Spanky's Place

July 18th

A lot of really interesting things happed on this date. See if you can guess which of these had the biggest effect on my life:

• 390 BC - Battle of the Allia: A Roman army is defeated by raiding Gauls, leading to the subsequent sacking of Rome.
• 64 - Great fire of Rome: A fire begins to burn in the merchant area of Rome and soon burns completely out of control while Emperor Nero reportedly plays his lyre and sings while watching the blaze from a safe distance.
• 1195 - Battle of Alarcos, great victory of Almohad ruler Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur over the Castilian King Alfonso VIII
• 1536 - The authority of the Pope is declared void in England.
• 1792 - John Paul Jones dies in Paris
• 1830 - Uruguay adopts its first constitution.
• 1857 - Louis Faidherbe, French governor of Senegal, arrives to relieve French forces at Kayes, effectively ending El Hajj Umar Tall's war on the French.
• 1863 - American Civil War: The first formal Negro military unit, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, unsuccessfully assaults Confederate-held Fort Wagner but their valiant fighting still proves the worth of Negro soldiers during the war.
• 1872 - Britain introduces voting by secret ballot.
• 1873 - Oscar II of Sweden-Norway is crowned king of Norway in Trondheim
• 1898 - Marie and Pierre Curie announce the discovery of a new element and proposed to call it polonium.
• 1914 - The United States Army's Signal Corps is formed, giving definite status to its air service for the first time.
• 1918 - Three days after a German offensive near the Marne River in the Champagne region of France meets with failure, Allied forces launch a major counterattack, ending the Second Battle of the Marne and decisively turning the tide of the war toward an Allied victory.
• 1925 - Adolf Hitler publishes his personal manifesto Mein Kampf.
• 1929 - Pioneer of "gonzo" journalism, Hunter S. Thompson is born in Louisville, Ky., on this day. (Happy Birthday dude!)
• 1938 - Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan arrives in Ireland.
• 1939 - MGM screens a sneak preview of The Wizard of Oz. (After the screening, producers debate about removing what will later become the movie's signature song, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow.")
• 1940 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who first took office in 1933 as America's 32nd president, is nominated for an unprecedented third term.
• 1942 - World War II: The Germans test fly the Messerschmitt Me-262 using only its jets for the first time.
• 1944 - World War II: Hideki Tojo resigns as Prime Minister of Japan due to numerous setbacks in the war effort.
• 1947 - President Harry S. Truman signs the Presidential Succession Act into law which places the Speaker of the House and the Senate President Pro Tempore next in the line of succession after the United States Vice President.
• 1948 - Juan Manuel Fangio, a.k.a. "the Maestro," made his Formula One debut finishing 12th at the Grand Prix de l'ACF in France.
• 1964 - Spanky's birthday.
• 1966 - Gemini 10 launched.
• 1968 - Vietnam War: The two-day Honolulu Conference begins in Honolulu, Hawaii between US President Lyndon B. Johnson and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu.
• 1968 - Intel incorporated.
• 1969 - After a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Senator Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts drives an Oldsmobile off a wooden bridge into a tide-swept pond and his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, dies.
• 1969 - Apollo 11 makes preparations for landing on the Moon.
• 1976 - Gymnast Nadia Comaneci, aged 14, scores first ever perfect 10 at the Olympics.
• 1977 - Vietnam joins the United Nations.
• 1982 - 268 campesinos ("countryside people") are slain in the Plan de Sánchez massacre in Ríos Montt's Guatemala.
• 1984 - McDonald's massacre in San Ysidro, California: In a fast-food restaurant, James Oliver Huberty kills 21 people and injures 19 others before being shot dead by police.
• 1986 - Video of the Titanic wreckage released.
• 1989 - Rebecca Schaeffer is shot by a crazed fan, prompting California to pass America's first anti-stalking law in 1990.
• 1992 - The ten victims of the La Cantuta massacre disappeared from their university in Lima.
• 1992 - 'The Late Show (Australian TV series)', starring the D-Generation debuts on ABC.
• 1994 - In Buenos Aires, an explosion destroys a building housing several Jewish organizations killing 85 and injuring many more.
• 1994 - A court upholds NBA salary cap and draft rights.
• 1995 - On the Caribbean island of Montserrat, the Soufriere Hills volcano erupts. Over the course of several years, it devastates the island, destroying the capital and forcing most of the population to flee.
• 1996 - Storms provoke severe flooding on the Saguenay River in Quebec, beginning one of Canada's costliest natural disasters ever.
• 1996 - In an event very similar to the Oklahoma tornado that would occur three years later, an F5 tornado hit the town of Oakfield, Wisconsin.
• 1997 - 8000 low-caste Indians riot in Mumbai (Bombay) following a funeral for 10 children who had been killed by police.
• 1998 - A 23-foot tidal wave kills nearly 3,000 people in Papua New Guinea.
• 1999 - David Cone of the New York Yankees pitches the 16th perfect game in baseball history against the Expos at Yankee Stadium.
• 2001 - In Baltimore, Maryland, a 60-car train derails in a tunnel, sparking a fire that lasts days and virtually shuts down downtown Baltimore.
• 2003 - Kobe Bryant is charged with sexually assaulting a 19-year old girl.

Still can't figure it out? Here is a hint: my Amazon Wish List.

Of course, if you really wanted to make my day, you could always buy my house.

The last several months have been an exercise in frustration. Being out of work is not something I would wish on anybody. Being out of work, in Michigan, is even more frustrating. Things that would be absoutely unnaceptable any place else are considered normal here. It is not at all unusual for people to commute 100 or more miles, one way, in order to find work.

I've been told by many "in the know" people (recruiters, mostly) that my experience is too specialized, and perhaps I should consider learning some other technologies such as Visual Basic, C++, Java, CSS, DHTML, Windows API, JavaScript, XML, or SOA. And I've exhausted myself explaining to these same people that being an expert in Lotus Notes/Domino Development/Administration requires that I master all of these things and more. I've been told by many of these same people that career wise, it is simply not possible to find work in the field that I love, and that I really should try something other than Lotus Notes/Domino.

This isn't to say that I'm not willing to try out other platforms. Quite the contrary. At my core, I'm a problem solver and creator of things. I love challenges, and I love making useful things. Development for Lotus Notes / Domino has been my primary source of income since R3. I have stuck with this platform simply because it is the best one I've yet found. I've used many other languages, platforms, IDEs, and technologies throughout my career, but I've always come back to Lotus Notes. The simple truth is this: I bleed yellow.

Please forgive my impertinence, but telling me to give up Lotus technologies is akin to telling a heart surgeon to take up plumbing. They are both valueable professions, they both pay well, and they both have something to do with connecting tubes and making sure valves don't leak, right?

Which brings me to the main point of this post. I know I said in an earlier post that I wasn't going to announce this until Lotusphere, but the number of emails I've received has been astonishing, in addition to the number of page views. So I'm going to go ahead and announce it here and now.