VoIP

So I've been using Skype for a while, and it's nice, but kind of limiting. I'm thinking of replacing my landline with VoIP, since even with the cheapest plan available for local and long distance, I still get charged a minimum of $45 a month just for all the taxes and fees - even if I don't make any long-distance calls. VoIP would solve that, but I don't know anyone else who's gone that route.

I know the downsides; if your broadband connection goes down, you have no phone connection either. So I would need to keep my cell phone constantly charged; no biggie - I do that anyway. I also know that some of the VoIP providers don't have local 911 centers for every area code, and the time it takes to patch you from the centralized call center to a local one could be critical. That one does concern me a bit.

I'm looking at either Vonage or AT&T CallVantage. Has anyone used either of these services? Have you ever used the 911 function, and if so, how satisfied were you with the response time?

Goodbye to Myron...

As a follow-up to another post, I just finished Darkest Fear. I went to Harlan Coben's website, and he says he may not write any more Myron books!

On the upside, apparently the series has been optioned by Columbia Pictures and will be turned into movies. Can't say I agree with the IMDB board's choices for Myron (Vince Vaughn?!), but I do applaud Cillian Murphy as Win... he's about as psycho as they come.

Fun little Friday game...

Posted on our bulletin board database at work this morning. See how many you can come up with.

Summarize a film using only the title of another film. Examples:

Before Sunrise - Walking and Talking
Insomnia - The Longest Day
Barfly - Drunken Master
Groundhog Day - Time After Time
Titanic - That Sinking Feeling

My contribution was:

Any James Bond movie = The Spy Who Shagged Me

Speaking of, a new Bond has been named... yuck.

Google Reader

Google has taken one more step in their never-ending quest to take over the world... they're beta-testing their own newsreader. I've been playing with it for a day or so; I'm not sure I like it. But then, I've never used any other newsreaders; only live bookmarks in Firefox, so I can't really compare it. I do miss being able to see all the comments that have been posted to a particular blog post, but again - don't know if that feature is available in any newsreader.

developerWorks RSS feeds

Just got an email letting me know that I can now add RSS feeds direct from developerWorks to my website... they have a click-thru wizard to make it easy.

Upset!!!

James Blake drops Rafael Nadal in four sets... woo hoo!!! And Agassi knocked out another young whippersnapper...

Just to see if I remembered how...

I added some simple JavaScript to my template to display a random quote when the page loads. You may see an overabundance of Oscar Wilde. I like Oscar Wilde.

I'm reading...

I thought I'd second a recommendation from Ben Poole for the Myron Bolitar thrillers by Harlan Coben. The first one was published here in the States about a decade ago, but I had never heard of them until recently. I usually don't enjoy thrillers all that much because I can usually figure out the ending about halfway through. I can honestly say that I haven't gotten any of these figured out before the end. I've come close, but Coben always throws in one last twist that I can never see coming.

Myron is a fantastic lead - his sense of humor reminds me very much of Bill Murray.

I started in the middle of the series, and the books can be read as standalones, but I'm now going back and reading them in order:

Deal Breaker
Drop Shot
Fade Away
Back Spin
One False Move
The Final Detail
Darkest Fear

(I've only gotten as far as Fade Away, so no spoilers!)

Home sick today

...with my annual bout of bronchitis. No brilliant flashes with codeine-enhanced cough syrup swirling through my bloodstream and a 65 lb. dog sleeping on my stomach.

Music from your graduation year

Time for a trip down memory lane... a longer trip for some of us! I'm continuing the trail started by Libby and Rich (from whom I stole the formatting for my new blockquote element.)

The instructions are: Go to musicoutfitters.com, and do a search on the most popular 100 songs from the year you graduated high school. (You can do this by searching on the year you graduated). Bold the ones you actually like. (Understand that the word "like" in this case means, at the very least, "wouldn't immediately change the radio station from.") Pick a favorite. Underline that favorite. And Strikethru the ones you loathe. Italicize the ones you consider to be guilty pleasures.

The unstyled ones I'm either indifferent to, don't remember, or have never actually heard to begin with.

