Out of the Pink...

This month is of course breast cancer awareness month. Pink has been everywhere... Profile pictures, ribbons, etc. I have mixed emotions about this in the best of times - breast cancer is just one of many cancers, and I am uncomfortable with its more than equal airtime. Taking actions like changing the color of a profile picture, or posting a status "against" a particular cancer (is anyone for it?) just really doesn't make sense to me. I feel the same way about my "own" cancer - the one I survived (merkel cell carcinoma) - so I don't think it's a case of my picking "favorites."

The counter argument is of course the benefit of raising "awareness." For the past 32 days, I have been very aware, and the last thing I have wanted or needed to see is more pink and additional reminders. I have been through a scare; I found a red flag symptom at the end of September. I had a series of all the standard tests - none of which isolated the cause, or even indicated a problem. I've been on a roller coaster of fear/relief/fear/relief... Each time a test showed no problem, I thought I was in the clear, only to learn there was yet one more step to take.

This past Monday, I had a same day surgery that finally brought this cycle of fear to an end. I got the biopsy results a few hours ago - completely and totally benign. In contrast to the day I was diagnosed with MCC, which had a Shakespearean thunderstorm in December, today has a bright blue sky and peak autumn leaves. I have my life back again, except...

I need to remember how totally lucky and special each day is. Scares like this bring that home, but it is so easy to forget when things get back to "normal." Awareness... But for me, the awareness I need is not of all the bad things that might happen, but of all the good that happens every day.

That problems view...

I recently heard from a user who said that it wasn't possible to filter the contents of the problems view, and realized that others may also not realize that this is configurable. If you click on the little arrow that is on the far right on the problems view's title bar, you get a drop down menu. If you choose "Configure contents" a dialog is shown, pictured below.


If you check off one or both of errors and warnings, and then for the Scope setting, choose "On any element in same project," the problems view will only show the errors and/or warnings that apply to the selected project. This is just standard Eclipse function, but is built right in to Domino Designer.

And of course another way to filter the errors out would be to just fix them :-)

the firsts become lasts

Yesterday morning, as I have most mornings over the past 24 years, I woke a child up for school. Counting day care years, this has been my morning routine for 27 years. And I realized that it was the last time I'd do so... Our youngest had his last final in high school yesterday, and all that remains are things like graduation rehearsals (later in the day) and senior banquets, and of course, graduation.

He'll be off to college in the fall, and will have to depend on his alarm clock instead of mom. And I will have to rely on his alarm clock, too, to provide the safety net I've been for years...

But I recognize the punctuation mark here. I started having kids pretty young, so it's hard to remember when getting myself up in the morning was the sum of my morning responsibility. I'm returning to that state - a freedom long forgotten, one I wasn't even cogniscient of when last I had it! I can't say I'll miss the not-always-welcome receptions I got waking them up in the morning, but I don't yet know how it feels not to be needed.

home is where the memories are

I'm headed home to Buffalo for the weekend in a couple of weeks, and started thinking about what I wanted to revisit (besides my mom!) and what I wanted to reconnect with in my home town.

There are a certain set of foods for which Buffalo is famous: Ted's Hot Dogs and Anderson's Roast Beef on Kummelweck, and of course I will be headed back to Boston with some Weber's horseradish mustard. But then I remembered a very special pub... One that my first boyfriend would bring me to, with old graffiti-covered wooden booths (I believe our initials are on them!), and delicious frozen drinks with "no filthy dairy products" in them (I don't know what WAS in them, that was a secret, but they were really special!) Last time I was there was probably well over 20 years ago, but the same bartender with the gravelly voice was there, with the same banter about "straw to the bottom of the glass" and the disparaging remarks about dairy products. I really wanted to go back... So I was very sad to discover in a google search that the Rendezvous is no more... And actually that the Rendezvous that I remember has been gone for a very long time.

So I'm headed "home" again soon, but the Buffalo I see will not be the Buffalo that exists today, but rather the one seen by the girl who sipped magical drinks with a boy, holding hands across a wooden booth.

Ireland's Bard

I am so sad to hear of Liam Clancy's passing. He was an amazing musician and a kind man.

Back when music was played on stereos that were French Provincial furniture with embedded record players, my father discovered the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem's music. We had all their albums, and it was pretty much all I listened to in grammar school. When I was nine-ish, they played Kleinhan's Music Hall in Buffalo. Somehow, it was arranged that I was to meet the band (how is lost in the fuzzies of childhood). But Liam is the only one who came out to shake a little girl's hand, a hand that wasn't washed for days.

Their music connected me to my identity, my heritage. (And really annoyed my violin teacher when all I wanted to play was Rising of the Moon instead of the assigned etudes.)

The nine year old grew from the girl who wanted to marry Liam Clancy when she grew up to someone who still loves their music. My iPod plays his music today; he lives on in the music he loved and gave the world.

Goodnight sweet bard. Sing a tune tonight with my dad, please (if you can get him to sing, otherwise, just let him listen).

when in Designer...

when editing a composite application design element....

Should the Comp App Editor (if installed) or the XML editor open by default when you go to edit the application design note?

Leaning towards Comp App Editor here, but wondering what others thought!

Thanks in advance :-)

sometimes you second guess yourself...

In Designer 8.5, we thought long and hard about whether or not to allow preview of custom controls. In many cases, it "just works" fine. But then we got a serious case of the "what ifs" - what if the custom control takes parameters, should we just preview without the parameters, or do we have to build a framework for sending parameters on preview (and there was no time to fit that part in)??? We don't preview subforms, and that really isn't possible, so symmetry would also say custom controls should not preview. So not previewing them won (at least so far...)

So now looking ahead, I find myself rethinking that... We've had some recent feedback that not being able to preview them is a problem. It's not a huge code change to allow it (unless we start asking for parameters). Should we allow preview of custom controls? Should we just warn if the control has parameters and allow the user to continue or cancel the preview (that's my current leaning!) Sanity check, please!

long train running

Blueberry (my 1994 camry wagon) hit a milestone today. I wasn't behind the wheel, my son was, but he knew I needed to share the occasion....

She's going strong, and I can't wait til the kids are ready to hand her back to mom :-)

I think I need to read this at least once a week...

thank you ClumberKim for the link. This is just an amazing post on and for mothers!

is it just me?

I hate videos. OK, I guess that was rather general, maybe I should be more specific. It seems many sites are using video for news, product pushes, etc. If I'm on cnn.com, if there's something there that I would normally click on, but I see it's a video, I just don't. I want my news faster than that - I want to just READ it! Maybe it's a left/right brain thing, or maybe I'm just odd, but just because we have the bandwidth for video doesn't mean it is necessarily the best medium for the audience or the message.

My vent for the day :-)

Wendy-Woo: 1/27/2001-6/10/2009

The euphemism would say she is no longer with us, yet she will always be with us. Wendy, aka Weaverwood's Winsome Wendy went to the Rainbow Bridge around noon today. I held her as she took her final breaths and her spirit was set free. She didn't have the longest life - she was only eight and a half - but she was clearly dying, and we had tried all reasonable medications to help her.

Her four field spaniel friends surround me, and I think they miss her, too. I will remember her swimming in Sengekontacket Pond, pulling us on the leash the entire way there because she loved it so much. And I will always hear the echoes of the WOO she would always greet me with when I arrived home. And how the sound of a whipped cream can could get her to the kitchen in record time.

Thank you, Wendy, for eight years of love and fun. Wait for us by the bridge, it won't be heaven without you.

best of times, worst of times

So I've been quiet for a while. In many ways, the time since Lotusphere has been very nice. We spent a week in Germany for Entwicklercamp, giving some talks and touring Heidelberg, Trier, Strasbourg, and the Black Forest. Lots of good feedback from the Notes developers there (I was told Entwickler is developer in German!) and a very nice and well run conference.

Next week I'm off to Prague for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and then I'll be home for a bit...

In the meantime lots of work on Designer 8.5.1, which is progressing. With the LotusScript and Java editors under control, I've been focusing on core usability issues (UI *is* my favorite thing!) and searching for the most important things for us to improve *first*. Working sets are on that list, as is improving the creating a new XPage experience. Plus some smaller things that don't feel so small when you run into them (like disambiguating the Remove Database from Navigator function from actually deleting the database!)

