The Contrarian Technologist

Category Opinion
Ed Brill created an entry today about the power of some of the templates that are delivered with the base Domino product. (link). Most of the comments have pointed out the lack of updates to the UI and the functionality of the templates for the last several years. I started to respond to these comments, but realized that my entry was getting too long and perhaps would ruffle a few feathers, so I'll put it here instead.

Posted by Kit Davis At 12:32 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (4)

Category Collaboration
After 4 days of radio silence I heard back from the original IBM tech support person who informed me that he wanted to set up a Web Conference and watch the installation program fail. I was disappointed and frustrated since we had agreed last week that the problem should be escalated to level 2 support. It was also pretty clear that the tech was sure I was doing something stupid that he would catch and quickly solve. Unfortunately for both of us, using Sametime Web Conferencing over a satellite connection is an exercise in extreme patience. While my connection speed is not the best, and I have complained about it elsewhere in this blog, it should still be sufficient for this purpose. However, and I believe it is related to the way that the satellite transmits packets in bursting form, screen sharing in particular just doesn't work properly and results in numerous time-outs. Sure enough, we spent an hour and a half on the conference, and I had to terminate and restart the web conference no less than 10 times. However, we persevered, and sure enough, the installation of the WMC provisioning server failed at the same place and in the same way that the 30+ installations I have previously attempted failed. Once again, as was the case last week, it was decided that this problem needed to be sent on to the second level support staff. Hopefully, this will get the ball rolling - I certainly did not expect to be in this situation 3 weeks after starting the install.

Posted by Kit Davis At 9:43 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Life in Cape Breton
Tonight was the televised portion of the east cost music awards which were described by one presenter as the grammys with more alcohol. There are enough musicians in the Maritime provinces to rate their own music awards program. Some of the awardees are known outside the area such as Sarah McLachlan , Great Big Sea, and George Canyon (the runner up from the first season of Nashville Star), but there are hundreds of other bands that range from indie to francophone that well represent the area. With a population of under 150,000 people, Cape Bretoners make up a disproportionately large part of the acts. From guitar virtuoso, J.P. Cormier, to song writing phenom Gordie Sampson, to traditional stars the Cottars, there are so many bands on this island that it would take you a year to hear them all. Certainly the highlight of this evening's concert was the tribute to Buddy MacMaster by his niece, Natalie. If you have never seen either of these two famous fiddlers in concert, you have missed a piece of musical history. Natalie travels the world with her band performing in many venues and we have seen her more often over the years in Washington at WolfTrap and the Birchmere than we have here, but her uncle Buddy rarely leaves Cape Breton, so you need to travel here to see him. Thankfully, that is not difficult as he seems to play somewhere 4 to 5 nights a week during the summer and is one of those performers that never seems ready to leave the stage. If you have never experienced the music of Cape Breton this link http://www.redshoepub.com/audio/MairiRankin2.ram is the best example I know of on-line.

Posted by Kit Davis At 9:37 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Other
Tonight, according to the Wall Street Journal was "Open that bottle Night" a time each year when you open a bottle of wine you have been saving for a special occasion. Due to the very restrictive import restrictions on the importation of wine into Nova Scotia, we are only allowed to bring a couple of bottles with us when we cross the border, and there is not much of a selection available in the state run liquor stores. But I rummaged around in the wine cellar and found a bottle of 1999 Camigliano Brunello di Montalcino which I didn't know we had, (I think I bought it at the roadside alcohol emporiums that the State of New Hampshire runs right on 95) and opened it tonight. It was fabulous - I only wish I had a few more bottles of it, or even anything close. I'd probably get a lot of argument from some quarters, but with Brunello, Barbaresco, Barolo, Barbera, Amarone, Sangiovese, Chianti and dozens of other choices, I think that the Italians make the world's best wines for just about every use and price range.