So, for your reminiscing pleasure(?), here are the top 100 of 1990:

1. Hold On, Wilson Phillips
2. It Must Have Been Love, Roxette
3. Nothing Compares 2 U,Sinead O'Connor
4. Poison, Bell Biv Devoe
5. Vogue, Madonna
6. Vision Of Love, Mariah Carey
7. Another Day In Paradise, Phil Collins
8. Hold On, En Vogue
9. Cradle Of Love, Billy Idol
10. Blaze Of Glory, Jon Bon Jovi
11. Do Me!, Bell Biv Devoe
12. How Am I Supposed To Live Without You, Michael Bolton
13. Pump Up The Jam, Technotronic
14. Opposites Attract, Paula Abdul
15. Escapade, Janet Jackson
16. All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You, Heart
17. Close To You, Maxi Priest
18. Black Velvet, Alannah Myles
19. Release Me, Wilson Phillips
20. Don't Know Much, Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville
21. All Around The World, Lisa Stansfield
22. l Wanna Be Rich, Calloway
23. I Remember You, Skid Row
24. Rub You The Right Way, Johnny Gill
25. She Ain't Worth It, Glenn Medeiros Featuring Bobby Brown
26. If Wishes Came True, Sweet Sensation
27. The Power, Snap
28. (Can't Live Without Your) Love and Affection, Nelson
29. Love Will Lead You Back, Taylor Dayne
30. Don't Wanna Fall In Love, Jane Child
31. Two To Make It Right, Seduction
32. Sending All My Love, Linear
33. Unskinny Bop, Poison
34. Step By Step, New Kids On The Block
35. Dangerous, Roxette
36. We Didn't Start The Fire, Billy Joel
37. I Don't Have The Heart, James Ingram
38. Downtown Train, Rod Stewart
39. Rhythm Nation, Janet Jackson
40. I'll Be Your Everything, Tommy Page
41. Roam, B-52's
42. Everything, Jody Watley
43. Back To Life, Soul II Soul
44. Here and Now, Luther Vandross
45. Alright, Janet Jackson
46. Ice Ice Baby, Vanilla Ice
47. Blame It On The Rain, Milli Vanilli
48. Have You Seen Her, M.C. Hammer
49. With Every Beat Of My Heart, Taylor Dayne
50. Come Back To Me, Janet Jackson
51. No More Lies, Michel'le
52. Praying For Time, George Michael
53. How Can We Be Lovers, Michael Bolton
54. Do You Remember, Phil Collins
55. Ready Or Not, After 7
56. U Can't Touch This, M.C. Hammer
57. I Wish It Would Rain Down, Phil Collins
58. Just Between You and Me, Lou Gramm
59. Something Happened On The Way To Heaven, Phil Collins
60. Black Cat, Janet Jackson
61. Can't Stop, After 7
62. Janie's Got A Gun, Aerosmith
63. The Humpty Dance, Digital Underground
64. I'll Be Your Shelter, Taylor Dayne
65. Free Fallin', Tom Petty
66. Giving You The Benefit, Pebbles
67. Enjoy The Silence, Depeche Mode
68. Love Song, Tesla
69. Price Of Love, Bad English
70. Girls Nite Out, Tyler Collins
71. King Of Wishful Thinking, Go West
72. What Kind Of Man Would I Be?, Chicago
73. Get Up! (Before The Night Is Over), Technotroic
74. Here We Are, Gloria Estefan
75. Epic, Faith No More
76. Love Takes Time, Mariah Carey
77. Just Like Jesse James, Cher
78. Love Shack, B-52's
79. All Or Nothing, Milli Vanilli
80. Romeo, Dino
81. Everybody Everybody, Black Box
82. I Go To Extremes, Billy Joel
83. Whip Appeal, Babyface
84. Oh Girl, Paul Young
85. C'mon and Get My Love, D-Mob With Cathy Dennis
86. (It's Just) The Way That You Love Me, Paula Abdul
87. We Can't Go Wrong, Cover Girls
88. When I'm Back On My Feet Again, Michael Bolton
89. Make You Sweat, Keith Sweat
90. This One's For The Children, New Kids On The Block
91. What It Takes, Aerosmith
92. Forever, Kiss
93. Jerk Out, Time
94. Just A Friend, Biz Markie
95. Whole Wide World, A'me Lorain
96. Without You, Motley Crue
97. Swing The Mood, Jive Bunny and The Mastermixers
98. Thieves In The Temple, Prince
99. Mentirosa, Mellow Man Ace
100. Tic-Tac-Toe, Kyper

I apologize...

for turning on the text verification thingie when posting comments. I started getting spam comments.

Hopefully the two of you who read this will not be too put off by it.

SetAnyDate

I love it when I find out about a previously-unknown function... a great many have come to my attention courtesy of Stan. Just found another one, that happens to be very timely (no pun intended.) This is something I can use right now to fix a problem I've been having with training registration databases that generate calendar entries.

SetAnyDate


Does anyone out there have a favorite function, property, etc. that isn't well-known but is extremely useful in certain situations?

Updated template

When I first set up this blog, I decided to just use one of Blogger's ready-to-use templates. I wasn't sure how much time I was going to put into it, so I didn't want to spend a ton of time creating my own template. Besides, I like pretty things but don't have a designer's eye.

I've known that I wanted to edit it into a three-column layout for a while, but never got around to it. So I sat down last night, determined to make the change. How long could it take, right? It's not like HTML's real programming. Famous last words...

