Author: Gregg Eldred

This is a weblog with some basis in IBM/Lotus Notes & Domino software, when I feel like it or think of something that might be interesting. Other than that, we'll see where this goes. The views expressed in this blog are mine alone, and do not reflect the views of NextStep Technologies, LLC. If you think otherwise, you are mistaken. © 2003-2020 NextStep Technologies, LLC. All rights reserved. The rights to all logos, images, etc., are owned by their respective owners.

Lake Michigan Circle Tour – Day Two

Spent some time, the previous night, mapping out Day Two’s ride. Using Google Maps and the Ride Michigan book, determined the roads we were going to ride and some of the specifics on those roads. After a free hotel breakfast, we rode out of Ludington and continued north.

Day Two:

day2

Day Two Best Roads:

day2-best

From bottom to top:

Michigan 22 gets you really close to Lake Michigan, beautiful views, sweeping curves, and altitude changes. Great road, with one spectacular road side park. If you ride M-22, you must stop, take a break, and take pictures of the lake and the vistas. While there, we watched a lake tanker making its way north. It looked so small and insignificant on the lake.

Michigan 119 is also known as Tunnel of Trees. A great motorcycle road. Very tight, the road is a bit more than one lane. Keep your wits about you as bicyclists and other cars could be just around the corner. As I was leading, I rode farther ahead of the others, riding to the left of the center line, so that CJ and Doug would have ample time to move to the right in the event of an approaching car. And there were quite of few of them on this beautiful day. There is a portion that goes down to Lake Michigan, of which we rode a little, as it heads south and away from our true route. If you do go down to Lake Michigan, watch for sand on the road. Back on M-119, you’ll know when you get to “Devil’s Elbow,” the road takes a 90 degree turn and then goes up. Simply awesome! Riding M-119, you are truly in a tunnel of trees. We stopped at a little roadside post office/deli/store and picked up some pins, patches, and stickers. Except for CJ, who doesn’t understand vests, pins, or patches. Or putting stickers on your helmet. Too bad for him. Gorgeous road, highly recommended.

img_1777

 

Mackinac Bridge. Are you kidding? Nearly 5 miles of bridge. The outside lane is paved, the inside lane is grate. We rode the grate, to pass semi tractor trailers and to get a great look of the Straits of Mackinac, 200 feet below us. Toll is $4, which is collected on the north side of the bridge. It was a bright, blue beautiful day to ride the bridge. And the wind wasn’t bad, which is important to know if you’re riding two wheels.

Michigan 123, heading to Whitefish Point. You have to see this to believe just how close you ride to Lake Superior. Beautiful vistas with the lake basically lapping at the road. And Whitefish Point? This is where you can see the actual bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald. While the museum had closed by the time we arrived, the views and the grounds are great.

whitefish_1

Our first experience with the Upper Peninsula. Two things we learned in our short time in the UP:

  1. Gas stations are few and far between. Just because you know that there is a town up ahead, it may not have a gas station. Make smart decisions with respect to your fuel levels and don’t be hesitant to fill up even though you still have 100 miles to empty.
  2. When the sun goes down, it gets dark. Really dark. Because there are few sizable towns/cities in the UP, there is no light pollution. And zero street lights. It is really, really dark. Keep your wits about you, there are big things in the dark, like moose. And deer.

As night fell, we rode into Newberry. First hotel stop, they didn’t have room for us. Although we doubted that was true, because of the lack of cars in the parking lot. They may not have had rooms for us because the registration desk saw three guys, in armored jackets, arrive on motorcycles. After asking about other lodging, we headed down the road to another hotel. The second hotel had rooms for us. And, bonus!, it was located next to a bar/restaurant, just a short walk from the hotel. Perfect! Newberry eventually worked out okay for us.

Total miles: 350

Lake Michigan Circle Tour – No Reservations

This is a post that I’ve been meaning to write for a few months. Okay, it’s been five months. Specifically, since the last week of August, 2016. Better late than never. This will be the first in a series concerning an excellent ride (mostly) around Lake Michigan.

The riders:

theteam-michigan

(left to right, me (with Monkey), CJ, and Doug)

The tools:

  • EatSleepRide – Probably the premier, free, motorcycle GPS app. Recorded progress, share location with others (like those watching our progress from afar), also has CrashLight, which will text someone, or 911, if your mobile phone detects that the bike has crashed.
  • Waze – Route GPS, updated by the crowd, provided best routes, police locations, and more.
  • Google Maps – When Waze wasn’t doing a very good job. It’s always good to have a backup GPS.
  • The Weather Channel App – You’re on a motorcycle, you need to know the weather.
  • Sena 10S Bluetooth Headset – Handsfree, motorcycle helmet bluetooth headset. Allowed me to follow along with Waze’s directions as well as listen to music. First time using a headset, now I can’t imagine travelling without one. Easy installation, easy setup, paired quickly with my iPhone.

