About Me...

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I'm Kathy Brown and I've been an application developer in Lotus Notes/Domino since 2005.

Prior to working in IT, I've had numerous careers including an Investment Analyst and even an Actress (long ago and far away).

And I (try to) love running!

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kathy (at) runningnotes (dot) net

On Twitter, kjbrown13

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Disclaimer

This is my personal blog. None of the opinions shown here represent those of my employer. In fact, forget I even have an employer. Any examples given here are strictly fictional and hypothetical and it is pure coincidence if they in any way seem like anything in real life.

06/20/2010

Marathon Training Starts Tomorrow

Category Running
Well, that snuck up on me. Tomorrow is the beginning of my marathon training. (HOLY COW!)

I looked at a couple of programs and settled on one from The Runner's Handbook. (Incidentally, a book I highly recommend for runners. Affiliate link below.) For the first half marathon I ever ran, I trained with a group. For the second and third, I used Hal Higdon's plans. For whatever reason, this plan just looked more appealing to me. The mid-week runs don't quite get as high, but with the same mileage. It looks like I could keep the daily streak going as well just by running one mile on the "rest" days.

It looks like I'll hit my first new mileage day (15 miles) at the end of July, probably while traveling to IamLUG, so that should be interesting.

This week should be "easy", one- and three-mile runs, with a six-miler on the weekend. Part of me thinks, "wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" and part of me thinks "what the F*ck have I done?".

06/16/2010

Interesting Bing Feature

Category Bing Lotus Notes
I saw an article (I already forgot where) that showed some "cool" features in Bing. (Side note, I really hate the name Bing, I hate saying Bing, it irritates me, but I digress.). Anyway, in Bing you can put in whatever search term you like and follow it with "contains:[file extension]". For example, "New Hampshire contains: .nsf" and all results will contain "New Hampshire" and an NSF file extension.

Very cool way to see a lot of sites using Lotus Notes.

Now of course, many of the results will just be links to OTHER sites that are using Lotus, but still I thought it was very interesting.

06/10/2010

Lotus Notes Developer Tips at IamLUG

Category Development IamLUG
Most of the sessions are up on the IamLUG site here. As you can see, Tom "Duffbert" Duff and I will be speaking together once again.

Developer Tips EVERY Dev Should Know

Ever wish you had a list of all the top mistakes to avoid when developing for Domino? What about all the tips you need to know to create successful applications? Join Tom and Kathy as they show what EVERY Domino developer needs to know. They’ll explain what you need to know and why you need to know it. They’ll also share how they learned some of these tips the hard way, so you don’t have to!

This is a "repeat" of our session from Lotusphere, but we've changed it up a bit and added new jokes. If you're following our @NotesDevTips account, you'll no doubt see some familiar tips. But the best part is we'll cover more than can be conveyed in 140 characters!

As you can see here, I had a blast last year at IamLUG. It was great fun and I learned a lot. And did I mention that the conference is FREE?!

Hope to see you there!

06/07/2010

Anyone Using the LotusScript Symphony Toolkit?

Category LotusScript Symphony
In this month's Lotus Developer Tips Newsletter, I wrote about using the Lotus Symphony Toolkit extract data from Lotus Notes to Symphony (Spreadsheets in Part I) via LotusScript.

I've been working a lot lately with the toolkit and just started wondering who else (if anyone) is using this?

Why or why not?

Thanks for your input!

06/04/2010

A Fix to My Crazy Domino Problem

Category Lotus Notes Domino Designer
Behold the power of community.

Yesterday, I blogged about a crazy Domino Designer problem I was having. Many of you commented with suggestions or ideas. One of those suggestions including shutting off the Eclipse LotusScript editor. Guess what? That worked! That isn't the fix, however, or the end of the story.

Last night on Twitter, I happened to see a tweet from Mary Beth Raven from someone having a problem with LotusScript. The problem was suspiciously like mine. Mary Beth had suggested the user ask Maureen Leland. I pinged Maureen and told her that my problem sounded eerily the same. She took a look and discovered the item "$AssistAction_error" had been added to my wonky agent. Using Noteman, I was easily able to remove the item and all was well with my agent!

This still begs the question of HOW or WHY the item was appended, when there was no error. HOWEVER, I at least have a fix and understand why the code wasn't displaying correctly.

06/03/2010

Please Help Me With A Crazy Domino Problem

Category Lotus Notes Domino Designer
I am using Domino Designer, Release 8.5.1 Revision 20090929.1223 (Release 8.5.1) installed in Windows 7 on my laptop. Over the weekend, I updated a LotusScript agent in an application template, located on the server.

On Tuesday, I went into the office and using the same version of Designer, on my Windows XP desktop. Accessing the same application template on the same server, I open the same agent...and the code is old. Basically, while working over the weekend, I had made several changes and saved frequently. The code being shown on my LAPTOP is correct and the latest version. The code shown on my DESKTOP is from an earlier save, and has errors.

To add oddity to this problem, when the code is run, it is the correct and final code. No matter which machine it is run on. When the code is viewed in the debugger it is the correct and final code. When the code is exported to DXL it is the correct and final code. ONLY when viewed in Designer (which is, you know, kind of fricking important) is the code the old code.

Here is what I have tried to figure out the problem:

Different versions of application? Nope, checked several times to be sure the server is the same, the application is the same, everything is the same.
Different users? Nope, tried accessing with different users on different machines, and the same user on different machines. The code is only correct on my laptop.
Local replica? Nope, checked sever times to be sure it's the server version. In fact, no local replica existed until I tried that as a means for fixing this.
Make a local replica, check it, and replicate to the server? Tried it, didn't work. Looks good on the laptop, wrong on other workstations.
Export the agent to DXL, compare and import? Exported, they were identical. Imported ANYWAY, still shows incorrectly on workstation.
Different version of Designer? Nope. I am in the 8.5.2 beta, and it didn't work there either.
The different OS? Nope, installed on another Windows 7 machine, still no love.
Reinstall? Nope. Uninstalled, completely cleaned the machine, reinstalled. No good.

Now, something that may or may not be related. On the workstation, I frequently get the following error:

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I did a quick search on google and found that some people had that error and found their LotusScript agents weren't always compiling. That sounded PERFECT! Except, their resolution didn't work for me. Their suggestion involved getting rid of antivirus software. Which I tried, and still no love. In fact, I uninstalled the antivirus software, uninstalled Notes, reinstalled Notes and tried again.

Anyway, seeing that the error involved Java, I made some comparisons there. Hmmm, laptop on Java 6, update 16. So put other machines on same version. Still not working.

So, anyone? Any thoughts? Suggestions? At this point, I am ready to sacrifice chickens or something, if it will work.

Modified to add all the things I tried and already forgot that I tried:

Removed the app from desktop and bookmarks
Deleted cache.ndk
Deleted the workspace
Fixup Updall Compact on the app
New Copy of the template
Copied just the agent into a new blank application

Nada zip nothing. Still broken. Fun, right?