It's been at least 5 years since I've done any serious web development outside of Domino. The CSS revolution has passed me by - I'm strictly a tables girl. Well, the author of this template didn't believe in tables. I know the basics of CSS; styling paragraphs and other text elements is no big deal. But absolute positioning, layers, and z-indexes are way over my head.

It took 6 hours. Yikes. Time to get a book and try to catch up, if only to say that I can.

Need to get back into this

I went on vacation for two weeks with no internet connection, and haven't been able to get back into this since I've been back. But now that Stan knows I'm here I have to get my butt in gear and start posting again.

Just not right now.

MIT Survey

Clientcopia

For anyone who's ever worked in consulting... or at a helpdesk... or with people. Clientcopia is a place to vent. A lot of stupid stories, but a few humdingers that make you wonder about the future of the human race.

iGrep

iGrep is a new (to me, anyway) search engine focused specifically on developers. Not sure how helpful it will be; all the content comes from Developer Shed, which I've never explored.

Super DragAndGo (firefox extension)

Thanks to Julian at nsftools.com, I now have a spanky new Firefox extension that I don't know how I've lived without. He listed all of his Firefox extensions in his list of computer rebuild settings, and Super DragAndGo, while cheesily named, sounded like a must-have. I installed it right away, and will now install it on every computer I have. If you use Firefox's tabbed browsing like I do (I often have 11 or 12 tabs open at a time), it's really convenient to be able to drag a link up off the page to open it in a new foreground tab, or drag it down to open a new background tab. Not that ctrl-clicking on a link was really all that difficult, but this allows me to choose where the tab opens.

Using tables

Jake over at Codestore (new window) has admitted to using tables for form layout. My techniques have finally been validated! I love tables, and use them all the time. CSS is great in its place, but nothing can beat a table for a clean form layout that scales with the window size.

A few comments to that post mention that Notes tables are easier to deal with, and this may be true, but admittedly they create horrible code. So it's time to start taking advantage of R6 features. Create your table using the Notes properties box, then select it and choose Edit-->Convert to HTML. You can then choose View-->HTML Pane. From there you can tweak the code as much as you want, and see the results in the HTML Pane immediately. Very convenient.

Certification

I've finally decided to go ahead and take the R6 update exam... 5 years after getting my R5 certification. I know that certification really doesn't mean much to most companies, despite the CLP salary survey that says otherwise. But for me, it's like having a bit of Stuart Smalley on my cube wall. "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me." All this for a measly $125 and a lost Saturday morning...

The future of browser programmability

Thanks to Rich over at the Power of the Schwartz for the link to a Lotus guy's Sergio Leone take on the current state of web application development. The bit that was of particular interest to me is quoted here:


"The back button is not a bug in Ajax, it's a flaw in the browser metaphor.

I hearby serve notice to the following browser controls: forward, back, home, reload, and that URL field. You need to die... unless I need you."


I've been pretty immersed in Notes client development for the last 4 years. Well, that and XSLt, but that's a whole 'nother story. Anyway, I've gotten away from my web roots. But this got me thinking: Firefox is built on JavaScript and XML. The chrome is exposed to developers of themes, and now GreaseMonkey allows coders to change the content of a page from the user end; what's to say that the actual browser controls won't eventually be programmable as well? Wouldn't that be a fantastic tool to have? Just think... you could disable the Back and Forward buttons and force users to stick with the application navigation you've built to ensure that they progress in a logical manner, rather than clicking around willy-nilly, like your 1000-hours-of-overtime baby was just some... some web site.

Or have I completely missed the boat while buried in LotusScript classes? Has this already been done by some script kiddie?

The reason I can't afford a vacation...

waldo
This is Waldo. Waldo is picky about his treats. This makes him an embarrassment to the basset hound breed, as he's lacking the indiscriminate, "eat it before it eats you" gene. Because he turns up his nose at PetSmart specials (heaven help me if I ever bring a box of MilkBones in the house), I'm always on a quest to find new treats he'll condescend to enjoy. It's either that, or listen to the "I'm starving; I'm wasting away" whimper while I try to eat dinner.

So I found these treats by Merrick. They're disgusting. Dehydrated lamb lungs, beef hearts, and other things you wouldn't expect to see outside of maybe a biology lab. He loves them. Naturally, they're expensive. I find that I could use some supplemental income...

Another potentially good feature gone to the dogs...

So I've been slowly integrating new R6 functions and features into my applications, now that 95% of my users are on 6. I just found @SetViewInfo and thought, "Wow! This could really be the answer to a lot of problems. No more reason to maintain 50 views just so users can see only their state." Think of all the ways I could use this!

But alas. It turns out that @SetViewInfo is not my own personal 42. It applies itself to every view, not just the current view. Not good. Ah, Lotus... why hast thou forsaken us?