September 28th, 2007
Geek stuff
I am quite tired after last night's Geek Dinner — had to be at the office at 07:30 this morning to prepare for an important meeting. I'd been on the organisers' mailing list but being so busy and flustered during the past month, I wasn't able to commit myself to a meaningful contribution. I had been given a solemn promise by a very serious and businesslike guy from the Zandberg wine estate that they would sponsor an event, but he evaporated, and nobody responded to the enquiry which I filled in at at the Zandberg Web site in an effort to re-establish contact. GetWine, who have previously been happy to sponsor a Geek Dinner, rose to the occasion, and I asked whether I might be the one to thank them for their sponsorship and promote their special offer. Jonathan was a little amused, since I do not actually drink wine myself (in spite of the fact that my father raised me properly). Wessel, who drove there and back with me, informed me that the wine was very good.
Rudi, Graham and Wessel at the Geek Dinner. At the end of the table (looking like a ghost of Jean-Luc Picard — sorry, low lighting) is Andy.
One of the talks last night was about what it takes to become an issuer of digital certificates, delivered by Stefano Rivera. I was a little distracted during the talk by other things which were happening in the room, but I thought, never mind, I know enough about certificates to do what I need to do with them once in a blue moon. Now at this point in my narrative, imagine an ominous change to a minor key in the background music, with nervous cello's and some rumbling timpani. Since I will be out of town next week and my Notes certificate was due to expire during that week, I had to recertify my Notes id this morning. A while back, I had changed my organisation name and moved my mail file to another server, since we are no longer running two Notes domains, but only one. So I reckoned I should recertify myself with the new organistion's cert.id. Logical, perhaps, but also unfortunately wrong: Just before the Big Meeting at 10:00, I locked myself out of my own mail file and all the other applications which I had developed and to which I had Manager access! Fortunately, my mail file was still open on another computer with a locally stored id file, and I could rectify my mistake by resending the request to the Administrator's mail file and then using the old organisation's cert.id to certify the copy of my id. I then replaced the messed up id on the server with the decent one. Perhaps I will have to cross-certify my id again at some stage, but perhaps I should not exacerbate a potentially shaky situation by acting preemptively. What I (re-)learned from this temporary disaster was that what appears behind the slash is not an indication of the domain to which you belong. Evidently, I am still a citizen of a country which no longer exists, and as long as it issues me a passport, I can travel. Bullet number two of the conclusion: I should probably listen more attentively to Stefano Rivera.
One of the most exciting talks last night was by Neil Blakey-Milner. An event called StarCamp is being planned for December, and the format is exactly what I would have wanted in a geektech event. More about this later. I still wanted to say something about the conversations that Dennis, Wessel, Graham, Arno, Christèl and I had at the table too, but I've got to go and do my to-do list now. Apologies to those to whom I have not created hyperlinks yet. Will try to rectify this faux pas when I get back from my trip.