Christmas Lists

As most people do this time of year, we've been trying to get our Christmas shopping done for family and friends. In addition, we've also been struggling with how to respond to our family members' requests for our own Christmas wish list. That's always one of the hardest tasks we face each year - coming up with that list of things that others can get us for Christmas. The reason that's so tough is that by the time we decide what we want it's difficult to resist just buying it ourselves; perhaps we need more practice on delayed gratification! This is particularly true when it comes to technology-related items. As long-time techo-filiacs, we're particularly fond of gadgets and gizmos, usually managing to convince ourselves these are "really useful" items, even though it's often the technology itself that fascinates us.

Since we suspect many of you may also be trying to come up with a Christmas wish list, we thought we'd update you on some of our favorite gadgets. And we'd like to invite you to add your own favorites to our list. Hopefully you can help us create our new wish list for this year.

Last year about this time, we talked about a few of our favorite "toys," specifically, our dear friend, Tivo, which is still our number-one household gadget and is in constant use. Even when we're traveling and can't watch it (more on that later) Tivo is busily making sure we don't miss our favorite shows and it also helps us find new shows with its "Tivo Suggestions." Case in point, have you been watching Flashpoint?  It's one of our favorites since Tivo introduced it to us based on our watching patterns. 

Also on last year's list was our Wii and specifically Wii Fit, both of which we still heartily recommend. And we can now add to the list Wii Sports Resort, which is great fun!

Then there are the travel essentials that we don't leave home without. We've blogged before about our reliance on our GPS. This year, we've upgraded to a GPS that includes European as well as North American maps, in hopes that our opportunities to visit Europe may continue to increase. In the meantime, it's very helpful for the occasional trips to England to visit Jon's family.

We also have a very small wireless travel router that we connect in hotel rooms so that we can both share a wired Internet connection. Since we primarily travel together, this has become an essential piece of gear for us. In cases where the hotel charges for internet connections, we can often (although not always) share a single paid connection via the router. Even for occasions when we travel alone it's very useful to have the flexibility of working anywhere in the room and not be tied to the desk where the connection is. Currently we're using the Apple AirPort Express, but there are several good small travel routers out there and we've found them very helpful.

Of course we both carry cell phones, but nothing fancy. We may lust after iPhones and similar devices, but the fact that we need to use our phones cross-border without incurring massive roaming charges severely limits our options. Right now the compulsory data plans required for iPhones puts them completely out of reach no matter how useful they might be.  Even for us there are limits as to how much we'll spend to feed our technology addiction!

One more travel essential that may sound too trivial to be mentioned--we both carry small "extension cords." Susan's is only about five-inches long, but still has plugs for three devices on it. That thing is worth its weight in gold when traveling (e.g., in hotel rooms where the furniture is often situated such that you can't actually get the plug for your laptop or router into the outlet or when there is only one available socket for two laptops, a router and two cell-phone chargers). They also come in handy in an airport where electrical outlets are at a premium. Susan got hers at Radio Shack for $5.

A new item on this year's technology/travel gadget wish list is an eBook Reader. We're currently leaning toward the Sony, but even then, we're not sure yet whether the much more expensive touch version is worth the extra cost. That's an item that we'll be giving to each other this year, mostly because it's too expensive to put on the family's list, but also because we're still undecided about which one to buy. We've heard there are at least two or three new models that are due to become available in January, so we may delay our decision for a month or so in order to see if those look interesting, or if the announcements impact pricing on the existing readers on the market. Any thoughts on eBook Readers out there?

An item that Susan is lobbying for (Jon is still not convinced it's worth it) is a Slingbox. That would allow us to share the Tivo between the two TVs in the house and even allow us to watch Tivo while on the road. Admittedly, the idea of the two of us crouched around a laptop to watch Tivo is dubious. And the thought of carrying a Sling Catcher around in the suitcase doesn't appeal, not to mention the number of additional TSA searches it might occasion. Another item we've been considering is the Western Digital Media Player. We're still not sure how well that will fit into our technology lives, but it does seem cool.

So there you have it: some of our favorite technology gadgets, toys, and travel essentials. Help us add to our list by commenting on some of your favorites. Maybe we'll get that wish list created eventually that way!

Open Source and IBM i--Something to be Thankful For

Before we go any further, a belated "Happy Thanksgiving" to our American readers (and a very belated one to our fellow Canadians!). So that those of you elsewhere in the world don't feel left out, "Happy Tuesday" to all of you!

As we write this we are en route home after spending Thanksgiving with two great groups of people: Susan's family in Atlanta and the members of AMCU, the Atlanta User Group. The board members of AMCU are typical of the many hard-working LUG leaders around the world who give up their spare time to help promote the system they love and to ensure that fellow fans can be kept up-to-date on the happenings in the IBM i world.

This meeting was the first to be organized by our friend Darryl Freinkel, who has just assumed the role of education coordinator for the group. Knowing that many members are being challenged to maintain the role of IBM i in their shops, Darryl wanted to start the season off with something a bit different that could help the members in their fight to keep the i alive and well. Together we came up with a seminar based around open-source software and how it could be used to stretch budgets and shorten the ever-present end-user wish list.

We were quite pleased with the result and, from the reaction of the audience, we weren't the only ones. We started off the session by sharing with the group a number of success stories of companies who have used open-source software to help them leverage and modernize their existing applications. We then looked briefly at a number of specific open-source applications such as SugarCRM, the Mantis help-desk package and various other offerings. Susan then described how the MySQL database works on IBM i, and in particular how the MySQL DB2 Storage Engine can be exploited to allow sharing of MySQL data. Why is this important? Because nearly all open-source software, and a significant amount of commercial software, is written to utilize the MySQL database. By utilizing the DB2 Storage Engine, we can take advantage of open-source software written for MySQL while giving our RPG and COBOL programs access to the same data. That's a pretty powerful option. Many attendees were quite surprised to see that good old PDM option 18 could be used to update a DB2 table and see the results of that change reflected back in a MySQL utility program. We wrapped up the session with Jon providing a  brief introduction to two PHP Application Frameworks (ATK and Xataface) to demonstrate how quickly simple multi-table applications can be built using such tools. We mentioned the frameworks in IBM i EXTRA e-newsletter articles--"Exploring ATK" and "Two New Open-Source Database Tools."  We wrapped up the session with a brief Q and A before all going our separate ways.

One of the more intriguing aspects of the meeting was that one of the attendees was new to the group--not only that, but he was not an IBM i user! He's a PHP and Java consultant who having heard that PHP was available on the IBM i, decided to check out for himself the stories of the legendary reliability and ease of use, etc., of the platform. His original forays were at the COMMON conference in Reno, Nev., where he attended several of our sessions. When he saw that we were speaking in Atlanta on the topic of open source he decided to take the opportunity to come along and meet some of the local user community. The result was typical of the type of synergy that we need to see more of--members of the PHP and Java communities being introduced to the platform, and members of the IBM i community realizing that there are resources that they can call on to aid them in their early explorations of these technologies.

There's a whole new world out there folks and it can help you maintain the vitality of the IBM i within your shops. Go check it out.

COMMON - The Saga Continues

Before we say anything else this week, a quick "Thank You" to the many, many people who responded to last week's blog both directly and by private e-mail. We knew the subject matter would inevitably prove somewhat controversial, but were still surprised by the reaction, both here in the blog and elsewhere.

That said, we think there are a couple of points/comments that we would like to make related to the past week's goings-on.

Before we do that, however, we would like to celebrate the good news today that a new branch of COMMON and an associated YiPs (Young i Professionals) group have been launched in South Africa. Back after a 14 year absence! After a long respite, the i and Power Systems community there seems to have decided that there's a need for an organization to unite and serve them. Best of luck to the newly re-born COMMON organization in Africa.

