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!