So lots of goodness going on, yet there's been some background stress with Steve job hunting. Though he is finding that in spite of all the news reports, there actually is a job market out there, with some interesting things going on. Change is certainly stressful, but sometimes it does bring good things, and I am looking forward til then.

And since I returned from Germany with a very nice viola bow that I found in a shop very serendipitously (there are those who believe there are no coincidences, and many times I agree with them!), I am taking some time to learn how to play my viola. And when I can play music, all is right with the world.

Year 10

When Bob was handing out Lotusphere buttons Saturday night, I started counting and... this is my tenth Lotusphere! There have been so many changes in those ten years - but Lotusphere is a thread that links it all together. Yesterday I co-presented an XPages Jumpstart with Maire Kehoe, for whom this is her first Lotusphere. Walking around she remarked that I seem to know everyone here... Now I don't really know everyone, but I do know enough faces and people to make this feel like a reunion. A Domino reunion.

So I'm now compulsively preparing for my next session (Domino Designer 8.5: A New Beginning) that is at 2:15 today. There's lots to show, and only 60 minutes, so I'm still tuning it. It's interesting to think of how much Designer has changed in the last ten years! And me with it. It feels in many ways like Designer and I have changed and grown together.

Back to prep for now, but after the session stress is done, I can focus on the reunion (and catch a replay of the OGS!)

a new track!

Earlier this year, I read a book that was recommended to me: Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing, by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher. The book was a bit dry (in my opinion), but the points it made were spot on. From the first page, my feelings and experiences were validated. I love what I do - I love to build things and make them work. But I have always felt more insecure/less confident than at least most of the men around me appear to (and maybe the key word is appear...). I *feel* like my lack of interest in dissecting my laptop makes me less serious an engineer. And I feel like my desires to read novels, knit, and other outside interests make me less serious an engineer. And of course I am a perfectly serious engineer, and even know it on other levels - but it's about how I feel inside. This book made me realize - it isn't just me!

I had dinner with Kristin Keene at DNUG when I was reading this book, and was talking to her about it and how I felt. And she had this eureka moment - and decided that we should have a Lotusphere session on this! And a BOF! So if you're going to Lotusphere, on Tuesday, from 11:15-12:15, in Swan Mockingbird, some of us will be participating in GEEK102 "Nerd Girl" Panel: Making Geek Chic! The BOF is on Wednesday, from 5:45 to 6:45 pm, in Swan Toucan 2. The experiences of women in computer science affect all of us - male and female - let's see what we can learn when we share our thoughts!

Christmas card musings....

I'm (finally) writing out some Christmas cards. And hitting a dilemma. I've always signed our cards with my name and Steve's, followed by those of all the kids. As I started out signing them that way this year, it occurred to me that the first three kids are quite solidly adults, living in their own apartments, and maybe it isn't right to include them on our Christmas card. After all, my mother no longer includes me on hers... Yet the youngest of the six still lives at home as he's still in high school, and the next older two live at home when not at college. It doesn't feel right to name three of six kids, and it doesn't feel right to name all six at this point, either. But I'm also not sure I'm ready to let them go... So, for this year anyway, all six will still be on the card...

New Domino blogger

George Langlais, who has worn many hats on the Domino programmability team, has started a blog - aptly named George's Blog. It should prove an interesting read, I encourage you to keep your eyes on it!

And I promise to get back to blogging here, too. With 8.5 finishing up, power outages, Christmas, birthdays, it's been more than a bit hectic around here...

those other files....

Anyone who has looked at the contents of an NSF in one of the Eclipse navigators rather than Designer's navigator knows that we've added a few extra files (stored as hidden file resource design elements) to make each nsf a good Eclipse citizen. And if you've worked with xpages and have wanted to include some java classes, you've discovered that you can just add in files to the nsf in the projected hierarchy through standard Eclipse mechanisms.

Which leaves me with a dilemma. These extra things really are file design elements, except that their path is not relative to the Resources\Files juncture in the virtual file system. They are also something that not everyone wants or cares to see. I'm worried that users who have worked with "traditional" file resources might be a bit annoyed to see stuff they didn't create show up there.

I'm leaning towards adding a separate category called "Project Files" (or something like that) that contains these other files, so they'd be accessible from the Designer navigator. And I believe whether or not that category is presented in the navigator ought to be controlled by a preference. These files would have paths relative to the project root - so if you wanted to add a file there, you would just type the relative path you wanted.

But others have said we should just dump them in with the other file resources. A file is a file, so why make an artificial difference?

I could use a sanity check here to see if I'm making an artificial distinction or a helpful separation - please let me know what you think (and an answer of it doesn't really matter is also helpful information!) Thanks!

sugar mountain

On my twentieth birthday, I listened to Sugar Mountain all day. Today, on the freight boat back to Woods Hole, watching the dark blue ocean, and the bright blue sky, it came on again, uncommanded, as if it knew it was that time again.

I'm an unspecified number past 20, and I was definitely leaving the island too soon...

It feels like I've gotten away with being 20 on Sugar Mountain for a long time - every day remains a new adventure, even a few decades later :-) Maybe someday I'll grow up, but not this year.

fresh eyes

It's funny, sometimes things are so much a part of the UI that you are accustomed to, that you just no longer even see them. As we brought Designer over to Eclipse, many pieces of UI moved over almost exactly as they were in the "old" Designer. But thanks (really!) to a customer who talked to me after a demo a little while ago, now every time I look at this very old piece of UI design, it drives me crazy. So not long after deciding to just "look around," I found myself actually changing some code - and those design doc properties, that have looked like that since before I started working on Notes, now (I hope) make a little more sense! The old way was designed for the space constraints of the infobox! And the most likely significant piece of information (the note ID) was last, and the UNID was spread over two lines.... I'm thinking this design is better, but I have a few questions.... (And to be clear, it's not even checked in yet, so surely won't be in 8.5, but rather in whatever number comes next!)

Does anyone even need to look at sequence time and number? Is this a better order? Do you really need to see the database replica id on every design element doc id panel? Does anyone really need the old way of presenting this in that form?

As my silence here reflects, the past month has been insanely busy, putting the finishing touches on 8.5. And simultaneously designing what's next. As usual, there are already more things I want to do than time to do them.

In my engineering "childhood," we just built the next logical extensions of what we had just done, or if someone had a cool idea, we'd do that, after doing some logical calculus of what fits under the curve til the next release. I'm not sure if it's my perspective changing because I am more part of the process than I once was, or if things have changed (or both!), but now what goes in to the next release seems much more disciplined.

What goes in has to provide real value, and it has to make a difference. Now I'm not a marketing person, so I don't really have or have access to the data to predict that adding feature A will generate Y positive result. Yet I know inside me that many of the things we are considering will make a huge difference, and I have a strong sense of which are most important. I know it intuitively, I know it instinctively. INFP that I am (though the F edged out the T only by a small margin), going on instinct works for me :-) But I find I need to be able to *prove* it.

It's too soon to be saying what we're looking at doing next - still much more to figure out. But it is fun to be trying some ideas out!

She was my first real friend, we met in first grade. Her grandfather taught us how to do the Irish jig. Dressing up in our moms' clothes and high heels... Swinging on the swings at the school across the street from ours, talking about how dumb all this growing up stuff was.

I was the tomboy nerd; she the fashion princess. We would grow apart over time, our interests and directions just too far apart. I haven't seen her in a long time, but when I heard she died last week, it hit me hard.

As different as we were, parts of us were also the same. Tonight I'm wearing mascara - not something I usually do, but something that just felt right tonight.

Transitions

I remember sitting in my Metaphysics final exam, spring semester, senior year of college, last exam. I had finished the exam. Once I turned it in, I would be a college graduate (modulo a ceremony). I sat there with my exam a good long while. I seriously contemplated not turning it in. The only way I could fail the course would be on the technicality of not turning in the final - that would give me an FX in that course. Then I wouldn't have to graduate. I wasn't sure I wanted to let go - I wasn't sure I was ready. I loved my college, and my four years there were precious. But once this exam was done, I was done...

So I guess I like to hang on to things. We're in that part of 8.5 where we are doing the hard triage. Some of the bugs are clear, we have to fix them. Others are not so clear - the ones that show up when you stand on one foot, under a full moon and the wind is blowing from the east. I cling to each bug as if it were that final exam. There are some very patient souls triaging with me :-)

But it's nearing time to let go, turn in the exam. There's the next round to think of, new features to build, thoughts to complete.

