The Domino Chick
What, me silent?
Wednesday, October 11th, 2006
Those of you who know me in real life and have heard me yammering on endlessly about Lotus software products probably wonder about why I've been so silent in the electronic realm, especially with this blog. I started it with the best intentions of keeping it up, but to be honest, my travel schedule, day-to-day communications and job duties, and personal obligations make it hard for me to consider it a high priority. I really want to contribute and participate in discussions, especially those that surround 7.0.2 and Hannover and Sametime 7.5 and all the other interesting things going on in the Land of the Loti, but I just don't have the bandwidth a lot of the time.I know I'm not the most well-traveled person out there - I think Ed and I are in a race for who has the most butt-in-seat airmiles at the end of the year - but I have flown over 116,000 miles so far this year, with a good 42k of that in the 3rd quarter. I've also traveled a bit by train and car, too. My internal body odometer is showing a lot of wear and tear.
That said, I've had a lot of interesting discussions with customers, IBMers, and business partners in the last month or so about several topics relating to Lotus software, and in those discussions I've found a bit of new inspiration for blogging. So, for the next little while anyway, you can expect me to be a lot less silent.
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Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 03:15:00 PM
Location: New York, NY
Live from the Irish User Group event
Friday, June 16th, 2006
I'm at the Irish Lotus User Group event in Dublin, sitting at the HADSL booth doing a little blogging after Ed's keynote and before my session. The keynote was great - lots of good information, and the message was very clear: Hannover is Notes!I'm speaking on Domino Domain Monitoring in a little while and then sitting in on some of the other sessions this afternoon. If all goes well and time allows, there may be a small surprise or two during the closing session and prize draw, but don't hold me to it. There will definitely be some fun to be had afterwards at the geekdinner, though! Photos will be posted shortly - keep an eye on the photoblog at the right as I'm sure the blogmonkey will make an appearance.
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Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 10:57:19 AM
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Live from DNUG
Tuesday, May 16th, 2006
So, I didn't make it to the Ask the Experts session on Thursday night. Late on Wednesday, I got a call from the airline, telling me that my direct flight from Los Angeles to Boston was cancelled, and that I would have to be rebooked on a connecting flight through Chicago. There were delays in Chicago, so I didn't end up getting to the hotel until about 11 PM Thursday night. I stayed up for a couple of extra hours to work on the VMWare images for my presentations the next day, and then presented two sessions on Friday. I also attended a couple of Susan's sessions, where she demonstrated the new "Notes on a stick" feature, and took my ND7 Administration Update test, which I passed. (Chris sure did make that test difficult, though!)After that eventful (but short) trip to Boston for the View's Admin2006, I am now in Germany for DNUG. I just finished my second session of the conference on Domino Domain Monitoring. Yesterday, I did a jumpstart session on Domino Administration. Both sessions went quite well, and the audiences seemed to enjoy them. Domino Domain Monitoring is one of my favorite new 7 features, so I really enjoy talking about it and showing everyone how it works. There's a lot of information, but I somehow managed to fit it all in within a one-hour session!
In Karlsruhe, I've been spending far too much time with Paul and Bill, plotting the chaos that will occur at the Irish Notes User Group in June. In a little while, I'll be heading down to their session on worst practices, which is always informative and great fun. Tomorrow, I plan to catch Ed's session in the afternoon, and the rest of the time I'll be in the Meet the Lotus Software Experts lab on the main floor. If you're here at DNUG, stop by and say hello!
