B's Blog

This is a great story and has a very good morale. I really enjoyed this story, so I thought I would share it with everyone else.

"Watch out! You nearly broad sided that car!" My father yelled at me.

"Can't you do anything right?"

Those words hurt worse than blows. I turned my head toward the elderly man in the seat beside me, daring me to challenge him. A lump rose in my throat as I averted my eyes. I wasn't prepared for another battle.

"I saw the car, Dad. Please don't yell at me when I'm driving." My voice was measured and steady, sounding far calmer than I really felt.

Dad glared at me, then turned away and settled back. At home I left Dad in front of the television and went outside to collect my thoughts. Dark, heavy clouds hung in the air with a promise of rain. The rumble of distant thunder seemed to echo my inner turmoil.

What could I do about him?

Dad had been a lumberjack in Washington and Oregon. He had enjoyed being outdoors and had reveled in pitting his strength against the forces of nature. He had entered grueling lumberjack competitions, and had placed often. The shelves in his house were filled with trophies that attested to his prowess.

The years marched on relentlessly. The first time he couldn't lift a heavy log, he joked about it; but later that same day I saw him outside alone, straining to lift it. He became irritable whenever anyone teased him about his advancing age, or when he couldn't do something he had done as a younger man.

Four days after his sixty-seventh birthday, he had a heart attack. An ambulance sped him to the hospital while a paramedic administered CPR to keep blood and oxygen flowing. At the hospital, Dad was rushed into an operating room. He was lucky; he survived.

But something inside Dad died. His zest for life was gone. He obstinately refused to follow doctor's orders. Suggestions and offers of help were turned aside with sarcasm and insults. The number of visitors thinned, then finally stopped altogether. Dad was left alone.

My husband, Dick, and I asked Dad to come live with us on our small farm. We hoped the fresh air and rustic atmosphere would help him adjust. Within a week after he moved in, I regretted the invitation. It seemed nothing was satisfactory. He criticized everything I did. I became frustrated and moody. Soon I was taking my pent-up anger out on Dick. We began to bicker and argue. Alarmed, Dick sought out our pastor and explained the situation. The clergyman set up weekly counseling appointments for us. At the close of each session he prayed, asking God to soothe Dad's troubled mind. But the months wore on and God was silent.. Something had to be done and it was up to me to do it.

The next day I sat down with the phone book and methodically called each of the mental health clinics listed in the Yellow Pages. I explained my problem to each of the sympathetic voices that answered. In vain. Just when I was giving up hope, one of the voices suddenly exclaimed, "I just read something that might help you! Let me go get the article." I listened as she read. The article described a remarkable study done at a nursing home. All of the patients were under treatment for chronic depression. Yet their attitudes had improved dramatically when they were given responsibility for a dog.

I drove to the animal shelter that afternoon. After I filled out a questionnaire, a uniformed officer led me to the kennels. The odor of disinfectant stung my nostrils as I moved down the row of pens. Each contained five to seven dogs. Long-haired dogs, curly-haired dogs, black dogs, spotted dogs all jumped up, trying to reach me. I studied each one but rejected one after the other for various reasons too big, too small, too much hair. As I neared the last pen a dog in the shadows of the far corner struggled to his feet, walked to the front of the run and sat down. It was a pointer, one of the dog world's aristocrats. But this was a caricature of the breed. Years had etched his face and muzzle with shades of gray. His hipbones jutted out in lopsided triangles. But it was his eyes that caught and held my attention. Calm and clear, they beheld me unwaveringly.

I pointed to the dog. "Can you tell me about him?" The officer looked, then shook his head in puzzlement.

"He's a funny one. Appeared out of nowhere and sat in front of the gate. We brought him in, figuring someone would be right down to claim him. That was two weeks ago and we've heard nothing. His time is up tomorrow." He gestured helplessly.

As the words sank in I turned to the man in horror. "You mean you're going to kill him?"

"Ma'am," he said gently, "that's our policy. We don't have room for every unclaimed dog."

I looked at the pointer again. The calm brown eyes awaited my decision. "I'll take him," I said.

I drove home with the dog on the front seat beside me. When I reached the house I honked the horn twice. I was helping my prize out of the car when Dad shuffled onto the front porch.

"Ta-da! Look what I got for you, Dad!" I said excitedly.

Dad looked, then wrinkled his face in disgust. "If I had wanted a dog I would have gotten one. And I would have picked out a better specimen than that bag of bones. Keep it! I don't want it" Dad waved his arm scornfully and turned back toward the house.

Anger rose inside me. It squeezed together my throat muscles and pounded into my temples.

"You'd better get used to him, Dad. He's staying!" Dad ignored me. "Did you hear me, Dad?" I screamed. At those words Dad whirled angrily, his hands clenched at his sides, his eyes narrowed and blazing with hate.

