TimsterC

After 2 and a bit years in Business Partner Technical Enablement and 3 years in the IBM Innovation Centre at Hursley and 3 years in Channel Technical Sales I have accepted a role working with customers again. I’m sure I’ll still have lots to do with our Lotus partner community going forward, but it’s not going to be my main focus now.

So I would like to take this opportunity to say a MASSIVE “Thank you” to all of the Lotus business partners that have helped me understand the channel, supported me in my mad-capped schemes and ideas and just generally been some of the best people I have ever worked with and alongside.

I’ve had some great times and met some fantastic people along the way and I’m grateful for all the fun we’ve had too.

So what am I going to be doing? I am going to working in Lotus Technical Sales in UK & Ireland. This is the “Back to the Future” bit for me as I have done this role before, just before I stated in Channel Technical Sales. I’ll still be at ILUG and Lotusphere 2011 (hopefully) so I’ll see you all there.

So it’s not “So long and thank for all the fish” but more of a “Where are the keys to the DeLorean? And can we make sure the flux capacitor is working right this time?”

I got a phone call stating that the parts had been authorised for my BMW and that they would be ordered as soon as possible. WHAT PARTS? Day 90 and they are still working out what they need to put it back together. All this on top of the fact that last week the story was “nearly finished, should be with you on Wednesday”. So when I got that call on Thursday I’m afraid I lost the plot, a little.

I called the lease company and demanded to speak to the head of the relationship between IBM and Leaseplan. Then I ask her what on earth they are doing. She was very empathetic with my situation and asked me to email her, which I did.

AND

Today I got a call giving me an update as to what she has done and what she is waiting for and what I should expect to happen next.

Why has is taken them 90 days and me ranting to produce reasonable customer service? I guess I’ll never know, but it’s very frustrating.

On Feb 19th the engine in my BMW 320d decided to stop working. Something to do with a bent crank shaft, 2 bent con rods, cylinder leakage from 1, 2 and 3, a piston loose in the in the cylinder, pitting on all four piston heads, marking and scoring on all 4 cylinder sleeves. So just a couple of minor niggles really. ;o)

The BMW garage said it needed a new engine and the leasing company, naturally, took a very sharp intake of breathe at this point. And I don’t blame them. £9,000 for a replacement engine is a lot for a car that’s just two years old.

After much tooing and froing, and tooing and froing and some more tooing, just for good measure, the car is with a garage that are going to replace the engine.

I rang them just after lunch today to find out what is happening. I remember something about “the engine is out of the car and we don’t have an engine that works yet to put back in” before my brain melted and ran out of me nose.

So it’s not going to be back tomorrow (day 70) and then it’s a bank holiday weekend. So that’s going to be up to day 74 at the earliest and if they work on it over the holiday weekend. (not going to happen)

I think I might get to day 80, but not as far as day 100 before I lose it completely and scream at someone down the phone about this.

Anyone want to guess on the what date I’ll get the BMW back? Day 80 onwards……..

I’ve been doing a bunch of bunch of housekeeping on my Sametime contact list today.

I’ve added a whole new department of people in a bunch of nested groups. But while I was doing this I came across a problem. Whilst I have everything sorted alphabetically (groups and people), that mixed up all the people in amongst the groups.

So I needed something that would make the people sit above the groups. A simple full stop works just fine.

Lets say that you create a group for your team and you want your manager to appear at the top of the list when they are online. All you have to do is edit the “Nickname” of the contact and add a “.” to the front of their name. Then they pop to the top of the list.

.Robert Manager
Fred Bloke
Georgina Lady

Taking this one step further, I have a group that has people and groups in it, and a manager. So to the manager I added two full stops and just one to the other people in the group. They all appear above the groups and the manager appears everyone.

..William Manager
.Fred Bloke
.Georgina Lady
Admin (GROUP)
Finance (GROUP)
HR (GROUP)

So whilst it’s a bit of a drag to edit a few peoples nicknames in Sametime it’s not too bad to look at and it works.

So I’ve been challenged in my Open University course to try and understand a bunch more about time management and how it can help me.
Being a Lotus bod I decided to take another look at eProductivity that I saw demonstrated at Lotusphere 2009, but Erick Mack and David Allen of GTD fame.

Having listened to David Allen read his Getting Things Done (GTD) book a bunch of times (I have it as an audio book), I think I get the process. I have no decided to take the plunge and investigate integrating that into my Lotus Notes mail file to get the full effect of what it can do for me. eProductivity is just such an application that will change the look, feel and functionality of my mail file. It’s safe for me as I know how to control the security in Notes (ECL) and I have complete control over my mail file (Manager Access). If after evaluating this on a 4 week trial I discover that it’s not for me then I can revert back to the Lotus designed mail file and nothing will be lost. You have to love Notes for it’s flexibility.

