Category: Geekery

I can’t believe IT departments allow Lotus Notes on their networks

I’m having problems installing new software in my CrossOver Office Windows (non-)emulator, so I’m trying to get a VMWare Windows virtual machine working. A coworker gave me an image that’s working for him, and suggested that I just use that.

First thing I did was delete his personal account and create a new one for me. Then I copied over my .id file from ./.cxoffice/dotwine/fake_windows/data/notes/data/[foo].id to the appropriate place on the virtual machine. And when I fire up Notes, it says has my id in the drop down, and I can log in with my current password. But when I click the “Mail” item, it shows me my cow orker’s mail box. Just in case you missed that, let me spell it out for you – I used my password and accessed his email.

I mentioned that to our sysadmin guy (who takes care of the local Unix servers, and helps us work around the stupidity of corporate IT who are responsible for the Windows boxes). He said yes, you can put your Notes ID file on a thumb drive, take it to any Windows box in the company, log in with your password and read the email of the person who owns that box. Is it just me, or that just about the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard? Now, I don’t know if that’s a deficiency of Notes, or a deficiency of corporate IT, and I don’t particularly care. I’m just boggled.

But accepting that bogglement for the moment, does anybody know how to make Notes forget about the person who used to read Notes on this box and now doesn’t even have an account on the box, and allow me to read mine? The sysadmin says the only way is to remove Notes and reinstall it, but when I try that I get a Notes that doesn’t ask for any password and complains that the mail file wasn’t found when I start it.

iPhone thoughts

Vicki made an off-hand comment to me the other day to say that according to AT&T I’ve fullfilled the contract I signed when I got my Treo and I’m eligible to get another phone if I sign up for another 2 year contract. Of course, my first thought was “iPhone!” My second thought was that this was a rather cruel thing to tell me when we’re officially in the blackout period when I’m not allowed to buy anything for myself for fear that I’ve made Vicki’s Christmas shopping harder.

I guess the question for today is “Would I want an iPhone even if I could buy one?” And I’m not 100% sure the answer is yes. Buying the Treo was a no-brainer: it could do absolutely everything my existing phone could do, and everything my existing Palm Tungsten E could do, which meant I could reduce my gadget load. It also tempted me to add data to my cell phone plan and so now I use it for email and for mild web browsing (ostensibly for checking weather while away from base, but used more often for checking my friend’s page while in boring meetings). If I could do everything I do with an iPhone that I do with my Treo and my iPod, again it would be a no-brainer. But that’s where it gets difficult. So let’s look at it piece by piece.
Continue reading “iPhone thoughts”

I just don’t understand how people’s minds work

I got an email this morning to my waypoint generator email address asking where the person could get “waypoints for eastern Canada”. I asked if there was some specific problem with the waypoints that my generator provided? He responded that he couldn’t seem to get them to work with this list of three or four programs that he’d tried. I had never heard of them, so I looked up the ones I could find, and none of them said anything about supporting any data format that I provide in my waypoint generator (although one was listed as supporting GPX on the page that lists programs known to support GPX). I got the name of the data file that he’d produced from him and looked it up in the logs, and it appears that he’d generated a CoPilot file, a GPX file, and an AeroCalc file.

So it appears he was just trying random combinations of file formats and programs to see if he could magically find a combination that went together. I asked if that was what he was doing, and suggested he find a program that does what he wants and find what sort of data files it takes, he said that he was a pilot and a photographer, not a database expert.

I tried to explain that was like trying to open an Excel file in Photoshop, but I don’t think it’s getting through.

I guess I’ll never understand how people’s minds work. And I’m not entirely unhappy about that.