Posted by Kit Davis At 9:57 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (1)

Category Collaboration
It's been a week of multiple installs and troubleshooting, but I've had no luck getting the provisioning server operating. Over the last couple of years, IBM support has certainly improved, but on this issue they have been less than stellar. Having been at the other end of the support equation many times, I certainly recognize the issues and the nightmare it must be for IBM to provide support for a product like WCS and I am hesitant to blog about any experiences both good and bad. Of all of the support options that are available, email support works best for me. I think communicating technical issues works best in print, and with email support, I avoid playing phone tag, and I can revisit the problem and solution at a later date if desired. I have used this resource dozens of times with portal and LWP issues and in many cases, I receive a return email the same day with some additional instructions or configuration suggestions that are "spot on". In this support incident most of the subsequent communication has been via phone. I send emails, and the support technician calls me on the phone with a response. Unlike some other support organizations IBM support people are well spoken and typically responsive, but that does not mean that they are able to solve every problem. I realize that the product is quite new and that so far, I am dealing with first level support, but I knew that things were not going to go well when the first thing the technician told me when he called was “we haven’t had a chance to install the product yet.”

Posted by Kit Davis At 9:07 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Technology
I admit that I am somewhat of a neurotic and have occasionally displayed some compulsive disorder symptoms. Today's frantic search for some old mail messages is perhaps a good example. I keep my old mail messages - I don't know why I started doing it - I really don't need them, but I keep them nonetheless.

Posted by Kit Davis At 5:34 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Life in Cape Breton
The thing that drew me to Cape Breton originally was the music - it permeates the island and you hear it everywhere. While there are plenty of locals who would prefer to listen to contemporary music, Cape Breton celtic music is still very popular with a wide cross section of the population. I've had a few good laughs on warm summer evenings getting passed by a car of teenagers and hearing fiddle music blaring from the sound system.

And then there are the bagpipes. While not as common as fiddle players here, it is still considered good form to have a piper at any big event. If you are a car dealer who wants to have a big sale on the weekend, you get a piper to stand outside and play. If your church is having its 100 year anniversary, you get a piper or two to show up.

Posted by Kit Davis At 8:28 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Collaboration
I've spent most of the last couple of days working with WCS2.6. As I blogged about earlier, the initial installation worked flawlessly and I was certainly impressed. However it still appears that configuring and tweaking the system are the technical challenges that they have always been. Implementing Domino LDAP worked well, but I have spent so much time working through all of the problems with the previous versions that I wonder if others would find it as easy. (While I have not had the chance to fully investigate, it does appear that this version is missing some of the out of the box integration with Domino that was present in the earlier versions. The Domino Web Access Portlet is not part of the base install, and installing the version from the portlet catalog produced an error)

The real issues began when I tried to implement the Managed Client Provisioning Server.

Posted by Kit Davis At 11:51 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (4)

Category Life in Cape Breton
Admittedly if you are looking for night-time entertainment in the winter there is little to none to recommend in Cape Breton. Once tourist season is over, most of the hotels and restaurants close down and the few that extend their season are closed by the first of January. This time of year going out to dinner is pretty much limited to the couple of fast food restaurants and pubs in Port Hawkesbury, or an hour and a half drive to the Sydney area.

So what do Cape Bretoner's do for entertainment? There are of course the winter sports for either watching or participation, although this mild snowless winter has not presented many opportunities. While we have seen the ice fisherman out on the lake in droves at some particularly popular spots, the ice has only formed in our cove in the last week and I would be hesitant to go out on it yet. The prediction for the weekend is for temperatures again in the low 50s, so I suspect that the couple inches of snow we got last weekend will disappear and the cove will likely thaw. Gone are the days the old timers talk about when you could not only skate or ski across the lake, but drive cars and trucks 20 or 30 miles across to the other side of the lake on ice that was 4 or 5 feet thick.

Posted by Kit Davis At 10:04 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Politics
OK, It's probably not advisable to combine technology and politics on a blog, but I just can't resist. Tonight as the controversy around Dick Cheney's "bagging a big one" while quail hunting swirls, ex Senator Alan Simpson has come to his defense. Senator Simpson is worried that people will think that Dick Chaney is a cruel, hard man after listening to the news reports and just made the following comment on CNN. "Dick's a sympathetic hunter - I've seen him pull up when a dog or a car came into his line of fire." Gee, does this imply that standard behavior would have been to shoot?

Posted by Kit Davis At 8:21 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Technology
I've lived through the trials and tribulations of many repetitive installations of Workplace and Portal for the last 4 or 5 years and quite frankly they have always been the stuff of nightmares. The earliest versions of Portal required hundreds of parameter entries, the installation required a lot of attention, took hours to complete, and at least for me, it would never ever work. Things finally got better with Portal 5 - it still required a lot of effort to install, but at least you could get it to work after a few tries. Then came Lotus Workplace - the 2.01 install was dreadful - I was part of the redbook team that produced "IBM Collaboration Services and Lotus Domino Together" (I wrote all of the Intro/Positioning chapters and the LDAP chapter.) We spent so much time trying to get the product installed that I wrote most of my stuff after the residency was over. Workplace 2.5 was an improvement, but still the install was much more complicated than it should have been.

