JoeLitton.net

Gmail outage: not universal problem, down 12 hrs so far (Tue 30 June 2009)

Joe Litton — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:12:36 -0400

For about the past 12 hours (so far) Gmail has been unavailable for me. I suspect the server that houses my mail is down ...badly, horribly down. If you click the thumbnail image to the left, you'll see a screen shot of the error. The symptoms are that I attempt to sign on, and after several minutes (I timed it at about 3.5 minutes) an error screen finally displays. I've tested this at work during the day and at home this evening. I've tested using Windows, Mac, and Linux machines, using various versions of IE and Firefox. And I've tried accessing Gmail from my BlackBerry. I can log on to iGoogle, but not to Gmail. My wife's account is fine.

The error that displays is: Temporary Error (500), Numeric Code 93. From what I've found searching the net, this is an issue that has hit others at various times, and appears to affect just those unlucky enough to have their mail on an affected server.

So... for now I have no personal email. Others hit with this issue in the past have written of Gmail being inaccessible for anywhere from a few hours to several days. Well it's been 12 hours for me so far; hopefully things will be working by tomorrow. And I will definitely configure Evolution on my home machine (Ubuntu OS) once I can get to my Gmail settings to enable POP.

This also makes me painfully aware of the issues that may present themselves to those who dive headfirst into cloud computing. Gmail is free, so I can't really complain too much; it's been great for me for years -- until today. But I would very seriously consider how to mitigate the risks before I would run a business based on applications in the cloud!

Dell Mini 9 - LOVING this little Ubuntu netbook

Joe Litton — Tue, 3 Mar 2009 20:50:37 -0400

I've posted a few pics on Flickr ...showing mainly the quick 6 setup screens. Notes 8.5 screams on this little guy. I don't know if it's the 2GB of RAM or the solid state drive, but it's definitely the fastest I've seen Notes 8.5 run. Really the only thing I don't like (and this does really bother me) is that the apostrophe key is down on the bottom row ...2nd key to the right of the spacebar. OK, they just weren't trying on that placement. C'mon! ...I have no idea HOW many times in the past week I've been typing and have hit the Enter key instead of the apostrophe.

Since I'm a little guy with little-girl-size fingers, the keyboard feels just fine to me. And no problem at ALL for the apps. Of course, I've been playing with Ubuntu for a while. But NOW, this IS my main home machine. And I'm totally digging it :)

Joining the Netbook camp

Joe Litton — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 13:22:01 -0400

I've ordered a Dell Mini 9

Back in early October of 2005, I ordered my current laptop, a Toshiba A75-S213 (P4 3.33GHz, 1GB RAM, 100 GB HD, Windows XP Pro, 15.4" display, weight: 7.9 pounds, battery life: 1 hr if lucky). And I purchased a 3 year warranty. The extended warranty expired 4 months ago, so the laptop is starting to die. Since I have a laptop from work, and I've got a desktop machine that I'm rehabilitating, I decided to get a machine that would meet my needs when travelling (not really all that much travel), and more importantly allow me to sit in the family room or outside with Shirley as we each geek away ...without the blasted machine dying on me due to its poor battery life or its advanced age.

So I decided to research netbooks - the drastically shrunken laptops that have become the rage. Among my requirements: it had to be lightweight, quick to startup, silent, and I did not want to pay for MS Windows, since the machine was going to run Ubuntu. Microsoft prevents a netbook Windows system from using more than 1GB of RAM, so I ideally wanted a system that came preinstalled with Ubuntu and that would allow me to have more RAM. The Dell Mini gets great reviews and meets all of my requirements. I was hoping to spend less than I did - especially since the base price of the Mini is US$259. After popping on a 64GB solid state hard drive (US$150), portable CD/DVD (US$80), bumping the stock 512MB of RAM up to 2GB (US$75), springing for a 1.3M pixel webcam (US$25), and electing to purchase a 2 year extended warranty (US$39) ...with tax and shipping the grand total came in at US$620 (for those doing the math, a program through my employer gave me a small discount, so the $620 total is less than what it would have been otherwise). Given that I paid US$1415 for the Toshiba over 3 years ago, the $620 is OK!

