A new brewing adventure...

After years and years of brewing and bottling my own beers, I've decided to try my hand at kegging my beer. Bottling my beer is nice, and the beers tend to last longer in the bottle, all the prep work before bottling happens has become a chore. Unboxing the bottles, cleaning the bottles, sanitizing the bottles, bottling the beer, and then capping them takes a lot of time.

Since I had some gift certificates to Northern Brewer, I decided to take the kegging plunge. I bought a used kegging systems, complete with a 5 gallon soda keg, a dual gauge gas regulator, a gas hose, and a beer hose with a picnic type tap.

I've already cleaned the keg and replaced the o-rings, so now all I have to do is fill the keg. Since I made a Black Lager about a year ago, and it's been sitting in my beer fridge in a secondary fermenation state for about 8 months or so, it will be the Black Lager that I will keg.

Since I have the next two days off, I will keg this beer during this time off, and by Saturday or Sunday, it should be ready for consumption, compared to the two weeks it would take if I had bottled it.

I'm a little nervous, but excited about this new adventure in brewing.

If you've never been to Lotusphere, or even if you have, you still need to read this...

Lotusphere '08 was my first Lotusphere event. When I was downloading the internet on everything Lotusphere, I stumbled upon Andy's website, and his annual "Guide to Lotusphere" blog post. Being the newbie I was gonna be at Lotusphere, Andy's blog helped me tremendously. If you're going to be going to Lotusphere for the first time, or not, it's helpful to read his post to let you know what's going on.

Andy's Guide to Lotusphere

Check it out!

Lotus Traveler and Windows Mobile 6.5 - Installation problems...

OK... so I've got this HTC Tilt 2, which has Windows Mobile 6.5 installed on it. I was able to download Lotus Traveler (the bootstrap file and the installer for WM 6.0/6.1 for Pocket PC). Installation goes fine until it tries to connect to the server. I'm getting the following error messages:

"There was an error reading your configuration."

and

"Parsing error reading the configuration file at line 31, position 3."

and, after a couple of minutes...

"Time out reached while connecting to the network. Please verify that your data network is available and check your network configuration settings."

Now, I have installed Traveler on a WM 6.1 phone (a Treo 750) without fail. I have also installed Traveler on several iPhones, again, without fail.

I've read on some message boards that people have installed Traveler on WM 6.5 devices, but once they get it installed, they don't come back to explain what they've done to get it installed. I'd really like to get Traveler on this phone, but it's looking like I'm going to have reinstall Good Mobile Messaging so this salesperson can get his emails, until I can get this little issue figured out.

Lotusphere can't some soon enough!

Lotus Traveler, Windows Mobile Devices, and the Corporate Directory

OK, so I may be late to the "Did you know what Traveler can and can't do" posts, but I found out something about Lotus Traveler, Windows Mobile Devices, and the Corporate Directory.

First, let me state that I do know that the corporate directory (or company address book, as I like to call it) is not sync'd to Windows Mobile (WM) devices, and that the iPhone can do lookups.

Secondly, I know that in order for me to send someone within my company an email with my WM phone, I am supposed to have them in my personal address book (PAB).

Well, I attempted something on my own. I wanted to see what would happen if I were to enter someone's name from my company, but not in my PAB, into the TO: field, and send the email anyway.

Guess what? It worked. Of course, I have to make sure that I spell the name correctly, but it did work.

Just to make sure I'm making myself clear, follow along with me:

1. Joe Smith is an employee with a Lotus Notes account, within my company.
2. I do not have Joe Smith in my PAB
3. I compose and email to Joe Smith with my WM phone
4. I enter "joe smith" (no quotes) in the TO: field
5. Finish the email and send it
6. Joe Smith receives the email and can reply to it

So, while Lotus Traveler on WM devices don't do a lookup ON THE PHONE, it does appear to do a lookup once the email is sent on it's way.

Should would be nice to get this lookup down at the device level for WM devices.

A month with the iPhone and Lotus Traveler

OK, so I've given up my Windows Mobile phone and have acquired a 32GB iPhone 3GS (it's good the be the adminstrator) and installed Lotus Traveler on the iPhone.

Now, while I am a Domino Administrator, I am not a heavy Notes users. I get my fair share of emails, and send a few emails here and there. I have to say, using Traveler on the iPhone is an absolute joy, especially after using Traveler on the Windows Mobile phone.

To back up a bit, we've been a Good Mobile Messenger user for the last two years. While Good served its purpose, I felt it was time to move on. After upgrading our Domino server to 8.5.1, I also installed Traveler 8.5.1 on the same server that Good is running on (no problems running both on the same server thus far, knock on wood.)

I installed Traveler on my WM AT&T Tilt phone, after uninstalling Good on the phone. While I liked the UI with Good, Traveler was just OK. Traveler on the iPhone is absolutely awesome. Of course, I don't really have another iPhone app to compare Traveler to, when it comes to Notes, as Good doesn't support the iPhone as of this writing. I hear they are working on an app for that.

I now have three other people using the iPhone with Traveler. So far, I have had no complaints about it's functionality, or that they can't do this or that, like they could with Good. I will slowly begin migrating people from the WM phones to the iPhone, as contracts come close to the end, or phones give up the ghost, which ever comes first. I have let my smartphone people know that I will not tolerate abusing their WM phones, in an attempt to get an iPhone sooner than they would like. I still have a few Palm Treo 750's that still work, and have threatened to replace their "broken" phone with a Treo until their contact period is up.