I didn't know it had lyrics!

Like any good geek, you're probably anxiously awaiting the premier of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" next week. In the meantime, this should hold you over.

Wondering where your stimulus cash is?

I've been wondering that myself for a couple of days now myself. For our overseas guests to the "House O' Blog", you may have heard that late last year President Bush pushed through an economic stimulus package that would basically give American taxpayers some extra money back. This of course is so we would all run out and buy Xbox 360's, Wii's, flat screen TV's and other pricey electronic toys to boost the economy. Instead, my family likely use it for gas and grocery money. But not everyone gets the same amount though, it's figured on a scale of how much you made and how many dependents you have, etc. This money was suppose to have been direct deposited into accounts for those folks that did that with their regular returns and paper checks to everyone else. Since we choose direct deposit when we used Turbo Tax, we figured that we would get our money last week. But when that money didn't show up, I started to get a little concerned. That's when I found this page on Turbo Tax's website.
Basically, when I submitted our tax return, I figured I would allow Turbo Tax to deduct the cost of e-filing from my rebate rather then put it on a credit card. That's called a Rebate Transfer. I know, doesn't make sense to me either. But by doing that a third party got in the middle of me and the government and now the government isn't going to give them the money to give to me via direct deposit. Which means I have to wait until June to get the money via a check. Oh well.
If you were smart and didn't do as I, you can check the status of your refund with the IRS by going to their "Where's My Stimulus Payment?" website.
Go forth and spend, peoples!

Lotus on BlackBerry slide from WES.

Lotus on BlackBerry.JPG
Originally uploaded by BlackBerry Cool

I was browsing through BlackBerry Cool's Flickr and tripped across this from the WES OGS. I wonder what they had to say about it!

Lotus Connections also got a mention as well. Full WES OGS details here

Odds and Ends

So I got my new BlackBerry Curve from Verizon today and so far I am impressed with the device. It's no BlackBerry Bold, but it will do. Lord only knows when that will hit Verizon and I am pretty sure I will get questions about that this week from someone. The screen on the Curve is very crisp and clear and the font selection for the themes are much better on it than the World Edition 8800. Of course, there is GPS on the device. But it's enabled only to work with the VZ Navigator application even though BlackBerry designed the device, like all of the latest models, to have GPS on it. The AT&T Curve has it available and it works with Google maps and BlackBerry maps, but your stuck on Verizon with having to pay the monthly fee to use it. Harrumph. I'll hopefully have a better review of this in a couple of days when I have more time to play with it, but so far so good.

In other blog news, the voting is closed on the poll on whether or not to change the tag line of my blog and the public has spoken. The tag line remands as is. However, that could change at some point to be "The Big Pimpin' Mac Daddy of the Domino World", but we'll leave it as is for now.

IMG00006.jpg

Testing out my new toy!

Say hello to Patrick

Nephew #4 was born last night at 19:59.

8lbs., 14 oz., 21" long.

Welcome to the world, Patrick!

Windows Firewall strikes again!

So this morning I decided that I was going to play with Domino 8.0.1. More specifically, I wanted to show off the Lite mode to the boss. So away I went installing Domino on a laptop I have been using for the last couple of days to test the Notes client upgrade. Everything appeared to be going fine. I was able to get the server up and running with a test account and access DWA locally on the laptop. But things quickly changed when I tried to connect to the laptop from my normal workstation. I could ping the "server" but connecting with a web browser wasn't working. I pulled out the trusty NPING.exe and tried to ping the "server" on 1352 and 80. Still no luck. Then it occurred to me that this laptop is imaged with our corporate image and Windows Firewall is locked down. So here's what I did to resolve the issue to allow not only Domino sever connectivity, but also http connectivity to the laptop.

1. Access the Windows Firewall application. There are several ways to get there.
   
2. Click on the Exceptions tab.
3. Click the Add Program button.
4. Scroll down the list and select the Lotus Domino Server.
   
5. By default, the scope for connecting to the server is Any Computer. You can change that selecting the Change Scope button and make the necessary settings you are comfortable with. Click OK to exit the Change Scope window.
6. Click OK to add the Domino Server exception to the list.
7. Click Add Program button again.
8. Click Browse.
9. Browse to where you installed nhttp.exe on the computer.
10. Again, if needed, click the Change Scope button to make any changes and click OK to exit the window.
11. Click OK to add the nhttp.exe application to the exceptions list
12. Click OK to exit Windows Firewall

With those steps done, it's time to show off some DWA goodness. An easy fix for temporarily running Domino on a Windows system that's not a server.

Protecting your corporate image

Many of you reading this already know where I work. It's not a secret if you meet me at Lotusphere or Admin. However, new readers may not know. Nor will you find out at least from reading this blog.
Corporate identity is a closely guarded asset many companies are protecting at all cost. That's one of the reasons why I NEVER post the company name of where I work on here because I know someone in marketing will get an email alert and then I will likely be called on the carpet for mentioning it. I would never say anything bad about my company, I love working there. But for the Papa Johns Pizza company, they lost control of that last week.