The weirdest thing will probably be getting used to the difference in size, weight, and noise. The pic here shows my current Toshiba monster of a laptop. The paper on top of it is the size of the Dell Mini :) ...quite a difference. The mini, of course has a much smaller screen, but since I don't plan to do a lot of development on there (I will do some), that will be fine. The mini is over 5.5 pounds lighter than the Toshiba, and it's battery should last about 4 hours, vs the 1 hour I get out of the Toshiba (when the Toshiba doesn't die even WITH remaining battery power).

I thought about this quite a while and read a fair amount before deciding to go for it. It should arrive in a couple of weeks. This will be interesting :)

Verizon BlackBerry Storm after 1 month: grade: B

Joe Litton — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:01:54 -0400

I've now had the Storm for a bit over one month. My prior BlackBerry was a Curve. Overall, I give the new Storm a 'B' grade...and I think it will be an 'A' after another OS upgrade or two.

There's a definite learning curve, but it only took me about an hour to be accustomed to a touch screen. Helping Shirley configure the Curve (she opted to replace her Pearl with my now-discarded Curve), I found myself already trying to select items on the screen using my finger. The real learning was in getting used to the typing on the faux keyboard. There are postings on a few web sites suggesting Option settings to tune the typing. For me, these settings work best:

Select Options > Screen/Keyboard, scroll down to the Touchscreen section, and set Tap Interval = 600, Hover Period = 700, Swipe Sensitivity = (High) 6. Experimentation is the key here. The other thing that improved the feel of the keyboard tremendously, was to pop off the battery cover, trim 2 business cards to the size of the battery, and place the trimmed card stock on top of the battery (between the battery and the cover). This suggestion is posted on CrackBerry. As with the Option settings, one should definitely experiment.

OK, so here's what I like:

It's a BlackBerry. My Notes mail and calendar from work synch effortlessly and wirelessly as long as I have a BlackBerry
Beautiful large display. This is far and away the reason why I prefer this device
The touch screen is easy to use for navigation
Tight integration with other apps like Facebook, Flickr, YouTube
Great phone coverage from Verizon
Notes mail on the Storm displays with colors, renders tables, etc.
I can open (or God forbid, edit) Excel, Word, and Powerpoint files
The camera is 3.2 megapixel, so it takes some decent pics
Did I mention the incredible display?

And a few things I don't like:

From time to time it will just reboot..sort of like a BSOD, but at least it restarts itself. Happens a couple of times a week.
Had to buy a new BlueTooth headset (Motorola H710 works nicely)
The camera. What the heck?!?! A glacier will pass by and melt in the time it takes to snap a single pic. It literally takes several seconds for a picture to snap.

There's a software upgrade coming in a few weeks (RIM releases it, then Verizon tests it for a bit before releasing) that should improve some issues. So overall, I really like this device. Those few little irritants that I listed are what keep me from giving it an 'A', but I will be keeping this BlackBerry.

Best part of Lotusphere: sharing intense learning with fellow curious colleagues

Joe Litton — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0400

It struck me this evening that the best part of Lotusphere is the combination of taking in SO much information - learning such an incredible amount - and sharing that experience with so many other curious people.

We're geeks in order to earn a living, yes, but also in large part because there is so much joy to be found in exploring and learning. It is the nature of the human existence to constantly seek for more and more. Whether that 'more' is knowledge or money or love or anything else, we are not happy if nothing ever changes. We crave growth (as much as we may sometimes fear change). Lotusphere offers an intense opportunity to learn from the research of many brilliant colleagues - and to share this wonderful week with others who also yearn to constantly expand their knowledge.

