As of today, the latest version of Ubuntu is available for download. If you alreadyhave Ubuntu runing, the update manager will give youthe option to upgrade your existing installation.If you want to perform a clean install, simply download and burn the ISO file for Ubuntu 11.04 (with the code name Natty Narwhal) from www.ubuntu.com. As always, you can install the new operating system next to Windows, keeping your existing operating system working.  When I tried the update from within Ubuntu 10.10, I was told it would take about 7 hours for it to finish. To download the ISO will take about one hour on the same internet connection... This is of course unusual slow, and can most probably be contributed to everyone downloading the new version today. One of the biggest changes in this release is the new desktop enviromnet called Unity, replacing the traditional Gnome shell. As soon as I have been playing around some more with it, I will report back on what I think about it. The main difference is that commonly used programs can be docked on the left side of the screen. It seems like Ubuntu users either love it or hate it... Michael Brown blogged about how to install Lotus Notes in the (as yet) unsupported Ubuntu 11.04 this morning,so I will not repeat that here. Go read his instructions. 

Below is a summary of the event I attended yesterday. It will mainly be quotes from the different speakers. Ed Brill, IBM (@edbrill)People want to do business with people. They like to know something about the person they do business with. When I started my blog, I had to decide what my online presence should be. Am I Ed Brill the IBM executive? Or Ed Brill the father, traveler and photographer? The answer is all of them.Historically, many companies (including IBM) had a policy that only the highest executive, or certain people, talked to customers. That policy, one face to the customer, does not work today, in the age of social business. Companies must decrease the distance between themselves and the customer.It is important that you get a social media policy. When IBM developed one five years ago, we encouraged people to blog, be on social networks, etc. We said "do this" instead of "don't do this".According to the IBM CIO study, 95% of standout organisations will focus more on "getting closer to the customer" over the next five years, connecting people - customers, partners and employees - ast networks to drive innovation.People don't use the restaurant reviews in the Sunday newspaper anymore. Instead they use crowdsourcing. People go to Yelp and similar sites and read reviews by other people.Who here in the audience would go to Best Buy and get a new big screen TV or a blue-ray player and trust the sales guy? How many of you would pull out your smartphone, go to Amazon.com and check the star rating and perhaps a couple of reviews right there in the store? (Most in the audience raised their hands at this point)Marcia Conner, author and analyst (@marciamarcia)96% of people under 30 are on a social network.Companies with highly engaged employees have 26% higher revenue per employee.9 in 10 adults trust recommendations from online friends and total strangers.Many companies are afraid of social media and block it. People will work the way they need, using the tools they need, with our without you. They will figure out ways to get around limitations. They might just all use their smart phones and bypass any proxies/firewalls, and use the social tools they need.What are the companies afraid of?*"People will say the wrong things" - Help them say the right things. Have a social media policy. If someone says something wrong on the phone, you don't take their phone away.*"People will do other things" - And they will remain engaged. It is good to decompress, that actually makes them more productive. And giving them access to the tools makes it possible for them to get back faster to the task they are working on.Link the network of networks together. Link what you know, who you know and who you are.Give people permission, a path clear of obstacles, and they will participate. Jon Raslawski, IBMRetaining customers is linked to increased profitability.2% increase in customer retention has the same effect as cutting costs by 10%. It is…