I did turn in my exam that day, and I did go on to grad school. I am working on the list of next things for Designer. But first I'm going to fix this one bug....

positive or negative....

One thing that has always bugged me about Notes is the negative logic. "Hide when"/"Do not maintain unread marks"/etc. In newer properties, I've been making that logic positive, and in a few cases in the application properties editor, I have reversed previously negative logic to be positive. So "Do not maintain unread marks" turns in to "Maintain unread marks."

The problem... Whether or not to update the infobox. In an ideal world, sure (probably). In the beta, you'll see we have not yet changed the infobox, just moved the application properties editor rendition to be positive. Long term, the db infobox will be obsolete, so I am a bit hesitant to put much investment there. But will the inconsistency here be so bad that we really have to change the infobox? Personally I'd rather put the energy elsewhere, but if the new UI differing from the old UI is really going to be an issue, it is certainly possible to align them (though that would ripple through documentation, etc).

Thoughts?

my favorite debugging technique

Over the past few years, I've spent more time debugging Java than C++. I like things about both languages, and I don't really have a strong preference. In general, both languages work, and both languages let me say what I need to say. But when debugging Java, there is one feature from C++ I sorely miss...

Set Next Statement

I can't tell you how many hours that one technique has saved me... Now that I get to debug C++ again, every time I use it (like just a minute ago), I smile.

so says the whippoorwill...

My song for today. He's better. Still in the hospital, but change is in the air!

atonement

if last weekend saw me shirking maternal responsibility, this week saw me swimming in it. One of my boys has been in the hospital since Monday night, and is projected to be there til next Friday. He'll be ok, though the path from here to there is still a bit uncharted, and some paths are easier than others. It's not easy to see your child connected to endless IV lines, and you know life has turned around when you're happy to hear him complain about it.

When the big stuff hits, there's no denying what a mom needs to do....

maternal failure

I'm having one of those "I'm the worst mother in the world" moments. I have six sons. I don't like sports. And that's a really bad combination.

My youngest loves basketball. At least it moves at a faster pace than baseball, which set me to walking laps around whatever field those games were in, as I just couldn't sit and watch a game that went so slowly. So I should be feeling fortunate he has settled on a sport I can almost stand to watch.

Whenever I do watch one of my kids play a sport, my attention stays focused on the game only as long as my child is actually doing something. Not for a moment longer. And, one of the things that makes me a bad mother, sometimes less. I watch the other parents, apparently really into the game, and feel like I must be from another planet.

There's a basketball tournament this weekend we learned about just this Wednesday. Thursday night ferry tickets got moved to Saturday night. Now, oh, the tournament goes to Sunday, too. Rory says he can skip the second day. Even I know he can't.

I really should try to be one of those mothers who cheers loudly from the sidelines. But I'm just not that person! I'm leaving basketball for the guys this weekend. I'm going to the island without them. I hope bad mothers are welcome there.

halloween redux

I got away from my laptop for a bit this afternoon and tried to find the garden. It has gotten way overgrown due to my neglect. I decided to clear a 6 foot patch again.

I was pulling and pulling, making quite a pile of weeds. I got to a strange looking couple of plants. I pulled one, then looked at it carefully... It looked like a squash plant. That's odd, new kind of weed, I guess. OH! That pumpkin from last Halloween that spent the winter in the garden must have had some fertile seeds. The plant in my hand was one of two little pumpkin plants. I replanted it back in the garden next to its sibling - if part of the garden becomes a pumpkin patch, I can live with that. With this kind of start, it will surely be one of the most sincere pumpkin patches around!

single/double click dilemma

Sometimes defaults are really tough to figure out. Right now we're really going back and forth on whether single click should open things in the Designer navigator (as it always used to) or whether double click should open things (as is the default in Eclipse). We do pay attention (post-beta) to the Eclipse default.

People used to Domino Designer want single click. People used to Eclipse want double click. People who started out used to DD and then started using Eclipse (me, for one!) adjusted to the double click. But we've also had people get blocked thinking there's no way to get a list of forms because single click didn't work.

So the question is... Now that we listen to the Eclipse preference, should that Eclipse preference in a Domino Designer install be set to single click to open or double click to open? And remember that this behavior affects *all* perspectives in the Eclipse instance.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

old vs. new

I realized that I keep saying that Designer 8.5 will have no LotusScript editor. When I say that, I am thinking about the brand new LotusScript editor we are building based on the Eclipse framework that has a class browser, etc. In my head, because that isn't ready for 8.5, "it" isn't there.

But I've heard that some take my statement very literally - that they think Designer 8.5 won't have any LotusScript editor at all. What we do have (still) is the old LotusScript editor, while we continue to work on the brandy new one.

In my heart, it's the new one that counts, but that's different from not having any LotusScript support at all, and of course we still support the old one!

Just thought I'd clear that up :-)

twittering about

I've been experimenting with twitter lately (late to the party, but that seems to be my style..) Not sure what I think of it yet, but giving it a try. The one thing I find I do like about it is that it is easy to do. Sometimes the thought of writing a *blog post* is daunting - it feels like a blog post must have some profound meaning, and sometimes deep and meaningful just doesn't fit in the day.

So we will see what twitter brings. On twitter, I'm mvgirl, of course!

in Bremen!

Haven't seen much of it yet, as I just arrived a few hours ago. But I went for a long walk in a park across the street from the hotel, and found a reliable source of diet coke....

It was a pretty easy flight, even my 50 minute connection worked, even though I DID have to go through passport control/security again. Will mostly be preparing for the talk tomorrow, but I hear there's a boat tour tomorrow night that sounds like a neat way to see the city!

quite a day

my head is full this morning. It's beautiful outside, and my list of things to do today is way longer than the day. My thoughts are like a pinball right now, trying to decide which idea to tackle first. Replacing cabinet pulls on the kitchen cabinets, planting gladiola bulbs, preparing a presentation for DNUG (I thought I was done, but have some new ideas!), coding up a feature I've committed to for our next iteration, breakfast, let the dogs out, and back in... So I'm starting with a blog post, which wasn't on the list at all, but so be it.

I fly to Bremen late Tuesday night, arriving Wednesday mid-day. I've never been to Bremen, and I'm looking forward to it - to see the river that leads to the North Sea. I'd love to see the North Sea, but that will have to be another trip - my son graduates from high school on Sunday, and I need to get right back home.

I'm also looking forward to showing all the neat things we actually are doing for Domino Designer. Our team has been working very hard, and there is a LOT to show. I'll post screenshots after the talk :-)

sadness

My dog Woodstock is an impeccable judge of character. In our house, we refer to it as passing the Woodstock test.

Woodstock is a field spaniel, and like many in his breed, he is reserved. He's not nasty at all, but if he doesn't know you, he will generally keep his distance.

I brought Woody in to Iris when he was a puppy. It was an overwhelming experience for him. But one person passed the Woodstock test, Cynthia Ice. Cynthia had a soft heart underneath a very dry cynical wit. Woodstock saw straight to the heart, and made a fast friend. Cynthia saw past Woodstock's reserve to the sweet dog he is.

Cynthia died this week, and we will miss her very much. I keep remembering snippets... Her guide dog Cashmere would sometimes wander out of Cynthia's office when she was absorbed in her work, and Cashmere would head straight to my office. I'd spoil Cashmere for a bit, then bring her back to Cynthia quickly, as Cashmere and Cynthia were quite a team. Meeting Cashmere and Cynthia in the hall, rubbing Cashmere's tummy as Cynthia and I chatted. Cashmere died a year or two ago, and I know Cynthia's heart ached for her. She never replaced Cashmere, I think because there could be no replacement.

And there is no replacing Cynthia. She has left this world a better place - she fought for the rights of the visually impaired, and she gently taught all of us to make our software the best it could be. And she has also left this world a darker place for her light no longer being with us. Cynthia, it was an honor to know you, and heaven is a brighter place today.

bookmark migration

In my Lotusphere presentation, there was a slide that had the phrase "bye-bye bookmarks" on it. I meant that pretty literally and have not as yet scheduled anything into the plan to actually migrate them, thinking that the new Eclipse working set ways of arranging design databases would lead people to rethink their bookmark structure anyway. And, in full disclosure, we have a lot of things to do, and I'm not sure this fits anyway!