We stood glaring at each other like duelists, when suddenly the pointer pulled free from my grasp. He wobbled toward my dad and sat down in front of him. Then slowly, carefully, he raised his paw.

Dad's lower jaw trembled as he stared at the uplifted paw. Confusion replaced the anger in his eyes. The pointer waited patiently. Then Dad was on his knees hugging the animal.

It was the beginning of a warm and intimate friendship. Dad named the pointer Cheyenne. Together he and Cheyenne explored the community. They spent long hours walking down dusty lanes. They spent reflective moments on the banks of streams, angling for tasty trout. They even started to attend Sunday services together, Dad sitting in a pew and Cheyenne lying quietly at his feet.

Dad and Cheyenne were inseparable throughout the next three years. Dad's bitterness faded, and he and Cheyenne made many friends. Then late one night I was startled to feel Cheyenne's cold nose burrowing through our bed covers. He had never before come into our bedroom at night. I woke Dick, put on my robe and ran into my father's room. Dad lay in his bed, his face serene. But his spirit had left quietly sometime during the night.

Two days later my shock and grief deepened when I discovered Cheyenne lying dead beside Dad's bed. I wrapped his still form in the rag rug he had slept on. As Dick and I buried him near a favorite fishing hole, I silently thanked the dog for the help he had given me in restoring Dad's peace of mind.

The morning of Dad's funeral dawned overcast and dreary. This day looks like the way I feel, I thought, as I walked down the aisle to the pews reserved for family. I was surprised to see the many friends Dad and Cheyenne had made filling the church. The pastor began his eulogy. It was a tribute to both Dad and the dog who had changed his life. And then the pastor turned to Hebrews 13:2. "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers."

"I've often thanked God for sending that angel," he said.

For me, the past dropped into place, completing a puzzle that I had not seen before: the sympathetic voice that had just read the right article...

Cheyenne's unexpected appearance at the animal shelter. .. .his calm acceptance and complete devotion to my father. . .and the proximity of their deaths. And suddenly I understood. I knew that God had answered my prayers after all.

Morale of the story:
Life is too short for drama & petty things, so laugh hard,
love truly and forgive quickly.

Live While You Are Alive.
Tell the people you love that you love them, at every
opportunity.
Forgive now those who made you cry. You might not get a
second time.

Lost time can never be found. 

Hey everyone, been a little while since I have had the chance to actually blog. So finally, after much fuss, we figured out that we had to manually add the Sametime server to a config file within Connections in order for the Sametime presence awareness to actually work. At least I believe that was what needed to be done, so much stuff happened over a short period of time that it is difficult to remember all the changes that needed to be made to make it happen. But beyond that, after the Sametime presence stuff was taken care of, I got around to beginning the branding, which is a very fun aspect to setting up Connections. Lucky for me, Chris from Lotus911 made this site look so fantastic that I was able to get in contact with him for some advice with the branding (thanks Chris!). Anyway, the branding is going in nicely, a few quirks here and there but overall starting to look good. I like that everything is just CSS, it makes things much easier.

In other (personal) news, my band is playing at the Rave in Milwaukee on March 7th, so if any of you Milwaukee Bleeders want to come see a bunch of rock/metal bands play in the Supernova battle of the bands, hit me up and I can get you tix! Other than that, just the same old same old, looking forward to getting the show done and getting the chance to actually finish up season 3 of Lost with my wife. That's about it for now.

Signing off,
B

So something I'm starting to realize, tagging should be included in everything that can be tagged. It's such an important part of not only searching for relevant anything, it's a part of self expression. It doesn't distinguish between documentation and people, and I think that is often an important (and overlooked) detail about searching for information. Not only do you want to search for relevant documentation on the subject that you are looking for, but it does ya one better! It finds the people who are related to that information, whether it be the person who wrote the documentation or someone else who is an expert in the area!

How many of you struggle with Expertise location in your business? Do you have a central repository where all your documentation is located, or is it scattered all over your virtual environment? I know we struggle with that on a daily basis. Thank God that someone is doing something to at least start in the direction of expertise/knowledge location. Enter Lotus Connections (*clap*clap*clap*). Now for tight integration with a wiki (hopefully soon), so we can search tags across both Connections and Wikis.

Signing off,
B

So we are evaluating different Wiki software for integration with our Connections suite. Up until this point, we had been using DekiWiki, but we want something that is an officially supported integration point for Connections. Has anyone been using these either of these in conjunction with a Connections install? If so, what features do you like about your specific scenario? Which one is harder to get up and running and which offers a more rich feature set? I know these are pretty vague questions, but any insight into these two software options would be very helpful and extremely appreciated.