For the last few weeks, I have been working full-time in Domino Designer 8.5.2, the version based on Eclipse. I had previusly just been playing around some, but as we are upgrading to the latest version of Notes and Domino at work, I am now able to use this version almost exclusively.I am currently still doing only Classic Notes development, as we still have some users on Notes 7.0.2. Also, from what I understand, the performance of Xpages in the client is not fully where one wouold expect it. So I am holding off on putting Xpages into production for a little bit longer.So what is my impression of Domino Designer for Eclipsethis far?Both good and bad, but the good is far outweighing the bad.Let's look at a fewkey points. PerformanceI went from a3 year old Core2 Duo @2.0 GHz and 1 GB of RAM running Windows XP to a Core2 Duo @3.06 GHz and 8 MB of RAMrunning Windows 7 (64-bit). Performance is obviously better, partially due to more memory and partially from the new computer being a clean install, but honestly it is not a huge difference. StabilityI recently switched from 7.0.2 to 7.0.3 on my old system. I am not sure if it was because of that,because the computer needed to be rebuilt (I saw a lot of other issues) or because of the code I wrote,butDesigner kept crashing fairly frequently. I still manage to crash Designer 8.5.2, but not as frequently (unless I do really weird things with lists). FunctionalityThere are a few things I love about DDE, and a few things that really irritates me.Let's start with the negative ones.You have to double click on design element groups in order to see themin the right pane. For example, if you want to see all agents, in earlier versions of Designer you simply clicked on "Agents" and they were displayed in the right pane. In DDE you have to double click. Very annoying, and slowing me down.  I love the working sets. Using them makes it much easier for me to organize databases applications I work on, for example for different departments. If you are not using this gem, take a look at it right away!There are several other little gems, like the asterisk (star) in the tab when adesign element is dirty (has been modified) and need to besaved. I like the tabsin the bottom pane, with properties, events and problems. And one of the features i like the most is the real-time compilation and that errors are being displayed at once. I like the popup help in the Lotusscript editor when I hover over a function, but I am not happy with how F1 works, it usually just opens a generic help page about the editor.Also frequently the code completion tooltip is not showing up. I am not sure if this has to do with the fact that I (like probably most developers these days) use two monitors side-by-side. ConclusionMaureen and her team has done a good job, and…

I have a database template (I am still on Notes 7.0.3, so I will keep using "database" for now), containing a number of forms, views, script libraries and agents. A whole lot of them, actually. Over the years I found out that occasionally I have to use the recompile all function to get changes in script libraries to be recognized. This is the result:   Well, I open the forms (these are all forms) and save them again. No error/warning. I make some small changes to the code. No error/warning. I change the order the script libraries are loaded. No error/warning. I open the script libraries, make a small change and save them again. No error/warning. Finally I open the database using Domino Designer 8.5.2, perform yet another recompile all, and I now see five (5) warnings/errors at the bottom. I still am not able to locate the actual error, Domino Designer 8.5.2 is not giving me enough to work on. So either I am very stupid, or there is something buggy with the recompile all function in Domino Designer... Anyone can shed any light on what might be going on? I am sure it is related to the script libraries, some of them contain references to other script libraries in turn. 

I have been using HP calculators since the mid-70's, when my cousin (who worked for Hewlett-Packard in Sweden) brought an HP-21 to us. When I was in 8th grade and we finally were allowed to use calculators during math class, I purchased the HP-15C, a programmable scientific calculator. In 1987, when I was in high school, the HP-28C was released, and I got it as soon as it came out. The next year I upgraded to the improved HP-28S (32kB instead of 2kB and a 1 MHz processor instead of 640 kHz). Both were clamshell designs. I also got a HP 82240B infrared printer, which used thermal paper.In April 1990 I was getting the HP-48SX as soon as it came out. I could use the same infrared printer I already had, and I also got an expansion memory card (128 kB, I believe). I used this calculator for many years, and still have it, even if it is not working fully, due to a faulty on/off switch (which seems to be a known issue on these old units). My next project will be to open my calculator and fix this problem...The HP-48SX had a serial port, built-in Kermit file transfer and infrared communications. There was a large set of programs and utilities available on several bulletin board systems (BBS) and later on the Internet. Most notable were Joe Horn's Goodies disks. Many programs can be found at hpcalc.org.Back in the late 1990's I found some emulators that let me run a HP-48 on my Windows computer. It required a ROM image from the original calculator, which I of course still had. Then in 2000, HP released the ROM images for free downloads. Very cool!The emulators have evolved, and now everyone can get a HP48SX, or it's successors 48G and 48GX, on their desktop. It is actually very simple. You just need three small downloads to do this:* The free Emu48 emulator by Christoph Gie?link* AHP-48SX ROM image* A photo realistic skin, for example this one by Arno Kuhl or the one to the right by GrowikSimply unpack the Emu48 installer and run it. Put the ROM image in the Emu48 directory and use the convert.exe program to convert the ROM image. Then copy the files for the skin into the same directory. Launch the program, and you have a really cool calculator. Everything works, including programming! More skins, as well as other programs, can be found at hpcalc.org.HP calculators, with the exception of the business models (designated by a B in the model name) use Reverse Polish Notation (RPN). It is a faster and better way to calculate, especially more complex computations, but can be confusing to non-engineers/technical users. I highly recommend to learn this, though.So go get this calculator for your computer and start playing! 

