March 28, 2006
Movin' Out (No, not the Strattons)
Posted by Don McNally in
Guest Bloggers
First off, I have to say THANKS! to Jess for letting me blog here for a while. I've decided to strike out on my own and see if anyone follows along. My new blog is at dmcnally.blogspot.com. I hope you'll come and check it out - and leave me comments!
March 20, 2006
Acrylic nails - do they come with instructions?
Posted by Jess in
Geek Humor
Spending so much time with computers, games, dogs, cars, and other non-frilly things leaves me with a girly side that's nothing short of, well - inept at best.
A girlfriend of mine convinced me to get acrylic nails before Lotusphere, with the argument that they'd look great, and I'd feel great. She was right, of course, but boy did I realize I'm waaaay behind the times in terms of "fanshy girly technology".
Wine lists I can handle. I can blindy stumble through a sushi menu, and stutter "hamachi, please." I can even close my eyes and wildly point at the oil change list and still manage to come out OK.
I could have never made it through this list of nail options without my friend there at the time.
Gel, acrylic, tips, fills, french, pink and white, UV gel, polish changes, repairs, ahhh!
As it turns out, my friend told them I needed a "full set". Which, by the way, was not even listed ON the menu. Apparently, most women just know these things.
Anyway, I entered the salon with cuticles the size of small pebbles, and walked out with no less than ten new little daggers on the ends of my fingers. They looked great. And I did feel great. But, not having to stare at my cuticles anymore left me all sorts of time to do some thinking. These things are weapons! Wolverine's innards have nothing on these tips.
It baffles the mind. People aren't allowed on planes with toothpicks, yet I was allowed on with my ten indestructible scythes of doom.
Here's the real tricky part about these nails. Every two weeks or so, you have to go back to get them worked on. I called my friend back.
"What do I ask for when I go in? I can't just call and say 'hello, I'd like some routine maintenance done on my nails'...'can I have the 3,000 tap polish change?'"
When she finally stopped laughing at me, she informed me that I needed a 'fill'.
As it turns out, I didn't need to ask for anything. I went in, and showed them my hands. They knew what to do. And now I know for next time.
We all have to start learning somewhere, I suppose. Now, moving onto learning more about my car. If you asked me what a "limited slip differential" was before owning Eloise, I'd have said it was why they never have anything in my size in stock at Victoria's Secret.
March 17, 2006
SnTT: Homegrown Application Change Documentation
Posted by Don McNally in
Guest Bloggers
Don here once more. Change control in your application development has become increasingly important over the last couple of years. How good is your system for documenting changes? There are products out there to help manage the process and keep track of which design elements have changed but you can develop a basic system on your own.
In the Lotus Sandbox at developerWorks: Lotus (LDD/Notes.net) you can find the DatabaseDesign class. We used this class as the basis for developing code that compares design elements in two databases to identify differences. The databases can be two replicas of the same database (for example one local and one on the server) or two copies of a database (for example one development and one production). Within the same application, we also used the class to create lists of design items to populate drop down lists in a dialog box; that lets users create their own list of changed design items by choosing from lists.
Unfortunately, at this time I am not able to show you the code we developed, but I thought it was worthwhile to point out that the class is out there (thanks Damien Katz and Andre Guirard) and that it can be helpful in developing a change recording system. Contact me if you run into problems developing your change recorder.
March 09, 2006
Show-n-Tell Thursday: Sametime Success
Posted by Don McNally in
Guest Bloggers
Don here again. This is a story from a while ago but it seemed worthwhile to share as a success. About four years ago, we decided to evaluate Sametime in our environment. We installed the server and rolled out the Connect client to a few people. We also made the web conferencing components available to a larger group of people to test that feature.
When we did our post-trial analysis, we found that we had pretty much paid for the software during the trial. One group of people used it for an online meeting instead of paying for another vendor's "rented" option. Our team used it to install a piece of software on 15 user machines, saving trips to desktops (including some in remote offices) or time on the phone walking people through the procedures. I know: who visits desktops to install software? But this was four years ago before automated software distribution was implemented in our environment.
To this day, it receives fairly heavy use for scheduled and instant meetings. My team uses it nearly every day to demo applications that are in development, to resolve problems on user machines or provide training at application rollout. We have also been slowly incorporating presence awareness into our applications.
The reach of the product is relatively small within our organization, but the investment continues to pay for itself.
He had me at "co-editor"...
Posted by Jess in
Announcements
The March issue of LotusUserGroup.org's Developer Tips newsletter is out, and I am now the proud co-editor along with Tom Duff.
Tom and Libby had asked me about it during Lotusphere, and I am honored to join them.
If there are any developer topics you'd like to hear, please drop me a line.
There must be a lot of Princess Bride fans out there, which is *always* a good thing. I've gotten a few emails since it's been out, and they've all said the same thing - "loved the PB quote!"
March 04, 2006
The Mummy - or not.
Posted by Jess in
Geek Humor
Matt's playing World of Warcraft in the background, and the music fades into that sort of adventuring, something-really-exciting-is-waiting-to-be-discovered music. The drums start, slowly, and build up…
The light changes when the sun starts going down, showing that thin layer of dust in the air, and I start to begin to feel like Indiana Jones. The light shines through like it's being reflected off a light source elsewhere.
I picture a complex mirror system underground in order to focus on where the light is hitting.
The music reaches crescendo, and then – I see it.
The three-year ancient layer of crud on my cabinets now that the light is hitting it just right.
Sigh. Ancient indeed.
March 02, 2006
Show-n-Tell Thursday
Posted by Don McNally in
Guest Bloggers
OK, to avoid confusion, let me start by saying this is NOT Jess - it's Don. ;)
Last week, I showed a way to show responses in a view but open the parent of the response when a document was double-clicked. This week, I have another view tip. Form formulas allow you to open documents from a view using a form other than the one defined on the document. What I will show you is a way to provide users a choice of two forms to display documents and the means to set which form they want to use when they open the view.
Why would you use this? We have an application in which we want to display the fields from a document in a "report" format that can be printed for easier reading or in "data entry" format for user entry. This method allows us to use one view to perform both functions. In our case, the documents that appear in the view that uses this code are main documents and the "report" format form also contains LotusScript code to get field values from specific response documents to include in the report.
For simplicity, this assumes that all the documents in the view use the same form but it wouldn't be too hard to extend the code to handle more than one form. To give the users a way to determine the form they prefer, create an action button in the view with this code:
curr:=@GetProfileField("UserProfile";"DisplayFormat";@UserName);
@If(curr="Summ";
@If(@Prompt([YesNo];"Change Format";"You are currently opening these documents in the Summary Report format. Open documents with the document's form?")=1;
@SetProfileField("UserProfile";"DisplayFormat";"";@UserName);@Return(""));
@If(@Prompt([YesNo];"Change Format";"You are currently opening these documents with the document's form. Open documents in Summary Report format?")=1;
@SetProfileField("UserProfile";"DisplayFormat";"Summ";@UserName);@Return("")))
The Form Formula for the view is then:
@If(@IsNewDoc;Form;
@GetProfileField("UserProfile";"DisplayFormat";@UserName)="Summ";"ReportFormat";
Form)
Nothing to it!
