Running Notes

Category Lotus Domino Lotusscript Folders
Follow up to my prior post where Denny commented that he wants the @WhichFolders available in Lotusscript. Well, back in March 2008, Bob Balaban blogged about a routine to find what folder a document is in. He blogged a code snippet that was written in C#. An alternative or two, and the timing of the various methods were blogged by Steve McDonagh, so check that out.

Here is my little snippet of the same basic idea as Bob's, but in Lotusscript. The v.IsFolder bit is a little slow. And obviously, the more folders you have the longer this will take. @WhichFolders is much faster, but doesn't work outside of view columns!

Dim ses As New NotesSession
	Dim db As NotesDatabase
	Dim myViews As Variant
	Dim myFolders As Variant
	Set db = ses.CurrentDatabase
	Dim doccol As NotesDocumentCollection
	Dim doc As NotesDocument	
	Set doccol = db.UnprocessedDocuments
	Set doc = doccol.GetFirstDocument()
	myViews = db.Views
	Dim viewnav As NotesViewNavigator
	
	While Not (doc Is Nothing)
		ForAll v In myViews
			If v.IsFolder Then
				v.AutoUpdate = False
				Set viewnav = v.CreateViewNavFrom(doc)
				If viewnav.Count > 0 Then
					MessageBox v.name
				End If
			End If
		End ForAll
		Set doc = doccol.Getnextdocument(doc)
	Wend

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Posted by Kathy Brown At 11:32 AM Location Portsmouth, NH | Permalink | Comments (3)

Category Lotus Domino Folders
Thanks to Charles Robinson's most recent blog post about the All Documents view in the 8.5.1 mail template, I saw that you can now see in what folder a particular document is located. While this is exciting for my mail template (and for many users when they find something in All Documents, but have no idea where the doc is located), it is even MORE exciting from a development perspective. HOW did they do that? A quick peek in the design of the mail template reveals, @WhichFolders.

Apparently, lots of people way more observant than me noticed this, like these guys... Steve Castledine Bastian Wieczorek and Adam Osborne

Anyway, apparently it doesn't work well in agents, or @If statements, or well, anywhere other than a view column formula. BUT STILL, this solves some user requests I've had and does it quickly and easily. Woohoo!

Disclaimer: I am easily impressed when it comes to code that makes my life easier.

Posted by Kathy Brown At 2:07 PM Location Portsmouth, NH | Permalink | Comments (2)

Category Running
Several people have asked me what to wear when running in winter. I began running in September 2007 and ran all that winter outside and all of last winter outside. I live in New Hampshire where “winter” can be late October through the beginnin of March. The weather is also very changeable. They have a saying here, “Don’t like the weather, wait 15 minutes”. January averages a low of 15F, a high of 34F and 4.2 inches of “precipitation”, which is usually snow. So, here are some of my thoughts on winter running:

+20 – dress as though it were 20 warmer out. So if you wake up for your run and it’s 32 F out. Dress as though you were going to go outside (not running) at 52 F. This has almost always worked for me. 55 or 60 may seem cool, but once you warm up from running, you’ll be happy to be wearing shorts and a tank (or whatever it is you would wear at those temps).

Cold at the start – you should feel cool/cold when you start. If it’s a cold day and you feel all warm and toasty when you walk outside, you are going to be sweating bullets when you get a mile or so into your run.

Gloves – I personally don’t really like gloves. My hands heat up quickly when I run. That being said, some really cold and windy days require gloves. My best advice here? Get the $1 stretchy gloves at Walmart or Target. Don’t go crazy and buy expensive gloves. In my experience the cheap ones work well. And then you won’t get upset if you lose one or both. And if you’re on a long run and warm up and get sick of holding them, you won’t feel bad if you toss them.

No cotton ever – that’s it. No. Cotton. Evar. An angel loses its wings whenever you wear cotton on a winter run. Cotton doesn’t wick. You will be cold and wet and exceeding uncomfortable. And when it’s REALLY cold out, your clothes will freeze. Don’t do it.

Layers – Layers. Layers. Layers. As you warm up, you may want to cool off a bit. Layers, especially those with zip-ability are great. You can unzip a little or a lot and then fully remove a layer if necessary. Just remember the layers should be light enough that if you *did* remove them, you’d be willing to carry them. Don’t wear a giant sweatshirt thinking you’ll pull it off once you warm up, or you’ll be running carrying a giant sweatshirt.