I was thinking earlier about going back to the office tomorrow. At our regular jobs, few of us have the opportunity to be researching and diving deep into new realms every single day. We may not be mired in a world of TPS reports, a la Office Space, but we do all nonetheless have a certain degree of routine to our normal work days. That routine is pleasantly disrupted by the frenzy that is Lotusphere, and joyously shared with a few thousand close friends. And I am already missing it and looking forward to Lotusphere 2010.

My Dinner with Arne: Best side effect of Lotusphere is new friends

Joe Litton — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 12:29:18 -0400

Last night it was my very great pleasure to be able to spend the evening dining and chatting with Arne Nielsen (note: Arne's blog is written in Norwegian. I use the Unofficial Google Translate Firefox extension to translate to English). The manner by which this evening came to pass is a serendipitous chain of events that started some years ago...

I began blogging 6 years ago (early 2003). Fairly quickly I met (virtually) a number of other bloggers from the Notes community and from elsewhere (I have this technical blog, and several public and private non-technical blogs). Among the early bloggers was Trond-Are Utle from Symfoni Software in Norway. Several years ago, Trond began inviting several other bloggers and me to the annual Symfoni Collaboration Dinner at Lotusphere. At last year's dinner, I met Arne, whose blog I'd been following (as best I could with the translation software) for some time. At this year's dinner, Arne and I (and John Vaughan and several wonderful folks from Norway) were seated at the same table chatting for a couple of hours.

When I returned from Lotusphere Thursday evening, I wanted to continue the networking that Lotusphere fosters, and scanned my email address book, sending invitations to connect on LinkedIn to a number of folks. Arne accepted the invite, and I noticed in his note that he was in the Tampa Bay area for a day before heading back to Norway today (Saturday). So I emailed Arne asking if by chance he was free for dinner and would care to join Shirley and I at The Hurricane - one of our favorite local destinations. Arne emailed back, we chatted a bit on Skype, and the plans were set.

And thus it came to pass that my wife and I were delighted to be able to dine and visit with Arne, spending an absolutely wonderful evening getting to know each other. Thank you Arne. And be forewarned: we are making plans to come and visit!

Busy first day at Lotusphere2009

Joe Litton — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:33:19 -0400

Got up at what felt way too early...which is odd since I usually get up around 5:15-5:30am, so 6:30 or so should have felt like sleeping in. Oh well. Grabbed some coffee and arrive fashionably late to Scott Good's JMP201 (AJAX & JSON). Main note to self from this session is that I *need* to play with JQuery - looks to be a HUGE time-saver when coding ajax calls and then use of JSON will save a bunch of time for parsing data. Much simpler than parsing XML!

Next up was JMP203 - Getting to Know XPages and Designer. Maureen Leland and Maire Kehoe went through creating XPages apps...covered pretty much everything you need to know to get started. I recognized Maire's voice as the voice I'd heard on some of the instructional videos on the Domino Designer Wiki. I need to download the session slides, 'cause there was a couple of tips re properties or techniques I'd not encountered to date whilst playing with XPages.

Grabbed some lunch - ran into Duffbert in the chow hall - snagged fresh coffee, and next up was SHOW105 - Dojo Widgets. Lance Spellman presented this session focused on the Dojomino toolkit that his company has provided. This is yet more web 2.0 goodness provided to the Domino community. It was a great session, but I have to admit that even with the coffee I had to keep shifting position and chewing gum to stay focused...I swear they ground up sleeping pills in the lunch salad dressing. This is another session for which I took some notes and mainly made a note to get the session slides and to download the toolkit ...and to hit the session later in the week when Lance and Jack Ratcliff square off with Dojomino vs ext.nd.