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Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 01:14:01 PM
Location: Karlsruhe, Germany
Baseball fever
Monday, May 8th, 2006
Most people who read this know that I travel a lot for work. How much, you ask? On average, I'm on the road 3 weeks out of the month. The bulk of that is domestic U.S. travel, but every so often I'm lucky (or I go on vacation) and I get to go out of the country. Since most of this travel is for business, my evenings are usually free. A lot of the time, I know people in the cities I visit, but even then, sometimes I end up looking for things to do. Couple that with the fact that I'm a complete baseball geek (who am I kidding, I'm a geek about everything I like) and you get my project for the next couple of years: I intend to visit every Major League ballpark. This is to the great delight of a few of my friends, who like baseball nearly as much as I do and would be happy to aid me in my quest by attending baseball games with me. :-)To that end, last week I was in Milwaukee and attended a game at Miller Park. It's a really nice park - nice concessions, easy parking, a cool retractable roof, and everything is designed so you don't miss a moment. They have a TGI Friday's in the park, and pretty much every seat in the dining area overlooks left field. There's even a little balcony area - it looked like it was close enough that we could've tossed down some hot wings to the outfielders. We were able to snag field-level seats about an hour before the game started for under $40/person, which is pretty cheap (by L.A. standards, of course - I notice wide variance in ticket prices around the country). I noticed that they also had bleacher seats for $5, so going to a game in Milwaukee is pretty affordable. They played against Houston, and since I really don't care about either team unless they're battling the Dodgers for the wildcard towards the end of the season, I rooted for the home team, but the Astros (Libby's team) won. All in all, it was a great game. Some photos are over at my photoblog.
I'm getting ready to go to Boston for the View's Admin2006 conference, where I'll be presenting a few sessions. I've got a head cold right now, so I'm doing everything I can to get rid of the congestion before I fly. Hopefully I'll be sniffle-free by the time I get there. I hope to see you there!
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Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 05:18:45 PM
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Google Calendar
Thursday, April 13th, 2006
I'm testing out the new Google Calendar features. I created a public calendar feed, where I'll post appearances at events like Lotusphere, DNUG, and the View. You can put the XML feed into any feed reader and the iCal feed in any iCal-compatible calendar application. I'm going to play with it some more and see what I can do with it. Fun!Permanent Link | Comments: Read (0)
Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 03:13:23 PM
Location: Los Angeles, CA
2005 - Year in review
Monday, January 2nd, 2006
I'm going to steal Ed's format for this year in review because I love bulleted lists like nothing else. If I could marry bulleted lists, I would. Anyway.I didn't blog as much as I would have liked to this year, and I heard about it from a lot of people, customers included. (Thanks, Steven! I can always count on you for a good heckling. And sorry about the misspelling!) I hate to use my constant travel as an excuse, but I will - it's difficult for me to find enough left over brain matter to conjure up something interesting most of the time. But really, the reason for the lack of blogging is that this year has been such a complete rollercoaster for me. I've been pretty much off-balance the whole year. Some really amazing, wonderful things have happened, and some really awful things have happened. I haven't talked about most of these things here, because I like to keep things light, fun, and full of monkeys. So I'll throw out some highlights for you. And some monkeys.
Memories from 2005:
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Travel highlights from 2005:
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Wishes for 2006
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I wish everyone a happy, healthy, successful 2006. I want to thank all of my friends and colleagues for being there for me this year and I hope next year will be even more amazing than this one.
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Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 03:55:42 PM
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Alive and kicking
Monday, June 27th, 2005
I'm baaaaaack. Aren't you excited?With my triumphant return thus announced, I'd like to welcome a shiny new addition to the Domino blog family (I hate the word blogosphere!) - Susan Bulloch. Susan
(By the way - yes, I know, I haven't posted in a while. Thanks for reminding me, Steven.) ;-)
One of the reasons I haven't been blogging very much - and there are many, I swear! - is that I've been traveling a lot. Couple that with working on a couple of artistic projects, and there's no space left over in my brain to come up with new blog content. I'll keep trying, though.
For now, I thought I'd start a Kathleen-tracker. I'm going to list every city I've been to this year, just for kicks. I'll put this into the sidebar at some point (though I may need help with that - Rocky?), but here's the list so far. An asterisk denotes a city that I'd never been to before.
Hartford, CT*
Orlando, FL (I bet you can guess what this was for!)