From Google Apps: A Love Story:Blame the consumerization of IT. BI-LOs users learned how to use Google Apps and similar Web applications in their personal lives. According to an internal company survey, 30% of employees already used Gmail at home and another 25% used a different Web-based e-mail service, like Windows Live Hotmail or Yahoo Mail. That familiarity translated into prior training -- training the company didn't have to pay for -- and pre-existing affinity for the cloud.In my eyes this is another good example of why there is a need for some kind of scaled down home version of Lotus Notes, with POP/IMAP support and possible connections to the most popular webmail providers, like Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo. It must also be possible to combine all mail into one inbox, no matter the origin, and reply to mail making it look like it is sent from the correct service. So if I respond to a mail sent to my Gmail address, my reply will have my Gmail address as sender as default. Of course, I want to be able to change that before sending. 

Today would have been the 85th birthday of my mom, Marie-Luise Martinsson (born Groeling). I recently posted a blog entry about her on the anniversary of her death.I am as old now as she was when I was born. Amazing how the time just keep passing, she has been gone longer than the times she was a part of my life. But I still remember her birthdays, how dad got her flowers and some nice gift. One year it was a nice stereo, my mom loved music and used to sing in the church choir. She also had a nice collection of music, mostly classical music. She usually made the birthday cakes herself, she was very good at baking and cooking. Happy Birthday, mom! 

The other day I tried a new dish, and it turned out blog worthy. So here it is.Take five to six chicken breasts and trim off any fat. Cut an incision about 2 inches long (or just above) along one of the sides, to shape a pocket. I extend the cut section inside the chicken as close as the edges I can without cutting though, to make the pocket as big as possible.Microwave a tray of deep frozen spinach for 3 minutes. It should be soft but not cooked. Add some ground nutmeg and stir. Mix in a generous amount of shredded cheese. Fill the check pockets with the mix and put chickens on an oven safe dish covered in aluminum foil.Salt and pepper the chicken breasts. Then dust them with paprika powder, smoked chipotle powder, ancho chili powder and similar spices. Put in preheated oven and cook for 20 minutes in 400-425 degrees F.When finished, serve with your choice of vegetables and potatoes/rice. For a luxury version, or if you are doing low carb, add a spoon of fresh cheese like Bressot, Cantadou or similar (garlic and herb flavored soft cheese) and let it melt on top. Enjoy!  

This week the children in the Stockholm region where I am from have sportlov (transl. "sports break"). This break from school goes back to World War II. Despite Sweden being neutral and not participating in the war directly, the rationing and lack of coal used to heat the schools became a problem. The solution was to close the schools for a week during the winter to conserve cost. Different activities were arranged for the out-of-school children, and quickly the activities were focused on outdoor activities and sports. That is where the "sports break" got it's name from. Today the dates are different in different parts of the country, but it takes place in the end of February or in March. When I grew up, I was not very interested in winter sports. My parents had me learn ice skating and I also did cross country skiing, but I was more interested in less strenuous activities... My sister on the other hand did enjoy Alpine (or downhill) skiing, both locally on the island where I grew up where they had ski lifts and prepared tracks on a small mountain, in northern Sweden (Scandinavian Mountains) and in Italy in the Alps. So what did I do? Well, eventually I managed to convince my parents, using my excellent verbal skills (in combination with several warm winters with no snow, when skiing and skating was not really possible), that being outside freezing and potentially getting sick was not the best use of the break. I was about 10 or 11, and I started to try different activities arranged both on Liding??>, the island where I grew up, and in Stockholm itself. The Swedish Army Museum in Stockholm had, like most museums, activities, and one year I went there and built a plastic model of a SEPECAT Jaguar. I then started going to a local indoor shooting range, where a local shooting organisation arranged for children to test air guns, shooting .117 caliber pellets. We had to sign up for a timeslot, and after 30 minutes of shooting time, we were allowed to sign up again for a later slot again. I frequently walked to the nearby library to read or get some new books while I waited. This way I often got three or even four sessions of shooting in. Other years my parents took the opportunity to go down to visit my dad's family in Blekinge in southern Sweden. I usually spent a large part of that time reading, both during the 8 hour drive (today it is less than 7 hours, due to new roads and increased speed limits) and during the stay. After I got hooked at computers in 7th grade, a couple of times I managed to borrow a computer from the school during the break, or some years actually got to spend time in the computer room despite the school being closed. The maintenance staff often used this week to repair things or paint stairs or walls, and as…

