitting in the airport, reading tweets of others traveling home, writing my own tweets. Reading wrap up blog posts, and writing my own.

I’m sad. Those of you who have never been wonder how I can be sad about leaving a tech conference, but it is so much more than that. It is much more like an amazing family reunion, where I also happen to learn a ton of stuff.

Some of the highlights (because I couldn’t possibly write about all of it):

The Opening General Session on Monday – I LOVE OK GO and they played the OGS!  I was sooo excited.  Loved it.  The OGS could have ended then and I would have been just fine.  Michael J Fox was the guest speaker, and he was terrific.  Inspiring, funny, and managed to fit his talk in with Lotusphere and social and community.

Tuesday was Nerd Girl day for me.  First, the Nerd Girls Sparks session, which included several short TED-talk-like presentations.  They were really great and I really enjoyed this.  The Nerd Girls BOF to follow up the discussion from the Sparks ideas was also good.  Unfortunately, I had to leave a bit early, but it was off to a great start.  Later that evening, The Great Geek Challenge took place.  This was the second year for this event, and this year was (if possible) even better!  A great time was had by all with loads of fun and laughter (and reubens and sliders!).

Wednesday I presented two sessions.  The first was on mobile and web development, from Notes to BlackBerry.  I made a decision to change part of the session, thinking I was making it more appropriate for Lotusphere.  Afterward an attendee came up and asked me a question about the very thing I omitted.  Lesson learned, never assume.  My second session was with Jess Stratton on being both the developer and admin.  We had a great time.  I saw a couple of lightbulbs go off for some attendees.  That is always a great feeling.

The closing session was just bizarre.  No other way to put it.  Andrew Zimmern was an arrogant ass (job description for celebrity chef, I think) and mentioned his show and why we should watch it about a million times.  He also claimed to be twitter-savvy and reviewed our tweets before his talk, then said the hashtag was #LS2012 instead of #LS12, which makes me wonder how truly savvy he is.  OH, and he boiled and torched live animals on stage, then ate them.  As I said, bizarre.

So Lotusphere…Great sessions, great speakers. Amazing friends, awesome conversations. Tons of laughs and a million hugs. Met lots of new people and spent time with lots of old people, errr old friends.

PS The title of this post is in reference to this, this, and this, just some of the fun we have at Lotusphere.

Photo courtesy of Greyhawk68

Continue reading »]]> I’ve written about some Geek Gadgets here before (under the tag “Gadget Glee”, but after a recent Twitter conversation about what to bring to Lotusphere, I’ve decided to round up all the travel gadgets in one post.

My number one favorite and essential geek travel gadget is a portable charger.  I wrote about this one in particular, but I also have this one:

That’s the FatCat charger (and yes that is an Amazon affiliate link), which seems to charge a little more than the first one.  But hey, I have both. 

Next on my list is the USB Squid from ThinkGeek.com.  Rather than some “block” type USB hubs, it allows for flexibility if you’ve got some stuff to plug in that’s bigger than the “usual” plug.

Up next is the Monster Outlets To Go power strip.  Nice and small, with outlets that are spaced out for those big charging blocks.

I love my Grid-It from Cocoon.  Perfect for organizing all of these gadgets!

If you’re presenting anywhere, then I really like the Kensington Wireless Remote, which works great on my Mac (and fabulous at entertaining cats, ooh laser!)

Unfortunately, I can’t share my latest essential geek travel gadget as I’m giving a few away as gifts at Lotusphere.    But I’ll be sure to post when I’m back.  So what are YOUR essential geek travel gadgets?

MTA:  I own all of these gadgets paid for by my own money.  I recommend them purely because they are awesome, not because someone paid me to.  I get nothing at all for telling you that they are awesome.  Unless you buy them through my affiliate link on Amazon, for which I will receive some tiny little teeny percentage, which you can read about at the Amazon affiliate site.

