Lotus Notes Haters Day

Looks like yesterday was the "First International Lotus Notes Hater Day". I didn't really hate Lotus Notes, but I definitely don't miss it :-)

Oracle still has to have a few instances of Lotus Notes floating around because PeopleSoft had soooo much stuff in Lotus Notes. You just know that they're not too happy about that.

Separate, but related : I was looking for a link to best describe PeopleSoft dependency on Lotus Notes and found this old press release about the release of PeopleTools 5 with workflow integration with Lotus Notes. Hee hee. That brings back some old memories...

Things to watch out for with HP All-inOne printers

I lost half of the day today, dealing with my HP C6150 all-in-one printer. I purchased a computer running Vista (and this is yet another thing that worked great on XP, but doesn't work well on Vista).

Networked Printer Uninstalling itself on Vista

Every once in a while, the printer just disappeared on the machine. You can see this both by going to the HP Solutions Center software (where it throws a dialog saying "No HP devices detected" and closes), or by going to the list of printers in control panel, and finding it missing. I searched all over, not finding any information to help me on this, so I ended up giving up and contacting HP technical support. I literally described the problem as my having to re-install the printer periodically.

Before I describe the wild-goose chase I was sent down (which by following them, caused my scanner not to work), let me send you the link to the critical update that fixes it. If you're running the C6150 All-in-One and accessing it through the network from a vista machine, download and run the patch linked to this page.

Here is what I was told to do:

• Perform a level-3 uninstall (which didn't follow the standard windows uninstall from control panel)
• Re-install the HP Software, but connecting using the USB port
• Finally, connect to the network and add a device using their software to do the network configuration

This required a at least one re-boot at each step.

Although I was finally able to print, I couldn't scan from the device (and the HP Software said that there was no network printer).

Second Issue that prevented scanning

So, the step of instlling the printer first as USB and then as network was the root of my next set of issues. I'm not sure why they had me do it (must be some other bug). However, the fact that there was both a USB and an ethernet print connection for the same printer and that the first connection was USB was causing the scanning software to not even try using the ethernet one. After much wrangling, I ended up going to the printers in Control Panel. THere I discovered the two entries: "HP Photosmart 6100 series" and "HP Photosmart 6100 series (copy 1)". By deleting the "HP Photosmart 6100 series" printer, and renaming the "HP Photosmart series (copy 1)" to "HP Photosmart series", I was able to scan from my machine.

All I can say is I sincerely hope this posting helps somebody doing a google search on this issue.

Talking to my 8-year-old about Osama Bin Laden

Today, I had a long converstaion about Osama Bin Laden with my 8 year old daughter. I hadn't planned on doing this at any specific point in time. You see, when the September 11 attacks occurred, my daughter was only 2 years old (ironically the same age as me when Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon). However, the following picture happened to be on the CNN homepage at the time she walked in the room.

"Daddy, who's that man?"

"Osama Bin Laden. He was responsible for killing lots of people. Even women and children."

"Really? He looks nice in that picture."

That's how the conversation got started. Interestigly, each answer kept prompting a new question from her to try to understand something that is in many ways not understandable.

Explaining What Happened

I decided that showing her a video from September 11 and explaining what is happening would help her understand better what happened (and how not nice this person really is). Here is what I showed her.

What I didn't anticipate was my own reaction to this video. At 2:55 into the clip, the director timed a cell phone conversation of a victim with the footage of the building he was in collapsing. Hearing him cry "Oh God" right as the building started collapsing had a profound affect on me and really got my tears rolling (I'm starting to tear up right now even as I write this). My daughter was surprised that I was crying (mainly because she'd never seen me cry before), but I told her it made me sad to know that we just heard this man die, and that he would never see his family again, and that I remembered going to the top of that building with her mommy a few times before she was born.

Explaining Why it happened

The next thing she wanted to know was why. Actually, that's not quite accurate. What she really wanted to do was to understand what would cause Osama Bin Laden to want to kill so many people. I realized that this was not the time to give a simple answer. I was not going to say "He was an evil man," or "It was because of his religion," or even "I don't know."

My response focused more on the fact that he had certain beliefs and that he didn't like people who didn't believe the same things as him. Of course, she wanted to understand more about those beliefs, so I started by talking about his beliefs about how women should live their lives and went on to talk about TV and other things that he believe are evil. I continued by telling her that one of the reasons why we live in such a great country is that we accept people who think, act, and look different from ourselves.

