A Little Quiz: Is this code safe?

sub Initialize

  dim s as new NotesSession
  dim db as NotesDatabase
  dim c as NotesDocumentCollection
  dim doc as NotesDocument
  dim item as NotesItem

  set db = s.CurrentDatabase
  set c = db.UnprocessedDocuments
  set doc = c.getFirstDocument

  if doc.HasItem("Body") then
    set item = doc.GetFirstItem("Body")
    if item.Type = HTML then
      Call doc.PutInFolder("HTML Body Messages",true)
    end if
  end if

end Sub

This LotusScript was converted to HTML using the ls2html routine,
provided by Julian Robichaux at nsftools.com.

You've probably guessed that I wouldn't be asking if this code was safe if the answer was 'Yes', so can you see why the answer is really 'No'?

Almost two months since I've posted anything here. Wow. Longest drought ever, I think.

Today's news about Oracle buying Sun is certainly enough to wake me up. It's a bigger shake-up by far than it would have been if IBM had done it. This will re-shape business relationships throughout the IT industry. Judith Hurwitz has some interesting thoughts/speculations here.

Will Oracle make a move toward the consumer space? Perhaps with an acquisition in mobile technology? Palm?

What will happen to the recent Database Machine hardware alliance with HP? No idea..

Most important to the Lotus community, of course, is that Oracle will own Java. What will they do with it? How will this impact IBM's long-standing committment/devotion to Java? There are certainly other languages out there gaining in popularity on the web, but nothing near as ubiquitous in the industry as Java. With Oracle now in the hardware business for real, and possibly poised to go after a major acquisition in the services space, will IBM draw itself closer to Microsoft?

The next few years will be very, very interesting.

Via Kevin Schofield: a well-written review of salient economic facts from recent US history

No sessions for me today, except the OGS. I spent the rest of the morning and afternoon at the HP booth. I had hoped to get to one session, but because the OGS ran long I couldn't get the things I needed done at the booth soon enough to get away for that time slot. I do hope to get to several sessions on Tuesday. Our engineering team is meeting at 7 AM to finalize our coverage schedule for the day, and hopefully we'll be able to stick to it.

It's really hard for me to judge our booth traffic this year versus last. We had a great turnout last year, but we had a bigger booth, bigger staff, and eye candy with a great big rack. Ummm... wait a minute. Let me rephrase that. Not with a great big rack. The eye candy was a great big rack... of servers! Eye candy for geeks. This year we're right next to Binary Tree. They've got the more traditional type of eye candy, and they just might be diverting a bit of traffic from us. We do have a great give-away this year, though: an HP touch-screen PC is the grand prize that we'll have a drawing for on Wednesday, and we're giving out lots of yellow USB mice, too.

Okay... 93 is a bit of an estimate, but I think it's pretty close.. Today, a lot of folks are calling thiis "Lotusphere Day 0". If this is considered the first day of my 16th Lotusphere actviities, and if I count all the days that I attended each of the previous 15 Lotusphere, plus asll the BDDays, plus two days for the app dev course that I attended in the Y&B immediately after Lotusphere '93, plus all the Saturdays for Penumbra Group dinners (14 of them!) and/or other pre-Lotusphere meetings and/or networking activities, and the four post-Lotusphere Fridays that I spent in entertaining clients at EPCOT... and if I subtract off the two days that I missed in 2000 because I went home after BDDay and came back on Tuesday night so I could provide coverage for technical and management issues in the office... then I think that it comes to 93 days. I'd say I'm 99.5% certain that it's 93 plus-or-minus one day all told. I'm not including days spent prepping presentations and demos, and I'm not including days spent in the theme parks pre- or post-Lotusphere stricly with family. It's just days in Orlando where some or all of the day was spent on Lotusphere itself or Lotus community activities.

So, 93... That's a lot of days devoted to one event. It's more than 3 calendar months, and about 4 working months, Either way you look at it, it's a pretty significant chunk of a career... or a lifetime, for that matter.

There are others here who can say the same or similar numbers. I got my "16" badge from Bob Balaban moments after I walked into the Dolphin lobby this evening. (I was transferring my bags from the less expensive hotel that I've been sharing with the kids for the past few days over to the Dolphin.) If you see anyone else wearing a "16", keep the above numbers in mind. Even without counting all those Saturdays and the occasional Fridays as part of the Lotusphere experience, the 16-ers people have still put in on the order of 70 to 80 days at Lotusphere!

Today my only Lotusphere activity was the Penumbra dinner. I couldn't make it to B.A.L.D. I spent the morning and afternoon with the girls at the Magic Kingdom instead. At the dinner, as usual, friendships were reneweed and new people were met -- including Bob Picciano, the new Lotus GM. Also as usual, there wasn't enough time to talk to all the people I wanted to, and many of the conversations I did have were too brief. In some cases, such as an intriguing conversation I had with Russ Holden, we made notes to ourselves to catch up with each other follow-up shortly after Lotusphere. After all, when an IBMer asks "what can we do to help?", one doesn't let a silly thing like lack of time stand in the way!

And what a great thing that is to hear, too, from an IBMer, or from anyone. "What can we do to help?". That's what Lotusphere is really all about, and whether you call it Day 0 or Day 93, or whatever... It's under way!

Today I was at EPCOT. For 12 hours.

In retrospect, spending three days in the theme parks with my girls before Lotusphere was probably not the smartest move I've ever made. My feet are already in pretty bad shape. But I'll be spending tomorrow at the Magic Kingdom, until late afternoon. Then I'll be heading over to the Penumbra Group's annual dinner, thanks to their gracious invitation to this former founding member.

On Sunday, after taking the girls to the airport early in the morning, I'll try to catch a bit of BDD activities in what remains of the morning, but I'll spend the afternoon doing pedestal setup and meeting with my HP colleagues. And from that point on, the best way to find me will be to drop by the HP pedestals and ask for me. I won't be there full-time, but people there will always know when I'm scheduled to be back.

I arrived here with my daughters about 30 minutes ago.

Wondering if any other Planet Loti are here early.

We're going to spend a few days at the theme parks before I put them on a plane home on Sunday morning and then dive into Lotusphere activities.

At last year's JamFest, I asked around to see if anyone knew the lyrics to Spooky. Nobody did. I was bummed, because it's a fun song to jam on. So, I've looked up the lyrics and I'll bringing printed copies with me. It's a built around an interesting variant of a three chord minor progression and a distinctive rhythm.

The guitar chords and voicings are a little unusual, but actually quite easy

• Em7 - preferably the 7th fret bar form

• A13 - preferably the 5th fret voicing shown at top here here
  (but I prefer to just mute the high E string rather than fretting it to a high A).

• Bb diminished 7.- preferably the in the 7th fret position of the form shown at top here
  (though the easier form on the 5th fret -- or 8th, or 2nd, because diminished chords are cool that way! -- is just fine).

The melody is also simple and easy to improvise around, with lots of opportunities to bend notes.

So... anyone want to plan on going up with me to do the vocals on this or jam on the instrumentals? Let me know and perhaps we can talk about another song or two.