Continue reading »]]> Lotusphere is just over a week away.  Are you ready?

I’ve downloaded the Lotusphere Sessions App for BlackBerry, and the updated the Lotusphere Sessions App for iPad.  Thank you to Gab, Tim, Ben and anyone else that works on those applications and the data!

I’ve updated my profile on http://www.socialbizonline.com/.

I’ve added my sessions to my calendar:

One Application To Rule Them All – Wednesday 11:15-12:15 in DL S Hemisphere I

Collaboration, Party of One: When You’re Both the Dev and the Admin – Wednesday 4:15 – 5:15 in DL S Hempishere III

I’ve added Nerd Girl stuff to my calendar:

Spark Ideas – Tuesday 11:15 – 12:15 in the SW Mockingbird 1 & 2

Nerd Girl BOF – Spark discussion – Tuesday 5:45 to 6:45 in the SW Parrot 2

I’ve added fun stuff to my calendar:

Great Geek Challenge! – Tuesday at 8PM in the Fountain Restaurant in the Dolphin

This week, I will be finishing up demos, packing, trying to get plenty of rest, trying to stay healthy, and looking forward to warmer weather than here.  See you there!  (Now, what am I forgetting…)

MTA:  Wow, apparently I was forgetting when my sessions were…sheesh.

Continue reading »]]> I’m certainly not the first person to blog about ifttt.com.  And I won’t be the last, because it’s really really cool.

The premise: If This Then That.  If (something happens) then (do something).  The site has loads of “channels” to pick from to create a “task” and a “recipe”.  I’d read some people had found it useful, but nothing popped out at me as useful to me, until today.

I like to post pictures to Flickr, however Flickr has no BlackBerry app.  So if I take pictures with my BlackBerry, I have to wait to upload them from my PC (yes, I know I could email them in, but that’s boring).  Additionally, many of the pictures I would upload, I probably also tweeted.  Enter ifttt.com.

I created a task that says if I tweet something with the hashtag #photo (my idea, you can make it whatever you want), then get the photo and the tweet and post it to Flickr.  Very cool.  The tweet text becomes the description on the Flickr pic, so I don’t have to go back and mess with the picture at all on Flickr.

Go to ifttt.com and check out the recipes there.  You may find one you really like (email me when a new book is listed as a free Kindle book!) or at least get inspiration for your own recipes.

Continue reading »]]> I love to learn new things.  Everyone has their own way of learning and I’ve never really settled on one particular way.  Some things you have to learn by doing.  Some things you can learn from a book, others with a teacher.  Some things have to be seen.

The one thing I have learned regardless of the method is that learning is a spiral.  Or a snail shell.  This is likely when you wonder if I’ve lost it, but stick with me for a second.

Imagine you are a tenth of a mile away from a tree.  It’s a really big tree, so being a tenth of a mile away allows you to see the whole tree, top to bottom.  You may look at the tree and have questions that you can’t answer from that distance, but it’s okay.  You still know that it is a tree.

Now walk in a circle around the tree, only as you walk, you get slightly closer to the tree.  Now you get back to the same side of the tree that you started on, but you’re much closer, say you’re a few yards away.  Now what do you see?  It’s the same tree, the same side, but now you can notice more of the details.  You can see a bird’s nest.  You can see some of the detail of the bark.

Circle around the tree again, and end up on the same side, but now you’re right in front of the tree.  You know even more now, right?  You can see markings in the bark, what the leaves look like up close.  Only now you can’t see the top of the tree anymore.  You can’t see the whole tree.

But it’s okay, because you’ve seen the whole tree.  You saw it from the same angle, but further away. You can compare that knowledge with what you are seeing now, up close.  You can keep looking at the same angle over and over, but it looks different with each circle you walk as you get closer.

My point being that it doesn’t matter if you start up close or far away, just realize as you are learning, it is okay not to know everything.  You will circle back to the same angle, but with new knowledge.

PS This can be applied to life, too!