ZCM and new phone keeping me busy

My new gig is in health care, where we are pushing ZCM to it's limits, working closely with Novell to resolve a bundle of issues related to how we are specifically using ZCM.  That along with learning all the ins-and-outs of a big project that I was hired into the middle of has kept me very busy and off the GroupWise administrative side of things.

What I can tell you about ZCM at this point is - patch to the latest version before calling Novell. Chances are we've run into the problem and Novell's already fixed it with a patch or FTF. It might save you a headache, and a wasted SR.

Now on the totally unrelated topic of cell phones. I absolutely love, love, love my Nextel Blackberry Curve. But after nearly 5 years of abuse - including drops down stairs, drops in parking lots where it's skittered under more than one car, getting chewed and slobbered on by big puppies, and drops on concrete - the jack for a wired headset is broken, making it hard on my work from home days to handle conference calls and still get other stuff done easily.

I caved, gave in and picked up the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G (or whatever order those words go in) running the Gingerbread version of Android.  I'm liking it "ok". I still despise the touch keyboards as I have fingers that are apparently "too fat" for touchscreens. I'm constantly having to correct and I hate not being able to simply tap on a space between 2 letters to correct a word, rather than having to backspace over everything else that was spelled correctly and reenter it all. That's where the Blackberry kicks butt over everything else for me.

We don't have 4G at my house, and the Sprint coverage is worse than I had on my Nextel Blackberry, but it seems to work okay at this point. I'm giving it 2 weeks to decided if I'm staying with Sprint or dumping it all and moving to Verizon - which does have 4G at my house but not unlimited data and will cost me $30/month more than my current Sprint contract discounts. I'm okay without 4G at home as I can just jump on our wireless and I do have 4G at work.

For those that may ask why I didn't go with iPhone? Well, to be blunt, it cost a hell of a lot more to get the equivalent "power" in the iPhone over the Samsung. $150 more to be exact. (And it's not 4G ready.) That's because the local Sprint store was having an in-store special making the Samsung drop to $49.95 if you bought an accessorie (which I needed anyway). Walking out the door with a new bluetooth headset and a case, I was still $30 under the cost of the Samsung if there wasn't a special.

I do still have my Blackberry - I love the password manager on it and have so many on there it'll be a pain to transfer, so it's staying until I've completely decided which way I'm going yet. We'll see, two weeks to go. If I haven't thrown the phone across the room by then, I guess I'll keep it.

Call for Conferences

If you'd like your upcoming conference listed on my blog, please let me know, I'm happy to help spread the word.

Mind you, I will give preferential treatment to user group organized events and things that include Novell products.  :)