She also wanted to understand why people would kill themselves to try to kill other people. I had to think about the answer to this one for a minute. I told her that sometimes people are told that God wants them to do something. When they believe that God wants them to do it, they don't need to question what they're doing and can believe that doing even the most horrible things is the right thing to do. Because nobody can understand God or God's intentions, there's no use in questioning what he wants us to do, even if it seems wrong. I told her that Osama Bin Laden said that God wanted them kill all those people.

I told her that Bin Laden was wrong and that I believed that God loves all people, regardless of whether they watched TV, wore the right clothes, or went to a church. I also told her that I believed that one of the most important things taught by Jesus is how people should treat other people, especially people who have wronged us. That because God loves everybody, what is most important to him is how we treat each other and that anthing we're told that contradicts this is wrong.

Reflecting...

Ever since first becoming a father, I realized how important it was to come to terms with my views on religion and morality. When a child asks her first questions about these things, it's easy to provide an answer that doesn't require you to do this. Eventially they will start asking deeper questions -- Where it becomes important to them to take those abstract concepts and understand how they apply to something real (other than wishing for things or wanting to know what happens when people die). That wasn't the original intention of the discussion ("Daddy, who is that man?"), but by answering what she wanted to know and understanding my feelings on the matter, I was able to handle difficult questions and hopefully help to raise a compassionate, caring person.

A problem occurred while trying to render the page

I've been happily using my new Blackberry 8830 for the past month, and all of a sudden, I kept getting the following error message from the Blackberry browser:

A problem occurred while trying to render the page

This started on one site, and then quickly spread to all the sites I used.

I knew it couldn't be something in any of the sites themselves, because the browser never got past the "requesting" step (whicn means it didn't connect to the site yet). I searched the forums and google with no luck.

Eventually Brian suggested I find the cache for the browser and delete it. This did the trick. So, if you ever encounter this error, you may want to try to do that. When in the browser, select the Options menu. Then select Cache Operations. Clear only the Content Cache. If things start working at that point, you had the same problem I did.

My take on Allergen-free Peanuts...

Yesterday evening, I watched a news report that discussed work that's been done to make allergen-free peanuts. Although I think the research is important and valuable, I'm extremely concerned about the way the work has been positioned. Words like "rest easy", "thing of the past", "may soon be history" are associated with this finding, which is dangerous.

For those not familiar with this development, here is the UPI article on it. Here's another article that has even more information.

Looks exciting... So, what's the problem?
It is exciting. However, the research does not cure the allergy, but tries to eliminate the compounds that trigger the allergic reaction. In other words, people who are allergic to peanuts will continue to be allergic to peanuts what aren't treated to remove the allergens.

Here are a few facts that are important to this discussion:

• The vast majority (upwards of 80%) of deaths due to food allergy occur when the person ingests a food they didn't know contained the substance to which they were allergic.
• Unless parents of children with severe food allergies imprison them in their own home, those children will be put in positions where they will be offered food and will have to make their own decisions as to whether the food is safe for them to eat.

Here's a pretty chilling CNN article that shows the tragic ramifications of both of these facts working together. I contend that deaths due to accidental exposure to peanuts will increase, not decrease if the benefits of the allergy-free peanuts are over-hyped.

What do you mean?
Managing food allergies is similar to being a security guard. There are many ways that bad guys can get in to do bad things. Similarly, there are many ways that children can get exposed to their allergens. If you don't remain vigilant with respect to the contents of the food and don't keep an epipen on hand, you're just asking for trouble.

Here are some examples of what I mean:

• A child is given allergy-free peanut butter and believes that he's cured of his allergy.
• A child is at a friend's house who's parents don't take the time to check the ingredients of a cookie they feed him (after he asks what's in it), because they believe peanut allergies have gone away (or that all cookies contain allergen-free peanuts).
• A child (or parent) diligently checks ingredients, but the labeling is confusing to them (it says peanuts, but is it the safe ones)?

And, if you think that you can guarantee that the world's food supply will be rid of peanuts that aren't treated to remove the allergens, you're kidding yourself. The allergens occur naturally in the food, which means that they will always be somewhere where your child will be exposed to it.

Our experience with food allergies
For those who haven't read my posting that describes the food allergies that my son has and what we've had to do to manage it, here's a link to it. The Cliff's Notes version of it is that our son has peanut-type food allergies to many foods, including dairy, beef, and pork. Because those allergies are life threatening and are to so many foods, we're always thinking about it. This means that we always look at the ingredients of foods and we always carry our emergency kit with us (a pack with benedryl, an epipen, and an inhaler). Because we're always on high alert, we're also always prepared.

