Oct 28, 2003

Crossover Office for Linux {1}

I just read that Crossover Office for Linux now supports Flash MX and Dreamweaver MX.

Very cool.  I hadn’t looked at this product in a long time, but basically it allows users to install Windows applications on Linux.  This included Microsoft Office as well as the Notes client.   This is just another reason to consider never using Windows again!

CrossOver Office is capable of running a range of Windows software, but CodeWeavers will support the following applications:

  • Microsoft Office XP, 2000 and 97
  • Microsoft Word
  • Microsoft Excel
  • Microsoft PowerPoint
  • Microsoft Outlook *
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer
  • Microsoft Access *
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Microsoft Visio
  • Lotus Notes/li>
  • Quicken

By Category: Software Tags: ,

Oct 28, 2003

Change for the sake of change is bad… {0}

As I write this, I’ve been assigned my 5th boss in the last 8 months. Yup, you read that correctly. My employers fired my boss while I was at Lotusphere last year. So I got a new boss. He got fired about 2 months ago. Then they had my team report directly to the Senior VP in charge of IT.   Then, we went through a layoff, and they threw our IT department over to another SVP. We reported to him for about three weeks, until he broke up our team and placed us all under different bosses.  So here I am under boss number five.

Now for my current boss, I really like him, and I think it will be a good fit.  I think I’ve been placed on the right team.  Unfortunately though up to this point it has taken it’s toll on my morale.  For one, it’s been hard to get anything done with lack of leadership.  For two, having several of your bosses and friends fired is never fun.  Lastly, the uncertainty of what will happen next has been pretty nerve-wracking. I’m all for change when it makes sense, but as of late, this really hasn’t made much sense to me.

Anyway, I guess I’m just happy to still be employed, and I think that the new direction we’re going in will be a good one, it’s just time to go back up the roller-coaster hill.   So, what has everyone else been experiencing?  Am I alone in this type of situation, or are many of you in the same boat?  Let me know…

By Category: Work Life Tags: ,

Oct 22, 2003

The Blame Game {3}

Okay, this story makes me sick.  The gist of it is this.  Two kids, aged 16 and 14 took out a .22 caliber gun and shot it into traffic repeatedly.  They ended up killing two people.  Why did they do it?  Well they said that they saw it in the game Grand Theft Auto 3.  Now Grand Theft Auto 3 is a violent game where you play a Mafia guy that jacks cars, kills people and beats prostitutes.   So no, the subject matter ain’t pretty, but it did not CAUSE THE KIDS TO KILL.

Anyway, the families of the victims are suing the game company and Wal-Mart for selling the game. They couldn’t possibly blame the kids or their PARENTS for this… First of all, how did a 16 and 14 year old get access to a gun? Secondly, how did they get the game as it’s rated as M by the ratings board? And then, how did they not know the consequences of their actions? Did their parents not teach them what is fantasy and what is reality? I mean for god’s sakes, at that age they should know better. And anyone that thinks that a videogame caused this is an idiot. I know the families of the victims are hurting and want someone to blame, but for god sakes, blame the people that deserve it. We’re too litigious as a country. It has to stop, and the blame has to go to the right people.

McDonalds didn’t make you fat, Cigarette companies didn’t give you cancer, and videogames/movies/music do not kill people. Take some personal fucking responsibility.Personally I hope the kids rot in prison for the rest of their lives. They are too stupid to be allowed to breed.

By Category: Entertainment Tags: ,

Oct 22, 2003

Happy Birthday to ME! {6}

Yes, today is all about ME. Today I am 33 years young. Well wishes, 40 GB iPods and large cash contributions welcome.

Also happy belated birthday to Carl Tyler. Hopefully his Tylerettes helped him to have a wonderful birthday as well.

I cannot believe that I’ve been working with Lotus stuff for nearly 8 years now…

By Category: Personal Life Tags:

Oct 21, 2003

Did Apple screw up with iTunes? {1}

I know that your overwhelming answer will be no to this, but I was thinking about it today. By releasing iTunes for Windows, Apple just gave me one less reason to ever buy a Mac. I’m a hard core PC guy, so I’ll never “switch” per se, but for a long time I’ve considered buying an Apple computer to augment my computing at home. I do like the elegance of the machines, but I REALLY wanted something that would work perfectly with an iPod.

