Well, I'm moving too...

After Kelly, it's my turn to move out... From this point on, I will be blogging from my new Wordpress blog. I will be manually transferring some of the posts I already have here, but there will be no further updates...

Why am I moving? Well, first of all, the editor actually properly recognises HTML. I can type in HTML and I will not see my entries mungled. Also, I find the themes are nicer, and perception is fairly important on the web!

See you at the new location!

Title Change...

I decided to change my title...

My IBM internal blog was using the same name, so I needed a better differentiator between my blogs. Since the internal blog was first, it will stay as "Gold" whereas this one with go to "Silver". This is not to say that this is worth less, I just need a new name and decided to stay with precious metals.

Kelly's on the move! Why?!?

It seems that my fellow IBM blogger, Kelly, has moved off Blogger and to greener (at least she tells me) pastures.

Blogger is my first attempt at a blog, so I am not overly familiar with the various "engines" out there. However, Kelly's move has me wondering...is there indeed better environments out there?!? Hey, if it gives me a better editor than what Blogger provides (where at least I can type in HTML without fear of reformatting), I think I would be gone in a second. Especially since I do not yet have much baggage to tie me down anywhere.

So I'm asking the blogosphere at large (OK, the two people who read me - Hi mom!): Why would I want to stay with Blogger and why would I want to move to the "X" engine/site?

Back from St. Louis

Well, I was actually back last Thursday - but just barely...

The flight from STL to YYZ (Toronto Pearson Airport), where I (unfortunately) had to change planes was a few minutes late. This resulted in a lack of ground crew, which meant we had to wait on the tarmack. Luckily, it is not a good thing to have a plane just sitting there, in the way, so we got a crew to direct us in within 20 minutes. Not great, but not too bad... And then, the fun started. Since that crew had to be diverted from another flight, they had to get back to it to finish unloading, before being allowed to come back to us. Well, that meant another 45 minutes waiting for the sky check luggage to come through (CRJs just don't have enough storage space for the laptop bag and my overnight bag). I can only imagine how the people who checked luggage must have felt... Now, of course, that meant that the bus that would normally take us from the satellite terminal to the main terminal was no longer waiting (it took the passengers that had checked luggage), so we had to wait for a new one to be dispatched (another 15 minutes). At that point, I had to go through customs (luckily, and unusually, very quick) and make my way from terminal 2 to terminal 1...which means getting out of the secure zone and through security again!!!

Well, I made it. I was probably the last person to board the flight back home, but I made it. I should mention again that I do not like YYZ as an airport. It just seems stuck in a century past (perhaps the century of the fruitbat - with apology to Terry Pratchett).

All this, and I was locked up in a meeting room for three days in St. Louis and did not get a chance to see the sights... I'll have to try and go see the Arch the next time I'm over there (in a few weeks).

Off to St. Louis

I'm off to St. Louis tomorrow. Not a pleasure trip, a business one where I will collaborate on an internal project. It looks like it'll be three intensive (and long) days. If all goes well, I may be able to talk about it in a couple of months (after it is announced to the world at large - or at least to some people...).

I like traveling. It allows me to see new places and maybe bag a couple more geocaches. The down side to this trip is that there aren't many flights from home to St. Louis, and none direct. This makes my transit fairly long (6 hours or so each way). It's almost faster to fly to Europe (direct to London, UK). And, I have a terminal change at Toronto's Pearson - one of the worse airports to have to go through a terminal change...

Is edit HTML really so?!?

Why is it that I need to remove all line breaks when I create a post in HTML?

I decide to use HTML because I like to control the formatting. So why does the Blogger HTML post editor insist on replacing all line breaks with <br/> or <p>?

Quote: Relative simplicity of software ...

I like this quote from InfoWorld's Bob Lewis (from this blog entry):

"Simple problem" is a relative term. I'm well aware that in IT, "simple" means pretty durned hard, "difficult" means "if we make quite a few design compromises we might deliver this before we all retire," and "hard" means "finishing this is what purgatory is for.

My past as a product manager

As I mentioned in a previous post, I used to be a product manager at IBM. Actually, I used to be a product manager at Rational before the acquisition and I just kept on going for a while until the job changed. At some point, our job changed from what Rational thought a product manager should to to what IBM expected. At that point, I moved into the solution architect role.

As a product manager, I worked on Rational's, and IBM's, modeling tools: Rose, XDE, and the RSx (Rational Software Modeler, Rational Software Architect, and Rational Systems Developer) product lines. Yes, there are some things in these products that can be blamed on me...but I can no longer do anything about it! (Hopefully, this will prevent the hate mail...you can still send fan mail!)

I actually liked doing product management, it allowed me to interact with customer, to get ideas from them as to how the products should evolve, to show them what we foresee as the future. It also allowed me to attend the Rational Software Development Conference (this years was the first one I missed...although I attended the first one as a customer).