I'd planned to hit another Show-n-Tell session at 4pm, but decided it was WAY too early in the week to start being fatigued. So I popped back up to the room (gotta love staying on property) and snagged a nap. Then on down for TURT101 presented by, of course, The Turtle - how many folks get their own track! - at 6:15pm. This was a nice entertaining break from some of the earlier heavy-duty sessions. And then on to the opening reception 'Beach Party'. Tried to locate a colleague, but we missed each other's texts and calls. DID have some great conversation with Duffbert, Curt Stone, Julian Robichaux (and his very forgiving wife, Candace), Dan Sickles, and Nathan Freeman. Best quote of the night - from Nathan - "I am better at you than this". I don't think he intended the words to come out in that order, but it was far more entertaining this way. Saw Lars Olufsen wearing a tie! He said his mom tells him that he cleans up nice :)

Curt and I popped over to the big screen TV that was set up outside for the Steelers-Ravens game, and ran into Rocky Oliver (now with Teamstudio), and I was able to chat a bit with Trond-Are Utle from Symfoni.

The sessions are a wealth of information, but I must say, it's at least as valuable to be able to again visit with so many colleagues from the global Domino community. And with that ...time to rest up for another busy day!

Lotus Notes Admin contract in Pittsburgh PA

Joe Litton — Fri, 9 Jan 2009 13:57:26 -0400

If you're a Notes admin looking for a gig in PA, this was just emailed to me (I'm not looking for work!)

Lotus Notes Admin
Pittsburgh, PA
11-12 months+ contract

The job holder supports the Corporate Lotus/Notes Domino server environment running UNIX/AIX. Supports all product upgrades and patches to all servers and supports the Corporate Email and application infrastructure including Internet mail. Also upgrades servers, software, and maintains backup and recovery procedures, monitors servers for hardware break-fix and coordinates problems with centralized help desk, optimizes server and application performance, and capacity planning analysis on hardware and storage system. Involved in all phases of implementation and performs software installations and documents system software.

Minimum 3 to 5 years experience supporting Lotus Notes/Domino server environments required along with experience in advanced trouble shooting of Notes/Domino server environments. Job holder must have thorough knowledge of the companys technology practices, standards and procedures and implementing heterogeneous, open systems. Must have prior experience with producing detail-level functional requirement documentation and selecting the optimal testing environment for specific applications. Must also have a solid understanding and support of large DNS and DHCP networks. Job holder must be familiar with designing and executing major software installations.

Must be experienced at addressing a variety of technical (hardware, software or application) problems. Must also be customer-service oriented, able to build cooperative relationships with people and have effective oral and written communication skills. Job holder must be an experienced problem solver who thinks creatively about solutions and adapts easily to changing priorities. B.S. or B.A. or equivalent work experience required; advanced degree or certification beneficial. Knowledge of collaboration tools (instant messaging) preferred.

Dirk Carney
Lead Technical Recruiter
Software Specialists, Inc.
724 933 6100 x 1102
724 933 6106 (F)
dcarney@softwarespecialists.com

Notes 8.5 installed/running on Ubuntu 8.04

Joe Litton — Wed, 7 Jan 2009 20:36:20 -0400

The gold release of Notes 8.5 is running smoothly on my Ubuntu 8.04 laptop.

Yesterday I downloaded C1W0TEN.tar from the Lotus site. To make things easier on myself, I renamed the file 'Notes 8.5 for Linux.tar'. Earlier today, I double-clicked on the downloaded file to open the archive manager. I then right-clicked on the .deb file for the Notes install, and selected 'Open With' and then 'GDebi Package Installer'. That was it. I let it install right over the beta. I also installed the other packages (CAE for Composite Apps, etc) and then opened the Notes client when the installs were done. Everything runs great, as is evidenced by this post - from a Notes app running in 8.5 on Ubuntu.

Nice work, IBM, this really could not have been easier.

Ytria actionBarEZ: more time savings...

Joe Litton — Wed, 7 Jan 2009 20:28:23 -0400

Yesterday I needed to add a shared action to each of about 10 views in a Notes application. Unsure of whether Ytria actionBarEZ could help with this, I opened the tool and was pleased to discover that all I had to do was select the target views, and then drag the needed shared action to each of the views. What a time-saver!