Pleasanton, CA
Chicago, IL
Rochester, NY
Canandaigua, NY (personal)
Rosemead, CA (barely counts as travel, but it's L.A. traffic, so I'm counting it)
Detroit, MI*
Columbus, OH*
Kansas City, MO*
Grand Rapids, MI*
Charlotte, NC* (where I got to sample some of Susan's world famous home cookin')
Pittsburgh, PA*
Dublin, Ireland (personal)
London, England (personal)
Boston, MA
San Jose, CA
New York, NY
Columbus, IN*
North Chicago, IL
Phoenix, AZ (present)
As you can see, I've visited two Columbuses (Columbii?) already, and I'm scheduled to visit a third in August, rounding out the Columbus trifecta.
Hey, I warned you guys this blog would be about travel sometimes, too. ;-)
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Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 07:33:55 PM
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Windy city
Monday, February 21st, 2005
I'm currently in Chicago attending some training at the IBM facility here. This is only my second time in Chicago, but I must say that I count it in my top 5 favorite cities in North America. Granted, both times I've visited I've been blessed with perfect weather (or at least, weather the way I like it - crisp and cold but not freezing), but I really like this city. When I visit cities like this I'm also reminded of how much I love to be able to walk around instead of driving everywhere like I do in L.A.I'm only here for two days, but at least I get to stay in my favorite hotel in North America - the Drake. I haven't had much time to do anything outside of work, but I walked back here from the office today and just enjoyed the sights and sounds of Chicago. I spent the day learning far too much about fibre channel switches and spent my evening lounging in the hotel and people-watching. This hotel has a fantastic mix - people who have used this as their hotel of choice for decades, business travelers, young couples staying in their first fancy hotel. Combine that with the history this hotel offers and you've got one happy travel geek.
Tomorrow, after another SAN-tastic day, I'm off to Rochester, NY to deliver a two-day presentation, and hopefully explore the Eastman House. I haven't been to Rochester since I was a small child, so I'm looking forward to exploring a bit. It's one of the benefits of having a job that requires lots of travel, especially if you're a travel geek like me.
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Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 10:49:30 PM
Location: Chicago, IL
Germ-o-rama
Thursday, February 17th, 2005
After spending a week recovering from Lotusphere (and really, it did take a week - it was intense this year), I spent last week just outside of San Francisco in Pleasanton, CA doing some knowledge transfer with a customer. In some ways, it was like a mini- Lotusphere Comes to You, because I delivered the Domino Administrator jumpstart as well as the AdminP session, along with 4 or 5 FSS* presentations. The hecticness of Lotusphere finally caught up with me, though - I had been fighting off a cold for a few days before I flew up there, but I think 6 hours of talking each day for 3 days straight made my immune system declare mutiny and refuse to help any more. I woke up on Thursday with a very sore throat and almost no voice. A day of rest and no talking, except to order a smoothie from one of those oh-so-Californian juice places, was just what the doctor ordered, and I felt well enough on Friday to conclude my talks.So here's my totally non-technical related question: for someone like me, who flies one round-trip every other week on average but sometimes one or two per week, what is the best way to boost my body's defenses so I don't keep getting colds? This is the third cold in as many months, and I try what my doctor and friends have said - lots of water, daily multivitamin plus extra vitamin C and B-complex, take Airborne or Emergen-C when I fly, and frequent handwashing. I feel like I'm doing everything possible to prevent getting colds and I'm still getting them. Any tips from frequent flyers, moms, doctors, and anyone else who has to deal with germy people often would be appreciated.
* FSS = Field Support Services, which is my team.
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Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 10:09:16 AM
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Lotusphere preparation
Saturday, January 15th, 2005
Right. Time to make this an active blog again. Sorry 'bout that.I'll be delivering a couple of sessions at Lotusphere '05 with my esteemed colleague Susan Bulloch. We're doing a Jumpstart on Domino Administration (technically two sessions, since we're doing a repeat of the Jumpstart right after the first one), and a session in the infrastructure track entitled "Leveraging AdminP in Domino 6.x". I don't know how many people have registered for the Jumpstarts, but I do know that the AdminP session is in the biggest room at the conference, so make sure you show up and fill up those seats!
