New blog category: DeProductivity

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007
While many of my posts focus on the productive use of technology, there are those unfortunate times when the result is anything but productive.

Take today, for example. An IBM exec invited me to a SameTime meeting on the IBM SameTime Conference site. Simple enough. I logged in and I clicked on the "test meeting" option. I then noticed that the certificates had expired. I could have clicked away, but I thought to myself,  "self, if you can't trust IBM, who can you trust?" so I clicked OK and allowed the SameTime meeting room setup to begin prompting me to update [destroy] my machine [thank you very ,much IBM] by taking my perfectly working ThinkPad T60p replacing all of my working VM and SameTime code with old versions. [Note to IBM: It's time to eat your own dog food and run current versions of your product on all of your public servers - just like you encourage your clients to do! Another note to IBM: Please write a tech note on how victims of your web sites can recover from their visit. I would be happy to test this document.]

I've lost 5 hours so far today, trying to fix this problem that IBM conveniently delivered to my machine. My clients are unhappy, and I'm unhappy.  I've had a few blog readers offer tips, but no luck yet. I still get errors.  Fortunately, my own SameTime 7.5 server works as long as I access it with Firefox. SameTime really is a great product, when properly implemented.

During reboots, I decided to create a new category on my blog for "DeProductivity" just for the topics, like this one, that address the unproductive side of technology.

I'll reclassify my recent posts on SameTime and MindManager CPU problems and a few of my past Tablet PC posts as well. *

It's no question I'm unhappy about this. I brag about how I use a whole suite of products from IBM and Microsoft and others and how well I've gotten most of them to work together.

I feel like I've been torpedoed by IBM. I suppose some would say that I deserve it for using Notes Workspace instead of bookmarks. At least, I'm documenting what I'm learning so that I can save my clients similar grief.

During my next reboot, I'll start writing up my thoughts on the Notes UI, particularly the Workspace vs Bookmarks issue. I promise, I'll be nice. I love Lotus Notes.

* No, Michael, I'm not going to reclassify everything having to do with a PC as DeProductivity. Sorry.

Discussion/Comments (1):

New blog category: DeProductivity

I'm truly sorry about all the problems you've encountered with our deployment of Sametime. We will be looking to get a patch out and a technote written (and we will be upgrading our Web conferencing deployment to Lotus Sametime 7.5.1 in the very near future).

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Posted at 04/06/2007 7:59:29 by Adam Gartenberg



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