Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Skype integration

I've been using Skype at home for a while now with my dad, who's an even bigger geek than I am - he actually has a USB phone handset. Anyway, I just read this posting on Chris Toohey's DominoGuru blog, and I think I'm going to have to convince the company to start using it to communicate with our outside vendors just so I can play with integrating it into Notes apps.

I was going to try adding one of the Skype buttons from the button wizard, but Blogger won't allow script tags, so I guess that's not going to happen...

Update: I can add the button; just can't use the script that will detect if the person clicking has Skype installed or not.

Chat with me

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Notes calendaring

Am I the only one frustrated by the lack of documentation accompanying the alternate time zone feature on R6? I need to programmatically create a calendar entry. I've created one, and according to my document viewer, it's identical to a calendar entry I created manually, and yet it doesn't display the alternate and local time zones - it just treats the times I've chosen as local, period.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Follow-up on VoIP

In case anyone is still reading, I did eventually go with AT&T CallVantage. There was a bit of a problem at first with the sound quality, but once they diagnosed it as a faulty adapter, they sent out a new one overnight and it's fine. I've had it for almost two months, and I love it. I was able to forward my home phone while I was on vacation; I can set do-not-disturb hours (even set a regular schedule); get my voicemail messages emailed to me; all kinds of cool stuff. Their phone tech support is available 24/7, and are in general very knowledgeable. And the unlimited monthly plan is 50% less than my old local/long distance package. I would recommend it to anyone looking to switch to VoIP.

Ruby on Rails

I've been hearing about Ruby for a long time, but never had any time to look into it. Last week was slow at work since so many people were out, so I was able to fiddle a bit, and found a total-beginner's tutoral. It's actually intended for beginning programmers, not beginners in Ruby, so it's a bit simplistic, but a good place to start. It seems like it could be a really powerful platform, although I'll have to start reading the more advanced articles to see what it's really useful for.

Tough times...

I haven't been keeping up with this, and it bothers me. Things have been tough for the last few months: I had walking pneumonia, then my dog had emergency surgery while I was out of town. His back is healing nicely, but he is not eating, so he isn't recovering. He's lost more than 10% of his total weight in three weeks, which is extremely dangerous. He's going back in on Friday to have a gastroscopy tube put in; I'll have to use a syringe to shoot food directly into his stomach. Hopefully this will get him back on track. I haven't slept more than 2 hours a night in almost 2 weeks, and I'm worried that I'm going to end up sick again - then how will I take care of him? So it's been a bad few months.