During the NBA playoffs between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Washington Wizards, a local Papa John franchise in Washington started to print up shirts that said Crybaby 23 and included the Papa Johns logo on it. This was in reference to LeBron James' comments during the playoffs and the fact that he was getting fouled pretty hard. Brendan Haywood of the Wizards referred to LeBron as a crybaby, and thus the shirt was born. Of course, LeBron and the Cavs had the final say in all of this and soundly defeated the Wizards allowing the Cavs to advance in the series.
But seeing the shirts in Cleveland left a bad taste in the mouths of Cleveland pizza eaters. Papa Johns didn't wait to respond to this issue. They immediately let Cleveland fans know that the shirt was the product of a local franchiser and not from the corporate office and offered an official appology. They have even gone as far as to sell a 1 topping large pizza, today only, in the Northeast Ohio market for 23 cents, pick up only. So far, demand for the pizza is insane. Cleveland TV is reporting as much as a 5 hour wait to get a pizza. Actually, as of 6:30, some locations have cut off the lines! Pretty amazing how a moment of "team spirit" is ending up costing the company a lot of dough. And sauce, cheese and pepperoni.

SnTT - InstallShieldTuner Ver. 6 with Lotus Notes 8.0.1

For a couple of months now I, along with others, have been waiting for Lotus to release a new version of InstallShieldTuner for Lotus Notes (IST for use in this blog) to use with 8.0.1 and create some custom installs using the "Response Transform" option. Well guess what.

WE'VE HAD IT ALL ALONG!

IST is reliant upon the .mst file that is packaged with the installation software to tell it what options are available. In 8.0, the option for creating the response file was not there but as promised at Lotusphere2008, it was for 8.0.1. So with that confusion out of the way, I have gone ahead and written up an updated document giving the steps that I use in my environment to use the application. This by no means is the end-all document on IST, but may help you open the door to some of those troubles you've had in the past.
IMPORTANT NOTE!: I ran into a problem trying to create a response for the client install on my laptop that had the "All Clients" installation installed on it. I kept getting the "The upgrade you are attempting is not supported" prompt. So, to follow these steps, you must create it on either a machine running Lotus Notes 7.X or with no Lotus Notes installed.

Click here to access the document in PDF format.

Another reason to soon dislike Facebook?

Fox Business reports this morning...

Microsoft could be looking into a possible acquisition of Facebook, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

Microsoft (MSFT: 29.24, +0.03, +0.10%) bankers contacted the social-networking giant to see if the company has any interest in selling, but talks between the two companies, haven’t officially commenced, sources told the Journal.

Last year, Microsoft purchased a 1.6% stake in Facebook, Inc., worth close to $15 billion, and has previously shown interest in purchasing the company, but Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the site has been reluctant to sell the entire company the Journal reported.

BlackBerry 9000 first look!

The gang over at Crackberry.com posted a YouTube video showing off a BlackBerry 9000 and the 4.6 OS. The rumor mill was hot a couple of weeks ago with the 9000 for sale on eBay, was it real and all that. From the looks of it, it is. Check out the video. Looks pretty cool so far, but I'm sure the final production will be much better!

Iron Man is just the beginning!

Iron Man hit screens this weekend to huge numbers, so Marvel has decided to strike while the irons hot and announce upcoming release dates of other superhero films, most of which will tie into the July 2011 The Avengers film!

Film/Character		Studio		Status
Iron Man		Marvel		Released May 2, 2008
The Incredible Hulk		Marvel		Scheduled for June 13, 2008 release
Iron Man 2		Marvel		Scheduled for April 30, 2010 release
Thor		Marvel		Scheduled for June 4, 2010 release
The First Avenger: Captain America (working title)		Marvel		Scheduled for May 6, 2011 release
The Avengers		Marvel		Scheduled for July 2011 release
Ant-Man		Marvel		Writer/director engaged

I have yet to see Iron Man but hope to resolve that issue this coming weekend! From what I heard in the comic book store the other day, it is awesome!

Great Success!

Verizon has let it leak that the BlackBerry 8330 Curve will be released on it's network this Friday, May 9th. And mine is on order!

I'm currently working with the 8830 World Edition from Verizon and I'm not 100% sold on it as a day to day device. The keyboard is slippery and harder to work with, especially with fat fingers like mine. The Curve's keyboard is more pronounced with the keys sticking out of the device making contact with them easier. The Curve does have pretty much all of the same feature set as any other BlackBerry, but it includes a 2 MP camera with video option. After having a Treo with a camera for a long time I miss not having that feature around to capture the quick picture. Also, the Curve comes with 96 MB of flash RAM compared to the 8830's 64 MB. That of course means that I can download more stuff to play with on it! So hopefully I'll have it at the beginning of the week and I will of course be blogging about it.

Another trophy for my wall

I'm going to see how long it takes before the "Sametime Stud" button that is holding them up breaks
Okay, so the Predator had skulls, I have badges.

Time for a change? You need to vote!

As I was having a wonderful conversation with the lovely Susan Bulloch and the awesome one, Yancy Lent at the Cactus Bar the other night, the idea of blog titles came up. Yancy gave the example of my blog of "Lotus Notes and Domino Stuff, Work Stuff, Personal Stuff.....just plain stuff. Where good grammar goes to die!" So on the plane ride back, it got me to thinking. Is it time for a change? A blog title should be something to grab the readers attention and make them want to come back and visit often, right? So with that in mind, it's time for a vote and you, dear reader, can help! As you can see on the right, there is a new poll listed, and here's the key for choices on the titles:

• A - Stays the way it is
• B - Home of the Silverback-Alpha Male of the Lotus Blogging Community!
• C - A guide to work, life and Domino admin-ing
• D - Here, stuff is posted.

So vote early and vote often! Don't like my ideas? Leave a comment and perhaps we can add it to the vote!