Fleece headband – I have a couple of these and they are great for the ears. They don’t fall off like ear muffs. You may want to go with a hat, but I like the vent-ability of a fleece headband. A hat gets too hot for me and I wind up pulling it off and then my ears freeze. It can happen, I read an article about a runner who didn’t notice that part of her ear had frozen on a run. Yuck. Avoid that. Wear a fleece headband when it’s REALLY cold out and/or you’ll be out for a while.

Fleece lined running clothes – I have a couple of pairs of fleece-lined running pants from Nike, as well as some of their fleece-lined tops. Love them. So cozy and warm, yet still made to wick and are designed for running. If you are going to spend any extra money, this is the place to do it!

Sunglasses/sunblock – Just because it’s winter, doesn’t mean you don’t need these two! Trust me, when there is snow all over the ground and the sun comes out, you will thank me.

So, no reason not to run outside in winter. Just be smart and safe. I absolutely love running in Winter. Well, at least until January...

Feel free to add your own in the comments!

Posted by Kathy Brown At 1:09 PM Location Portsmouth, NH | Permalink | Comments (4)

Category Lotus Symphony
It should be called Lotus Wildfire, ‘cuz that’s how it’s spreading!

A Domino Administrator told me about his company. They use Lotus Notes for email and several homegrown applications. They use Microsoft Office for documents and very complicated, very customized Excel spreadsheets. The Excel spreadsheets have so many macros and programming, they have nearly grown to application status. They are currently using Office 2003 and due to the customized Excel files (1000s of them), they are reticent to upgrade to Office 2007. These 1000s of spreadsheets are “mission critical”, they need/want to do extensive testing before upgrading and finding their whole system breaks on the new Office.

No problem, right? Except many of the vendors and clients they deal with send them Office 2007 documents on a daily basis. As damage control, this company has installed Office 2007 on one workstation, and a member of IT has to “downgrade” any incoming Office 2007 files to Office 2003 files. Frustrating for IT and for the users. They don’t want to install Office 2007 on the users’ workstations for fear of breaking the 1000s of Excel 2003 files. The fear was that users would mistakenly open the customized files in Excel 2007 and not realizing their mistake would save the file in the new format.

My suggestion was to install Lotus Symphony on a few users’ workstations. Let them see they can open Office 2007 documents to view them. There is little fear the users would open the customized Excel files and go through the many warnings and steps required to save the file over in a different format.

Lotus Symphony has taken off like wildfire. Users have loved being able to open Office 2007 files without waiting for/bothering IT. The Admin has installed Symphony on an “as needed” basis, if a user needed to view an Office 2007 document, he has installed Symphony for the user. He tells me now that a manager at this company has just requested that her entire team have Symphony installed. The users are thrilled.

What a great way to get Lotus Symphony on their radar. It fills a NEED. There is no IT department forcing them to use new software for reasons that mean nothing to users. Users are REQUESTING it because it HELPS them do their jobs! Imagine that.

Posted by Kathy Brown At 12:25 PM Location Portsmouth, NH | Permalink | Comments (4)

Category Running
Today I ran the Smuttynore Half Marathon in Hampton, NH. As I posted last week, I had three goals. One of which, was my super secret goal. This is the dream goal. Not the goal you actually think you will reach, but one you aspire to. That goal was to break 2 hours. My previous best time for a half marathon was 2:11.

So, the race report. First I have to say what a great race this is. VERY well run. Before the race even began several weeks ago, I couldn't remember if I had registered or not. I emailed the race contact and they quickly responded. They indicated I was not registered, but tried very hard to help me, asking if there might be another name I was registered under. Turns out, I am just forgetful and hadn't registered. So, I registered. Which was good, because the race closed out and there was no race day registration.

Today marked 126 days of running every day. I had high hopes of breaking my PR, and even had secret hopes of reaching my super secret goal.

I couldn't ask for a better race start location. First, it's by the beach. I love the beach and the ocean. Secondly, my mother-in-laws house was about 1/4 mile from the start. So, I got there early, picked up my race number and timing chip and went back to her house to relax until race time. Race start was 10AM, so at 9:30, we rallied the troops and headed over to the start. My mother-in-law, husband and two kids would be there to cheer me on.

The race began and I had a little confusion as there was no starting mat that I crossed over. Usually when a race is chip timed, there is a rubber mat that you cross at the start. That is when I start my watch. No rubber mat meant I had no idea where the actual start was and no idea when to start my watch. At some point, I just assumed I must have missed it and started my watch.

The miles went by relatively easy and quickly at the start of the race. In order to hit 2 hours, I needed to run 9:09 minute miles. I was consistently running 9:09 or less.