If our son was only allergic to one food, I think it would be a lot harder to keep him safe in the long-run. We wouldn't be as diligent looking at food, and we'd be more lax about the emergency kit.

So, what do I think of this new development
I think it's a really good thing, but I also don't think that we should change our behavior based on it. In other words, we should go ahead and wherever possible treat peanuts that are in our food supply. This will reduce the number of accidental exposures.

We should continue to discourage people with peanut allergies from eating products with treated peanuts in them. The treatment of peanuts should be done as a defensive step only. Incorporating peanuts (even treated peanuts) into the diet of an allergic persion is asking for trouble:

• Children will be confused as to whether it's safe to eat peanuts in general or not. Keep in mind, that young children look at things as black-and-white. If they safely ate peanuts once, then they believe they can always eat them. Unless untreated peanuts are removed from the food supply, this confusion will prove to be fatal in many circumstances.
• Any lapse in the treatment process can also prove fatal. Remember in February, when people died from salmonella-tainted peanut butter? Can we really guarantee that similar lapses don't occur in the treatment process (because if it does occur, it could be even more tragic).

I also believe that anything we can learn about what goes on in the body (and what can be done to affect it) with respect to allergies is also a good thing. I'm hoping that we can take what we learned about removing the allergens from peanuts use it in other ways.

• Take the technology and find a way to turn off or remove the allergens inside the body (perhaps a pill that is taken either daily or just prior to a meal). Again, this isn't a cure for the allergy, but it is a safer way to ensure the allergen does not cause an allergic reaction. Instead of worrying about whether a food was treated, the allergic persion can take control of the situation. They would know when they're safe and know when they aren't.
• Find a way where lay people can treat their food before they eat it. Even if it's not something that a person can bring with them, if a restaraunt (or your microwave oven) could have an "allergen-zapper", you could make it safer by knowing that the food preparation removed the allergens (of course if the "allergen-zapper" isn't working properly, one could still get exposed).

More loving/hating of my Printer/Scanner/Fax

After spending the past 3-4 hours troubleshooting a problem with the scanner, I'm deciding that although I like my Printer/Scanner/Fax, I really, really, really don't like the software developers and the people who put together the online help.

For those who haven't read the following post, you should at this time (because although I never intended to write af follow-on posting, circumstances compelled me to do so)

So, here I am, trying to scan something into my computer, and I am getting all sorts of errors that the computer can't find the device. I think "okay... I know I can print to this device, so why can't it find it?" I print a test page to make sure, and it prints fine (hmmm....)

Take 1:

So, I wonder if the problem is that I changed the hostname of the device from the factory defaults (I remembered doing it through the embedded web server in the device, but I didn't do anything locally).

So, I start looking for how I can set the hostname on the software installed on my computer. After going through the documentation and all the menus on the programs installed on my computer, I realized that there was no way to do this without getting really deep and dirty (such as looking for registry settings).

So, Idecide to try a different tack. I realized that during the installation process, the program was smart enough to find the device on the network to configure it. Perhaps if I reinstall the software and have it find the device already configured, it would pick up the appropriate host name. So, I run the uninstaller and reboot my machine. I then re-install the software, and in hangs halfway through (it does such a good job of hanging the machine that I couldn't even get task manager to come up). So, I wonder if my antivirus software is causing an issue (not sure why it didn't cause the issue the first time, but it was worth a try). I disable the antivirus and am finally able to get the software installed again (one reboot later).

Take 2:

So, I print my test page. Try to scan (or access the embedded web browser), and the software still cannot find the device on the network. So, I look a little farther in the company's online support pages. It then tells me that perhaps the programs and ports are blocked by my computer's firewall software. I go through the recommended steps, which took me close to an hour. I try to scan again... No luck.

Take 3:

So, I'm back to square 1. I decide to see if changing the hostname on the device back to the factory settings would make a difference. The fact that the scanning software on the computer was part of a larger package that used the embedded web page on the printer to do advanced configuration (and that it couldn't find the page) told me that perhaps that was still the root of the problem. So, I hit the IP address of the web page (versus the hostname) and reconfigure the hostname back to the factory setting, and viola! I could scan.

Okay. Now I'm really mad. I wasted all this time due to sloppy software development, poor diagnostics, and poor support. There were many opportunities for the software team to do small things that didn't either waste my time or limit the product unecessarily (you see, it ended up taking me 4 hours to learn that I cannot put more than 1 of these devices on my network, because I'm stuck with the factory-delivered hostname, which will be the same for every device).