But I have heard some internal users report that they expected their bookmarks to be migrated. It would be "just code" to do it, but is it important enough to do? Or would you be seizing the opportunity to rearrange your databases anyway? Thanks again :-)

Create/Design/Form/Outline/etc

One of the more common Designer actions, certainly. But we're encountering some challenges in making it work consistently from the client. So the question is, is this used often enough from the *client* that it is worth putting the effort into fixing, or should we just pull the menu from the client? I must admit I am leaning towards the latter... We'll still have View/Design to open up a specific db in Designer, so you can move from the client to the Designer in context... But you would then need to choose to create the form or outline or whatever once you were actually in the Designer. Would this be such a big move backwards in user interface we shouldn't even consider it? Or is this a rarely used convenience feature we can live without?

thanks!

it worked!

And I ended up settling on www.mvgirl.net, it's shorter... Thanks to all for the help. I think in the end, it actually was set up correctly before, I just never realized it as I expected that the cname record would make mvgirl.net go to google until I took the final step of connecting it to the blog. Another proof that user expectations can create an odd mix with software developer's expectations....

But www.mvgirl.net is now alive! And mvgirl.blogspot.com nicely redirects to it :-)

cname records, oh my....

A while ago I grabbed the mvgirl.net domain thinking I'd give this blog its own domain name rather than just be a blogspot prefix. Blogspot has some pretty good instructions on how to send your blog to your domain name, and I figured this would be pretty easy. I did notice that they didn't have instructions for Network Solutions, but I figured it all must be pretty generic.

I am not an expert in cnames and aliases and hosts and all that stuff. Just not enough UI to keep my interest :-) But how hard can it be? Apparently, hard enough.

Armed with the documentation, I went to setup advanced DNS settings for mvgirl.net. It seems I need a CNAME record that sends it to ghs.google.com and then after that works, all I should need to do is a few steps on blogspot.

So I set up blog.mvgirl.net to map to ghs.google.com in their domain management tool. It warned it would take a while to replicate around... A few days later when hitting blog.mvgirl.net still gave an error, I went back and looked.

It was mapped to ghs.google.com. With the period at the end. I edited it to remove the period, and figured I had made a typo. Looked at it again, the period was back.

And I'll admit it, that was months ago. There are too many other things on my plate to spend time on that. But I tried again last weekend. I noticed the UI was different, maybe that bug was fixed. Nope, still there.

Now it might be a bug, and it might just as easily (or more likely) be user error. But at this rate it will be a while before blog.mvgirl.net sees the light of day!

The stove was off...

so we were free to take a walk...

We walked to the lagoon today - a beautiful blue Spring day.  It was too cold for humans to swim, but Wendy and Eve thought the water was just fine...

 

I had wondered where the Cassie had gone - all last summer she was docked with the Grace in Vineyard Haven harbor, but for the past month or so, Grace was docked alone.  Cassie turns out to have been hiding at Sailing Camp Beach!

 

As Wendy and Eve took their swim, a sailing race was beginning.  The season is beginning!

... See my Tabblo>

bug or feature, I can't decide....

Several of the new design elements in 8.5 are variants of file resources. That means that unless I do something, if you open a database with some of these elements created in the 8.5 Designer in the 8.0 Designer, these elements will show up as file resources.

Now from some points of view (including mine on alternate days), this is a bug. And from others, also including mine on alternate days, it's a feature... You can at least look at these elements as text like files in notepad in older versions of Designer.

So should I fix this or celebrate this?

thanks :-)

first light

So yes, I've been quiet on Designer lately. We've been intensely busy transitioning to our proper home in the Notes environment. I must admit, it's pretty! While our initial work has been done on "plain" Eclipse, but we need the Notes framework to have little things like location switching...

We'll be doing further work to customize the look - trying to strike a balance between making it feel like home and exposing the power of Eclipse. I'm proud of what the team's been doing on this - so thought I'd give an early look of its new look, even though it is still evolving :-)

Threads

A peaceful, evening crossing. Dark night on the ocean, empty ferry, quiet night. The ferry is pulling in to the dock at Woods Hole. All relaxed. Then it happens. Did I turn the stove off? I know I did. Yes, I'm sure, really sure. I checked the burners before we left. But did I check the oven?

I remember as I took the last pan of cookies out thinking how on this stove I had to press Cancel...

Steve tells me he's sure it was off.

It's off, I know it. Mostly.

Or maybe I just have to go back to check :-)

Other than that thread running in my head, it was a nice day on the island. Oh it certainly was gray, cold, and windy. But the tulips are coming up in my garden, we got a nice walk before the drizzle started in earnest.

Maybe I do just have to go back to check!

speaking of the world...

do something to make a difference to global warming... Turn out the lights on Saturday 3/29 from 8-9 (your time). Imagine how beautiful the stars could be without extaneous light...

See this link for more info!

and then all was right with the world.....

I am on the island. Evil spirits indeed do not cross the water. My legs are tired from a two mile walk in wind to see the Katama breach. It's almost a year old now, but somehow last summer I never found the time to walk out and see it. It's amazing... The currents are going every which way, and the sand continues to erode - mini cliffs along the water's edge. A seal followed us along the beach, bobbing his head up from the water laughing at the silly humans walking in the wind.

I'm home and it is good.

when you walk through a storm....

I remember my grade school class having to learn that old song for one of spring/fall/concert events... I didn't think it would ever ring so true. It's been running through my head pretty steadily in recent weeks.

Life has been feeling like quite a test. Our peacable canine kingdom has suffered from the decision of two of the spaniels that they really hate each other. They're fighting over dominance - and we are the focus objects. We've had three emergency vet trips, several scheduled trips, and a trip to a behavior specialist... Two of the crew had surgery today - one scheduled for a lump removal (unrelated to the combatants), the other needed emergency repair to the first repair of the fight that happened a week ago. I'll spare any readers the details as it's just been awful, but the canine behavior specialist did have some good suggestions that seem to be working so far.

Long ago (but well after they made me learn that song), I learned that when things get really awful, it's best for me to just keep going no matter what. Maybe that's because when your kids are little, mom has no choice, regardless of what's going on, you just have to keep everything moving forward. Life goes on, nothing is permanent, no point in dwelling on what's going on, just keep moving ahead. Sometimes I think it makes me feel like I'm ignoring the issues, but it beats dwelling and drowning in them.

And code is a great place to hide... Let's just say I've gotten a lot of code written this week!

when a hard disk dies...

it's odd what you want to recover most.

I should have known - I was in denial, for sure. Even during Lotusphere, there were some unexplained events with my laptop, but denial is a very powerful force. Since Lotusphere, with increasing frequency, my laptop would misbehave. An error on boot... Access Connections disappearing from the toolbar... But I circumvented each obstacle... If I can get by it, it can't be that serious, right?

Last Thursday, when IE suddenly refused to connect but Firefox was happy, I decided it was maybe time to heed Steve's advice and do a chkdsk, which of course involves a reboot. Blithely I tried it. Reboot, chkdsk successful, but as it launched, blue screen... Tried it all again, not a fluke. Tried it again in a different T60 shell, same thing. Dead disk.

Then the panic starts.

Source trees - ok on that count, submitted my code a few hours ago. Work mail - all on the server, no problem, can always make another replica. Presentations - ouch. But if I have to write them again, I still could. Personal email - now THAT is only on the machine as I so neatly remove it from the server... That's a real problem. My history is in my email - it's a journal of conversations, and I felt its loss deeply.

I actually felt kind of disoriented. It's probably pretty unhealthy for a laptop to be so much a part of one's comfort zone.

But there is a pretty happy ending. Someone was able to put it in a drive tray, and if you don't try to boot off of it, the data is accessible. My personal email has a new home on my home machine. My presentations have been preserved. A new disk is on its way from the mothership. All's right with the world again.

Album Craze

After seeing Pete's and Brian's album covers, my curiosity got the better of me...

Here's mine!



A Chestnut Mare... Ironic, as that song will always be close to my heart. It is my song, from long ago, but will always make me smile.

Change of Seasons

As soon as I returned from Lotusphere, I felt spring on its way. This contrasts sharply with the reality of New England winter, but I can't help it, I feel it. It didn't make sense to me until I realized why I was feeling the seasons were changing - Lotusphere is a season unto itself. When it's over, it must be the next season, which if you blur it with reality, the season after winter is of course spring....