This was a VERY interesting race. I used to live in Hampton. At the beginning of the race, I passed by a house that I lived in one winter. Another part of the race went down the road I used to drive to and from work for several years. Yet another part of the race passed by the beach I got engaged on. I passed the neighborhood where we bought our first house. A little run down memory lane.

Also interesting and fun, were my thoughts. Two hours is a long time. You think about a lot of stuff. In particular, I thought about a lot of my Twitter friends. I had tweeted before the race and many had tweeted back. Francie gave me a cheer, which made me laugh at several points throughout the race. I thought about things people have posted. Like Francie (again) posting that hilarious video where Elmo gets bleeped. Cracking myself up while running thinking of Elmo saying "Bleep you, Baby". I ran fast for you guys. I really wanted to be able to tweet that I broke two hours. I didn't tweet that, but I think my tweet may have been equally amusing.

So anyway, not sure how...according to my Garmin I hit the target mile pace for every mile, but my finish time was officially 2:01:21. A fabulous, wonderful PR by 10 minutes, but a tragic miss of my super secret goal by just 1 minute and 21 seconds.

More on how well the race was run, the after race goodies were great. FREE BEER with NO LINE. They were just lined up on a table for the taking. And pizza, and granola, and drinks, and vegetable soup. Again, all lined up and waiting for runners with no lines. AND KLONDIKE BARS!! You can't beat a race that has Klondike bars. Very well run, well organized. I would love to do this race again next year.

The stats, if you're interested:

1 - 9:12
2 - 9:09
3 - 9:09
4 - 8:54
5 - 9:01
6 - 9:09
7 - 9:00
8 - 9:04
9 - 8:58
10 - 9:06
11 - 9:00
12 - 9:08
13 - 8:55
0.35 (according to Garmin) - 3:26

Posted by Kathy Brown At 2:34 PM Location Portsmouth, NH | Permalink | Comments (6)

Category Twitter
As I said in my last post, I think the reason a lot of people don’t “get” Twitter is because they don’t get involved. So following are a few tips to hopefully help new Twitter users (and old ones, too) get involved.

Follow people. This one *may* seem obvious, but if you only follow 5 people, you aren’t really going to get a lot of value out of Twitter. Someone compared Twitter to a giant cocktail party. The more people there, the more conversations you can listen to or get involved in. A cocktail party with only five people doesn’t offer a lot of variety.

Follow good people. I see lots of people follow loads of celebrities. Fine, I guess, if that’s your thing. I personally don’t get it. I am a runner and a Lotus Developer. I follow lots of runners and lots of Lotus people. I started with a few Lotus people, then saw who they were following. I clicked on profiles and if I liked what someone was saying, then I followed them. Over time, if someone didn’t tweet a lot, or just wasn’t interesting me, I unfollowed them.

Don’t follow too many people. If you’re just starting and you follow 500 people, you’re head will explode. There are services out there for bulk following, but I don’t recommend that unless you’re going to market a product, or have recently quit your job and have nothing better to do than keep up with Twitter. There are a couple of services that recommend people to follow, like Mr. Tweet, and I think those can be useful.

Learn the lingo. Learn how Twitter works. This is a very basic video showing how to get started. You need to understand “replies”, “mentions”, “DMs” and some other lingo and how it works. Google is your friend.

Get a good client. The web interface just isn’t that great. It’s simple and workable, but a lot of the complaints that people have with Twitter are easily handled in a good client. I like Tweetdeck for my desktop (I have a PC, I hear loads of people like Tweetie for Mac) and Ubertwitter for my Blackberry.

Now to address some complaints (chiefly the ones from Rob’s linked post in my last entry, but they are common, so I’m addressing them):

No unread marks – The answer to this is to get a good client that maintains unread marks for you. I personally, am not bothered by this, but I see how one could be.

People say inane things – Really? I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but that isn’t limited to Twitter. And seriously, if the “I’ve just gone the bathroom” example tweet is used one more time, I’m going to have to tweet that “I’m throwing up”. I have NEVER seen tweets about *that*. Yes, there are inane tweets, but there are inane Facebook status updates and inane emails and inane blog posts and inane posterous posts and …

Disjointed conversations – I’m sticking with the cocktail party analogy. That’s actually what I like about it, incidentally, if someone is boring me, I just don’t follow that conversation, and can easily jump in (butt in) to another one.

And now in all fairness, I present to you 25 Ways To Be A Total Tool on Twitter (and YES, I have done some of these)...

Posted by Kathy Brown At 10:20 AM Location Portsmouth, NH | Permalink | Comments (1)