Greyhawk68

As if losing the bet wasn’t bad enough in my last post, I had to sleep in the following bed. Is that Cruel and Unusual punishment or what? 🙂

Well, last year Declan and I had a bet on the Steeler/Dolphins season opener, and I lost. To pay up, I needed to put on a Steelers jersey and wear it proudly on my blog. Well, the day has come to pay up, and that’s what you see above. Myself at Declan and Terri’s house wearing the Black and Gold. Yes, I feel unclean.

The picture was taken after this past Monday night’s rematch of the Dolphins/Steelers. Declan invited me to the game, and we braved a couple inches of rain and cold conditions to have a blast. The field conditions were so bad that punts sunk directly into the field and stopped when they hit rather than bouncing like they normally do. It was pretty amazing. It was the lowest scoring Monday Night Football game ever, and the lowest scoring game in the NFL since 1993. So we were at a game that will become a piece of NFL history. Too bad it ended up Steelers 3, Dolphins 0. I tell you, the Steeler crowd was pretty nervous playing our winless Dolphins. Oh well, it was fun to give them a scare.

Dec, thanks a ton for having me. Terri, equal thanks to you for letting me use your ticket. 🙂

I had a killer time, and now I can’t stop having hunger cravings for a Primanti Brothers Pitts-Burger. A sandwich with cole-slaw and fries RIGHT ON THE BURGER… heavenly.

My latest for Intranet Journal is now up. How Popular is your Lotus Domino Site? is an article giving you all the basics you need to get logging going for your web-based applications. Also, many thanks to Duffbert for his comments on the article! It’s nice to see someone whose writing I respect give me a shoutout.

🙂

Last January, one of my resolutions was to learn the Mac platform and use one as my main machine. Well, it’s happened and in a big way.

It started with finally talking my boss into a MacBook Pro for work. Once the Intel processors showed up, it was a no-brainer (for me, not so much for him.) I work in a two monitor setup and run Mac on the laptop screen and Windows in a VM on the secondary monitor for anything not available on Mac yet (*cough* Notes 8 *cough*) So that has been running splendidly for the last 7 months or so. So well in fact, that I started considering one for home.

Well, my daughters (six and four year olds) were wanting to use the computer more and more, and my self-built monster of an XP machine was starting to get long in the tooth. Once the new aluminum iMacs hit, I knew they would be perfect. So I snagged a 24 inch beast for our living room. It’s running Leopard and just screams. Time Machine is keeping everything backed up, and life is good.

But, I didn’t stop there. I decided to grab an iPhone. After my brief affair with the iPod Touch, I started missing the video and photo capabilities that were so strong on the Touch. So I figured, what the hell, snag an iPhone and hack to my heart’s content. I’m now running everything including third party apps and I’m loving it. It really is a wonderful little device. My wife now has my old Windows Mobile device, and I’ll probably never look back.

So basically, what I’m saying is, I’m a switcher. I’ve become those ads that I scoffed at a few short years ago. I have no regrets. In fact, it may be the best computing decision I’ve ever made. And if you look at our community, I’m not the only one making that decision. These are hard core technologists picking Apple. If you haven’t looked at Apple in awhile, now may be the time, we would love to have you in our little cult.

🙂

Today, I’m ending my first week back after being on vacation for a week. Let me tell you, it was one of the best vacations I’ve ever had. It wasn’t flashy, it wasn’t expensive, it was simply relaxing and recharging.

I had been getting burnt out, so I needed the time away from work. So, for the first time in memory, I didn’t check work email the entire time I was gone. I didn’t read RSS feeds until the last day of my vacation. I actually stayed off of the computer for the most part. I say for the most part because I DID set up a new iMac and iPhone during the week, but other than that, I didn’t spend a lot of time browsing or reading or anything.

I think that was the main thing that let the batteries re-charge a bit. Another was just spending time with my daughters and wife. We played games, and hung out, went to the movies (Bee Movie was cute) and actually watched Star Wars as a family for the first time. We also ate at new food places and old favorites. It was great. I actually got up fairly early each day and just went about at our own relaxed pace.

My wife and I got to re-connect as well. We had been running so much, that all we ever had energy for was watching a little TV before bed. But, since we went about things at a pretty leisurely pace, we got to enjoy each other’s company more.