I am following the Apple event online right now, and the new iPad2 sounds impressive this far. Dual core processor, up to 9 times faster graphics, dual cameras (front and rear facing), gyroscope like in iPhone4 and iPod Touch, 1080p HDMI output, as well as 33% thinner (8.6mm vs 13.2mm) is all very impressive. It even comes in two colors, white has been added. Steve Jobs claim the battery life is still 10 hours, like in the original iPad. The price will be identical as for the first generation iPad, starting at $499 for the base wifi only model with 16 GB memory. It will be available in the US on March 11, with 26 more countries on March 25. The same day Apple will also release iOS 4.3, not only for iPad2 but for the original iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. The video conferencing program Facetime will be available for iPad2, so the users can communicate with iPhone4 users using video. For iPhone4 the new iOS 4.3 will also add wifi hotspot functionality. I played around with the first generation iPad last summer. I liked it, it was a cool gadget, but I have my reservations. I am totally tied into iTunes, and if I want to copy any of my movies over from my collection (which is mainly in the formats AVI (Divx/Xvid) and MPEG, I have to re-encode them or convert them into Apple's format. Personally I prefer a tablet where all standards work, like mp3, wmv, avi, divx, Flash and more. Steve Jobs also showed a new cover for the iPad2, which attaches to the front using magnets as well as some other accessories. So it is a cool toy, but not something I can motivate spending that money on right now.  

Stuart McIntyre just posted a blog entry that I think everyone should read. He is actually in turn re-posting a blog entry by Single Dad Laughing, who has given permission to repost it. So I will simply copy the full blog post below. It is fairly long, but I hope everyone that read this blog will read the full text. It really made me think, and I also recognize me in several sections. I am sure the same will happen to you.Thank you. As a warning, the following post was written in complete desperation. I have recently learned some very sobering truths from people that I love dearly.These truths have set in motion a quest within me to do whatever I can to make a change. Today is not geared at funny. Today is geared at something greater. Read it to the very end. I promise you will be affected in a way you have always needed to be. I spent more than twelve hours writing this post because its message is that important to me.I wonder. Am I the only one aware that there is an infectious mental disease laying siege on us right now? There is a serious pandemic of "Perfection" spreading, and it needs to stop. Hear me out because this is something for which I am passionately and constantly hurting. It's a sickness that I've been trying to put into words for years without much success. It's a sickness that I have personally struggled with. It's a sickness that at times has left me hiding in dark corners and hating myself.And chances are it's hit you too. What is the disease called "Perfection"? Perhaps a list of its real-life symptoms will help you better understand it. We live in communities where people feel unconquerable amounts of pressure to always appear perfectly happy, perfectly functional, and perfectly figured. "Perfection" is much different than perfectionism. The following examples of "Perfection" are all real examples that I have collected from experiences in my own life, from confidential sources, or from my circle of loved ones and friends. If you actually stop to think about some of these, you will cry as I did while writing it. If you don't, maybe you're infected with way too much of this "Perfection" infection."Perfection" is a wife who feels trapped in a marriage to a lazy, angry, small man, but at soccer practice tells the other wives how wonderful her husband always is. "Perfection" keeps people from telling the truth, even to themselves. My husband is adorable. He called me a whore this week because I smiled at a stranger. When I started crying, he said he had a game to go watch. I love him so much."Perfection" is a husband who is belittled, unappreciated, and abused by his wife, yet works endlessly to make his marriage appear incredible to those around him. "Perfection" really does keep people from being real about the truth. You would have laughed, guys. She said that I suck…

This image was inspired by a twitter conversation last night...  