• Probably the easiest solution from a development perspective is to allow me to configure the hostname in the software on my PC. This would still limit me to 1 device (but would at least give me control over how it shows up on my network). Better yet would be to have it periodically look for devices and if there's more than one, to ask me which one I want to use.


• Another option is to address it at installation time. The installer could already look on the network for the device and find it, even after I had changed the hostname. It should have been able to do one of the following:
• Keep track of the hostname, MAC address, or IP Address of the device it found (it does this for printing)
• Keep track of a change to the hostname when the user made it (although the change was made by the embedded web server in the device, due to the automatic navigation, it would take a pretty savvy user to even know what was being done where).

This comes down to a failure in both organization and process

• The fact that the device allows you to make a setting that cannot be used by a computer that uses the device is probably an artifact that one group of folks wrote the firmware on the device and another wrote the software on the PC (and yet another wrote the installation programs).


• The fact that networking works differently for printing than for scanning or faxing also illustrates a breakdown in the design and development process. Ever heard of Encapsulation? There really is no need to write the same thing twice.


• The lack of documentation of this setting also illustrates a breakdown (if there was more thought given to it, there would have been more for the doc writer to include). That should have been my cue from the start, I guess.


• Finally, the online help and support had both misleading and incorrect information with respect to this problem (which wasted my time, and ended up being the source of most of my frustration).

Lesson for configuring devices from this manufacturer: DON'T CHANGE FROM THE FACTORY DEFAULT SETTINGS. THEY DON'T TEST THEM.

Okay... Enough on the Hate side...

On a positive note, once I did get the scanning to work, it did a great job of capturing exactly what I wanted to capture and make it easy for me to do so. It has lots of nice features for saving the file in different formats as well as setting the scan settings as well.

So far I haven't tried the device-driven scanning (in other words, pressing a button on the device and having it pick which PC the scan results would show up at), but the PC-driven scanning seems to work well (again, once you get it set up properly).

I love/hate my new printer

One of my pet peevs is when somebody puts together something that does exactly what I want, and then decides to cut one feature that kills much of the value of it. It really drives me nuts, and this is a story of exactly that.

So, I just got a brand new multi-function printer to replace the photo printer that died recently. It's got a lot of cool features that I really like.

• Photo capabilities (with 7 separate ink cartridges, so I have a good breadth of color and only need to replace the colors I run out of).
• Decent printing speed
• Ethernet capabilities, so I can connect it directly to the network and have several machines print to it without having to turn on a main print server machine.
• Fax and Scanning (I already had a scanner, but it's nice to be able to fax out when needed)

So, you think all would be perfect with the world. I unpacked the box, put it all together and hooked it up to the network. I had one machine I was going to use to administer the printer, so I took the CD and installed the required software and then configured it. I was impressed. Smooth sailing up until this point.

So, now I wanted to take my laptop and set it up to use the printer. The instructions said you had to use the CD to do this, but I simply could not believe that they would require me to install all sorts of software on it, when all I needed was a network identifier for the printer to connect to it. I ended up spending the better part of an hour trying to figure out how to do it (I was even able to telnet to the host name and port 9100, type in a few items, and then cause it to show up on the printer). To no avail. In their infinite wisdom, the printer manufacturer decided to create a proprietary print server. I'm sure that it has something to do with the fact that it also does scanning. I can just see the design discussions that went on:

Well, we've already built this thing that the administrator uses to configure the printer on the network. Instead of using standard protocols for sharing the printing, fax, and scanning features, let's just use what we already built. Sure, the people would have to install the administrator tool on any machine that wants to use the printer through the print server. Since this printer isn't part of our business product family, they should feel lucky this printer even has the ethernet functionality."

This is really frustrating, because the manufacturer took away a lot of the value of the print server functionality with this decision, and there really isn't a good reason for it. Whenever somebody wants to use this printer, they have to have the CD and install the software on their machine. Additionally, anybody who spends any time administering computers knows that bloatware is a problem. I don't want to install a bunch of extra crap, just to send something to the printer

With all the cool things this printer does, it's really frustrating that they overlooked such a simple requirement that has a big impact on the value of it (although not such a big impact that it would cause me to return it... in some ways, I guess that's the point regardless of my frustration, isn't it?).

P.S. I'd tell you the model number in question, but the manufacturer is a potential customer of ours (and I see this sort of thing going on with other manufacturers, so I don't necessarily want to single them out).