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(said in an obligatory west country accent)

Yes, dear reader, from the end of last week until the 23rd - I shall be in London, completely upgrading a client to 8.0.1. And when I say completely, I mean all the servers, and Sametime, and building the client, and - well everything really, in countries all over the world, with Notes, DWA and even Outlook Express clients.

In fact, I think this upgrade answers quite alot of questions. Can you upgrade to 8.0.1 now? Yes. Can you do it easily? Yes. Will the new client work on your infrastructure? Yes (probably). What is life like in a hotel for 22 nights? Boring. Can you take Warren out for a drink whilst he's here? Oh yes.

Seriously though, this isn't the first customer we've upgraded to 8.0.1 and I'm sure it won't be the last. The mix of Sametime/Quickr/Notes is so compelling that it's pretty much a no-brainer. Add in the fact that the upgrade can be done with little of no software cost, very little disturbance to the users, yet a fantastic result and seriously, you'd be mad not to.

Oh, and if you're interested in how we're using, packaging and deploying the Notes client  - well, you'll just have to come to my session at ILUG, won't you?

Posted by Warren Elsmore At 10:11:24 Location London, Camden Lock | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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So, in answer to the question - 'can you still put luggage in the guards van?', the answer is seems is 'yes'. Just wait where it pulls up and put it in. Easy

Of course, laughing out loud at Top Gear is probably not terribly friendly, but....

Posted by Warren Elsmore At 18:20:51 Location Somewhere between Edinburgh and London | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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OK, so it's not a particularly scientific survey, but as Bill mentioned - Scotlands' main refinery is closed whilst the workers strike. Not good, although I'm not going to comment on who is really to blame (shoddy government or unionised workers - make up your own mind).

So, out of the three petrol stations we passed this morning on the way to the airport, how many had ANY fuel at all? None. And that's in the centre of Edinburgh. Oh dear....

Posted by Warren Elsmore At 14:39:04 Location Oxford | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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Whilst I wait for AD, DNS, SQL Server, SQL Management tools, MSXML, ASP.Net, ASP, .NET framework and god knows what else to install (just to test something....). Here is my answer to 'What is Lotus Notes?'

It's what you never knew you needed.

Posted by Warren Elsmore At 12:02:23 Location Edinburgh | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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Yes, I'm shamelessly thieving the Lotusbeer franchise - sorry about that one. I humbly bow and grovel in front of the masters.

Anyway, Lotus people, how about beers in Edinburgh next Friday night? Say, 6pm in the Dome? There will be a few of us there, celebrating things ending, new things beginning etc etc. Fancy joining us?

In other news - I saw a Bafta yesterday - a real one, sitting on a shelf. Whaddya know. And, I've just booked into a hotel in London for 23 nights. Joy...

Posted by Warren Elsmore At 14:44:56 Location Edinburgh | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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Posted by Warren Elsmore At 09:32:17 Location Edinburgh | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

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So, this proves I'm young...

It was 1993 and like every other person in my year at school, we went off to do 'work experience'. Basically, they send you to see what a real job is like for a couple of weeks. Anyway, I go to Dungeness Nuclear Power Station and have a ball helping out the Helpdesk fixing PC's. I sense a career choice coming on!

The next year, I'm back at Dungeness to work through my holidays, then the following year I work there for a whole year before I go to University. During this year, we create a helpdesk from the ground up, fix most people's problems and spend alot of time with OS/2 RPL load workstations and Lotus 123. Also during this time, the IT manager goes off to start a special project and one of the things that they look at is Lotus Notes. Of course, being the busy helpdesk person that I am - I don't get any time for special projects. I do remember asking 'what does it do?' and not really getting a straight answer though!

3 months at University and I'm back at Dungeness (my choice), with more OS/2. Servers get moved to NT4 (New Techology!) and RPL load gives way to Code Loads. After another year or so though, we've got the point of receiving around 5 helpdesk calls PER WEEK. Say what you will about OS/2 - it works and never went wrong! So, with nothing to do I start looking for a job. After a while, I end up with Albany Life Assurance. Now part of Canada Life, but at the time part of MetLife. MetLife use Notes. Alot. Although we didn't have Notes internally (Albany had some mainframe system I forget the name of), I get my first introduction to email. Can you believe I didn't use email before then? No, me neither.....

Albany Life had a few people that used Notes. The internal Audit team did, as they were part of MetLife. So did the managing director (head honcho). Being the head honcho, we had a Notes system just for him and someone had to support it. Queue my team leader saying 'someone has to support this Lotus Notes stuff, so I'm making it you'. Basically at that point it was in at the deep end. I had 5 days of MCE training towards my NT4 MCSE, followed by 9 days straight of Lotus Notes training, followed by the exams. Funnily enough, I took all that training in a building that I ended up in much later at Computacenter. But I digress.

I do remember just how much my head physically hurt when I first looked at Notes in detail. Why did I have files to represent users when NT just needed my name? Why did the client need so much configuring when all my clients were setup in exactly the same way? Lots of things didn't make sense, but it slowly all clicked into place eventually. Of course, I only had one user, so my life was pretty easy. At least until I moved to Pearson.

Pearson Technology was setup by Peason Inc to manage their new SAP rollout, and I moved to them shortly after they started. This was (still) one of the jobs that I learnt the most from in a number of ways. We had new offices, new PC's, new Sun SAP servers, brand new Compaq services that I specced, checked, order, racked, installed and configured. We had Notes too - a cluster in the UK and satellite sites. I speced the New Jersey office and then later even was flown to Manhatten in February 2000 to do the local install. The people were great, I was single for the first time in a long time and, well, fun was had by all! At this point though, I was still a general network admin. I had Notes, but along with NT, Mimesweeper, desktop support, network support etc etc etc.

My next move really cemented my love of Notes. I moved to Pearson TV, who were in the process of rolling out a worldwide ISDN, VPN, Notes and NT solution. More greenfield but really pushing the boundaries this time. When your reseller AND Cisco can't get something working but you do is does give you a sense of achievement. I had a proper network to manage now. Thousands of users, many many countries, remote users, different languages - the works. I got the chance to deploy DWA with our R5 rollout and heard about Lotusphere for the first time. Of course, I didn't get to go. For that I'd need to move on....

In 2001 I moved to GE Capital IT Solutions as a groupware consultant. Now, I just did Notes. I don't miss much data I've ever lost - but the presentation I created in 2001: 'Notes versus Exchange', I really, REALLY regret loosing*. It must have been a corker, because it landed my the job and moved my career into consultancy. Of course, now we're into customer territory,so I can't mention any names, but GECITS was eventually bought out by ComputaCenter, whom I eventually left to form BE, who eventually became part of Bluewave just last year. I don't really ever think I had a Notes 'epiphany', but at each step in my career I've seen or done things that have cemented my love for the product. I just hope the next 15 years are as interesting!

Posted by Warren Elsmore At 15:55:06 Location Edinburgh | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Well, Lotusphere came to us with a vengance this week! Wembley on Tuesday, and Manchester on Thursday. Both events were very well attended and I heard good things form our customers about the sessions. I, of course, was manning the stand all day - so saw none of it. Then again, there wasn't much for us to learn

It's been a fun week meeting up with existing customers, old contacts, new contacts and a generally nice bunch of people over those two days. My travel this week though has left me (and Paul) 'Lotusphere' tired*. I have therefore invented a new scale of tiredness. It's a little like the richter scale, going like this:

Saturday tired - not tired at all
Sunday tired - a little tired. Slow start, but generally OK
Monday tired - quite tired. lack of sleep showing
Tuesday tired - really quite tired. Taking a really big effort to get out of bed. Occasional nodding off.
Wednesday tired - very tired now. Having to consciously think about most things. Planning (slowly) how to get through the day
Thursday tired - ridiculously tired. Actually wondering how you are still awake. Having to think about focusing now.
Friday tired - dead. Or as near as.

Currently, I'm somewhere near Wednesday tired. I've driven from Edinburgh->Derbyshire->Nottingham->Hatfield->Luton->Wembley->Luton->Hatfield->Reading->Manchester->Toddington, then tomorrow Toddington->Watford->Hatfield->Derbysire->Sheffield. And home on Sunday. It's been one hell of a week!


*kind of an in joke, but yes - it really is that tough a week. If you do it right, at least!

Posted by Warren Elsmore At 22:31:01 Location Toddington Services Travelodge, M1 Southbound. Yeah, it is that bad.... | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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A bit of an early one this, but it's kinda important, money-wise...

Do you want to sponsor UKLUG? If so, please contact me for a chat The event will be happening, thanks to our big generous sponsors, but I'd like to talk to anyone else who may be interested in sponsoring us. Email warren@elsmore.net if you are!!

If you want to come to UKLUG - hold on, details will be coming out soon!

Posted by Warren Elsmore At 13:10:54 Location Edinburgh | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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In the UK, we've currently got an iPhone ad running.

'If you like Facebook so much, you check it everytime you're at your computer....'

Does anyone else want to finish this with:

'then turn the bloody thing off and talk to people in the real world!!'

Or is it just me?

Posted by Warren Elsmore At 22:17:52 Location Oxford | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)