 Opening Spring 2010
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Like so many other in the Yellowverse, I am getting ready to leave for Orlando. A couple of more days, and I will be on the airplane heading to (hopefully) sunny Orlando again. My schedule is still up in the air a bit, I know that Monday and Tuesday there are probably some interviews and meetings scheduled for me by IBM, and I will not know about them until I check in. Except for the obvious sessions (OGS, Gurupaloza, Beat the Developers and CGS), there are a couple of sessions I want to push for. They are high on my priority list as well,a nd I hope I have time to go to all of them. SHOW112 - How to Build an XPages Application from Start to Finish Tim Clark and Matt White JMP102 - The Top Things All New IBM Lotus Domino Developers Need To Know Thomas Duff and Kathy Brown JMP106 - “Kum Bah Yah” Meets “Let's Kick Butt” John Head and Alex Kassabov BP108 - Worst Practices 4.0: "Orlando, We Have a Problem" Paul Mooney and Bill Buchan BP114 - IBM Lotus Domino Server & Application Performance in the Real World Andrew Pollack BP202 - There’s No Fixing Ugly: How to Make a Great First Impression with Your Applications Scott Good BP205 - "I'm a Programmer Not a Firefighter!": The Low Maintenance "Notes Shop". Timothy Paque and Bruce Elgort BP210 - The Great Code Giveaway 9: Never Gonna Let You Down Rob Novak and Viktor Krantz I am not a new Domino developer, but I still hope to be able to pick up a few new tips and tricks from Duffbert and Kathy. This is Kathy's first LS presentation so she need some friendly faces in the audience. I want to see if she live-twitter during her presentation or if she can survive without twittering for an hour. :-) Last year I submitted a suggestion for a similar session, and I am very happy to see this session at Lotusphere this year. I think that is important to get new developers interested in the platform, and give them tips and pointers. So great job, IBM! See you in Orlando!
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 Recently my best friend from growing up came over from London on a business trip, so I picked him up at the airport and we went to have dinner at Capital Grille in Dallas. The food was good, if not as good as at Nick and Sam's where we went at a previous visit. But still good. After dinner I had a Cognac. I am usually more a single malt person, but on occasion I enjoy a good cognac as well. Capital Grille did not have any really exciting single malts, so I decided to the the Delamain Vesper cognac. At $48 for a glass, it was pricey, but worth it! This 35 year old cognac was incredible smooth, had a great fruit flavor with a hint of vanilla flavor and a very long aftertaste. I been looking in the local liqour stores for it, but no luck. Even wrote to the importer, who told me no stores in the DFW area carry it. They told me to contact their local sales rep/agent for this part of the country to see if I could buy a bottle. So when I get back from Lotusphere, I plan to do that. If you like cognac, I can not recommend this one enough. At between $120 and $199 per bottle (online prices) it is not cheap, though. But I would say it is worth it.
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I am lucky enough to be able to go to Lotusphere again. This will be my 13th time in Orlando. I also went to LS97 in Nice. This year I will be arriving to MCO on Saturday at 9:40am, and leaving Friday at 1:55pm. If anyone is interesting in sharing a cab, let me know. @TexasSwede on Twitter or texasswede@gmail.com. I am flying AA 1434 from DFW, anyone else on that flight? Also, if there are any Swedish readers of this, I have a favour to ask... Could someone bring a few items that are hard/impossible to find here? Just let me know how much it is and I bring cash. What I am looking for is 2 or 3 of the larger (double) packs of Vasa Frukost (900g?) and 2 or 3 tubes of Kalles Guld. The regular Kalles Kaviar can be found at IKEA here in the US, but not the premium Guld. Let me know if you can do this, I would appreciate it! For anyone not familiar with Kalles, it is the most sold brand of caviar in Sweden. It is made from salted and smoked cod roe and comes in a metal tube. You squeeze it out on bread (for breakfast) or on hard boiled eggs. A piece of bread with a sliced egg and some caviar on top is a delicious and helathy way to start the day!
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As I wrote back in June, I managed to do a submersion test of my (then fairly new) Blackberry Bold. It worked perfectly fine after that. Then a little bit later in the summer I dropped it on concrete and got a small crack in the screen. I checked with insurance, it would cost me $125 to get the phone replaced, and it was not bad enough to spend that money on a new phone, which probably would be a refurbished anyway.
The phone started acting up about a month ago, dropping calls, etc. Sure, could be the network (I have AT&T) but I walked into the local AT&T store and talked to the sales guy. He said it sounded like a problem with the phone, and it should be covered by warranty. He then opened the battery compartment and looked, then said "OK, no water damage. Tell that when you call AT&T about warranty replacement."
So a few days later I called, and was told to open the battery compartment and tell her color of the sticker on there. I told her it was red, and she said that it indicated water had come into contact with the sticker. Oh well, just wonder why the sales guy could not tell. The label is supposed to be white when no liquid has touched it.
I decided to hold off a bit longer. Then the camera stopped working (even if it later started working again, after about a week) and the battery started to drain quickly and teh phone got really warm while charging. Something was obviously wrong.
I called the insurance company on Monday. While on hold, the automated voice mentioned that I might be eligible for an upgrade. So I checked online, and I could get the Blackberry Bold 9700 for just $99 after mail-in rebate. When the 9700 came out, I decided I would stick with my 9000, that it was not worth to spend the money on an upgrade. But now, with the phone acting up and Lotusphere coming up, I had to bite the bullet.
I received the phone Thursday (no shipping charge when placing order online!) and have now been playing with it for 2 days. Here are my thoughts.
- The phone is smaller. I am still getting used to the smaller keyboard, at least initially I did more typos when texting.
- The screen has a higher resolution, 480x360 instead of 480x320. This cases my favourite theme not to work anymore. I can download it, but it does not show up in the list of available themes.
- The trackpad is very nice, but will probably take another day or two to get used to. The nice thing is that dirt won't get in there to cause problems, like with the ball on the older Blackberries.
- OS 5.0 installed from factory. Very nice. There are some small details I don't like, hopefully I can change that using Blackberry Theme Studio. For example, in the inbox the name of th sender is black and bold while the subject is gray and normal, making it much harder to read.
- The reports say that the battery life is better than on the old Bold. This is of course hard to tell after just 2 days, especially when loading software, transferring files from the old phone through USB, etc.
- Mini-USB connector replaced by micro-USB. My car charger and spare wall charger won't work, unless I get some adapters. At just over a dollar each, I will probably get a couple. The shipping is the expensive part, though. My Motorola P790 portable charger that I got for Lotusphere last year is also using mini-USB. Oh, if you don't have one of those chargers, pick one up! They are down to $15 or less now...
- My charging cradle won't work anymore either, since the phone is smaller.
But generally I am happy with the new phone. Just some small quirks, and I am sure I will get used to them or figure out how to address them.
Below is a picture of the two phones side-by-side. Bold 9700 to the left, Bold 9000 to the right.
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