Mardi Gras 2009 has come and gone, and I can’t wait for next year! It’s been almost 10 years since I’ve been to Mardi Gras, so I can’t speak to recent ones, but this year’s celebration has to have been one of the best ones that I’ve been too. Partly because I’m a bit older & a bit taller so I can actually catch the Mardi Gras paraphernalia a bit easier , but mostly because of 3 things: 1) Sharing the festivities with my wife for her very first Mardi Gras, 2) a solid group of friends who took care of pretty much everything & showed us a wonderful time, and 3) the hospitality of long-time friends by letting us feel at home by staying at their place (even while they were out of town!).

I want to thank all my friends for really making Mardi Gras 2009 a very memorable experience.

That said, I want take this opportunity to clear up a common misconception…

It has come to my attention that many outsiders (non-Louisianian residents) have a false perception of what Mardi Gras truly is or rather what takes place during the celebrations. Specifically, many folks believe that Mardi Gras is simply one long Girls Gone Wild episode. (Basically, the sort of activity that main-stream media highlights).

I assure you that is NOT the main activity of Mardi Gras. In fact, my wife and I never saw one thing the entire time we were there (4+ days). So, yes, in the touristy parts of town (Bourbon, the Quarter, etc.) when the crowds are thick & tourists are rowdy, then yes, that type of activity does occur. But if you happen to shadow a local, that type of activity is NOT all that common place.

If you’ve never been to Mardi Gras, do not let that misperception be the reason you don’t go. There are so many things one can do during Mardi Gras. I like to think of Mardi Gras celebrations especially on Fat Tuesday as one long and large tail-gate party, but with a New Orleans flare

I’ve been involved with Sametime for several years now and one of the challenges that I’ve been noticing lately (based on the types of questions I’ve been getting from across the community) is the ability to troubleshoot the Gateway. Not necessarily the inability to do it, but folks just aren’t aware of how to get started. If you are ever in a situation where you are needing to troubleshoot the Sametime Gateway, my team, Lotus Sametime Support, has crafted these guides on what to start collecting and researching. These are designed to help you get started:

• Collecting data: Sametime Gateway SSL configuration
• Collecting Data: Lotus Sametime Gateway XMPP community awareness issues
• Collecting data: Awareness issues with Sametime Gateway Yahoo or AOL
• Collecting data: Connectivity issues from Sametime Gateway to local Sametime server
• Collecting data: Awareness issues with Sametime Gateway to Sametime Gateway

If you don’t see information here that you need, let me know. I can help priortize your feedback via the right channels.

In addition, there are some really good documents / articles in these knowledge repositories specific to the Gateway:

• Sametime Wiki
• Sametime Infocenter

Hope this is helpful….

Hey folks, I took a bit of a hiatus from blog posting. I hope to change that around a bit here in the near future

I did want to let everyone know that a new cumulative patch has been released for Sametime Gateway 8.0.1. Here is a link with all the details on what’s been fixed. If you are any version of STGW other than 8.0.2, I’d strongly recommend you update it to 8.0.1 CF1

http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=477&uid=swg21370363

Let me know what you think of the tech doc.

Hey folks,

Over the past few weeks, some of you may have noticed that business partners like AOL and/or Google have had some maintenance outages that impacted federated IM service with your Sametime Gateway implementation.

In many cases, unfortunately, there isn’t much lead time for us [IBM] to get the maintenance notification out to all of you in a timely manner. So we tried a few things, and in the end, the best solution we came up with was to publish this information via our Sametime wiki!

 Here’s a direct link that will give you the latest on any scheduled maintenance outages:
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/stwiki.nsf/dx/sametime-gateway-outage-notifications

Let me know what ya’ll think about it. All comments, suggestions, concerns, etc. are welcome.

We will use this avenue to notify our Gateway customers of any pending scheduled maintenance that our business partners are planning to have so you can in turn notify your end-user community if appropriate.

 Note: Most if not all outages are scheduled during off-peak hours (based on North-America).

Don’t forget to subscribe to the wiki’s RSS feed so you can keep up to date with any changes made that that document.