Here are a couple of pictures to illustrate Saturday (BALD) and Sunday (Kimonos after the Welcome Reception/Party) at Lotusphere 2011.       

It is now two weeks since Lotusphere ended. After I got back I was thrown into a project initiated by the CEO, to be presented this morning during a manager meeting. Now when the presentation is over, I will try to put my thoughts about Lotusphere down.As always, the conference is busy, fun and overwhelming, and it have been taking me a while to wrap my head around everything.Sessions Let's start with the sessions. I was not able to attend nearly as many sessions as I wanted, but I managed to catch some great ones. Thanks to Ben Langhinrichs' excellent Lotusphere session database the planning was easy. I attended a number of sessions on Xpages, a jumpstart session, a show-and-tell as well as several Xpages-related sessions. I also purchased a copy of Mastering XPages during the signing on Monday. I been stuck on an older version of Notes for a long time, but it seems like we will get to a current version shortly, so I decided to spend the time and effort on learning Xpages. There was very little classic Notes development at Lotusphere. Kathy Brown had a great session (as always), this time on @Formula language. Scott Good and Henry Newberry had several sessions about web development, covering subjects like CSS and JSON. SNAPPS had Rob Novak and my fellow countryman Viktor Krantz had their 10th Great Code Giveaway, with loads of useful code. Julian Robicheaux (also from SNAPPS) had a session about feeds that I attended as well. But if I have to single out one session, it would be Mat Newman and BP206 "Where is the Love?". I love the energy, the humor and enthusiasm of Mat. IBM should hire him right away. He gave me a few things to think about, and many things to bring back home to the people responsible for end-user training...Social Business As I was participating as member of the media, I had meetings with several IBM executives. One of the most interesting was with Uffe Sorensen. He is responsible for the messaging and collaboration business in eastern Europe, Middle-East and Africa, and he focus on social media, mainly Connections, but also mobile applications. Uffe made a very interesting observation. Most companies are already using social networks, they just don't know it yet. As we all know, the tagline of Lotusphere this year was "Get Social. Do Business.", and while some executives see it s just the buzzword of this year, I think IBM actually get it. Jeff Schick, who I also got to meet, is the Vice President of Social Software at IBM. He told me that IBM have been a social business for many year and that the employees "eat their own dog food". The tools have been modernized, and Jeff talked about how the employee catalog evolved into the social portal it is today, with expertise search and much more. I think this is crucial, that IBMers actually use social tools. Some critics recently pointed out that some IBM executives…

IBM released more info about their cloud offerings during Lotusphere 2011 (#ls11 on Twitter). Already during the opening session it was revealed that Project Concord, the online collaboration document editing that was shown at last years conference, was now a full product called LotusLive Symphony. Another product unveiled this week is LotusLive BES, a hosted Blackberry Enterprise Server offering that works together with the email in LotusLive.- This will allow a small company to get email, mobile support and much more without the need to purchase hardware, install the software, provision users and hire someone to maintain and administer the server, Brendan Crotty at IBM explained to me.- LotusLive is not intended to rip-and-replace, we think that most customers will use a hybrid model, he continued. There is a LotusLive Connections offering, currently supporting Profiles, Activities and (most recently added) Communities. The products are designed for a hybrid model.Uffe Sorensen, responsible for social business in EMEA, echo this. He point out that Xpages was developed to bring most of the functionality of the rich client to the web.- Now you can do almost everything you do in the Notes client on the web as well, he said.- Domino powers an incredible amount of applications, and we can't demand them to be thrown out, so a hybrid model is important.LotusLive Notes lets customers host their Notes applications in the cloud, but they still use the Notes client. By rewriting the applications, or parts of them, they can be deployed as web applications as well.So IBM is getting a more and more complete cloud offering, with options to run hybrid models if the customer wants to. Personally I think IBM is on the right way, and they have a solid offering. Imagine a new company going to ibm.com, selecting the services they need and then paying online with a credit card, and moments later they have the tools they need, without having to purchase hardware, software or services for an on-premises solution. 

