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.

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.

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.

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