You can start feeling Lotusphere in the air when the call for abstracts go out, but it doesn't truly arrive until you start getting notices for slides being due... Once the presentations start taking form, the season is in full swing... It continues til you arrive home from Orlando. November, December, January... Lotusphere Season.

And now it is Spring. No matter what the groundhog said today.

a few thousand words....

or a few pictures... I was so happy to be able to show not only the work to put Designer in Eclipse at Lotusphere, but also to reveal the new XPage design element that we've also been working on. In a way similar to how reworking the Designer UI lets us address longstanding issues in the Designer client, the XPage design element gives us the freedom to create a new way to render Domino data in a modern way, taking into account all that we've learned along the way...

And I said pictures not words, so here are some screenshots from Lotusphere for the curious...

bonnie & clyde

Bonnie & Clyde's first picture :-)

at the airport, looking back....

I'm soaking up my last view of leaves on trees, green grass, and warm skies.... The past week at Lotusphere has been amazing - insanely busy every moment, but so nice to get the validation that Designer is on the right path. I've been in Orlando since the 16th, first preparing for the OGS and my Designer session on Monday, then preparing for the app dev mini main, and in between doing my best to answer customer's questions in lab. Missed the Wednesday night party this year in favor of minimain rehearsal and preparation, but I must admit the quiet on the Swan/Dolphin campus on Wednesday evening is a breath in a busy week....

Soon the warmth will be replaced by New England winter, and the peace I feel at the moment will be replaced by the intensity of building the product.

When I was in school, I never would have imagined that I would ever stand up in front of 4000 people and get any words out of my mouth. It's still not easy, as the shy little girl is still inside, but it is getting a little easier...

totally addictively evil

http://www.chainfactor.com/

the cards not written....

I started my Christmas cards this morning. Very late, I know, but got a good start.

I go through my address book, writing out the cards pretty much alphabetically (somehow my mom's card is always first!) But this year, I paused when I got to two names... My Aunt Carol, who died too young at 71 in August.... One of the sweetest ladies to ever inhabit this planet... And Steve's grandmother, who died in April at almost 103... An amazing lady! I felt their absence as I wrote the cards out... I send them Christmas wishes in spirt, if not with cards and stamps...

database properties on my mind....

I'm looking at the database properties infobox, looking to move it to a property panel in Designer. When I say property panel, I mean putting properties in an Eclipse view at the bottom of the center of the screen, underneath the active editor. Like the infobox, this panel tracks the current selection. Someday the client may share this work, but for now this is for Designer.

The paradigm for changing properties in Eclipse is different from Notes. Both ways have their advantages... The non-modality and the volume of modifiable information available is a real benefit for the infobox.

But as I look at the db infobox, I see two kinds of information. One kind is informational or a launch point for a dialog (think archive settings, etc), and the other is actually editing the design. If I look at the same infobox for a db for which I don't have design rights, it's all mostly greyed out information.

So I'm thinking of a divide and conquer approach. In the Designer navigator, have a pseudo-design element, probably right under the database name, that lets you launch a database property editor. This editor would let you edit the stuff currently on the design tab, the advanced tab, the launch tab and a few strays - all very much part of database design. The properties box becomes more informational (and support the copy command for things like replica id!!) Things like size/archive settings stay in the property panel with buttons to change them today as they are discrete operations, not really design operations and are also allowed for nondesigner users. Header/footer stuff probably needs to stay in the property panel if the client will ever share this work, but would show the current settings (for BOTH header and footer) and then to change, you'd probably press a button that popped up a little dialog.

At first I was quite resistant to this train of thought - I like how the infobox works! But it's been growing on me (badly enough I woke up thinking about it), and I think should the client ever borrow this work it could greatly simplify the interface for the client, and that it gives a more natural editing experience for designers.

So was this a dream or a nightmare?

proposed UI change for agents, etc....

In Designer today, you can change your mind about what language you are writing an agent, web service, or script library in. (On button events, etc., too, but we're not going there yet!)

Would it be a huge hardship to lose that? Do you really change your mind about what language you're writing something in? If you do, would it be horrible to have to go create a new agent or whatever in that case? (Bonus - you wouldn't have to live through the "Are you sure/all existing code will be lost" message, and actually you would no longer necessarily be losing anything unless you chose to delete the item you were in!

It is a simpler design (that's what's in it for us!)

We made a similar change to script libraries in Release 6, and I didn't hear any issues, but taking it this much farther bears a question...

and then there were five.....

Our stairway has six picture frames, as does my office shelf. Each year in the fall, there's a ritual - open up the back of each picture and put in the new school picture for the year. It is a nostalgic moment as each picture frame holds all the previous years' photos. As time goes on, it can be quite a struggle to close the back of the frame again.

It started with one frame, when my oldest had his first school pictures taken. It built up to six picture changes for the years when they were all in school. Then there's senior year in high school... Time freezes for four years until the college yearbook picture (or longer if said son doesn't believe in such things).

The frame for my oldest son contains the picture from his college graduation day, walking down the steps with his diploma in hand. The next three have been frozen in time as high school seniors as they are still in college or working.

Today my fifth son's senior picture went up on the wall. We went through each of the pictures in the back - a frame by frame documentary of his metamorphisis from day care to almost eighteen year old man.

I likely won't see Tom's grade school pictures again for at least four years. Next fall, we'll only go through Rory's pictures. And the year after that, this moment repeats with Rory.

The fall after that... I have to believe I'll just open up all those pictures and remember anyway.

does anyone use the Tools menu?

In Release 6, we added a feature to allow people to add their own menu items to the Domino Designer tools menu. It would allow you to set the contexts in which these tools should run, and you could specify a formula or a simple executable to be available on the menu in these contexts.

This is different from how one would normally extend Eclipse so I'm not convinced it's a good fit with the new Designer. It's "just code" so we could bring it over, but is it worth the effort? Is it helpful to allow users who may not yet be Eclipse savvy enough to extend it with another mechanism, or is it just confusing to have more than one way?

Inquiring minds want to know first if anyone ever used this function, and second, what to do with it now?? thanks :-)

how much energy does a meeting take?

I've noticed that the more meetings I have in a day, the more exhausted I am at the end of it. I am far less tired by a day filled with coding. I don't believe that I am so old that the activity of walking between meeting rooms in the same building 5-6 times per day is sufficient cause to create the difference in energy levels.

After a day of coding, I feel (assuming things worked!) energized and as if my brain is well-worked. After a day of meetings, I feel anxious, restless, and exhausted. When I see a day that is "all blue" on my calendar, it is much harder to get psyched about getting to work. Ten hours of coding is easier for me to do than five hours of meetings.

One manager suggested that this was because of my INFP personality type... That meetings are hard work for introverted people. I think that's a large part of it. Another component is that I crave coding... I am hooked on the joy of making something work!

As I look to the next week, it has a better balance (so far) than last... I have a list a mile long of things I want to code. And a shorter list I have to code... This INFP will have to find the discipline to do the things on the shorter list first! With just a few things mixed in from my longer list....

barrington revisited

When I was a freshman in college I had a purse named Barrington. When I saw it in the store, I knew it was *my* purse, but had a crisis of conscience in buying it, for Barrington was made of rabbit fur.

I was horrified by the thought of having a fur purse, that something had to die for me to have an "accessory." I went back and forth... The rabbit had already given its life, it was so soft a purse...

In the end, the purse was mine. I carried it all through college and through part of grad school, long past the time when it had seen better days. Rumor has it that he was thrown out the window of a bus taking Canisius students (including me) to Philadelphia to see a basketball game... Some guys I knew clowned around with it while I slept. Or they just told me that they threw it out the window and the bus had to go back and get it - I'll never know for sure.

Barrington was named for the bunny in this story - warning, it's a very sad story....

Tuesday night, I indulged in a little retail therapy after dropping Steven off at his new dorm room. I found a beautiful purse.

But it was made of rabbit fur. It was soft, the right size, and I loved it immediately.

A familiar crisis of conscience ensued. This time, I couldn't buy a rabbit purse. At least not so far.... My conscience has evolved sufficiently for me to leave the store without it. But not so far that I'm not still thinking about it...

there are two kinds of people

those who love the repeat settings on a cd player/ipod/etc, and those who don't.