Now on to the comments:

1. Just to be absolutely clear. This isn't--and never was--just about money. As we stated in last week's post, the financial issue merely forced us to re-evaluate our involvement. We had been unhappy with the direction that COMMON has been taking for some long time. Like many other volunteers, we had tried to influence that direction from within the organization, but we haven't seen significant change in direction. We have been asked for input by the Board of Directors of COMMON and will be attempting to formulate our thoughts over the next few days to respond to that request, but we thought it would be good to hear a few more ideas from our readers first.

2. We're not the only speakers and volunteers affected by this. We personally know of others who will not be attending for similar reasons. While on the surface finances may be the issue, many have indicated to us via private e-mails that they have similar concerns to our own.

3. COMMON needs to reflect the needs and wants of its members. The current voting system really doesn't allow that to happen. Somehow, both the needs of the organizations that send the attendees and the attendees themselves need to have a far greater say in what happens at the board level. Right now the number of people who actually vote in the board elections is very very small. And this will likely continue to be the case because the vote attaches to the company who pays the membership. That company gets one vote, even if they send 20 or 30 people to the conference. We on the other hand, who never get to attend sessions or really participate as "real" members, get two votes! Why? Because it is cheaper for us to buy two individual memberships than a corporate membership and as a result we get twice as much voting power. That doesn't make any sense.

4. In the "old" days when COMMON didn't have a full-time professional staff running the organization, it made sense to only roll-off a limited number of board members each year. It aided in continuity. These days, however, there's staff to provide that continuity. And the limited number of changes that occur on the board each year just seems to make it harder to steer the ship with new blood. It also serves to discourage good people from standing for the board. We've talked to many excellent candidates who ultimately decided not to run because they felt that they couldn't have a significant impact as a lone voice. Heaven forbid we have "political parties" standing for electio, but if a larger group of people were elected to the board each time it would at least make it possible for a group of like-minded people to run with a specific agenda.

5. Last, but not least, we feel COMMON should decide on and focus on its raison d'être. In our mind it has focused on survival for far too long. It has been doing anything and everything to earn the dollars to keep it running without asking "Why" or even "If" it should continue to exist. Without knowing the answers to those questions everything else is irrelevant. In this day of instant answers via internet lists, world-wide internet Webcasts, Facebook and other social-networking sites each and every group needs to ask these questions.

What is the need? Is having a relatively large annual conference and a smaller event each year the primary mission? Are there other things an organization of the i faithful may be doing? Yes, we said "i faithful" since that's the community we are a part of and feel we can speak to. The COMMON organization has decided to embrace the Power Systems community as a whole. Does that dilute its support of i or does it strengthen it? Shouldn't there be a place for an organization devoted to i? Questions such as these are ones we're struggling with and think should be explored.

Au Revoir, COMMON

Before we begin, we should mention that the words "au revoir" in the title are used in their literal sense of "until we meet again," and not in the high-school French sense of "goodbye." As you read this, hopefully the reason for that distinction will become apparent to you.

COMMON's 50th anniversary meeting will be held in Orlando this coming May, but despite having volunteered as speakers and in other capacities at every conference since 1988, this time we won't be there.

There are many reasons for this, one of them of course being financial, but in the end the financial aspects were secondary, merely the catalyst that caused us to re-examine our involvement with the organization. We first wrote about the planned changes at COMMON back in May of this year and have been wrestling with the situation ever since.

Had it not been for the need to examine our participation from a financial perspective, we would probably have continued on autopilot, delivering sessions along with our other volunteer duties, as we've done every time a COMMON conference rolled around. Being forced to think about whether we could afford to do that next year also caused us to think about why we were doing it in the first place and whether the time, money and energy we've been donating to COMMON represent the best way for us to help the community.

This weekend we found ourselves at the moment of truth, wrestling with the decision to either accept or decline our sessions that had been selected for the spring conference. We concluded that we still wanted to support the idea of COMMON, but increasingly it became apparent that the COMMON we wanted to support was an idealized organization that existed only in our minds. We had hoped the old COMMON could return and we worked with many other volunteers to make that a reality, but for whatever reasons COMMON's direction seems to be set. For the time being we'll remain members of COMMON and hope that things will change.