I'll also be participating in the Lotus blogging community BOF and working with Susan for her BOF on Deploying Notes and Domino 6.5. I'm going to squeeze in Ed's "The Boss Loves Microsoft - Where Does That Leave Lotus?" session (always a good one) and the history of Notes panel, and most other times I'll be in the Meet the Developers Lab. So, if you want to say hi, ask a question, or bring me some snacks, stop by!
The whole schedule can be viewed here and full Lotusphere information is here.
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Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 03:42:23 PM
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Gnomedex
Friday, October 1st, 2004
I'm currently at Gnomedex in Lake Tahoe - that's right, even when I take personal days I'm doing geeky things. I'm listening to Steve Wozniak's keynote and joining all the other people in blogging the event. The only problem I'm having is that the blog template I use doesn't allow posting via web or phone, and I'm using a friend's laptop, which of course doesn't have a Notes client on it. (It's true! I fraternize with people who don't use Notes! Oh, the humanity.) As a workaround, I sent this post to my friendly blog host, Chris, and he's posting it for me. This functionality, in my opinion, is all that's standing in the way of making this template one of the most powerful blog tools I've used. It's far more customizable and flexible than any other blog software I've used, and as an added bonus, I can work offline with it. But only if I bring my laptop. Don't worry, it'll be here tomorrow.Bonus: I just created a KM/now photoblog, at Buzznet. Enjoy!
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Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 10:53:55 PM
Location: On the Road
LinuxWorld
Monday, August 9th, 2004
I went to LinuxWorld in San Francisco last week. As Ed mentioned, the show really seemed to be more about the Expo and vendor displays than about session content. Every session I attended or assisted with had no more than 20-30 people in it, and in my opinion there weren't enough sessions. But I learned some stuff and got some swag for my colleagues, and I spoke to a woman who runs another conference about another possible speaking engagement. I like presenting. :)I'm officially on vacation this week, through next Tuesday. The travel plans have changed slightly - I'm at home today and tomorrow getting some much-needed work done around the house, and then I'm off to New York and Philly on Wednesday. After I get back, I'll be home for a few days, then I think there's an extra trip to Virginia in the works for me before the Boston trip. I should hit platinum status on American in the middle of the return flight from Virginia. I know a lot of people think traveling all the time on business is glamorous - believe me, it's not. But if you can get elite status on the airlines you travel the most, it certainly makes things easier.
Even though I'm on vacation, I'll be working a little during the next week on a presentation I'm giving at the end of the month. It's basically a (much) shorter version of my Running Domino on Linux presentation from the View conference - I'm not reusing much, just following the same general outline and skipping the installation stuff. I also need to finish my laptop project - I'm repartitioning the hard drive, installing RedHat on one partition and Debian on another. I'll need to at the very least have RedHat installed with Domino running on it so I can do some demos during the presentation. But I'm really curious to see if I can get Domino running on Debian. I know it's not officially supported, but that's what makes it fun!
On a non-techie note, I want to wish a happy belated birthday to Ed, whose birthday was Friday, and a happy birthday to Libby, whose birthday is tomorrow.
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Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 11:57:44 AM
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Road Warrior
Monday, July 12th, 2004
IBM's acquisition of Candle is complete, which means that I'm now an IBMer again. And I've accepted a new position in another division of IBM that will have me on the road quite a bit in the next few months. I'd already had some vacation planned, but now my travel cup runneth over. A brief overview:23 July - 26 July: San Diego - Comic-con (vacation. No, wait, it's official business!)
26 July - 29 July: Washington, DC - customer visit
29 July - 1 August: VEGA$! - vacation.
2 August - 5 August: San Francisco - Linux World
8 August - 11 August: New York City - vacation (and yes, I know, I'm going to die from humidity.)
12 August - 17 August: Philly - continued vacation and birthday extravaganza! The birthday is August 12, in case you want to send extravagant gifts.
30 August - 2 September: Boston - meeting.
On at least one of these trips, I'm not even going to leave the airport in L.A. between flights. Pretty soon, I'll be giving Ed a run for his money in the road warrior department!
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Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 09:04:11 AM
Location: Los Angeles, CA