When a song worms its way into my head, it's the only song I want to hear. I have been known to keep a normal length song on repeat for up to an hour... This is fine if I'm driving alone, but doesn't always work so well when I am with others. Steve is fairly patient (up to about the third repeat...) but the kids are less so...

I've always loved music, I get completely drawn in to music that catches me. Conversely, I react physically to music I dislike - like opera. When subjected to particulary shrill opera, I curl into a defensive ball and/or look for the closest exit. Infinite tolerance for music I like, zero tolerance for music I don't.

I usually will listen to a cd at a time, and don't often get into these "repeat" moods. But once in a while, a song will hit a particular resonance, and I'm lost in it til it lets me go....

and grace is just a measure

I've been listening to Richard Shindell's version of Jeffrey Foucault's Northbound 35 a lot recently. It's a sad song, reflecting my feelings about this, the lyrics don't really apply in any real sense, it's mostly the mood of the song. I just haven't been able to get the song out of my head.

But I've always been a believer in making lemonade. Everything you ever do becomes part of you, what you learn changes you forever. And my time on LCD taught me a great many things; I return to Domino Designer a much stronger engineer than I left it. Domino Designer was likely to take much of my time anyway, putting it into Eclipse is a realization of a long held dream, and now my attention will not be split.

The details are an evolving story for another day. But thank you, LCD, for a great ride.

all for one, one for all?

It's been years since I've played D&D, and I never will again - it was one of those things I did to try to make a doomed relationship work... Still I remember enough of the lingo to be amused by this result:

What is your d&d alignment?

You are a Benefactor, Neutral Good.

Neutral good characters are devoted to helping others, but do not always do so through the institutions (such as church and government) created for that purpose. They are perhaps the most flexible among the good alignments, able to bend their approach to suit the circumstances in which they find themselves. They are honorable, but may sometimes behave dishonorably for a good cause. They may lie to an evil person, for example. As a general rule, neutral good characters do not attack unarmed opponents, harm the innocent, torture, kill if it can be avoided, refuse an honest appeal for aid, take bribes or betray their friends. The Three Musketeers are examples of neutral good characters.
Take this quiz!

sometimes it's the little things....

I'm in Miami at the Advisor conference, and I just wanted to show one more little thing than we've been working on... I thought back to the things on "my list" that I know have always bothered me and others... This one came to mind... A teeny bit of code, and there it is. If you change your mind about the "don't show me this again," you can set it back with a preference, or you can continue to still be prompted if you've ever been burned with having design changes overwritten and you never want it to happen again....

Last week someone said we were "porting" Domino Designer to Eclipse. It's this kind of change, as well as the more dramatic editor replacements, that to me make it far more than a port. It's a rethinking, a reinvention... And it feels really good to make that dialog box go away!

oh where or where...

should database (application) properties go in Designer??

We'll be adding some new ones, so we'll need more room to complicate the issue further.

Historically, they've been in the selection hierarchy of any infobox. Changes are immediate, and not batched in a transaction like form or view or any other design element editor.

With the first release of Designer in Eclipse, we'll have a mix of infoboxes and property panes (unless of course users decide they'd rather wait for us to rewrite all the infoboxes before releasing it...)

Two questions:

- is it ok to remove database properties from the infobox selection hierarchy in Designer (where infoboxes remain)?
- is it ok to have to click on the database header in the bookmarks or make another gesture to get to database properties?

thank you :-)

batman returns

a year ago, at the dog show in falmouth, Batman got his very first point. he finished his championship in january at american spaniel club. Since then, he's been chasing birds at the bird feeder and hunting stray tennis balls... until today :)

Today Batman returned to the dog show in Falmouth as a champion entered in the best of breed competition. We both need practice, so I chose a Friday, which tends to be quieter. there were 4 other dogs there who were still working on their championships.

still, batman looked and behaved great, and I didn't fall down, and he won best of breed!!!

A certain black dog just dropped a tennis ball in my lap - time to reward him with some play!

multigenerational magic

Last night, Steve and I went to the Ben Taylor concert at Outerland here on the island. It was a really great show in a very nice venue. Not huge, general admission, but we had great seats at just about acoustical center. Much of Ben's family also spends at least part of the year here, so several relatives joined in - his very pregnant sister Sally, his Aunt Kate, and his mom - Carly Simon! Ben, Sally, and Carly did a great version of Neil Young's Ohio, Sally (and sometimes Carly, too) sang backup on many of his tunes, and Ben sang backup for a song by Kate (which I really liked, but I can't remember the name!)

We went to pick up the tickets we'd bought online at Outerland in the afternoon - and Ben was there setting up. As we were getting our tickets, he came up to the front to ask the lady in charge a favor, but very politely said Hi in the smoothest voice - Carly and James did well with their boy!

it's happening again....

We're nearing September, the kids are ignoring the reality of the new school year. But I can't. Twice today I've found myself on the Harvard Extension school site, trying to figure out what course to take... Data Structures? Been there, done that. The Science of Google Searching? That's a course? Unix/Linux System Programming? Probably should, but if I have to, I can probably figure it out as I go....

Introduction to Old English Literature? Hmmm... Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales? Introduction to Modern Irish? One of those could be fun... But is there time?

Every fall I go through this. Every fall there seems to be too much else to do to tackle a course... This year promises to be busy, too. But still, September beckons....

visiting an old friend....

This has to be role reversal in a most serious way. My seventeen year old is off helping his older brother move from Brooklyn to New Haven as he goes back to grad school. What is the first thing I do? I take his car for the day....

Tom normally drives Blueberry, my precious 94 Camry wagon, so I haven't been able to drive her in months. Yesterday I drove her to work, as I will today. She has 195,600 miles now, and except for a vibration in the wheels when she goes over 70 (maybe a tire threw a weight?) she's in great shape.

In three years (when Rory goes off to college), I get her back. In the meantime, I'll keep stealing her for short snippets while I can to make sure she's ok. And enjoy driving a car that is as comfy and fits as well as an Aerosole shoe.

still free

I've been walking around for the past week with a little bandaid on my leg. There was a little bump that wasn't going away, and with my history, I found my mind was spending cycles on it, so I had to go have it checked. The dermatologist said it was almost certainly nothing, but given my history, it was best to remove it and biopsy it.

I haven't been as nervous about waiting for the results as I was for similar events in the first years after dealing with Merkel Cell Carcinoma. But it's been in the back of my mind... What if I have to fight *that* battle again. What if...

But the message on my answering machine when I got home said "benign." There is no more beautiful word.

What doesn't kill you does make you stronger :-) But you never forget.

I'm not winning the desktop battle

No, not that one. The one on our own computer at home. The computer used predominantly by my teenage sons that I wouldn't dare do any banking on.

A few days ago I walked by it, and it had a desktop picture on it that I ordered removed as inappropriate. After the predictable statements that it wasn't offensive, I turned into Imperious Mom and ordered it off anyway.

I just walked by it again. It does have a new desktop. It's a tiled picture of Stalin with a cartoon bubble saying "I am not offensive."

I should be glad he knows enough history to consider that "blatant sarcasm"? There's a bright side here somewhere, I just don't see it yet....

I was hoping it wasn't quite this bad...

but I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Seems like minoring in English should have helped a bit more, though!

puppy love

I finally got to see Georgia's new litter yesterday - and it was lots of fun to see them and cuddle them and take their pictures. Here's the result, because the pictures are worth a thousand words!

Georgia and James had three boys and a girl on June 7, 2007.  The pups are seven weeks old now, and soon will be off to their homes.

If only I had room for one more....

... See my Tabblo>

the old girl lives on

http://www.mvgazette.com/commentary/editorials/?doc=20070724_editorials

An 800 yard run is child's play for the Islander, but it is a far better next step than the scrapyard.

I may have to make a trip to Manhattan!

processes and directories, oh my....

I am determined to separate the Notes client and Designer processes at the same time we put Domino Designer into Eclipse (I can't say when yet, but we are still hard at work on it!). This will require a few decisions... I was pretty sure I knew the right path, but then I talked to some customers at the recent NE Notes User Group meeting I realized I needed to validate some ideas.

As I thought about how to solve this problem, I came upon one thought that is very important to verify. My belief (please say if I'm wrong!!) is that the "typical" Notes developer *uses* a different set of databases than he or she *designs*, and based on several Lotusphere conversations, people who design also often want to design using a different ID than they use in the client.