Now I know that you could use an iPod with a PC before, but by all accounts it wasn’t nearly the seamless experience it is with iTunes. So for awhile, I had kind of lusted after a Mac, mainly for the purpose of digital music, as well as buying music digitally through the iTunes music store.

Now if you’ve been reading the meanderings, you know that I have pretty much despised all of the attempts the music industry has made at selling music online. Most of the time it is far too restrictive. Out of all of them, I always thought that iTunes was the best. It has the least restrictions with the most quality. Because of this, I’ve really wanted a Mac. Once again, now I don’t need one. Apple came to me!

So do you think this has happened to anyone else out there? Do you think iTunes being released might keep people away? Also, for those Mac faithful out there, “Why should I get one?” What are the additional reasons I should pick up a Mac. Convince me folks…

By Category: Music, Software Tags: , ,

Oct 20, 2003

Upgrading from R5.0.12 to R6.0.3 or R6.5? {2}

Well folks, it’s about time for me to upgrade my Notes infrastructure at work. We are currently on Domino 5.0.12 and I want to move to either 6.0.3 or 6.5. The question I have for all of you is, who has been through this upgrade and has there been a lot of pain involved?

The good thing for me (as far as the upgrade is concerned) is that I am only really running web apps on the servers.  No mail, and very little RPC. So, even though the upgrade may wreak havoc with mail, that’s not a lot of concern for me.  Also, I will upgrade my hub, and two app servers, but I want to keep my Sametime server running on R5 to avoid problems.  I am using Notes intranet password authentication for Sametime, so will the address book changes hurt me there?I do have the Redbook for Upgrading to Notes and Domino 6. It seems straightforward enough, but I wonder if there are any gotcha’s with 6.5???  Can any of you other gurus shed any light on the topic, or should I just take the plunge?

By Category: IBM Lotus Tags: ,

Oct 15, 2003

Mozilla 1.5 is released! {0}

Go grab ithere

New Features and Fixes

  • Mozilla now includes a spellchecker for MailNews and Composer.  
  • Additional MailNews improvements include:  
  • Users can add header lines to *every* message sent out via a certain identity.  
  • A common application hang with SSL-encrypted SMTP connections has been fixed.  
  • Printing of the attachments list is now supported.  
  • Users can now mark message as read by date.  
  • Many great improvements to Mozilla Composer including:  
  • Better resizing for images, tables, and absolutely positioned objects.  
  • Support for absolutely positioned objects, movable on the canvas using the mouse.  
  • Support for z-index management.
  • “Snap to grid” when moving an absolutely positioned object.  
  • Source View now uses an editor instead of a simple textarea (allows find and replace).  
  • Numerous fixes in caret management, inline styles handling, and CSS styles handling.
  • Improvements to tabbed browsing, including:  
  • Tabs are now replaced when a bookmark group is loaded. This can be changed to the old “append” behavior in the Tabbed browsing preferences.  
  • Back and Forward navigation for tabbed browsing and bookmark groups has been improved. Users can now use the back button after loading a bookmark group to restore the previous set of tabs.  
  • Closing a window with multiple tabs now prompts the user with a confirmation dialog (which can be disabled for future close operations).  
  • ChatZilla, Mozilla’s internet relay chat (IRC) client, has had a major overhaul bringing logging and many additional improvements.  
  • DOM Inspector can now display the #document node (the document root).  
  • It is now possible to jump from the JavaScript console to the relevant line in the View Source Window.  
  • Mozilla’s view source now displays line and column numbers in the status bar.  
  • A quicksearch filter has been implemented for about:config.
  • Gecko now supports setting color for <HR>.  
  • The ‘::’ notation for CSS pseudo-elements is now supported. Note: The old ‘:’ notation is still supported for the various -moz-* pseudo-elements, but will NOT be supported in Mozilla 1.5. Themes should be updated to use the ‘::’ notation for pseudo-elements.  
  • Unstyled XML display has been improved.
  • Mozilla should no longer cause GDI problems on Windows.  
  • A common problem collapsing the URL bar popup on Windows has been fixed.  
  • Mozilla has improved performance, stability, standards support and Web compatibility.