Alistair Rennie opened Lotusphere (#ls11) - after saying "I love the smell of Lotusphere in the morning" - by introducing the 500 college students invited by GBS. He talked about the Notes customer General Motors and the Chevy Volt electrical car they brought to Lotusphere, and how it contains more code than an F-35 fighter. Then he introduced this years guest speaker, Kevin Spacey. Kevin Spacey is not just a film actor, but also the producer behind last year's movie "The Social Network". He was speaking about how he, after he decided to change career, started a social network for independent film makers called Triggerstreet back in 2001. Then he talked about Facebook and how the movie came to be. Now Alistair is back in stage and talk about how the important thing to IBM and Lotus is the success of the customers. "Everything is just hot air" he said. IBM just completed their yearly Chief Human Resource Officer study, which shows that social networking and business is very important to grow and evaluate businesses. Alistair Rennie think that social networking is the fifth step in evolution of computing, after mainframes, departmental computing, PCs and the Internet. It makes the business nimble and fast. The companies embracing social networking are also more successful, according to Alistair Rennie. Those companies are also more connected through mobile devices and the cloud. "It's about the people, stupid" Social business have to be built on open standards (OpenSocial, HTML5, etc) as well as work like the internet, use resources and services not only inside the company but also public resources. Alistair Rennie promise that we later this morning will see the next versions of Lotus Notes, Sametime, Connections, LotusLive and Portal. "Rethinking the outcome in the face of social business. Get Social. Do Business"   Now Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO of RIM on the stage, showing the RIM PlayBook. As @vowe said on twitter, "first OGS with a commercial break". Going mobile is just one of the ways social businesses will succeeded Rennie says. Now Jeff Schick from IBM is on stage, introducing representatives/executives from BASF, KBC Bank, CSC and AT&T for a on-stage panel. Message: "going social is a way to get good employees and keep them, as well as building value." Now Sandy Carter, VP of Sales (Worldwide) is on stage. Talking about how she is an "evangelist" at IBM, and how important she (and IBM) sees social business and how they "walk the walk". The internal network, w3.ibm, is very important to IBM employees. For every 1% increase in retention, the IBM software division saves 50 million dollar. Sandy talks about how companies that outperform their competitors are 57% more likely to use social networking. Finally the demos started. Ron Sebastian, who traditionally was doing the demos, had passed the torch to Brian Cheng, a young IBMer who won the hearts of the audience with his enthusiastic presentation. Brian showed the next versions of Notes, Sametime and Quickr, all featuring the activity…

Follow it here. Excerpt from Saturday's entry:So here it is day one of Lotusphere ?at least as far as I´m concerned. I realize the festivities don´t actually start today, but today is when my Beloved takes off for Florida into this unknown behemoth cult party that involves a lot of alcohol and nerding out on badass topics. It like Woodstock, except ?nowledge´ is the drug that is washed down with alcohol. How I wish Adobe held conferences like this ?from what I understand nobody parties like IBM does. At least, that´s what I remember when I worked for IBM years ago ?right, Jeff? [A particular IBMer took me out for dinner and drinks when he came to Dallas in the mid 90s. He's a high profile computer consultant from NJ's location that worked with some very prominent clients in NYC and elsewhere. Jeff knows how to party IBM-style, and that's all I'm going to say.]So here it is day 1 of Lotusphere (for us), and as I´m scheming and starving, I´m reading his Twitter updates of Kobe burgers and beer ?as well as imagining all the other goodies and alcohol he´s ingesting. Sigh. Don't miss Friday's entry.So after work we head over to dinner. I didn´t realize that all of Lotusphere would be joining us via B.B.T.FB.C. [BlackBerry Twitter Facebook Conference]. Our chat at dinner included his packing list (for the n^x time), and every update for every person that checked-in through Twitter/Facebook/blogs/whispered into the ether"...". My Beloved went name by name, explained who they were, and what they were doing. It was like some convoluted, extended family tree gossip session. I had dinner with some very important people last night ("..."and apparently most of them were very thirsty.. hm..).Dinner is finished and we make it back home. We´re doing the packing thing ?making sure he has everything, folding the last minute items ?you know the drill. So I´m working on a shirt of his when I say to him, "Hey Hon, when you get to Orlando, please let me know you landed safely."Without missing a beat, he actually said, "Just follow me on Twitter.""..."[insert one Girlfriend Look of Death] ""..."er, OF COURSE I´ll text you!""..."Right. 