That would mean that the data directories (and desktops) could be different between the client and designer, making the process separation much, much, MUCH simpler. We could still do a Notes preview in this world by launching a separate instance (in Eclipse-speak, target platform) for the Notes client to view the preview of interest.

Things get less simple if you actually want to preview a database that you use in your local client data directory, with the data that's there. So I need to know how important that case is...

Do you most often design databases that you simultaneously use locally in your client or are they typically different?

Your responses will really help me work this issue through! Thanks!

happy birthday, Nana

Today would be my grandmother's 110th birthday. She only made it to 84, but she packed a lot of personality into her 84 years, and she lives on in at least my mother's and my memories of her... Her lifelong mischief streak started with her birth.

It is a great family mystery as to whether she was actually born on the 12th or the 13th. July 12th is of course Orangemen's Day and my grandmother was of 100% southern Irish descent, and it would be completely inappropriate to be born on that day. Rumor has it that she was born on the 12th (albeit near midnight) but that *her* grandmother deemed that a completely unacceptable birthday, so her date of birth was officially recorded as the 13th, and we certainly always celebrated it on the 13th.

She was quite an artist, and I am lucky enough to have a few of her paintings in my house. They are rare - she painted just enough for her house, and then stopped painting when she started raising her family.

She threw elaborate parties, and hated to be left out... When my grandfather had a company Christmas party that did not include wives, she called the party anonymously to tell them that their headquarters was on fire, sending all the partygoers racing to their building to discover all was well.... When they still didn't invite spouses the next year, they were surprised with the delivery of an unfathomable amount of ice cream.

It is her name, Grace, that is my middle name. May I live up to it :-)

maybe I just shouldn't fish....

Steve loves to fish, and starting last summer, I have been trying to learn how to surfcast. I'm mostly getting better, and fortunately haven't actually caught anything, so haven't had to deal with how I feel about actually causing a living thing to stop breathing.

I have caught a crab, which was safely returned to the sea, a bit annoyed, but fine.

I can mostly deal with the reel and the lure, and I know I don't like to cast from the uneven rocks of a jetty, I need the steady sand beneath me whenever possible.

My cast goes out a bit farther each time, though I still struggle with having it land where I want it to.

Today, casting from the rocks by the side of the bridge at the Oak Bluffs/Edgartown border, on the very first cast of the day, I watched to see where my plug landed. I couldn't see it anywhere. Then my line started going out pretty fast and I couldn't figure out what was going on. Til I realized that the line was going towards the road above me. And that it was going about the speed of a car. I had hooked an SUV headed in the opposite direction. Steve told me not to drop the rod (which I thought was a perfectly good idea, but I figured he knew better). The line got tauter and tauter, and after what seemed an eternity, relaxed.

Steve told me to start reeling in the line, but it was caught in the bridge. The lure was gone, but eventually we got everything back together and I moved much farther from the bridge before I dared cast again.

I didn't catch anything else.

Driving back home, about a quarter mile up the road, I saw my lure at the side of the road. That was an immense relief, as I was really worried that it could have hurt someone.

My "one that got away" was a 2 ton SUV. I think I'm going to leave the fishing to Steve.

living up to my blog's name

today I really am an mvgirl again :-) I'm on island, breathing in the sea and the sky, listening to the birds in the trees, feeling peaceful. The shallow stressed breathing of the last few days before vacation is being replaced with deeper, more cleansing breaths...

Life is good.

private in desktop views

In a DDE (Domino Designer in Eclipse) meeting yesterday, when I was talking about how important it was to separate the client and designer processes at this time, Andre asked what I had in mind for private in desktop views... Part of the solution for separating the processes means a separate workspace/desktop for the Designer client, so that does indeed present a challenge for private in desktop views.

Driving in this morning (since I had to drive in by myself, and could be relaxed rather than clinging to the armrest because Steve doesn't like to brake as early as I do, but that's another story), I had the thought that we could probably get away with editing such views only within the context of a client. It is my belief that most of the users/editors of such views are those users who have an ACL access where they can create views, but do not have design rights to the database. They do their view design in the client anyway.

So I am seriously considering removing the ability to create private in desktop views when in the Designer, and only providing that function if you are editing a view in the Notes client itself (we'd probably have to have some UI to open the design in the client then even if you had design rights). The alternative for all this is some kind of replication between desktops.

Is my belief correct that that is the predominate use case for that kind of view? If so, I am leaning hard towards having them be client only. Anyone think that's a terrible idea?

question....

We're trying to prioritize some tasks for LCD, and I could use some help.

Particularly, we're trying to figure out in what release to include the support for the Notes client as a target development platform for LCD. In 6.0, we could deploy to portal, and with our alphaworks edition, to WASCE. My own sense is that supporting Notes client applications is tremendously important, but it would really help if I could reference a cast of thousands who agreed with me :-)

Is it important to you that LCD build Notes client applications? If so, do you plan to predominantly use Domino data in them, or would you want to use LCD's onboard XML document store, or both? If you would need the XML document store, would it be ok or not to wait for offline access to that data from the client?

I'll try not to prejudice the answers with my own views other than my already saying I think supporting Notes is important :-)

thanks for your thoughts!

we didn't forget....

LotusScript & HTML editing - I just didn't post the pictures before. Due to popular demand, here's the LotusScript editor:


And here is the HTML editor:



Cool, isn't it?

I guess I still sound like home....

Thanks to Bob, I found this quiz... There's no doubt, I still have a Buffalo accent. And if you heard me say the "a" at the beginning of accent, it would be quite clear :-)

What American accent do you have? (Best version so far) Northern You have a Northern accent. That could either be the Chicago/Detroit/Cleveland/Buffalo accent (easily recognizable) or the Western New England accent that news networks go for.

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Domino Designer DNUG presentation

Today I had my Domino Designer presentation. Showed all the new stuff in 8, then got to show all the progress on the Domino Designer in Eclipse effort. We have more things working now... A Java editor:

A JavaScript editor:

and just a little bit of fun:

There's more to do for sure, but it's fun and moving forward!!!!

Safely to Dresden, via Prague

First time ever in Prague, what a beautiful city! I know we only scratched the surface of what to see, but I was amazed by the churches and the castle... The city is incredibly beautiful, and there is history at every turn. I didn't even get through half of the castle, so I just have to go back! Lots of pictures, I'll create a Tabblo once I'm home (where the cable to my camera is...)

We took the train from Prague to Dresden, negotiated the Metro several times, including a final ride to get from the wrong train station to the right one... Who knew?

Haven't been in Dresden very long, but so far seems like a very pretty city. Have heard that it is all rebuilt to look as it did, but it looks quite authentically old (or I'm easily fooled!)

Drifting off to sleep, but so far a great start to the DNUG adventure!

on my way to DNUG

Tomorrow night I fly out of Boston on my way to Dresden for the DNUG conference. I am giving one presentation on Domino Designer (yes, there's some neat new stuff to show!!!), and Martha and I are doing a talk on Lotus Component Designer together. New stuff to show in LCD, too :-) Enough to make me lug two laptops across the ocean!

On our way there, we're stopping in Prague - which I have heard is an intriguing city. Hoping to see Prague Castle and get a new stamp on my passport!

Puppies!!

Georgia delivered four puppies this morning! Three liver males at 7:00am, 7:30am, and about 8:10am, followed by a liver female around 9am.

Mom and pups are resting comfortably, Julie (Georgia's breeder and other owner) is exhausted! Pictures as soon as I get one!

memorial day

I can't say it better than John Gorka did in his song "Road of Good Intentions" on his Writing in the Margins CD.

I always come back to the soldiers
with their courage and ideals
I’ve seen them smoking in the airports
there’s no telling how it feels
on the road of good intentions
all gets justified to hell
the price revealed in stories
too short, too sad, to tell

One of those soldiers was my dad.

He was sent to the Pacific just before the end of WWII, served in the army of occupation in Japan, went back to school, returned to the army, went back to school, went to the Korean war, went back to school....

His story was too short, but I remember it.

Prom Day!

Tom's Junior Prom was today - a beautiful May evening at Mechanic's Hall in Worcester.  That part of the evening was their own - this part, as they awaited their limo-chariot ride to the prom, was shared with the parents who were uniformly marvelling at the transformation of their children.  I hope their evening is as magical as they are!