So here goes, downloading the template now and replacing the design of my mail file this morning. Then it’s off to lunch for a stiff drink. ;o) When I come back I’ll start the spring clean with a trawl through my existing inbox and work out what needs to go where.

I’ll post my progress and let you all know how I’m getting on as I get into this. I’ll also share any tips and tricks I find along the way.

Full Disclosure
I feel it only fair to inform everyone that I will not be hiding anything in these blog posts, but if I like eProductivity, they have offered me a free license if I want to continue using it. All I have to do is blog about it. But I want you all to know that if it’s bad, needs changing, crashes my mail file, revolutionizes my life or annoys the life out of me, I’ll be telling everyone.
My thanks go to Erik Mack and Ryan Heathers for offering this opportunity to me.

I have appeared on the “Someone Once Told Me” website. This is a great daily inspiration site where Mario takes pictures or gets them from his flickr group and posts them. They are all black and white and all have something that the person in the photograph has been told by someone. Simple idea and very well executed. It was a pleasure being “shot” for this even if it was bitterly cold, dark and nearly raining. I intend to shoot some of these for Mario at Lotusphere, so if you see me walking around with my camera and have something that you might want to share with the world, then please stop me and ask.

The next big announcement is that I have published my podcast called “The X Cast”. This is all to do with XPages and can be found here. We are waiting for Apple to come back with an iTunes subscription so I will tell everyone when that happens. In the mean time you can listen from the website or download the MP3 file.

Please tell me what you think about both topics.

Just had chance to grab a couple of minutes with Rob Novak, President of SNAPPS at the Collaboration University 2009 in London.
Rob’s really excited today and rightly so, he’s about to wrap up the 10th annual set of Collaboration University events and SNAPPS announced “Project Jonathan” today at LoLA and here at CollabU in London.
Rob explains what “Project Jonathan” is about in this AudioBoo.

We are mourning the loss of a true hero in our neighbourhood. Bill Allen has past away and his loss will be very deeply felt by anyone who knew him. Frimley will not be the same without him, that’s for sure.
as my neighbour he was always there to offer advice, lend a hand or keep and eye out. As the local coordinator of the “Neighbourhood Watch” he put in countless hours to help make the place we live a safer one. The Millennium rose garden at the end of our street was an example of his dedication to community. His curry will remain infamous as will the celebrations at “26″. I for one will miss the Scottish Saltire flying from the window for St Andrew’s day.
Bill was in the Army for many years and he regaled us with many stories about his times in Cyprus and at Sandhurst Royal Military Academy.
In the end Bill’s health betrayed him. He had been quite ill for a while and he had shrugged it off and not told anyone, even the doctors, just how much was going on or going wrong.
On Saturday there was a thump on our front door and I was asked to help pick Bill up off the floor where he had slept after falling off the sofa. He had not been able to use his call bell, crawl 2 feet to the phone or even shout for help. We persuaded him to let us call the ambulance and he not only allowed them to take him to hospital, he even walked out to the vehicle himself.
Today Bill passed away and he will be missed.
Father, Soldier, Friend & Neighbour. RIP

So the drivers side headlight bulb has gone in the BMW. Mildly frustrating at worst. Grab the spare bulb pack supplied by the lease company and owners manual then set about replacing bulb.

Not so fast cowboy.

To get to this bulb you have to open a panel inside the wheel arch. That is where it all comes undone. With the wheel in the way it’s virtually impossible to get your hand in there let alone get the panel out and the bulb.
So I sheepishly rang the lease company and explained the situation. “No problem sir”, came the reply, “just drop it into your local BMW garage and they will do it for you.”
So I’m currently sat in the comfortable leather chairs at Barons BMW writing this blog post, on the iPhone, and waiting for them to finish replacing my bulb.
But it gets better.
They are doing it FOC, gratis, gratuit, free. Including the bulb!
Aparently it’s covered under the warranty.

Now that’s what I call service.

Must get back to drinking the free tea… ;o)

So Marissa and I are justly proud this evening having completed our first race event. The Asics British 10k London Run. Here is the route.

We did it in about 1hour and 20 minutes which we think is really good considering the amount of training runs we managed (not a lot).

Thanks to everyone who sponsored us. We managed to raise 400 pounds for the Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity