The Domino Chick

For DNUG attendees

Wednesday, May 17th, 2006

I know there were a few people looking for me in the lab today - I had to step away for a bit to take care of a couple of issues, but I do want to answer your questions. Please send me an email at kathleen AT kmnow DOT com, and I will answer you as soon as I can. Someone also pointed out to me that I don't have contact details on this site, so I'll remedy that shortly as well.

I'm off to the UK tomorrow and Belgium on Sunday, then back to the States on Wednesday. And then I'm taking a nap. After that, I'll blog about a few things I discussed with people while here at DNUG, some technical, some fun. :-)

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Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 05:55:43 PM
Location: Karlsruhe, Germany

Live from DNUG

Tuesday, May 16th, 2006

So, I didn't make it to the Ask the Experts session on Thursday night. Late on Wednesday, I got a call from the airline, telling me that my direct flight from Los Angeles to Boston was cancelled, and that I would have to be rebooked on a connecting flight through Chicago. There were delays in Chicago, so I didn't end up getting to the hotel until about 11 PM Thursday night. I stayed up for a couple of extra hours to work on the VMWare images for my presentations the next day, and then presented two sessions on Friday. I also attended a couple of Susan's sessions, where she demonstrated the new "Notes on a stick" feature, and took my ND7 Administration Update test, which I passed. (Chris sure did make that test difficult, though!)

After that eventful (but short) trip to Boston for the View's Admin2006, I am now in Germany for DNUG. I just finished my second session of the conference on Domino Domain Monitoring. Yesterday, I did a jumpstart session on Domino Administration. Both sessions went quite well, and the audiences seemed to enjoy them. Domino Domain Monitoring is one of my favorite new 7 features, so I really enjoy talking about it and showing everyone how it works. There's a lot of information, but I somehow managed to fit it all in within a one-hour session!

In Karlsruhe, I've been spending far too much time with Paul and Bill, plotting the chaos that will occur at the Irish Notes User Group in June. In a little while, I'll be heading down to their session on worst practices, which is always informative and great fun. Tomorrow, I plan to catch Ed's session in the afternoon, and the rest of the time I'll be in the Meet the Lotus Software Experts lab on the main floor. If you're here at DNUG, stop by and say hello!

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Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 01:14:01 PM
Location: Karlsruhe, Germany

Concrete schnozz

Tuesday, May 9th, 2006

I was supposed to fly out to Boston for Admin2006 today, but my cold keeps getting worse and I don't want to fly while I have this much congestion. The last time I did, the pressure made it so my ears couldn't pop and I ended up with a double ear infection, which kept me in bed for a few days and made me unable to hear much out of one ear for a week. Right now it feels like someone poured concrete into my sinuses and when I talk I sound kind of like a cross between Kermit the Frog and Abe Vigoda. So, I'm going to be coming in a couple of days late.

I was scheduled to deliver a presentation on the "Top 10 Reasons to Upgrade to Domino 7" on Wednesday morning, but my fabulous colleague Susan Bulloch will be taking over for me in my absence. I'll hopefully be cleared up and ready to travel by Thursday morning, which will get me there in time for the Ask the Experts session Thursday evening and my two sessions on Friday.

Susan promised to show my blog in the session on Wednesday. Hi, everyone! I hope you're having fun at the conference, and I know Susan is doing a great job! Make sure you give her good grades on her evaluations.

I'll see everyone on Thursday night!

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Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 03:52:00 PM
Location: Los Angeles, CA

Baseball fever

Monday, May 8th, 2006

Most people who read this know that I travel a lot for work. How much, you ask? On average, I'm on the road 3 weeks out of the month. The bulk of that is domestic U.S. travel, but every so often I'm lucky (or I go on vacation) and I get to go out of the country. Since most of this travel is for business, my evenings are usually free. A lot of the time, I know people in the cities I visit, but even then, sometimes I end up looking for things to do. Couple that with the fact that I'm a complete baseball geek (who am I kidding, I'm a geek about everything I like) and you get my project for the next couple of years: I intend to visit every Major League ballpark. This is to the great delight of a few of my friends, who like baseball nearly as much as I do and would be happy to aid me in my quest by attending baseball games with me. :-)

To that end, last week I was in Milwaukee and attended a game at Miller Park. It's a really nice park - nice concessions, easy parking, a cool retractable roof, and everything is designed so you don't miss a moment. They have a TGI Friday's in the park, and pretty much every seat in the dining area overlooks left field. There's even a little balcony area - it looked like it was close enough that we could've tossed down some hot wings to the outfielders. We were able to snag field-level seats about an hour before the game started for under $40/person, which is pretty cheap (by L.A. standards, of course - I notice wide variance in ticket prices around the country). I noticed that they also had bleacher seats for $5, so going to a game in Milwaukee is pretty affordable. They played against Houston, and since I really don't care about either team unless they're battling the Dodgers for the wildcard towards the end of the season, I rooted for the home team, but the Astros (Libby's team) won. All in all, it was a great game. Some photos are over at my photoblog.

I'm getting ready to go to Boston for the View's Admin2006 conference, where I'll be presenting a few sessions. I've got a head cold right now, so I'm doing everything I can to get rid of the congestion before I fly. Hopefully I'll be sniffle-free by the time I get there. I hope to see you there!

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Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 05:18:45 PM
Location: Los Angeles, CA