It has been one of those days....
As I sit here in McDonagh Central, the words of Dylan Thomas come rocketing into my mind
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Yes I have been shopping in Londonderry / Derry (affectionatly known as "Stroke City" cos the Prods afix the suffix London and the Catholics do not , hence "Stroke City"). But that is not ther reason for this rant....
After a quick wander around PC world to look at the tech and all things geeky, sundry females dictated that it was time to hit Foyleside Shopping Centre, what our American cousins call "a mall". Oh Joy Unbounded!
To me shopping centres of any type are as Douglas Adams would have it "..the long dark tea time of the soul" and on this late October day never was it more true. Gales and heavy rain had moved in from the Atlantic and the north coast of Ireland was being drenched and blown hither and thither in equal measure.
So there I was abandoned in one of the temples of Mamon with not a great deal to do for a couple of hours. Don't get me wrong there is a place in the world for clothes shops otherwise we would all be naked and in the case of Northern Europeans blue with the cold. However the nature of clothes shops is defined by a select group of deamons that have slipped through a dimensional gateway and rather than douse everyone in nasty smelling ectoplasm have instead taken it upon themselves to damn humanity to a multitude of evils wrapped up in the gaudy glitter of "department stores".
It being close to Halloween, the store fronts are packed with the tat all parents of the under 10's are nagged incessantly for. Witches harts, skeletons of varying sizes, colour and luminosoty (all of which are anatomically total crap!) gouls, ghosties and other miscellanea that go bump in the night. (perhaps only in the minds of people that have had too much cheese before bed - nocturnal Stilton nibblers have a lot to answer for!)
I sat at the central crossroads of the four "legs" of the mall, three floors above and two below and let a seething horde of humantiy bumble past. It struck me there really wasn't that much difference between the shuffling gait of these Halloween consumers and that of the Zombies in the "[insert time of day here]... Of the Dead" movies.. All they needed was a little less colour and some dribble and it would have been perfect.
Way and above any other group represented in this mass of humanity was the packs of PPTGs [Post Pubescent Teenage Girls]. Now I am the father of a 20 something male, a fact that I give thanks for every waking day for I as a father would not let any daughter of mine out on the street looking anything like these lassies.
There was a palable tension as each group of PPTGs passed by. Where as teenage boys seldom are not awake enough at 3pm to pose any threat (other than the sudden discovery of last night's socks in the linen basket) these lassies where on the hunt, tracking down their prey by some form of collective telepathy... or could it be the high pitched giggling and overly enthusiastic ejectualations of camardarie - Hmmm there could be rich pickings for a piece of scientific study there.
I retired to the relative peace and quiet of the Gentleman's department of Debenhams which has one small floor in the basement which is around the same size as the portion of the next floor up set aside to sell handbag deodourisation utensils.
There amongst the suits, 3 colours in a variety of sizes from "Skinny Git" to "Fat Bastard" I found a modicum of sanity and peace. This was not a place for the predatory packs of PPTGs or there older but much more deadly YMWPs [Young Mother With Pram] or the vicious solitary MAWLFAPFs [Middle Aged Woman Looking For A Party Frock] I spent a pleasant hour picking through a sizeable array of goods branded by "Stig" from Top Gear. (you can get Stig on a Rope if you feel the need to wash those intimate places with a dark visored helmeted Racing driver!) and some suits by "Rocca, John Rocca" why on earth does he need to have name mentioned twice .. it is not like it is a difficult name.. and I heard it the first time.. so WTF is there twice for?
Venturing back into the meleé i girded my loins and set off in search of a cup of coffee. Now I have said this before and I will say it again.. I WANT A FECKING CUP OF COFFEE. I do not want a trough, a bath or a small resevoir of the fecking stuff flavoured with caramel, cinnamon and essence of Papal Sweat!
I want a simple uncomplicated cup of coffee that taste of coffee, with perhaps a splash of milk, milk that came from an ordinary cow, not a skinny or lord perserve me a Soya cow! I want to be able to go up to the spotty oik behind the counter and say "A cup of coffee please" and not have to endure the endless fecking questions about the additional extras. Was not my instruction simple enough and put in such a way that there should be no misunderstanding? So to all you "baristas" out there, you are NOT some form of intellectual giant whose right it is to question the nature of the universe and coffee's place in it, you are there to give me a cup of smegging coffee when I ask for one and take whatever mortage level price your establishment is currently selling it for.How in gods green earth does some hot water, coffee beans and a serving attitude taught by Attilla the Starbucks Paradgim Moderator come to £3 fecking 50?