Preparation:

This was not an Arctic Circle run and we wanted to be as flexible with our time as possible. We roughed out the route, the stops, and the deadlines (ferry’s do not wait for those that are tardy). Plus, we didn’t want to be beholden to specific overnight stops. Thus, we spent all of three hours planning the tour. At first, we were simply to circle Lake Michigan. But after our first, and only meeting, we all read more about the tour and were sidetracked by what we read about the southern shore of Lake Superior. From that, we knew that we really wanted to see Copper Harbor, Michigan. In the end, the plan was to ride the western shore of Lake Michigan, until we crossed the Mackinac Bridge. At that point, we would head northwest to the southern shore of Lake Superior and ride that to Copper Harbor. We made no reservations at any hotel, we were going to ride until we decided it was time to locate suitable overnight accommodations.

In addition to the above, we spent a lot of time on the website, Lake Michigan Circle Tour. A great resource for the route as well as things to see and do along the route. Finally, I bought and brought along three additional items. Weather proof maps of Michigan and Wisconsin (again, on a motorcycle, you need backups and items that can be subjected to water) and the book, Ride Michigan. The book was extremely useful to determine what would could see and the best motorcycle routes to take along the way.

Day One:

mi_day1

We met at Cracker Barrel, in Sheffield, OH, for breakfast. Afterwards, we rode the turnpike into Indiana, then turned north into Michigan, Sturgis, MI, specifically, for lunch. If you ask yourself “why Sturgis?” then you aren’t a biker in the United States.

sturgismi

This turned out to be a most fortuitous stop. Using Google Maps, I found a highly rated, local restaurant, Boundary Waters Kitchen and Bar. We just happened to parked out bikes in front of a barber shop. Since three bikes can cause an auditory commotion in a tight area, the owner of the barber shop came out and greeted us. As it turns out, he is biker and had just returned from a trip to the Upper Peninsula. And he had photos, real photos, in a book, to show us. We had a great time talking to him and he provided us with a lot of excellent tips and places we needed to stop and see.

During lunch, he came into the restaurant with a list of things we should see. That was really cool.

A little ways outside of Sturgis, it started to rain. A very light rain. We didn’t stop to gear up, just rode through it.

Then we hit the east coast of Lake Michigan and turned our bikes north. We stopped for gas, and rest, but didn’t stop to see anything, as we were headed to Ludington, MI for our first overnight stop. Rode into town, hit Lake Michigan, and, as luck would have it, a hotel on Lake Michigan had room for us. Ludington is also the town where you can catch the ferry across Lake Michigan. We’ll see Ludington again in a few days.

Total miles: 405

 

Goodbye IBM Notes: Australian Securities & Investment Commission

The Australian Securities & Investment Commission (ASIC) has completed a proof of concept using Microsoft Office 365, and will be moving their mail and applications from IBM to the Microsoft cloud.

Perhaps most limiting of all, it has left ASIC glued to its ageing Lotus Notes system and the capability of its platform lagging well behind that of other government agencies.

“There’s a valid reason for that. We’ve still got a lot of systems that run off Lotus Notes applications and some of that is held up because of the registry separation decision. Because we’ve got Lotus Notes applications we haven’t been able to get off the Lotus Notes email but we’re doing both those things in parallel now. In effect we’re getting off the Lotus Notes email while getting off the old Lotus Notes systems,” Bryant said.

Bryant was referring to ASIC’s new project to split its classified and unclassified workloads to make way for Office 365 email and cut a path to move off the ageing Lotus Notes systems.

This really isn’t groundbreaking news, but what I found most interesting is the list of approved cloud providers.

None of the Australian Signals Directorate’s panel of approved cloud providers, which includes Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Macquarie Telecom, Salesforce, former CRN Fast50 No.1 Sliced Tech and Vault Systems, have yet been certified to carry ASIC’s classified data.

Hmmm, there seems to be a missing “premier” cloud provider on that list. But, I suppose that if you’re leaving IBM products in the on-prem world, why would you consider the IBM cloud?

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U.S. Senate Stops Issuing BlackBerry Devices

I suppose it was bound to happen at some point.

