Should I attend Lotusphere 2012?

Lotusphere is one of those things that has escaped me for a long time. I have wanted to go for about the last 10 years.  I finally had the chance to go last year and it was everything I had hoped it to be.  I figured it was one of those once in a career things for me and I took advantage of all the pre and post session meetings, BOF's, speed geeking, This week in Lotus Live recording, etc...  


Several people I know say you don't need to go every year if your an admin, the admin stuff doesn't change that much. I was OK with that when I was more of an Admin / Engineer.


Well my position has changed, I am now the IT Manager. I really wanted to send another person on my team in 2012.  However, he really has no desire to go to a HUGE conference like Lotusphere, and honestly would probably get overwhelmed.


I will be lucky if I get to attend another major conference like this in 2012.  Do I go back to Lotusphere? It's going to be the "On" year, with big announcements around Notes Next, right?


Or, since I am responsible for all aspects of IT, do I look for another conference to attend in 2012?  Something like VMWorld or Citrix Synergy? 


 I really loved the energy and excitement at Lotusphere, you can tell these people really love the product. 


Thanks for any input.

When a Lotus Traveler user deletes an item on their device it does not delete on the server

Since we have had a lot of users switch from Blackberries to iPhones lately we have been running into this scenario.  A user deletes a bunch of emails on their new iPhone, comes into the office and they are all still in the inbox.  Looks like it's an easy fix.  Check the ACL of the users mail file and make sure LocalDomainServers is listed as a Server Group and has the ability to delete documents. Of course make sure your traveler server is in the LocalDomainServer group.


Before

After

Looks like this only effected user accounts that were created in the year 2000. Not sure if we did this on purpose back then, or it was just a 4.5 ish issue.

 I am shocked that most people didn't even complain about this. Well I guess I shouldn't be.

Kia Soul tech

In order to "Evacuate" NYC before Irene hit we rented a car.  We got a Kia Soul for Budget. A huge thanks to Budget for not screwing me on a last minute, one-way rental at 8pm on a Friday night.  It took over 2 hours to wait in line and get a car with a full tank of gas. I wasn't picky and took whatever they gave me. I really wanted the new Focus I saw sitting outside, but I wasn't going to ask for favors by the time they got me a car.

I noticed on Saturday that the Kia had Bluetooth, USB and Aux inputs.  Here is what worked and what didn't.  

Bluetooth

I tried to pair my phone while driving and it gave me an error message something like "Not Available, car in motion."  I could not get out of this screen until we stopped the car. We could not even listen to the radio, it muted the sound when I went into the setup menu and would not exit until I stopped.

After we stopped I paired my Incredible just fine, fired up Google music and streamed music across PA on I-80. It worked well until I got into some 1X coverage areas, the music started skipping and randomly replaying tracks we already listened to.

Since we had to call Southwest to re-book our flights I also got to use the hands-free speaker phone. It worked OK, but at 80+ MPH there is A LOT of wind noise in the Soul. It was hard to hear even with the volume turned up all the way. The lady at Southwest even asked to be taken off of speakerphone, she was having a hard time hearing me as well. I guess I could have slowed down. Nah, we had flights to catch!

USB connection 

• For my wife's iPhone this would do nothing. No Sync, no audio and would not even charge it. In the Hyundai's you need a special cable that uses the Aux AND USB to get an iPhone to work. I guess we needed that cable to make it work.
• It charged the Incredible just fine, didn't try USB disk mode because of Bluetooth.

Aux Connection

We didn't use this at all since Bluetooth worked so well for audio.

Oh and we got almost 30mpg out of it as well. 

Too many chargers!

As we were packing for our romantic get away to NYC last week my wife said. "You know, most people take more clothes than chargers on vacation!"  Yes it is true, I took a lot of chargers with me. I rely way too heavily on mobile tech and I was worried about running out of power on the go. We went to NYC for 2 nights last week (we had to leave early because of a hurricane or something.)  Here is the list of tech we took with us.


Wife's

• iPhone 4
• iPad 2 wi-fi / Verizon
• Sony DSLR with 1 lens, extra battery, extra CF card, External Flash, 8 AA's

Mine

• Droid Incredible (Running Cyanogenmod 7)
• Motorola Xoom
• Verizon LTE MiFi
• Canon ELPH 300HS (I just bought this because I can't find my Canon SX210is. Turns out Canon released new models last week, so this one is getting returned.)