Ah well tis over for another wee while, I have been there done that and now I am at home, with the computer, a coffee and a good book, so for now I have done my "Rage Rage..." bit and the night having come lies ahead
Toodle pip for the now gentle reader :-)
ILUG countdown widget
Sun, Aug 22nd 2010 1:30p Steve McDonagh If you would like an ILUG 2010 Widget like the one on the left just copy this code into a convienent HTML/JS widget enclosurer on your blogbr /
br /
pre style="font-family: Andale Mono, Lucida Console, Monaco, fixed, monospace; color: #000000; background-color: #eee;font-size: 12px;border: 1px dashed #999999;line-height: 14px;padding: 5px; overflow: auto; width: 100%"codelt;script language='javascript' src='http://slightlydoolally.com/ilugcd.js'gt;lt;/scriptgt;lt;div id='ilug'gt;lt;/divgt;lt;scr [read] Keywords: ilug
blogger
javascript
widget
36
Help required with Duffy The Opera (An Idea waiting for a very drunken party)
Wed, Aug 11th 2010 8:27a Steve McDonagh It has been suggested by Mike Smith that we make the "Duffy" epic into an opera.. and tentative work has begun.. picture the scene.. duffy in a cubicle with the lights subdued and a general air of saddness fills the stage.. Duffy takes a deep breath and start to sing....the Duffy Aria ....br /
br /
blockquoteIm being swallowed by a sharepoint migrationbr /
I'm being swallowed by a sharepoint migrationbr /
I'm being swallowed by a sharepoint migrationbr /
And I don't like it very muchbr /
br /
Oh [read] Keywords: blogger
sharepoint
workspace
133
Single authenticated point of entry to iNotes for all your users
Tue, Aug 10th 2010 10:27a Steve McDonagh It has been a while since I did a Domino Geek posting, however I came across this today and thought I would share it. Basically you can if you know the URL get into your Lotus Notes eMail via a browser. The problem is that most users can be .. well .. forgetful and having to remember a big long string of characters is a bit of a pain that and we wanted a single URL that would (a) authenticate the user and (b) open the mail file so we came up with this solution.br /
br /
A single NSF with a short [read] Keywords: agent
domino
inotes
lotus
notes
ajax
blogger
email
password
server
53
Offical Minutes of the ILUG oganising committee - 9th Aug 2010
Mon, Aug 9th 2010 7:31p Steve McDonagh i**** Names, locations and proclivities have been redacted to protect the guilty ****/ibr /
br /
ILUG 2010 is now so certain to go ahead that Celine Dion is penning the lyrics to the theme song and even as I write the organisers are throbing with preternatural wibbliness for tonite was one of the famed ILUG 2010 skype calls.br /
br /
div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"span style="font-size: small;"Date : 09 August 2010/span/divdiv style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" [read] Keywords: administration
ilug
mashup
quickr
xpages blogger
development
mobile
skype
tivoli
34
Duffy the Banana Slayer - Chapter 3 "Is this your Ewok?"
Mon, Aug 9th 2010 3:30p Steve McDonagh iWhere we are introduced to a Pseudo French Inspector, Mistress Marybeth of the "Never used Vista Virgins" and the difference between Dastard and Bastardbr /
br /
/ibr /
He looked around the room surrounded by the detritus of a party. Half eaten pizzas beer bottles by the dozen, an unturned bottle of diet Coke in a ice bucket, a dart board with a picture of Bill Gates on.. the picture was more hole that picture. He stooped and picked up a crumpled flyer "Sharepointless Summer Party" .. yes they [read] Keywords: connections
sametime
blogger
development
javascript
vista
53
Duffy the Banana Slayer - Chapter 2 "The Journey Home"
Thu, Aug 5th 2010 8:31p Steve McDonagh iIn which we do not meet Nigel the out of work sarbannes oxley auditor and bus shelter attendant, Duffy has a Beatlemania flash back, Bill Buchans Knees make an appearence and we meet Gladys from the Sharepoint Coven/ibr /
ibr /
/ibr /
The group had been partying in the tea shops of south central Portaland. Tonight was the re-opening of the hottest geek club in town. The owner had completely remodelled the club in yellow and renamed it "Banana Daiquiri". No one actually knew who it was that now [read] Keywords: admin
domino
applications
blogger
sharepoint
sql
wifi
52
Duffy the Banana Slayer - Chapter 1
Thu, Aug 5th 2010 5:29p Steve McDonagh iWhere Duffy and his sidekick Privet are introduced to the reader and Matt White gets Dissed/ibr /
br /
"Are you sure this is a good idea Privet?" Duffy asked, peering at the screenbr /
br /
Privet laughed at the concern in his friend's voice. "It'll be fine, Duffy. It's a very simple xPages App. I won't mess it up."br /
br /
"I don't know," Duffy said, unconvinced. "I'm just not sure you should be using fancy coding tricks to spice up your life." He thought for a moment, then chuckled. "I'm sti [read] Keywords: ilug
lotus
quickr
xpages application
blogger
css
openntf
56
Irish Notes Geek in Israel - Jerusalem for a week any notes folk fancy a pint?
Sun, Jul 18th 2010 7:30p Steve McDonagh I will be finding myself in Jerusalem, Israel from the 25th-29th July and I seem to remember that there is an active Notes/Domino community in Israel. So if anyone wants to accompany a very pink (people tell me Israel is warm this time of year) Irish Notes Geek for a pint and a bit of a geek chat on one of evenings while I am there, drop me a line at mcdonaghs (at) utvinternet (d0t) com and lets collaborate socially :-)div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger. [read] Keywords: domino
notes
blogger
community
186
NotesMan Saves the day AGAIN!
Wed, Jul 14th 2010 7:25a Steve McDonagh It is nice to give a product a "call out" once in a while and today is one of those days.br /
br /
I had an app today where a unintentional download FUBARed exchange rates over a large number of records. Now I could have written an agent and fixed it that way however in my essential notes tool box I have a copy of a href="http://www.martinscott.com/Site.nsf/ID/Noteman"NotesMannbsp; /aand I was able to go into the app, created a collection of docs that needed changed , did the change, a quick "Co [read] Keywords: agent
notes
blogger
exchange
exchange
87
Nerd Vs Geek a Taxonomy
Sun, Jun 6th 2010 7:57p Steve McDonagh Twas only last weekend when thwe Arch Bishopess of ITIL a href="http://www.eileenfitzy.com/"Ms Eileen Fitzgerald/a and her chums Clara and Máireád plodded 22 miles around the north coast of Northern Ireland. Many and various were the topics we covered in those miles. One of said topics was the great Geek Vs Nerd debate. Both Clara and Máireád mistakening thought that Eileen and I were nerds ... OH how we laughed at that one. br /
br /
Eileen deffered to my age, experience and abilty to gesti [read] Keywords: blogger
facebook
office
twitter