I do have to say though, we are very excited about the potential behind Connections in conjunction with both a wiki as well as a forum software. Offering a suite of tools gives users so much flexibility in regards to creativity that it will help them to come up with ever more imaginative ways to innovate. Or at least that's the hope anyway

Signing off,
B

So in a personal note, I really love playing and writing music, so I thought that since it is such a huge part of my life, I would share it with everyone here!  Make sure that if you want to hear something a little more unique and a little less cliche' (at least in my opinion), then check us out. I really wish I had known about the jam session at Lotusphere, I would have been all over that!!!!

www.myspace.com/3udrocks

I play drums and lead sing, we actually have a unique situation in that we have 2 lead singers, one of them being the drummer, which isn't too typical. And we also have an extremely talented pianst who does samples as well. This is basically a 2nd job, so if you have time and like to discover new music, check us out and let us know what you think!!!

Signing off,
B

So we have all 5 Connections installed and running, but.........the fun is yet to come. We are trying to get the presence awareness to work in the Profiles section of 1.0.2, but it loves to hate us!!!! Some of IBM's best are working to resolve the issues we are running into, but it's definitely tough going right now. I do have to say though, I'm really looking forward branding this Connections install. I do have a question though.

HAS ANYONE GOTTEN CONNECTIONS AND SAMETIME TO ACTUALLY PLAY NICE?!!?!?!!?

Signing off,
B

62%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

I'm not really an obsessive blogger, but apparently I need a little help....

Signing off,
B

Getting ramped up here at the end of the week, next week we will be installing our first 1.0.2 version of Connections for R&D in the Harley-Davidson environment. This is a pretty exciting prospect given the rather conservative way that Harley-Davidson has always done things. Thanks to Chris W., I have a place to start with the branding and color scheming, which will be very fascinating to work with. I look forward to having a solid installation to work with on about Wed. of next week, and we will see where it goes from there.

Some of the features that we are most excited about:

Profiles - finally having a place to have expertise location as defined by the individual!!!!!
Dogear - no more losing bookmarks after a profile rebuild, and finally a place that everyone can share bookmarks!
Sametime Integration - Presence awareness will be a very, very nice feature
Profile Cards - I can't wait to experiment with placing the profile card in all the other internal systems!!!

Anyway, those are a few of the things that our group is the most excited about, other than the 2.0 version of Connections!!!

Signing off,
B

http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/paydirt/entry/hitting_paydirt

So I came across this rather interesting blog about social skills and their development in a "non-social" setting. I happen to be an avid gamer and a part of the clan Fragweiser, an America's Army clan (for those who don't know what America's Army is, go to www.americasarmy.com and download the game, it's free and along the same lines as counterstrike). Anyway, I find it interesting that some people think that games don't allow for social development. In my case, some of my best friends are from all around the world, living in the US, Canada and even other parts of the globe like India, Europe and Japan. I have only met a few of them in real life, but we all know each other on a first name/last name basis and we spend quite a bit of time playing video games together. But we also spend time just talking, whether we're on our computers, or over the phone or on MSN. I've found that I happen to be more socially active than ever when I'm out and about, and I think it's because I'm less afraid of what people think, basically because I find that in a virtual world it doesn't matter, so why should it make any difference in "real" life? So in terms of being in a physically social setting, yes, we are lacking that. But to say that gaming would cause under-developed social skills, is a little far fetched in my mind. But then again, I'm one of those Gen. Y's, so what do I know about social skills Just as an FYI, I found PayDirt's blog very interesting and I am not trying to start any arguments, simply stating my point of view on social skills and gaming

Signing off,
B

So here is my album cover, per Chris' criteria......(See criteria below)



1 - Go to Wikipedia's random article page. The first article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to the Random Quotations page. The last four words of the last quote is the album title.

3 - Go to Flickr's Interesting photo page. Third picture, no matter what it is, is your album cover.

4 - Put it all together to make your album. Either crop it to CD cover size, or just use the raw image itself ... the only rule is you're only allowed to add the album title and artist title.

That was the size of the 3rd image, which just isn't big enough to make into a cover without blowing up the dimensions, so I added my own gradient background.......so I bent the rules slightly.....
Anyway, enjoy!!!!

Signing off,
B

So in news this weekend, everything is bad!!! Ok, so not everything is bad, but there were still multiple disappointments that occurred this weekend. First being, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, which means 6 more weeks of crappy drivers and cold weather......man this stinks. After that heartbreaker, I also did not get to witness the history which would have been the best team to ever play the game the only team to go undefeated in a full season including the playoffs and the Super Bowl!!!! Man, the disappointment.........

But in happy news, I got to go to the Dueling Piano Bar Lucille's in downtown Milwaukee and witness some fantastic piano playing for my friend's 23rd birthday. It was an absolute blast, if anyone is ever in Milwaukee and loves any sort of music, make sure to check out Lucille's, it's a really good time! Anyway, it's was a late night of poker playing and good commercials on top of a late night the night before celebrating birthday's and what not, I'm out.

Signing off,
B