 

... See my Tabblo>

The measure of a man

I'm just back from taking my fifth son to be measured for his tux for his junior prom. I'll never know what it is like to help a daughter shop for a prom dress, but I expect the experience is very different.

I couldn't really get Tom to look at any of the tuxes while we were waiting - he waited until he was asked by the clerk what he had chosen to actually investigate. "Black" was the primary criteria, and I can't say there was much concern for stripes or pattern or number of buttons or material... He did say the word green about a vest and tie, and did find one that he was happy with.

Then you watch the little boy be measured for his thoughtfully chosen tux. Instructed by the store clerk to put his arms at his sides, to stand straight... When he tried on the pants, he was told to wear them at his waist at least for the pictures at the prom...

When I saw him in a try on for size tux and shoes, I wondered who is this man they just measured? That experience is likely to be the same as the mother who gets to see her daughter try on the first prom dress. He looked so grown up!

something funny with Google maps

I've noticed an odd behavior on my machine. I have two VPN programs currently installed, one of which is obsolete. Normally, this causes absolutely no problems. However, any time I go to a website that has a Google map on it, and some other google based sites (a Google group), my other VPN program launches itself and asks me to authenticate.

Now I'm happiest in UI code and networks and connections are pretty far from my comfort zone and even farther from my area of expertise. But I can't help feeling suspicious that there is some kind of network querying going on in Google's html....

how important is LotusScript?

Is JavaScript good enough, or is it important for LCD to think about what it would take to support LotusScript? Is it better to support LotusScript or other languages such as PHP, etc?

Inquiring minds want to know :-)

when it rains...

you discover what matters most.

The recent Nor'easter caused a flood in our basement. Nine inches deep of water everywhere... We had never totally unpacked from moving here almost five years ago, so there were many too many boxes, and much too much in harm's way.

Lots of things are headed to the dump, but many are still ok. And it's been a nostalgic trip through our history - that Mark Knopfler song "This is Us" keeps running through my head.

The value of things lost is not at all measured in monetary terms. Some college books are ok, others are not. I found I felt little nostalgia over my graduate school texts, which are probably far more valuable than my undergraduate texts. But I didn't enjoy BU like I did Canisius, it simply reflects the value I place on the memories.

Ironically my graduate diploma is fine; my bachelor's is irreparably damaged. I would not have bothered replacing my graduate diploma; I will be contacting Canisius to find out if it's possible to get a replacement....

In a very wet volume of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Letters to His Daughter is a priceless letter my mother's college roommate on my 14th birthday, the first birthday I had after my dad died. The book may need to be replaced (the jury is still out), but the letter will be ok, and it will be carefully placed back in the book (or its replacement) when it can. The book *can* be replaced, the letter cannot.

Baby pictures, some picture albums, genealogical research, fortunately much of that is ok. Toys, some books, some older electronics, are destroyed, indeed some pictures, are destroyed, too.

It's also fun to tease my husband about his carefully attempting to rescue letters from some of my old friends, but not the ones from an old boyfriend :-)

It's a horrible amount of work to clean all this up. But revisiting our past has been a gift, too. It slows the task down to read the old letter, or to look carefully at the picture of my grandmother... But it offers spring cleaning of the soul in return.

Not much is heard about grandmothers-in-law, but I was blessed with an amazing one. Steve's grandmother would have been 103 in June. She left us yesterday morning.

She was a very bright lady (a Smithie), who knew and spoke her mind. I hope I can be half as spunky as she when I (hopefully!) reach her age. When she could no longer drive, she just took taxis to Legal Sea Foods, not to be denied her favorite lunch. A voracious reader, she also loved the ocean and Cohasset. I didn't know her when she was young, but I know she loved her family, and I can see her influence in Steve and in our boys. I am grateful for the influence she has had on me.

I am very sad she has left us, but happy for her that she is now with her husband again. I will see and feel her spirit when I watch the ocean with her grandson.

a new rythmn

It used to be that the night before Easter meant assembling six identical Easter baskets, then hunting for six new dog proof locations to hide them before going to bed much later than I wanted to. Last night I was falling asleep early since I had to be up very early that day to take Eve (Batman's sister) to a dog show in Springfield in the morning (she didn't win, but she did well, so I was proud of her!)

Anyway, as I was starting to fight the battle of staying awake another hour or so, it occurred to me... Teenage boys sleep in. There's no need to assemble and hide the baskets tonight - I'll be up before they are in the morning, I can do it then. And that way the Peeps won't be stale!

This morning, I assembled four Easter baskets (the older two no longer live at home). One is yet unsearched for as its owner hasn't arrived home yet (college kid due in later)....

It seems the pattern of our lives is changing a bit. We're still pretty far from most people's definition of empty nesters with three kids living at home full time and an itinerant college student, but it is so much less populous than it used to be, and the kids are far more independent. One Friday this month on the way home from work we realized that no one was home... We impulsively stopped for dinner on our way. That must be what it's like to not have kids at home.

I think it's going to be ok.

the fear is still there

When I read the comment to my last post asking me to participate in the Merkel Cell Carcinoma discussion group, I think my heart stopped. That was a painful part of my past that I am proud of surviving, but have since tried to distance myself from. To a certain extent, getting over it meant forgetting about it.

But needing to forget means that at some level, the cancer still controlled me. I had been thinking not remembering was being cured. Maybe remembering and taking control is being cured. The scar on my left temple is my badge of courage, it is not invisible, it is part of me.

desperados waiting for a train....

I have a new old album on... Tom Rush with a reissue of Ladies Love Outlaws and Merrimac County, all on one CD. It helps me remember who I really am, or at least who I thought I was going to be. The delta is a bit unsettling.

I hear this music, and it's July 3, 1975, and I'm on a picnic blanket on the side of a hill out in Lenox, Massachusetts. It's an all day concert at the Lenox Music Inn with Tom Rush, Wendy Waldman, Leon Redbone, Orleans, and others I don't quite remember. I foolishly wore long jeans, and foolishly rolled them up and got a terrible sunburn on my legs. The lemonade was cold and sweet... I was with my first true love - and it could not have been more beautiful a day. A bit tinged with sadness around the edges - when Wendy Waldman sang about "nothing to do but let your wild bird go.." I already knew that love would end someday. But that was still a ways off.

I saw Tom Rush again last summer on the island. He's aged a bit, but is still amazing. Just him this time, indoors in the Old Whaling Church, so no sunburn. This time I was with the true love that lasted.

When I hear this album, I hear both the summers of 1975 and 2006. They're both all good.

No Regrets.

extension points....

OK, everyone keeps saying they want the new Domino Designer to have oodles of extension points. Based on Eclipse, extension points are of course a natural.

To help us out, though, since at some point a program actually has to have some immutable code, what pieces are a priority for you to extend? Since we are taking an iterative approach to moving Domino Designer over to Eclipse, starting primarily with the script editors, what extensions will you be looking to add, and what Designer behaviors do you want to contribute/attach to?

thanks!

I don't know how I feel about this...

I'm writing this post in line at the Steamship Authority in Vineyard Haven... They now have free wi-fi, even once we're on the boat!

I suffer from being online way too much, and it used to be that the boat was a safe haven, in so many ways. Now with the world so much with us, will it remain my sanctuary? How can we escape when there is no escape?

Just drove on the boat, and had to reconnect, but I'm still live, even on the freight deck of this massive four story boat...

Which means of course that the control must come from within... Time to go up on deck and look at the sky...

polls and rumors

Life has been hectic in February, and I was just catching up on my reading when I found this post and feel I should set some things straight.

I know Stephen created his poll with all the nicest intentions, but I did worry when I saw it that it would have exactly the effect that John describes. But I thought maybe I was worrying too much (worrying is one of my best things...) and put the thoughts aside til I read John's post.

At this point, it does seem important to state a few things. First of all, it isn't just me believing this needs doing, my boss does, my boss's boss... They wouldn't let me talk about it if they didn't believe in it. We have real people working on it (as their day job), as it clearly is so large of an endeavor that while I love to code, I could not possibly accomplish the project by myself in a reasonable amount of time.

So work is ongoing, and we are lining up the right release vehicle for the work. What release it will be will be a calculus of a critical mass of features and alignment with a Notes release. I don't know the answer to that yet, or I'd be screaming it from the rooftops. There are the usual caveats as in any engineering project that we might hit unsolvable problems, past performance is no guarantee of future results, etc. But the reality is that we are working very hard on it!