June 2010 – TexasSwede

The last few weeks have been slightly turbulentin the Yellowsphere, with JonVonstarting a discussion about the future of Notes development with his Lotus Notes: The Long Goodbye.

I am lucky enough to have a solid position as aLotus Notes developer at a Dallas-based insurance company. Notes is not going away from here any times soon, as a matter of fact we are moving rapidly towards getting the latest versions. We are just now in the final phase of getting all users on Notes 7. This is done at the same time we are moving most branch offices to Citrix.Very soon we are planning to move everyone up to Notes 8.5.1 as well. Our current plan is to wait about 6 months after the release of a new version to push it out, to let any bugs get fixed.

The exciting newsis that after 8 years at the company asme being theonly Lotus Notes developer,we might even hire anotherdeveloper to help me out, so I canspend more time on the architecture and design, and less onsupport. I spend about 40% of my time (more at times) at supporting end users. I also support the rest of the IT department (mainly the operations manager and the desktop support group) with Notes knowledge when needed.

So there are companies hiring. As soon as there is an official job posting I will publish it here.

So Notes is not dead. As a matter of fact, several of the most important applications here are based on Notes.

Today is Father’s Day here in the US. In Sweden it is actually celebrated in November (Nov 14 this year). I am thinking about my dad, who passed away in 2001.
My dad was a very intelligent person. He may not have had a fancy education and degree. As a matter of fact, he just had six years of school back in the 1930’s (he was born in 1926), then he had to start working. But he could build pretty much anything. He built us a summer house from scratch. He even did the design and the drawings/blueprints himself. At home he had a real architect drawing table. But he also repaired all kind of things down in the basement. He built his own tools, a powerful electrical motor and some pieces of scrap metal, and he had a lathe. When my sister needed a violin, he simply built one. And yes, it sounded great!
After I moved to the United States in 1998, he got a computer, and at age 70 he started learning how to use it and to send email.

Working on the summer house, circa 1974

Taking a break from the hard work.

Building a violin.

But my dad was not always working. Yes, he did work a lot, both to support the family and to (litterally) put a roof over our heads. But he also had time for me and my sister.
We went fishing, sailing (he got us a small sail boat and put me and my sister in sailing classes), and worked in the vegetable patch together with mom.

At Midsummer celebration, circa 1976.

There are so many things that make me proud of my dad, I can’t list them here. But he was a great role model for me, and I hope my son Erik one day will be able to think at me in a similar way. He was also, for a very brief time, a grandfather. He died in March 2001, but not until after he got to see and hold his first and only grandchild. Erik was born in August 2000, and he (together with my sister) visited us in early November.
I was told that he printed out the pictures I mailed him, and was showing them to all his friends. He was so proud! I wish he would have lived a few more years so he could have seen Erik starting to grow up.