...exactly one year after the Challenger disaster, I had a more personal loss. My mother, Marie-Luise Martinsson (born Groeling) suddenly and unexpectedly died, just a few weeks short of her 61st birthday. She was born in 1926 in Lauenburg in what was then Pommern. Since the end of WWII the town is called Lbork and belonging to Poland. My mom was just 19 years old when the war ended. The picture to the right was taken aroudn that time, probably in 1944. She lost her only brother (who I am named after)in the war (he was a glider pilot)as well asthe oldest of her two younger sisters due to diphtheria the year after. Her father had become a POW and was imprisoned by the Russians, but was eventually released a few years after the end of the war. My grandparents settled in Stralsund in the then DDR. Not until they retired were they allowed to move to the west, where my aunt lived.My mom was on the run for a couple of months, escaping the Russian troops pushing west through Germany, and she eventually ended up in Bremen. She later moved to the Hamburg area, where she worked for a few years. In the 1950's (I think 1952) she moved to Sweden to work as a nanny for a Swedish Air Force Colonel, and she ended up staying. In 1967 she met my father and they got married.My mom was a great cook. She had been schooled in cooking during her late teens, and she could cook all kind of dishes. She was also great at baking. We often had fresh home-baked bread growing up, and both me and my sister to this day enjoy cooking and baking. I have to admit that my sister is better than I am, but I consider myself a decent cook.She was strict but loving to me and my sister. Perhaps it was her German upbringing, or just due to the fact she belonged to an older generation (she turned 43 the week after I was born), but I am very grateful that she instilled some discipline in me. She was also very adamant about acting like a gentleman, opening doors for people, treating women well, etc. All those things have been beneficial to me later in life.She was not too happy about me spending so much time in the computer room in school, instead of coming home to do homework. But I am sure she knew I would eventually work with computers or something similar. I just wish she would have been able to see me succeed in life, and to see my son Erik being born.My mom stayed home until both me and my sister were in school. Then she worked nights at a local hospital for a while. The last few years of her life she worked for the German Parish in Stockholm. Her funeral was held in the German Church in Stockholm's Old Town. Thank you for everything, mom. You made…

The lotus is so thick you can smell it in the air"..."He decides to volunteer me(?), uh, tell me(?), ?- I was ?olun-told´ that I should run to the store after work for one of his Lotusphere projects."Honey, why do *I* need to go there," I asked.Logical Beloved programmer says, "Because you´re in that area and daycare is across the street."Now, while I am a logical sort, geek and programmer too, I´m still a girl"..." And I think I´ve been *super* cool about this Lotusphere cult/revival thing, the Dolphin Hotel elevator noises in bed, and even about the talking alcoholic IBM turtle. . "Ummm"..." No, try again." I´m a good girlfriend so ill give him another chance.And you can almost see his brain processing it:mouth.addEventHandler(MouthEvent.SPEAK, makeGirlfriendHappy);Function makeGirlfriendHappy(e:hopefullyNone):void;{ NavigateToHappyGirlfriend (newHappyGirlfriendRequest ("[insert quick thinking touchy-feely stuff here]")); }"You´re sweet and kind and nice to me?" He blubs.Do I let him off easy? Do I? DO I?Read full story here #ls11