With the year that is in it, I am keeping
gadget spending to a total (read:zero) minimum.   I have been dubious
about my "mighty mouse" from apple for quite a while.  The
right click works fine, but the scroll wheel sticks way too often.  I
was just tired of cleaning the bloody thing out.  Well today, the
mouse just froze, forcing me to close a shit load of apps and vms, links
and remote sessions to reboot.  I had enough.  To the Apple store.

I didn’t want to waste money on a mouse,
and the magic mouse has less functionality then the mighty one.  
Aside from that, I’m old fashioned and did not want wireless tools.  But
now I own one.  It feels, and works nice.  No expose button but
I will live.  Apparently it is very addictive so time will tell.

Steve
McDonagh, very unusual, strange,
odd (but brilliant and hilarious) was good enough to give the first comments
to myself and Bob Balaban during our "meet the grumpies" session
at Lotusphere.  He did this from Israel, where he was working at the
time.  Upon a few requests, here is the transcript of what he said.

As promised, my Adminblast, Worst Practices
(given with Bill) and DAOS/IDVault (given with Gab) are now available to
download on my
resources page.  These were
the ones presented (with some updates).

If you plan on reusing them, or presenting
them, I would ask/expect that you seek permission and give attribution
to the authors.   A lot of work goes into these things, and we are
happy to share as always.  All that we ask is for some recognition
of the work completed.

Enjoy!  

One of the parts of Lotusphere I was least
happy with was the conversation on SANs at Gurupalooza.  Some of this
was my fault, and I wanted to just point out a clarification.

Domino works on a SAN.  It can
work blisteringly fast on a SAN.   You can place all data on the SAN,
program files on the SAN, SAN boot the OS, even transaction logs (although
I am against that) on the SAN.  You can do all this.  It works
really well.

But…

The problem with SANs and domino is
typically communication.  In order to get performance from Domino
on a SAN, you need to ensure your LUNs and all disks are configured correctly.
 SAN administrators are typically not the application (read: domino)
administrators.  You need to tell them what you want – they need to
give it to you.  More often then not, this is where I see problems.
 Domino running slow on a SAN due to slow disks, bad configuration
or shared LUN’s.  Typically on really really large sites, all the
project planning and communication has been forced onto Domino and SAN
guys so performance is great.  On more mid-range sites, this is often
not the case.

I typically find it very hard to justify
SAN’s in environments.   If you are getting one in, great!  This
means that hopefully you have a reason and/or budget to do this.  Get
your disk array configured correctly and it will sing for you.  Get
it configured incorrectly and disk will bottleneck performance until you
go crazy.  

Mitch Cohen made a great point on this
at the session.  Well done sir.

Now, for the cynics…. replace the
word "Domino" above with any other product from any other Vendor.
 It’s the same.

So it’s all over again.  My sixth
Lotusphere in the USA complete and all the stress and tension lifts.  The
event was significantly different from previous ones for almost everyone
I asked.  I will get to that later.

The event

Lotusphere is, as ever a very big, very
slick event run with precision like a finely oiled engine.  Current
economic conditions were noticeable to "old-timers" during the
week, as I would guess cutbacks to budget were made.  Either way,
the event itself never fails to impress greatly.

The message

I will not go into details on the announcements
made at Lotusphere, as it has already been done in our Liveblog coverage
and on many other sites.  In short, I was impressed with the announcements.
 There were no major impending Lotus Notes releases, but more like
a "Hannover" announcement some years ago, a project of the next
generation client was announced. In one of the press/blogger sessions (Nachos
and news) this was confirmed to be a domino server powered, Lotus Notes
based client.  I can only see this as positive, and it will take a
few years to see evolve.  I loved the announcement to release
support for Android based phones in h1 this year.   Lotus showed themselves
to be with the curve on mobile technology, and this is excellent news for
all of us.  I heard a rumour that Allister Rennie is to thank for
pushing that project ahead.  I look forward to seeing what else he
will accomplish over the coming years.   Hopefully he gets more then
18 months in the position to keep making differences.

The sessions

I was lucky enough to present at Lotusphere,
and it seemed to go well.  Most of the Best Practice speakers are
very critical of their own sessions, and I was not overly happy with how
 mine went.  The content was there, but was not happy with the
flow of the sessions.   I even ordered the dvds of my sessions just
so I can see where I went wrong.  I got to present with Bill Buchan,
Gab Davis and Bob Balaban.  This makes me a very lucky person.

Total technical sessions attended =
0.  It’s a killer but time is very tight at Lotusphere.

The people

The "family" met up as usual,
but there were many more first timers at Lotusphere then I have remembered
previously.  We even noticed a new "family" at bars.  Younger,
smarter and offering to help us cross the road if we would ask.  Many
of the bloggers felt the baton had been passed on.  This is a good
thing.  I was in bed before midnight every night with one exception,
which was odd to say the least.  Jogging in the morning, no booze,
eating well.  

