From My Inbox and I Need a Job

Typical marketing crap telling me how much I love my iPhone and I can easily add another line. The problem is I dropped ATT and moved to Verizon over a month ago so I could get a

Droid x. Funny stuff. Apparently the ATT marketing machine is out of touch with the actual status of thier customers. On a more serious note, The company that I have worked for over the past 9 1/2 years is closing it's doors and I am in need of a job. I am not looking to move from Southern Maine so if you know anyone who needs a Notes/Domino Admin/Developer in Southern Maine or Southern NH, Let me know.

Goodbye iPhone, Hello Android X

My contract on my iPhone 3G is up in 6 weeks, but I decided about a month ago that I will be moving to an Android phone. For the most part, I have been happy with my iPhone over the past 23 months but I will be purchasing the new Android X for several reasons.

1. Said simply, I think Apple has an attitude problem. They have accumulated so many customers that will believe anything that Steve Jobs says (the whole "magical device" thing with the iPad was way over the top for me) that they no longer feel it necessary to earn business and customers.

2. The proprietary nature of everything apple just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, overpriced hardware, only one carrier for the iPhone, it all screams that Apple knows what is best for me and I just need to trust them to make decisions for me.

3. There are places that I travel to in Maine where I get no service available with ATT, yet users on Verizon's network have great coverage in those areas.

4. Lotus is in the process of supporting Android devices with Traveler.

I think there are many people who feel the same as I do here because Android activations are at 165,000 per day and rising. Bottom line is that Apple is it's own worst enemy and Apple's attitude has lost this customer. Read more here.

iPhone Problems Continue

Consumer Reports cannot recommend the new iPhone.

Sorry Apple

So I watched the whole iPad announcement from yesterday and I am not convinced that I will ever need one of these new devices. My iPhone gives me The Internet and Mobile apps in my pocket, my laptop gives me The Internet and all my applications in my backpack, the iPad will give me The Internet and mobile apps on a 10 inch screen. Tell me again why I need this "Magical" new device? I just don't see the value. Gadget envy will likely sell many of these devices, some will buy it just because Apple made it. I won't be buying one.

Can your users be trusted with delete capability?

It did not take me long to realize that something drastic needed to be done after we started getting accused of fielding applications that randomly deleted documents. Given what was involved with recovering these documents, it is probably the best code I have ever written in terms of cost savings. Consider what needed to be done when a user accidentally deleted a document from a 50 Gig database.

Step 1. Email to backup dude to create restore of said database.(typically 2 days until available)

Step 2. Be ready to change the replica ID of said restored database lest it replicates and causes more problems.

Step 3. Find document, copy to production, delete restored database.

Two people over two days and a lot of email in between because some users can't be trusted with delete capability. We tried turning on soft deletions but it could be several months before someone realized that someone has actually deleted something that should not have been and keeping soft deletions around for that long in the production database was not practical.

The answer to this problem was to create a "Recycle Bin" database and take away actual delete capability from everyone except developers. The code is simple really, it just renames the form to "deleted"+Form name and writes an entry to the audit trail so from the users perspective, they have deleted the document(s) just like they are used to but, it has really just fallen off of all the views that a user sees. Once a week, a scheduled agent moves these pseudo deleted docs to a Recycle Bin database for safe keeping and or recovery later. Go figure, we are no longer accused of writing code that randomly deletes documents and when someone asks "what happened to the report for abc company from 2005?" we can tell them who deleted it and when but, more importantly, we can restore that document in minutes rather than days and having to depend on the backup dude to create a 50 Gig restore. I can not tell you how much time and aggravation this has saved us.

How not to talk to a developer who you want help from

As a developer, you will eventually come across a customer or user that will try to use you as a scapegoat. It is unfortunate that there are people like this but it is part of the job and is many times the reason we are forced to play the CYA game. You know the type. The code you wrote 7 years ago that has worked exactly as specified, went through User Acceptance Testing, and was QA'd is now suddenly "broken" because one new manager does not like the way it behaves.

You get the email/phone call that says there is a bug in your code and when can you have it fixed? This my friends is not the way to win friends and influence people. A much better approach would be to say "We have re-evaluated our business rules for the xyz application and we would like you to help us change the code to adhere to the new rules". For some reason there are still people out there that don't realize that you can attract more flies with honey than with vinegar.

iPhone Report Card 14 Months Later...

I gave up my Blackberry and bought my iPhone 3G during the first week of September 08. I was somewhat of a rebel as I was the first person in our office of 10 to get one (we were a BES shop). There was quite a bit of interest from others in the office surrounding the cool new phone but people wanted to see what my experience was like before anyone else was willing to get on board.

In the first weeks I was able to produce a working proof of concept by porting the application we use for Project Management and recording time to the iPhone. This took me about 15 hours total and it demonstrated the ease with which a Notes application could be delivered to the iPhone.

Fast forward 14 months and now every smart phone user in our office has an iPhone. They all sync using Traveler (IBM took their time but, the got it right with Traveler), and two more plan on getting iPhones when their present contracts expire. Everyone I know that has one is very satisfied with this device and it remains for me, the best mobile device I have ever owned. Unless something dramatic happens in this market between now and next September, I will own the next generation iPhone as my next mobile device.