By Category: Software Tags:

Oct 14, 2003

Who is all going to Lotusphere? {8}

Just thought I would try to get a gauge of how many of us in the Domino blogging community will be showing up to the ‘Sphere? What I would like to see us do is get everyone together for a meet-and-greet party. We could possibly crash the Gonzo Lotusphere party that Turtle throws every year and make ESPN really feel the Lotus presence.

So, are you going to show up for the ‘Sphere and when are you arriving. I’ll be getting there on Saturday afternoon and staying until Friday morning…

By Category: IBM Lotus Tags:

Oct 13, 2003

Getting to know the inner geek… {1}

Well since Rocky put this out there, and John responded, I thought what the hell.  So here’s my Geek Quiz answers, and for cool stuff geek related hit thinkgeek.com

WHAT CLUBS WERE YOU INVOLVED WITH IN HIGH SCHOOL? President of both the Speech and Drama Clubs, was dual all-state in dramatic and improv acting my junior year.  I was also a cheerleader.  Gotta love hanging with the hottest girls in school.

DID YOU PLAY ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS? IF SO, WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE RACE/CLASS COMBINATION?
I still play D&D albeit through Neverwinter Nights by Bioware.  I play every Friday night against all the same friends who played together as kids.  We now do it from all over the US.  I’m partial to half-elves as well, and I currently have both a wizard and ranger.  I love the dual-wielding of the ranger, but the spells of the wizard rock.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SCI-FI/FANTASY NOVEL, BESIDES LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY?Was never a huge fan of sci-fi fantasy fiction.  LotR was about it.

WHAT WOULD YOU RATHER GO TO – A SCI-FI CONVENTION LIKE DRAGONCON, OR A RENAISSANCE FESTIVAL?
Dragoncon.  I’ve also been known to attend ICon in Iowa City, and the World Horror Con

WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST COMPUTER?
Commodore 64

WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST ONLINE EXPERIENCE?  (added question)
I used my 300 baud modem to dial into text bulletin boards in high school.  Did green screen telnets in college across the “internet” to access more text boards and MUD’s.

WHAT 80′S MUSIC DID YOU LIKE BETTER – “NEW WAVE” OR “HAIR BAND”?
Both!

OF THE TYPE YOU CHOSE IN THE PREVIOUS QUESTION, WHAT WERE YOUR FAVORITE BANDS?
Def Lep, Crue, Great White, Whitesnake, Skid Row, Depeche Mode

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE STAR TREK SERIES, AND WHY?
The original.  Shatner is the man!

NAME THE LATEST “GEEK TOY” YOU BOUGHT YOURSELF
Canon EOS 300D Digital Camera.

WHO WOULD WIN IN A CELEBRITY DEATH MATCH – STEVE JOBS OR BILL GATES, AND WHY?
Gates, but Jobs would look good losing.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE, AND WHY?
Well I do love Formula language because it’s so easy and quick.  I also love HTML and Flash, although technically, those aren’t languages…

HOW MANY HOURS DO YOU SPEND ON THE COMPUTER DURING A WEEKDAY? WEEKEND DAY?
Weekday probably about 10, Weekend 4.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SOURCE OF CAFFEINE?
Diet Coke!  Because I like to DO what feels good!

By Category: Entertainment, Personal Life Tags: ,

Oct 10, 2003

New Levels of Music Industry Idiocy {0}

Okay, I know I’ve been ranting about copy protection and the music industry and the like, but the story here is just insane. In a nutshell, there is a company that creates CD copy protection called SunnComm. They’ve been contracted to put this copy protection software on audio CDs.  Well they did and released it with much fanfare.  Well, a Princeton student figured out that you can disable the protection simply by disabling Auto-Run on Windows.  So, if you simply hold down the shift key while inserting the CD, no copy protection is installed.

So first off, the company are a bunch of idiots for designing a scheme that is so incredibly broken.  Secondly, they are now going to SUE the student that figured this out.  They are invoking the DCMA.  They are suing the kid because he was smart enough to hold down SHIFT and tell people about it. The company should be ashamed.

This just goes to show how technology will never put this genie back in the bottle, and how evil the companies trying to stuff it in there are…

By Category: Music, Technology Tags: ,

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