Search my site folks… when was that
stuff ever mentioned in a Lotusphere roundup session.  Seriously.

So Lotusphere, for many reasons was
very different this year.  No better, no worse, just different.  Many
friends met, many new friends made.  For the first time ever, the
event was only a partial reason for my trip to the USA.  The weekend
before spent on harleys, and the weekend after spent on #pdl.

On my 10 hour flight to Gatwick as we
speak, with a broken looking Warren Elsmore beside me.  Looking forward
to some sleep.

I promised to post a link to the DAOS
estimator version 1.5.  If
you attended my piece on DAOS this morning, you may want to look at this
tool to see how much space you will save if you implement it in your domain.

Folks, I will post todays presentation
on DAOS/IDVault, Worst Practices and Adminblast in the next day or so,
when I get a chance.  Adminblast 2010 may have to wait until tomorrow
as I do a repeat presentation on it then.

If you were here, I hope you enjoyed
the sessions

Having sneaked back to my room for an hour,
and while trying not to lie down on the bed for fear of passing out, I
figured now is as good a time as any to post a catch-up entry.

Friday

The flight was readily uneventful, until
of course I got to Immigration in Orlando, was taken to a side room and
interrogated for 40 minutes.  It’s amazing that America is the only
country in the world I have travelled to where I am genuinely nervous when
“auditioning for my entry”, even though there is no reason why
I should be.  The officer started out with long silences, occasionally
filled with obnoxious, arrogant comments.  After speaking for a while,
he slowly got friendlier until it finally came to an end with him realising
that there was another Paul Mooney from the UK, with the same birth month
as me (Sep, ’75) who is not permitted entry to the USA.

I though little things like passports
meant that wouldn’t happen.

Alas, he “changed” into a
nice guy and I finally left, with the ever patient Julian
Woodward and Mick
Moignard still waiting for me.
A few quiet drinks with the guys from HADSL and I was in bed very,
very early.

Saturday/Sunday

We collected our bikes from Orlando
Harley early Saturday morning,
and I was the proud owner of a Harley
V-Rod muscle for the next two
days.  An amazing bike.

Pics courtesy of Tony/Roy Holder and
vowe.

400 miles later, we had been to Cape
Canaveral, Cocoa Beach, Clearwater beach in Tampa, and Hooters.  Brilliant…
just brillant.  As anyone has seen me today will know I am burned
to a crisp and with my sunglasses have managed to get the racoon affect
nailed down to a tee.  Next year I am doing it again.  The more
the merrier.

Monday

This morning kicked off early with conference
calls and broken VM’s that I need for my afternoon session.  5am start
and hard going from then on.  The OGS went very well, with slick performance
and the appearance of William Shatner.  At long last eh?  Next
year it has to be the
Hoff!  We managed to live
blog it from the blogger den, as ethernet/power was supplied.  By
all accounts, WiFi sucked as bad as last year.  Our live blog covered
almost all of the announcements and was heavily watched by the many people
that couldn’t make it.

Compared to other bloggers, I thought
the OGS went very well, with slick, planned statements and a mixture of
great announcements, future technologies and imminent releases.  Although
a small announcement, Lotus committed to supporting Android within a few
months.  Lotus are now committing to mobile technologies ahead of
the people curve, and that is very encouraging.  Project Vulcan (the
next generation client interface looks promising, but there is a few years
of work to go into it).  IBM are really pushing the cloud strategy
now.  LotusLive functionality/integration was a key point made in
many integrations, indicating that LL will be “core” to IBM.
The cloud is the new black, and Lotus are playing for keeps in that
space.

I ducked out of the session early, to
get to the Swan hotel and join Bill.  Then it was the return of “Worst
Practices”.  The session went well, but we fell behind too easy
and have to speed it up for the repeat.  After lunch, my custom session
with GSX took place, to a full suite of interested people and some great
discussions.

Tonight, there is the showcase session,
followed by Jamfest.  Monday is only coming to a close, and already
my feet are sore, and I could sleep for a week.  Yup… its Lotusphere.

This morning started early, with the redeye
from Belfast to Gatwick, followed by the Virgin flight to Orlando.  Security
screening went surprisingly fast, but weather delayed departure. I’m sure
Immigration US side will slow things down even more.  Quite a few
familiar faces on this flight, all getting ready for the long week ahead.
 Although said many times in the past, Lotusphere is a tough week.
 Time goes very fast and there is a lot to fit in.  This is my
sixth Lotusphere US and when you get back to the Dolphin hotel it feels
like you never left last year.

This is my first time to arrive a day
early, but there are still a few people planning to meet up tonight to
kick things off.  I have spent a mixture of this nine hour flight
sleeping and prepping for sessions.  Still more to get done before
it all starts.