The river of BlackBerry mobile devices has finally dried up in Washington D.C. According to a recent memo, Senate staffers will no longer receive any BlackBerry devices going forward—it’s an Android and iPhone world on the hill now. BlackBerry will continue to support any devices still in use, but that’s it.

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Four Days and 1169 Miles

The 2016 riding season started a while ago, however I really kicked it off 2-5 June with a 1169 mile journey through Michigan. There was a STAR Touring and Riding event at Boyne Mountain Resort in Michigan which was the focal point of the ride.

Geoff and I met in Avon Lake, over breakfast, on 2 June to begin the ride which would end in Grand Rapids, MI. My sole reason to choosing this destination was to visit Devin Olson on the eve of his daughter’s high school graduation party. Of course, knowing that Devin lives in The Beer Capital was just a happy coincidence.

Because we had deadlines in Grand Rapids, we took the boring but highway method of reaching our destination. There is nothing quite like arriving on Devin’s doorstep on motorcycles; his welcome was probably one of the best I have ever received. A (rare) beer for me, a (rarer) bourbon for Geoff, and plans made to meet up later in the evening. Devin guided us to our hotel and provided an excellent dinner location in town then left us to our own devices. Used Uber to get us to dinner. Once done with dinner, we walked to The B.O.B and to Founder’s, where Devin met up with us. From there, it was Uber back to the hotel.

Friday started rather early, as we planned to ride the west coast of Michigan. We stopped at a rest area on 31, just south of Ludington to stretch. It was here that we discovered that there was an overlook. Took a very nice road to the top of the hill in order to discover . . . an overlook that overlooked tree tops. I think the word was “disappointing.” From there, we continued on 31 until we got to M-22. While on M-22, we discovered another overlook, this one was spectacular! Incredible views of Lake Michigan and coast line. Continued up M-22 and took it north into Frankfort, where took M-115 and linked up with 31 again. Then it was off to Traverse City, one of my favorite Michigan destinations. A very nice ride along the southern shore of Grand Traverse Bay.

Rode past the (now closed) Bravo Zulu Brewing Company. While it was sad to see, I was wearing my Bravo Zulu t-shirt that day, in honor of an excellent brewery. Arrived at Boyne Mountain Resort at about 5PM to register for the STAR event. Thankfully, one of the hosting Chapters opened registration for us so that we could participate in the bike parade to Boyne City (they had closed registration early). The parade, while short, was a lot of fun as it was escorted by the Boyne City Police Department and the Sheriff. They blocked off an entire city block for us, so that we had ample bike parking. Then, the local Chamber of Commerce passed out flyers with food and shopping discounts specially for us. That was a welcome surprise. After dinner, Geoff and I rode along Lake Charlevoix for picture opportunities. Then, after a 250+ mile day, it was back to the resort for some very welcome bourbon around a fire pit with other STAR members.

Saturday, the STAR Event organizers had an 85 mile route planned for the group. Well, the route, while nice, didn’t include Tunnel of Trees nor the Mackinac Bridge, both of which we really wanted to ride. Michigan STAR members provided us with the reasons they didn’t plan this ride; Tunnel of Trees can be very tricky, as the road is less than 2 lanes, there may be gravel on the road and in the curves, sand on the surface, and very limited sight line. As for Big Mac, the weather plays a very important role in the ride and if there is construction on the bridge, you may end up riding the grated surface for the entire length of the bridge. With that in mind, Geoff, Ted, and I took off to points further north.

Tunnel of Trees.

It was everything the brochures said it was. And more. Beautiful, twisty, and an absolute blast to ride. The “sandy” portions of the road were under construction, so we didn’t go down the lake shore. That was fine with us, the detour was many miles out of the way. The sight lines were, at times, extremely limited, but, as I was leading the ride, I made it work to Geoff’s and Ted’s advantage. Basically, I rode the middle the of the road and only moved over when there was traffic coming in the opposite direction. In this way, I provided Geoff and Ted with advance warning of oncoming traffic. Some parts of the road were 45 mph, but I cannot for the life of me imagine anyone actually going 45 (see “limited sight lines” and “narrow road way”). In addition to the occasional car, we saw a plethora of bikes. This is truly a Michigan “Bucket List” ride.

Mackinac Bridge.