So, in all, a completely enjoyable experience, and one I’ll have to remember. I haven’t felt this good in a long time…

Hey everyone. I was on vacation last week (and a glorious vacation is was — more on that later) so I forgot to post about my latest article on Intranet Journal. Extend Quickr with Open Source Templates is available now, and goes over all the templates released by Rob Novak and the folks over at SNAPPS.

If you use Quickr, you definitely will want to check out what these free templates can do for you.

This was Fridge (or Fridgidaire Silverbear on his AKC papers) He was one of the sweetest animals you could have ever met. A couple hours ago, we had to have him put to sleep. He had been battling bulging discs in his neck for the past month, and had been doing pretty well with his medication. But last night he took a big turn for the worse. The neck problems had been causing lameness in his right front paw and he would drag it but still walk on it. Last night, he was laying in the living room and couldn’t stand up. His left side had pretty much been paralyzed. He was too old for surgery, and my wife took him into the vet today. I know she asked the question to the vet “If it was your dog, what would you do?” The answer was the most painful one. Jen was there with him, and i know this is tearing her up.

I’m not doing well either, I should have been there, but went to work instead. I gave him a tearful hug goodbye this morning, figuring it might be the last time I saw him. Unfortunately that was the case.

I helped deliver him when he was born, and his size in the litter garnered him the name Fridge. We never thought we would be keeping him, and we never thought the name would stick. Well both were the case, and we couldn’t have asked for a better dog. And he looked at us, right in the eye, and you could tell that he completely trusted in us and counted on us for love and protection. I’m just glad he didn’t have prolonged pain, but it won’t be the same when I go home tonight.

Jen, I’m so sorry I wasn’t there…

No doubt, if you follow the Domino blogosphere at all, you know this already, but my buddy Bruce is launching the IdeaJam website.  IdeaJam allows you to vote on ideas relating to product features for various products.  A big congratulations to himself, Gayle and his code monkeys Phig and Matt.  The site looks great…

Idea Jam for the IBM Lotus Community to launch in November
VANCOUVER, Washington – October 16, 2007
–
Today Elguji Software announced their new “Elguji Ideas” software will
be used to support a new social networking site for the IBM Lotus Community called “Idea Jam” (http://IdeaJam.net).

The site will officially launch on Tuesday November 20, 2007.

Idea Jam is a site where users of IBM’s Lotus software products can exchange ideas on how to improve Lotus products.
Others can help promote and/or demote ideas, as well as, providing feedback through comments. Popular ideas will rise
to the top. The Idea Jam, unlike blogs and discussion forums, allows a single place for the Lotus community to share
and promote ideas and suggestions on how to improve IBM Lotus software.

Ideas are grouped into “idea spaces” – which currently include IBM’s Lotus Connections, Lotus Notes and Domino,
Lotus Quickr, Lotus Sametime, Lotus Symphony and Websphere Portal. Additional idea spaces for OpenNTF and Idea
Jam itself will also be available.

Idea Jam includes many features that make the site easy and fun to use:

• Tags – All ideas can be “tagged” with one or more tags. Users can then use tag clouds to see which tags are
  popular.
• RSS – Idea Jam provides RSS feeds for idea spaces, a specific idea, a user or for any given tag.
• User Profiles – Users can view their ideas, their comments, and the ideas they voted on.
• Views – Ideas can be viewed by popularity, recent ideas, most comments, recent comments or others. Each
  view also has an associated RSS feed.
• Unvoted – Users can easily review ideas that they have not voted on.
• Random – Users can be presented with a random idea to promote or demote.
  

Elguji Ideas and the Idea Jam were developed by Elguji Software in conjunction with Matt White of Fynn Consulting Ltd.,
London (http://www.fclonline.com), and Sean Burgess of Laurel, Maryland ( http://www.phigsaidwhat.com ). Elguji Ideas
and Idea Jam software were built with IBM Lotus Domino Designer, The MooTools Javascript framework, the Yahoo User
Interface Libraries, Genii Software’s CoexEdit and run on IBM Lotus Domino 8.0.

The Elguji Ideas software will be made available for purchase during the first quarter of 2008. Inquires should be made to
info@elguji.com.

About Elguji Software

Elguji software (pronounced "el-GOO-jee") is an IBM Business Partner located in Vancouver, Washington, USA. Elguji
specializes in custom application development and system administration for IBM Lotus technologies including Lotus
Notes, Lotus Domino, Lotus Quickr and Lotus Sametime. Bruce Elgort, the president of Elguji is the co-founder of
OpenNTF and also host of the popular Taking Notes podcast. Visit www.elguji.com for more information.