The Domino Chick

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

Move from Notes seminar - what happened?

Tuesday, February 1st, 2005

Today I was supposed to go to a seminar sponsored by Microsoft and delivered by Guidance, a MS business partner, entitled "Moving from Lotus Notes/Domino and Microsoft - Integrate, Extend or Migrate Lotus Notes/Domino to Microsoft Products". I was, of course, mostly interested in what they had to say about integration and coexistence, because in the real world, people rarely run a shop that's using 100% of any one company's technologies. It's much more likely to see a huge mix of different operating systems, applications, legacy systems, etc., and I like to learn new ways of addressing these issues.

Imagine my surprise when I went to the partner's website and saw the seminar missing from their front page. I double-checked my e-mail - I'd received a confirmation notice when I registered but no cancellation notice, so to be sure I went to the registration site and entered in the seminar's event ID. The registration website told me that no such event ID existed. I then called the business partner's office but was unable to confirm with a live person whether the seminar was still going to occur. As I don't really like going to Dodger Stadium (the location of the seminar) when it's not baseball season, I'm not going to risk it -but what if other attendees don't check the website and go to Dodger Stadium only to find no seminar going on?

What happened?

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Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 12:35:43 PM
Location: Los Angeles, CA