How can you top Tunnel of Trees? Easy, continue north and ride the five miles that are “Big Mac.” The day was overcast and windy. We left I-75 before the bridge to talk to someone in the Michigan Welcome Center in Mackinaw City. Since all alerts concerning the bridge are on the radio, and I do not have a radio on my bike, I wanted to know the conditions on the bridge. Any construction? Wind advisories? The helpful staff in the Welcome Center assured us that everything was fine on the bridge. Off we went. While there were no wind advisories, on a motorcycle, it was fun handling the bike in a cross wind. Truly. And, since there was no construction, we rode the paved lane all the way to St. Ignace. That was a pleasant surprise. Stopped in St. Ignace for a Mackinac Bridge patch and pin. Then, rode to an overlook for some picture taking of the bridge. Then, because of an electrical issue with Ted’s bike, we headed back over the bridge. Unfortunately, because of the issue, we cut short our Upper Peninsula ride. We were planning to ride to Sault Ste. Marie and, depending on the time, Whitefish Point. Just have to add those to my bike “Bucket List,” even though I have visited them in the past. There was nothing of importance on the ride back to Boyne Mountain Resort.

Sunday, we missed all of the terrific storms that passed through Michigan and Ohio. However, before stopping for breakfast in Standish, MI, we did don our rain gear as we did encounter some rain, but not of the biblical proportions that were forecasted. We only rode through light rain in some areas, but it was nice to be dry. Plus, as the air temperatures were in the mid to high 60’s, we didn’t sweat in our gear. That is a very nice bonus.

Geoff and I stopped in Sandusky, OH, to see if there was anything that remained of Ohio Bike Week but were greeted with downed trees and power lines, closed roads, and, above all else, the unmistakable smell of beer.

Michigan, on a motorcycle, in a nutshell:

  1. The roads suck. Do they collect potholes, do they not know about asphalt? And when they do have money for asphalt, the job that is done on the road makes it worse. How is that possible?
  2. The drivers are assholes. Apparently, as a biker, you are responsible for every facet of traffic as we were invisible to pretty much everyone. I think that only in Michigan are turn signals optional equipment on every vehicle and most drivers decided that they wouldn’t spring the extra cash for them. Tailgating motorcycles seems to be a sport. I don’t get it, but I thought I was going to get an engagement ring from several drivers, they were so close to my ass. I also came to the realization that no where else are “speed limits” more of a “suggestion” than in Michigan. If we wanted to keep up with traffic, we would have to travel at 80+ mph on the highways. Pretty much every where. While that isn’t really a problem, see Number 1, above.
  3. On and off ramps, that are maybe 100 feet in some cases. How is this a thing? Merging traffic doesn’t give a damn about oncoming traffic and oncoming traffic doesn’t give a damn about merging traffic. This made for some really “interesting” interactions between all motorists. Oh, and once they do merge, they will stop at nothing to get into the left most lane and accelerate to maximum cruising speed. To hell with everyone and anything around them.

That said, I’ll be back. There’s too much good stuff to see and do in Michigan to let drivers and roads keep me from visiting again on my bike.

Here’s the route:

MI_2016

And here is what I saw when I finally turned the bike off in Ohio:

odometer

Warren Buffett: “Owning IBM shares could prove a mistake”

Berkshire, which held an 8.59 percent stake in IBM as of Dec. 31, 2015, said in an annual shareholder letter on Saturday that it planned to keep that stake despite a $2.6-billion paper loss at the end of last year.

Buffett told the cable television network he did not think he was wrong for owning IBM shares so far, but said it “could be” a mistake.

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“I went to IBM Connect and saw Verse . . . “ – Part II

Apparently, the lack of a overarching message concerning, among other things, IBM Verse is being recognized by more than one tech writer.

IBM’s assets in the collaboration and communications market really have not received as much attention as they should have. To be in a presentation where products such as Verse (IBM’s cloud-based e-mail solution and, as we learned, future on-premises upgrade to Domino) were referred to as having a ‘secret sauce’ seemed a missed opportunity.

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So, there are a few people out there, attempting to spread the word concerning IBM Verse and other solutions in the IBM portfolio and come away wondering why IBM is missing their opportunity. And the window is shutting. The Connect conference is done and put away, which means that free publicity like this will dry up as it waits for something / anything out of Armonk regarding the announcements and demonstrations.

“Momentum” is more like “fits and starts” or “wait and see.”

That is not what this product deserves or needs.

 

“I went to IBM Connect and saw Verse . . . “

This is a very positive article, but one that concerns me. It should raise flags within IBM, if they follow their products in the news.

I attended IBM Connect last week, where I checked out one of the most interesting products you’ve likely never heard of — a new email offering called “IBM Verse.” While there was a lot of discussion about how it better integrated social networking, what really intrigued me was the idea of putting cognitive computing inside an email client.

. . . I’ll close with my product of the week, which has to be IBM Verse, the fascinating email product that focuses on the user. If I don’t tell you about it, you’ll likely never hear of it.

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