This doesn't mean we'll be giving up working with and for the IBM i community. We plan instead to take the time, energy and money we would have spent participating in the Orlando COMMON conference and steer it toward other IBM i community efforts. We haven't made any final decisions on that, but we're looking at our options.

For example, there are many wonderful local IBM i User Groups that still work hard for members and are struggling because they don't have cash reserves to carry them through the rough economic times like these. Because we support their efforts, we've always given User Groups a discount off of our standard rates. As a first step in our new approach, we've further reduced our rates for LUGs that we've worked with regularly over the years. Obviously, we can't afford to spend all of our time doing work for little or no pay, but we do now have a few days we won't be donating to COMMON.

We'll also be working more with the Young i Professionals. Now there's an energetic group that's doing really useful things for the community! And you can stop giggling--we know we don't qualify as "young," but we're both proud to be considered honorary members of the group and intend to do more with it in the future. We also hope to do more in terms of providing online resources through our own Web site and through System i Developer.

We also intend to put some of the cash that a trip to COMMON in 2010 would have cost us to work supporting the iManifest efforts here in North America. This is one of the efforts we had hoped COMMON might use its influence and position to support, so it seems an appropriate alternative use for the money.

We can't tell you how sad it makes us to be writing this. We firmly believe in the concept of User Groups, and feel that a national-level user group has a major role to play. We hope things may change and if so, we look forward to returning some day in the future to an organization more like the COMMON that exists in our minds.

To the many, many friends we have made at COMMON over the years: THANK YOU. Hopefully we'll find ways to meet and work together again in the future.

Dear Margaret

Today's piece is dedicated to all our fellow travelers--some of this will probably sound achingly familiar to you!

Sunday: Dear Margaret,

Thank you for your note welcoming us to the hotel and for preparing our room so nicely. We will indeed try to do our part to save the environment and will follow your detailed advice on how to hang our towels.

We do however have just one small issue. In your enthusiasm to clean up the room this morning you also removed several bottles of water. In future could you please leave any full or part-full bottles in the room?

We also clearly did not understand your instructions regarding the towels as all of them were changed today even though we left them on the rack as instructed.
 
Monday: Dear Margaret,

Thank you for not removing the full bottles of water. We would however have been even happier had you removed the empty ones, particularly those that we had placed in the waste basket.

One small favor. Could you please resist the temptation to change the station on the radio?  We know we should have checked, but being woken by Def Leppard on FM 99.7, "Your Heavy Metal Heaven," at 100+ dB was not quite what we had in mind when we set the alarm clock expecting to be woken by NPR News.


Tuesday: Dear Margaret,

We appreciate the extra soap you left today, but think that three bath bars, plus the one already in use, is probably more than we will need during our stay.  We would however like some additional shampoo because we are almost out of that.

Also, sorry we obviously weren't clear. It wasn't your choice of radio station we were having a problem with, indeed being woken by Mariachi music is nowhere near as shattering an experience as Heavy Metal, but we would prefer it if you could just leave the radio alone.

Perhaps it was a different staff member who cleaned our room today as we see we are back to losing our partial bottles of water.  Not to worry, we have decided to keep them in the safe so that won't be a problem in future.


Wednesday: To Whom it May Concern,

Shampoo is the yellowy stuff in transparent bottles.  Soap is the white stuff in a paper wrapper. We appreciate the extra bar of soap, but we still need some shampoo please. And the conditioner is getting low ...

Could you please clarify the process regarding hanging up towels because all of ours were replaced again today, so we obviously haven't got it quite right yet.


Thursday: To Whomever ...

Thanks for the shampoo. Unfortunately, you failed to notice that we were out of conditioner and lotion. But don't worry--we're leaving today so it really doesn't matter that much to us. We'll try again next time.



P.S. Everything in this note has happened to us, just not all in one trip. It was, however, our experiences last week in Las Vegas that prompted this blog entry, and indeed accounted for a number of the incidents recounted above.