Having any issues with Google connectivity and/or awareness ?

 Google has recently added a new server to the mix (209.85.201.125).

 You’ll have to update your firewall rules to allow outbound connections from your gateway to 209.85.201.125  on port 5269 in order to resolve the issue.

Having trouble trying to decide what type of clients to roll out to your environment?

I’d like to try and help make your decision a bit easier…

As I am sure you already know, both clients are essentially the same. The embedded Sametime client (ESC) in Notes (a.k.a the Sametime Contacts plugin) is based off the same source code that the stand-alone client (SAC) uses but is just packaged differently.

There has been some confusion as to whether or not there is any disparity in the set of features provided by both clients, but the reality is that BOTH clients, ESC & SAC, offers MOSTLY the same set of features. As of today, there are some feature gaps with the ESC (for example, the ESC does not contain the Primary Buddies or the Office integration features), but in general, the main set of features is consistent between the two clients.

This article describes the key differences in available features between the two clients from ONLY an entitlement perspective:
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/lotus/notesanddomino/sametimeentitlement.html

From a technical perspective, both clients provide the same set of features minus the ones mentioned above.

OK, so both clients provide pretty much the same set of features… so now what? In most cases, it should be a fairly easy decision:

If you have Notes clients deployed in the environment or plan to, my recommendation is to use the Notes embedded client. You can have the same set of features without having to load two separate applications. That’s the whole point of having the embedded Sametime client.

For all other environments, where Notes is not planned for deployment, then deploy the full stand-alone Sametime client.

Hope this helps

Anyone interested in deploying the Sametime Connect Client 8.x ? If you have questions/comments/concerns or even praises , come join us at the Open Mic that is scheduled for August 6th, 2008. Here is a link with more details:

http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=477&uid=swg21314871

cya there!

Wow, it’s been quite awhile since I’ve posted last. Life, in general, has been super hectic so I just havent been able to find the time to post.  (I’ll be trying to change that a bit here in the near future…)

 Anyways, how many of ya’ll drive fairly regularly on the freeway between major cities ? Today, my wife and I drove down to Houston, about a 2.5 hour drive from where we live, and EVERY single time, there is some yahoo on the road who doesn’t know the RULES of the HIGHWAY.

What annoys me every time is that there is that one person who is driving in the left lane AT the posted speed limit. From Austin to Houston, the speed limit is mostly 70 miles/hr during the daytime. That’s a decent limit, yes, but it’s still WAY too slow to be driving in the left lane! Even if you are driving in the left lane, and someone approaches from behind going faster, it is common courtesy to move over to the right lane to let the faster driver pass. But the more and more I make this trip, I’m beginning to wonder how many people are actually familar with that RULE.

 In fact, there are SIGNS to tell you if you forget: Left lane is for passing ONLY

 Arghh.. I wish people we were forced to take a driving course every few years Everyone but me.. hehe

Yahoo has scheduled a maintenance outage on Tuesday May 6th, 2008 starting at 5:00 PM PDT and ending at 9:00 PM PDT. This outage impacts the servers that IBM’s Sametime Gateway deployments communicate with.

During this time, Sametime/Yahoo users should expect some interuption in service (awareness/chat) between each other.

Please advise your user community of this upcoming outage.

For more details, see the following Flash alert/Technote:
http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=899&uid=swg21304230

Have you ever wanted to customize the default folder options of the Windows’ Save dialog box? I have wasted so much time traversing through my directories trying to get to the few folders that I always save attachments in.

You are thinking to yourself… why don’t you just optimize your folder structure.  Yes, I know.  I have , but my directory structure is heavily nested, and it takes time to drill down each and everytime that I have to save a file.

Why can’t I just have the folders that I save to most often appear on the left-hand side of the Save dialog ?

Well I CAN!

Thanks to TechBold, this article explains how to do it:
http://techbold.com/2007/07/customize-file-open-or-save-dialogs.html

Customizing the folders to which I can save files to has saved me a ton of time! So just wanted to share this with y’all to reap the benefits.