It was with some trepidation that I began the 2.6 install today. After getting everything downloaded and extracted, I started the install, filled in the directory information, DNS name of the server, the administrator ID and Password, checked the products that I wanted to install and then I walked away - threw the frizibe for the dogs and came back an hour or so later to find everything was installed. I've still got to configure it to use my LDAP server etc., but what an fabulous improvement!

That being said I've still got a few complaints. Why does the downloaded install consist of 16 executable files, 5 zip files and 1 tar file? As usual there are no directions on what to do with the files - but again an improvement, everything can be extracted to the same base directory which is one of the reasons the install goes so well. But, how hard would it be for the installation to include a simple script (even an old fashion batch file) that would extract everything into the correct locations and print out the installation instructions? As it is you have to find the installation PDF on the Developer Works Site to learn that the install program is located in one of the directories. If you click on setup.exe in the root of your installation directory (which is the intuitive thing to do) it begins a DB2 installation. It just doesn't seem very professional.

Still, I'm happy for the improvements - great work Lotus/IBM.

Posted by Kit Davis At 5:58 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Life in Cape Breton
The Nor'easter last week managed to take down 5 big spruces around the property. Most of them were 40 or 50 years old and had managed to grow at least 60 feet in height. Unfortunately the construction and resulting excavation disturbed their root systems and down they came with their roots and soil attached. Donald and his helper Johnny showed up yesterday with chainsaws in hand, and cut the trees into 4 foot sections. They then dragged and stacked everything into two big piles and set them ablaze. The fires burned all night and I've been restacking the wood all day so that everything is almost consumed. Not a great thing for the environment but there are just not many other disposal options for big trees. The fires produced a great quantity of smoke; enough that our friends and neighbors, Ute and Harold from the Cape Breton Smokehouse, the home of the world's best smoked salmon, ( http://www.capebretonrestaurant.com) came knocking on our door convinced that our house was burning down.

Posted by Kit Davis At 3:40 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Technology
Jack Dausman ( http://www.leadershipbynumbers.com/MS.nsf) has started a topic in his blog about IT worker dissatisfaction and the relationship to the need that many employees feel for increased training. The comment has been made that upper management does not know how to value or measure training. My argument is that to a greater extent, (particularly in the DC consulting world) it is not always in management’s best interest to have staff trained in the latest and greatest.

Posted by Kit Davis At 9:23 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (2)

Category Collaboration
A current topic of discussion on a number of blogs is Microsoft's newest initiative to migrate Notes/Domino customers to Exchange. To a great extent, I think that any campaign to convince customers to move from one platform or the other for the sake of mail is never going to make sense on a strictly dollars and sense basis. When the implementation is further complicated with applications then it becomes a complete fools errand. To a great extent, this cuts both ways. In my opinion anyone who has chosen to implement Exchange rather than Domino is either misguided or most likely bowed to political pressure from higher ups that were influenced by FUD marketing. However, once it's been implemented, I would not try to sell that customer Domino using an economic based argument. (Thankfully there are plenty of technological reasons, not the least of which is the unstable single data store used by Microsoft, to convince a customer to migrate to Domino.) When applications are added to the mix it becomes even more difficult to make a convincing argument. Again, the advantage goes to IBM because there are no Exchange apps, and millions of Domino apps.

Posted by Kit Davis At 10:30 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Life in Cape Breton
While the rest of the east coast basks in sunny, warmer than normal temperatures today, we are finally getting a taste of winter in a big way. A Nor'easter has blown in and we've had close to 6 inches of snow and 50 mile an hour winds during the night, and another foot of snow predicted for today. The temperature is just under 30 so it's wet heavy snow, but the winds are strong enough to drift it everywhere. We have areas of the yard that are completely clear and other places (including the front door) where the snow has drifted over a foot. As has been the case in with the last 3 wind storms, a couple of large spruces have toppled over taking their root structure and attached ground with them. It will warm up into the 40s by the weekend and rain, so the next couple of days may be the only chance we get to go cross country skiing this season.

Posted by Kit Davis At 9:11 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)