Save XP for now! April 21, 2008
Posted by lotusknots in Sharepoint vs Domino.add a comment
More I look at Sharepoint, more it seems to me that its trying to imitate Lotus Notes albeit within the Microsoft Space. There is no comparison to Lotus Notes and my belief was strengthened when a client who was addressing us in one of our forums (circa 2005) said about the implementation of the Lotus Workplace: “Your new product does not have any competition to live up to, in the sense of an external competitor; but rather look inwards and give us the best of Lotus Notes”.
For Sharepoint is strictly within the MS domain and the hold they have on the market with Windows and MS-Office along with many ex-Blue associates might help them pull it off. But theirs is a different problem. If Lotus Notes had a tough time warding off the wannabe geeks in the backoffice (yeah..so easy that a caveman could do it, as Geico advertises), Sharepoint does not seem to have that flexibility. We have seen some really eager beavers in the business side trying for exceptions to have LN Designer installed and start shooting applications from the hip. Can Sharepoint help them? Ok, so Lotus Notes causes a governance issue. Well, thats a policy and policing area, and do not mix it with ease of development.
But with each version and release of Microsoft apps thirsting for more and more resources on the machines, would we get to a tipping point? I read in AZ republic that a manufacturer in Europe introduced MS-free laptops. No, it was not Apple/Mac but Linux based. Can business desktops be far away? A shift has been made and I hope that it will work its way through for the better.
A popular technical journalist has even started a campaign to Save XP and resist the migration to Vista. Yes, I agree..Vista sucks. I got my wife a Compaq base model and it was crying hoarse with the 512 RAM it came with. What was Compaq thinking when they sold it to me? I had to rush to Circuit City and install a 1GIG to get a decent work done. (Unfortunately, the memory does not expand beyond 1 GIG). Still my wife curses it and pesters me for a Thinkpad (hopefully XP). Well, I am more inclined to the AirBook!
I have MS-Office installed on my machine, but apart for my clients tasks I do not use MS-Office at all. Very rarely do I need a word editor. Most of it is done on email or Rich text editors in the browser. Or I have Lotus Symphony, which gives me functions for 99% of my current needs. And with most offices having Browser based or Mainframe applications if they just switched MS-Office out, the need for Windows goes away (thanks to Firefox) and things can tip over.
Many corporates are not yet ready for Vista, unless they upgrade the entire hardware. And with Linux based OS I guess they can save big time on infrastructure too!
For now let me get ahead and sign up on SAVE XP! Yeah, I can’t switch over just easily. My wife’s employer tells her that she needs IE to run the software that she uses for her work!
Alvin and the Chipmunks April 20, 2008
Posted by lotusknots in Uncategorized.add a comment
Part of my TGIF routine, is to stop by the local RedBox and pick up a couple of movies. Yeah, two movies over a night, its kind of a pressure. But anyone who raised a 5 year old should be able to correlate. The challenge is not find what we can watch but what my Lil Brat needs to see. And choosing a good one from the Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks kinda pack is a challenge as we have to sit through it too.
This weekend I was lucky as I found Alvin and the Chipmunks to be available easily. Normally I book it on their website before pickup. Its a good family watch and entertains you all around. Do not expect a Cars or Nemo, but I guess such kids movies are like kids themselves. Each “movie” is special.
But the best part I of it that made me write this is a part that I have experienced in real life. In one of the scenes Jason Lee a.k.a Dave Seville is woken up to the tunes of Sponge Bob Square Pants ….Whooooo lives in a pineapple, under the sea! while the chipmunks entertain themselves. My wife and I could not help laughing at each other as any lazy Saturday and Sunday morning (when we try to sleep into 9AM) are broken by the same tunes.
And today, since she woke me up a tad bit late for our hike onto Camelback; we slumbered again only to be woken up to…
Well, if you were looking for a review, I would say its nice, cute and neat. Kids should love it. But as adults we might beg to differ. It definitely is not the best but is a good watch as family time.
Next big thing that I look to is WALL.E, Pixar has a reputation to exceed!
Finding Andalasia in Carlsbad, CA April 18, 2008
Posted by lotusknots in Travel.1 comment so far
Have you ever thought of stopping at a traffic light, step aside and watch the lights go green-orange-red-green? Any person thinking so must be out of his mind. Can we correlate this in our current life, perhaps not! We have to rush from one signal to another, one office to another, juggling work and personal life. It is no irony that Queen Narissa pushed Giselle and exclaimed that she banished her to a place where there are no “Happily ever afters”
Or maybe not, perhaps there are these pockets on this planet that allow you to indulge in yourself. We keep searching for in our urban spaces , for 
those little islands of joy, pockets of nature searching for our own Andalasia’s.
Thats what I chanced upon during my touristy trip to San Diego and LA in winter. I heard a lot about Highway 101 and my navigator was not that great or enthusiastic about my visions of driving alongside the sea, that I missed the turns and ended up on I-5 to LA.Should have trusted that to my Garmin but I was lazy to figure out how to make it respond to alternate routes.
Driving on I-5 with fleeting glimpses of the beaches and the lagoons, I could not resist the temptation. Hell with the GPS and my emotionless navigator, I will trust my sense of direction and go west pulling off the I-5. Behold a beautiful town with laid back houses and a calm beach. 
