Do Something Utterly Meaningless

When was the last time you did something utterly meaningless and it made you so happy you have no idea why you don't continue to do it more often?

Some of you may know about my recent excursion before leaving IBM's Impact conference last Thursday. I
have been trying to do this for a few years and finally got to do it.

I took a cab out to the Pinball Hall of Fame/Museum as it is billed in Las Vegas.

Do you remember what it was like as a kid going to an arcade or miniature golf or whatever kid fun place and playing the newest pinball machines? The size of the machines, the noise, the depression when your ball drained or knowing your best friend beat your high score was all you thought of while playing. For you younger readers, think of your first game console or hand held game, but it really is not quite the same.

Why isn't it the same?

Because we never got bored by the pinball machines. And in my case I REALLY wanted to know how they were built, worked, basically everything about them. I loved the craftsmanship, the wood, the ideas behind the games. And along the way, I realized a few things that proved playing was not just meaningless time.

Don't do anything for the money
Well I hoped they had some ideas beyond "we need a new game this year". We know now that this happened at times, just like any industry. But at the end of the day, you need earnings, revenue, profits but that did not always correlate with the imaginative side of the business. No one likes games lacking in skill or some new enhancements.

Failure is one more step, okay many steps, to success
Do I sound old? Probably, but walking into the museum it was just like being 10 again, the age
my son is now. His interest in our pinball machine has waned since he beat my score. I need to beat his now because in each of us there is a fighting spirit.

Imagination has no limitations
Imagine walking up and down over 6 aisles of pinball machines from the 50's wood rails and white boxes to today's strobes, mirrors, black and digital. Pinball back glass that holds Pop Art rarely seen these days from days of old. The single player solid wood mechanical games with rollers for numbers from the early days up to the LED based units. Each game had a designer and an artist to come together and provide a finished product. The artistry in older machines at times is lacking in modern ones, but the modern ones make up for it by being infinitely more elaborate, energetic than their early days brethren. Multiple ramps, strobe lighting,
motions and levels of complexity usually only found in video games.

Perseverance in the face of antagonism
Originally just sight and bells or bangs was all you heard but along the way we started getting digital sound and if you remember Gorgar, the first talking, and taunting, machine? "Gorgar beat you!" was all I heard for weeks while I tried to defeat it as a kid. You can listen to the voice from a promotional 45 record that someone uploaded here.

Find your inner peace
So why am I extolling on the virtues of pinball? Because I spent 2 hours playing numerous games and letting my mind clear itself of conferences, meetings, work and other entanglements of life. Just playing
and watching and listening to the games was mesmerizing.

Love what you do, but love having fun too. While you were growing up you may have forgotten what it was like to be a kid and see the world in a different way. Go do something utterly meaningless and maybe you too will find that it isn't as meaningless as you remember.

Humbled by an Expert

Yesterday I played hooky from work. Not the whole day, just the morning.

Why did I do it? Because I was learning. I was in need of seeking out someone who had more knowledge and experience than I to solve a problem.

The problem was important and although in the end I was on the right track, and indeed had validated the conclusion the expert came up with, I also could not solve it. As it turned out, neither could he, although we worked around it.

What I lacked in experience, I made up with in Troubleshooting ability. Yes we were surging power, yes we had tripped a fuse or 2. That was my laziness somewhat but the real problem was the loss of partial power.

Picture the light going on in your refrigerator but the motor not working to cool the food and you get my meaning.

So while we cleaned up some bits and ends in need, the problem still came back. It was only after looking at some very specific parts of other chips that we found what we were looking for. One chip had lost a leg and was causing a short. Soldering on a new one and replacing it put everything right again.

The kids should now be happy the pinball machine is fully functional again. Except for the bit which I was stuck on myself. I knew the wiring was good, the bulbs were good and power was good, but still no luck. We traced it back to the circuit board and well, for 2 lights not to work, I can live with that for now. The cost of a new board or repair can be up to $200.

But it was a great experience to learn more, see new ways to troubleshoot the machine and do stuff I would never do to a chip board. Surprised it didn't snap. But he knew what he was doing. And that is what you want from your experts. That ability to take something not seen or experienced before and work your way to the level of the issue. And then know how to work around it or fix it.

It is what I do for Lotus products and various other software programs and other technology, both new and old. It is why people pay us and come to us for help for our expertise.

While I was with him, someone else called me and needed me to come out to their house and resolve some wireless issues. The 2 of us talked about this as well and appreciated each others worlds.

When he left I said hope I don't see you again soon, although I do look forward to the next visit.

If you need Fred and are in South Florida, here is his website, http://www.homeusepinball.com and phone number (561) 683-5893. Thanks again for the lessons and my kids appreciate it even more.

The Lotus Pinball Machine

You pull the mouse plunger and watch the tcp/ip ball of data roll around your network surface searching for ways to collaborate and thus score more points(money/revenue) for you and your team.
Make sure you hit the data with the appropriate reply settings(flippers) and try to knock down all the targets on the left side (Exchange, Sharepoint, Office, Outlook, SQL and especially BOB) and the right side (123, Improv, Organizer, cc:Mail and of course e-suite).

If you can get up the middle ramp your email can flow and connect to the internet mode in which a Lotus Mail Protector device which uses a magnet drags your data to the top left corner of the table where you can bounce off the SMTP bumpers and Anti-Virus pop-ups to see if indeed you can crash your server with one too many hops.

After it leaves this zone it may get sucked into the Agent/Mail Rules hole. Now the fun begins, you need to watch fast as you never know if it will pop out of the Trash hole, the Filed Folder hole or the OOO hole. Once found you can continue on your mission which is to reduce your total cost of ownership by hitting the right drop lane where the Symphony kicker is waiting to put the data back in play, while reducing your overhead and thus making you more money.

If you have made it this far, I ran out of time but please comment with some updates for this.
I hope you have a great new year and have enjoyed my postings.
See you in Lotusphere!

Let me Compare thee to a....pinball machine

So this Lotus vs. Microsoft discussion gets old does it?

While not as old as the Middle East conflicts, Yankees vs. Redsox, Hatfields/McCoys or ex-British Empire Countries suing for their art and artifacts. It goes to show that something of importance can never really die in the minds of people throughout the world, even over cebnturies.

And so it was in Pinball.

I am restoring (making it useful and clean and power efficient, not 100% strip the paint restoration) a 1979 Bally Future Spa pinball.

Over the last 75 years there were many similar arguments going on wether Bally, Gottlieb or later Williams were superior. Advanced designs, louder, wider, faster game plays. You get the idea.

In the end, they all merged because the market was taken over by "video games".
A brief merger of the main ones then Data East grew out of the ashes of the previous companies, today the pinball world is just a very niche, but fun, product line.

Do I think the same will occur in this case? Highly unlikely unless Microsoft or IBM was willing to sell off their messaging servers and I think we can all agree that is not happenning. But the argumenst will run forever.

But what if Microsoft is the Data East of Messaging. They keep buying everyone until there is only 1 last contender and then Lotus eventually folds? I don't bet on this scenario.

Or may this exact endgame happen to Microsoft and Lotus wins the battle. And when Lotus/IBM does win, isn't it because Domino is much more than mail in the end and that is where the ROI on your messaging system is expected, when it is part of your entire business solution, not just another box you MUST install because of some companies blueprint for how to run your infrastrcuture.

Tune in about 10-15 years from now to find out.