So what do I do now as a solution architect? Well, that would be a topic for another post...

Things not to do...

I am a klutz.

When one is making pizza on a pizza stone in a hot oven and one put it on the stove prior to transferring the pizza to a board for cutting and one inadvertently hits it causing it to fall, one does not try to catch it to prevent it from breaking on the tile floor. Doing so will result in second degree burns on two fingers, first degree burns on three, and the stone will still end up falling, breaking, and cracking a floor tile...

Luckily, I keep some 2nd Skin^® burn pads around - not because I burn myself often, they are sensational on blisters.

Now, I am typing with eight fingers instead of ten. This is not fun...

Configuring w.bloggar

I've been using w.bloggar to post to my internal blog at IBM. However, I can't figure out how to configure it to work with this blog... I keep getting an "invalid username or password" type error from the API.

Anyone has a suggestion? Or is the "Blogger" entry in w.bloggar incompatible with "Blogger beta"?

Disclosure

If it's good enough for Kelly, it's good enough for me.

Hi. In the spirit of openess and full disclosure, here are a few statements...

I work for IBM as a Solution Architect, although I was a product manager for a while. However, I do not receive any compensation (e.g., money) from IBM for this blog. This is mine. These are my opinions and ideas.

I do make every effort to follow IBM's blogging guidelines, one of which is transparency, which is the purpose of this post, because...

• I like working for IBM.
• I'd like to continue working for IBM.
• I do NOT want to be "dooced"
  (I didn't even know about this until I read it off Kelly's blog!)
  

The purpose of this blog is to:

• open up a conversation about things technical - whether they exist or not;
• talk a bit about the stuff IBM does - but don't ask me about what IBM will do - I can't answer that (even if I know!);
  
• be part of an IBM blogger community - so you can find other IBM'ers out there with different interests;
  
• talk about how this whole social computing thingamajig could influence software development and governance going forward;
• other things that may cross my mind (or lack thereof).
  

If you are looking for gossip or anything that IBM may do in the future, this isn't the place. There are tabloids for gossip and IBM has sales/account teams to talk about futures (with proper mechanisms in place).

IBM DOES encourage and support blogging, internally and externally. In IBM, I have one personal blog. There are things I discuss on that blog that I can't copy here. There are things that will be posted on both blogs. And there are things that will only be posted here. And no, I will not tell which is which (but you are free to make guesses).

Why blog?

• Because I think it is an interesting discussion medium that fits my introvert personality;
• I think there should be more discussion out there and more point of views (yes, you are free to mine);
• This means that I like comment, be they praise or critique;
• Go ahead! I dare you to tell me I have strange ideas! (Actually, I think that would be a compliment...);
  
• I hope it will help me think. Putting ideas out there and having them commented (OK, ridiculed) is good.

There is, however, one thing I will not tolerate: disrespect. You can tell me I am wrong and out of my mind, but please do so in an intelligent, well-behaved way.

Disclaimers:

All opinions expressed in any of these blogging forums is strictly my own, and do NOT represent those of IBM, IBM management, or anyone else. (And sometimes, they may not even be mine...but then I'll try to let you know!)

All errors in these forums are my own: I can't type without a spell and syntax checker.

Eclipse is 5!

Would you believe it has already been five years since Eclipse was first released to the (unsuspecting) world at large? I wounder how old that would be in human years?!?

If you are a fan of this great open-source platform, you can put your name in a virtual birthday card. I wonder if that card will be printed? I would certainly go to the Eclipse office here in Ottawa (the birthplace of Eclipse) to see it!

To see indications of the success of Eclipse, you can have a look at the statistics for people who have already signed the card, either by country or by first version adoption (I hope they fix the percentage columns...). You can also look at a the Eclipse product wall of fame (49 products/companies listed as I was writing this). For those who do not realise this (where have you been?!?), many of IBM's tools are now created around this platform - understandable since we originally built it and gave it to the world.

Of course, no birthday would be complete with a birthday party! Go have a look, there are some all around the world so there is bound to be one close to you!

The one closest to me is at:

Ottawa, Canada
The Prescott, 2nd Floor, 379 Preston St.
November 7, 2006 from 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM
RSVP to Lynn Gayowski, Eclipse Foundation at birthday-ottawa@eclipse.org

It all has to start somewhere...

As everyone (or at least the few people who look at this) can see, this is my entry in this new blog. I say new because, although I have never had a blog on the internet at large, I have been running one internally where I work.

I am not quite sure what will happen in this blog - there are certainly things I talk about in my work blog that I can't discuss here... You might say that this blog needs a raison d'être. I am hoping it will grow into something that will be read by more than just myself...

So watch this space, there will be more coming!