Chargers taken

• iPad 2 Charger
• Belkin power strip with USB
• Xoom Charger
• HTC 1 Amp AC Charger
• 2 Apple USB sync cables
• 2 micro USB sync cables
• Portable battery charger - This one is similar to the one I have but double the capacity
• iGo Charge Anywhere
• Canon digital camera charger
• Digital Concepts Travel Charger for DSLR Battery
• LenMar 90min AA Charger for flash

Things we never used on this trip

• Spare DLSR Battery, Spare CF Card, DSLR Charger, Flash Charger
• Spare Canon Battery, Canon Charger

Things I used all the time

• Portable battery charger
• iGo Charge Anywhere

So is that TOO much tech / chargers for a weekend getaway?  I'd like to say it is, but I think it's kind of normal for us now.  I wonder if there are better solutions?  What is everybody else using to charge multiple device while traveling?

More tech posts are coming for this trip, things like. Verizon Coverage in NYC, carrying  multiple devices each day, what worked / what doesn't etc...

Random Post- Theme Park Ticket Prices

This post has nothing technical about it, but for some reason I feel the need to vent.  Theme park ticket prices have always been expensive, but as I look at buying tickets for an upcoming trip I am horrified at the cost.  My biggest complaint is the cost per age group. A 3yr old costs $79 for 1 day at Disney, while an Adult is $85 a day.  I could go on and on about this, but here is my suggestion to increase customer satisfaction and increase park attendance.


Ages 0-5 - Free, end of story
Ages 6-16 - Junior Price 50% of Adult ticket
Ages 17-59 - Adult - Full Price, i'm ok with that.
Ages 60+ - Senior, again a 50% price cut off an adult ticket


Disney, do you have any idea how many more families would come if the little ones were free for longer?  We still need to feed and buy gifts for our little ones and I am sure we would come more often.  I highly doubt Disney would lose any money at all by raising the free limit to 5.


Disney considers you an adult at age 10.  Seriously 10?  This one aggravates me the most. If tickets were cheaper for this age range I am sure we would start bringing friends along on vacation, increasing attendance.


Adult prices, I'm ok with the price, not the age range.


Seniors - Again, if you make them cheaper our parents are more likely to tag along.  Most grand parents I know can't handle day after day full day in the parks anyways , but they want to go and experience it with the grand kids. I bet they spend half as much time in the parks anyways, so why not charge them less?  Again they still need to eat and buy gifts while in the parks.


For our family of 5 (2 Adults, 3 kids)


2 days at Disney $801 - No park hopper, no water parks
2 days at Universal $597 - no park hopper


Unbelievable. Don't get me started on food prices.....

My take on SageTV being acquired by Google.

SageTV is some awesome PVR software that runs on a PC. I have been running it for 3 years now and I have Extenders on every TV in my house. I don't run coax to my TV's just Ethernet to the extenders.  All the recording. scheduling, program guide etc is on my SageTV server.  I have 4 tuners and can record up to 4 HD shows at once.  I love this system. Before SageTV I was a Beyond TV user for 5 years. I haven't had a regular DVR in my house in a long long time.  In fact I just built a new "server" for SageTV and upgraded to version 7, wow it looks awesome now.

My first reaction to the news of being acquired by Google was negative. I LOVE this product and it runs my house, all our TV, Movies, Music and Pictures are accessible from any TV, PC or Laptop, whether they are in the house or not. My kids all know how to use it, even the 2 yr old is picking it up.  I can't imagine what I would do if I had to replace it. Google has a history of buying products, trying them out and leaving them for dead.  For example Orkut. They also try new things and then kill them, IE Wave.

I've been thinking though, Google TV is supposed to interact with existing DVR's. SageTV has mentioned several times over the last few years that they were working on a Linux based DVR on USB stick concept. Take stock hardware, add a supported tuner, plug in the USB jump drive, boot from USB and have a fully functioning DVR with none of the configuration problems.

So maybe, just maybe this is a good thing. Maybe the next GoogleTV companion product is a SageTV based DVR appliance.  Maybe through the power of Google we get official Cable Card support in SageTV? Interesting.....

Now, what does this mean to me and all the SageTV guys that run windows based PVR's?  I don't know and that kind of scares me.  

Google and SageTV, please don't screw this up and make me use Windows Media Center. I am not building a PC or buying an XBox for all my Tv's.


Here is to hoping that Google is quick to make an Android Placeshifter client for SageTV. That would be awesome.

I got a Chromebook this week.

I could un-box it and explain how i got it, but its pretty much just like Mitch describes it  HERE.