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.