We are on 101 Highway, with no notion of it. Now I go northward and I was sure to reach my destination of LA. But something in me had changed. I knew I had found my Andalasia in Carlsbad and had to come back. The sojourn was broken when we hit the Marine Corps base and had to hit the I-5 again.If I put my sense of direction in again, the group travelling with us would have been discomforted and I zoomed into Universal Studios at the city of the Los(t) Angel(e)s.
Returning to the life we know, we carry out one more quarter and the chance for another escapade poised in the form of Spring Break.Looking at the reservations, it was hard to find something within budget and on the shoreline. The only worthwhile hotel within my wallet is gone while me and my wife debate. Well..have no fear…my deus ex machina turned up in the form of Hotels.com that got me the room at the same hotel even though it was sold out on the hotelgroups website.
Don’t miss this good place which is not so expensive!
It was 3 days of bliss. We got to visit the Flowerfields, a real sight to behold and get some nice pictures that you can hangup. Lazy mornings sipping coffee and watching the ocean or a trot along the shoreline. Not much of shopping can be done, as all of them close up early. By the time you soak the sunset and return to the pathways of the little town, everybody has downed their shutters. Well, have no fear…there are plenty of places for beers, margaritas and loads of food at not so expensive prices…Well be prepared to shell out atleast 30 for 2, or you can stick to Subway.
The chandelier at Los Cabos speaks volumes of the atmosphere. A busy tavern! And a great bartender…A lovely mohito he made for me!
My treat was not yet laid out before me. Enjoying the sun and surf, I thought its time to check out Mt. Palomar. I wanted to see the revered telescope that has done much for mankind as well as get a glimpse of the highlands of California and the areas ravaged by the wildfires. Little did I expect to see what I did. As I was driving through the curves of S6 shifting my sportronic, I hear the distinctive vrooms of superbikes and behold, they pass me on the curves at heart racing speeds with knees scraping the asphalt. What a sight that got me pounding too and in a bid to scream the engine I shifted to 1 and the car sputtered at 5000 RPM reminding me of my state. These were not the grand bikers (aka Harley thunders) of Arizona but the nippy zippy jap bikes.
Researching later in the comfort of my room, I realised that S6 is avoided by normal travellers due to the bikers and their temerarious driving almost always on the wrong side of the yellow band. But I just loved watching them, being a biker myself during my younger days. I guess my longest was a 7 hr ride . I need to get my AZ M license, a NightRod and hit the free road on Devil’s Route , Route 666 in AZ.
If you love gradients and curves, I would recommend the S6 and Mt Palomar. 
Do not forget your SLR on Saturdays and stop where you can park the car to get some excellent pictures of these mavericks. There is a restaurant and store at the top where all these guys convene. You can beg someone to lend their bike for a photo, which my wife wanted me to do. I did not dare mess with a biker who has the attitude…Wife, maybe…My bike..NEVER!
Mount Palomar observatory was an experience that was revering. Reminding me of how amateur I am in astronomy. The guide was kind enough to get me into the telescope room and get direct pictures of it. Standing in a place where Mr.Hubble did research was an overwhelming experience for someone who wanted to be an astronomer. The bad part is that the telescope is not available for general public viewing at night unlike Flagstaff. 
This is pretty serious business that can link to the future of mankind and researchers book their time well in advance. Also it is really chilly as it is always stored at nighttime temperatures. The smell of oil and sight of tools and instruments made me reminisce my Physics lab during college.
Be careful about your drive, as it was difficult to get the route on GoogleMaps. Not sure if GPS can pinpoint this and on my way back, I took a couple of wrong turns and ended up in Pauma Valley. To my suprise, we had lunch at a fantastic Mexican restaurant tucked away in the mountains. The EL REY restaurant on Highway 76 in Pauma Valley gave me some good mexican food and one of the best margaritas I tasted on this trip. I liked the building too, though constructed in Mexican/Southern style I could draw many parallels to buildings in Kerala and Goa, India. There was plenty of fresh air flowing around and the cool shades made it a wonderful experience.
We then zipped back into Carlsbad for another round of surf n sand 
and did not want to miss the sunset. Although I lived my entire life on a coastal town, I do not remember watching the sunset. But now I do remember my sunsets at Carlsbad and Santa Monica, which are also captured on my G9!
Mornings can be chosen to be either lazy or you could do a brisk walk or jog on the shoreline. But if you are into it, then surfing is a better option. I will learn it for sure on my next trip to California. But then, I have to learn to swim before I do that.
Near the Flowerfields we have seen some fresh strawberry stalls. So on our way out we decided to get some fresh stuff into Phoenix. Much to my surprise it was right next to a large Strawberry field. 
Coming from a country where a strawberry is considered a luxury, it was a pleasant photo-op. But let me quote a conversation between my wife and her colleagues, one of whom was on vacation from Ireland.
Ireland Return: Wow…do you know that we have apples growing in our backyard?
Indian colleague: Whats the great deal? If the Irish come to India they would say WoW..Jackfruit.
By the way, jackfruit grows in plenty in Kerala and during summer its considered more of a nuisance.
All said and done, it was time to bid farewell to Andalasia (Carlsbad) and return to Phoenix. Do not miss the Imperial Sand Dunes. 
Be careful when you wander to the Southern side of the dunes. Its real close to Mexico.
Now I am back in my rigors overcoming the abulia that had set when a piece of me was dying to hit the open road again; waiting for my next trip and discover another beautiful countryside. Meanwhile, I dream about Californication and the salubrious weather!
