Tip of the Iceberg

Category mac designer xpages
I've been playing with something off and on since Friday that I think has some serious potential. Rather than silo the idea, I've decided to show you what I've come up with so far and ask if any of you want to lend a hand.

First, let me tease you with a couple screenshots.





Nothing terribly exciting so far, I suppose. How about something a tiny bit fancier?





Okay, I guess that's a little more interesting. It's starting to look like a real XPage now. But what if we pan up a bit?



One final tease... let's slide up just a bit more and a little to the left:



That's right, my friends: none of these screenshots were taken in Designer. Or even Eclipse. It's just Chrome. On a Mac.

This is an XPage app for writing XPage apps. I know that's a bit matryoshka, but I think there are a few fundamental implications lurking beneath this proof of concept:

• Immediate, full-fidelity preview. This is not the Design tab in Designer, which gives you a static approximation of what your app might look like; this shows you what your app will look like. Right away. No "Preview in Web Browser"... you're already in the browser. That's why I'm tentatively calling it WYSIWYX: what you see is what you experience.
• It's lightweight. No gigabyte footprint installation eating up half your RAM and occasionally all of your CPU. Just whatever browser you already have installed. Hell, it even works in IE.
• Did I happen to mention I'm using this on a Mac? I suppose the whole browser thing makes it obvious that the operating system doesn't matter, but in my opinion this is the biggest implication. No need to set up a virtual machine and make sure the guest Windows installation is properly licensed (or, if you're the rebellious type, risk the wrath of Redmond by running it without licensing it). No need to install anything at all. If you've got a browser, you can do your job.

There's a huge amount left to be done. At the moment, it's not hooked up to the VFS, so you can't actually save the result as an XPage directly from the browser. I know how to do this, the code just needs to be written. The component registry that makes what already works possible can also be leveraged to create a component palette much like the one in Designer, as well as a property editor, so developers won't have to type all the XML by hand. Right now it only supports namespaced components; it needs support for passthru as well, but more importantly, resources, data sources, and the like. It's also only handling hardcoded attribute values at the moment... obviously we need to support method and value bindings as well. And of course, it needs some sort of application navigator or package explorer, allowing the developer to add applications and select which XPage they want to edit. The infrastructure is already in place to display multiple editors at once... it just needs to be hooked into some actual navigation.

In short, I'm pretty pleased with the potential represented by the five hours I've spent on this so far (feel free to try out the in-progress proof of concept). But I'm also too excited about what this could become to wait as long as I'd have to if I insisted on writing this all myself. So......... any volunteers?

Posted by Tim Tripcony At 1:07 AM Location Home | Permalink | Comments (12)

Category lotusphere
This year was my fifth opportunity to attend Lotusphere. It was unusual in that I was only able to be onsite for about 24 hours. But in some ways it was the most enjoyable Lotusphere I've yet attended.

As mentioned by many others, this year's OGS was very solid. Good pace, good demos, great opening band... good energy overall, and a fairly clear overall message. I found it striking that, although there was nothing particularly revolutionary revealed this year, the feedback I've seen (both during the session and since) has been almost universally positive. Perhaps that's because, unlike "big news" years, where the focus is on the recent past (features that just shipped, increases in revenue or customer base, etc.), this year the focus was on the future. IBM knows where they're headed and how they plan to get there, and were able to convey that in a way that resonated with the attendees.

The beach party, as always, was fun. It seemed a bit toned down compared to previous years, but I found I preferred that. In keeping with the rest of my stay this year, I didn't get to spend as much time with the people I saw as I would have liked, but I did get to see a lot of familiar faces, and was even able to connect with a few in person for the first time despite having interacted often with them online.

Our product showcase presence was incredible... in my opinion, it highlighted not only how global an organization we are, but how diverse are our offerings. GBS can meet just about any collaboration need a client has, and I think the variety, more so than the sheer quantity, of our pedestals accurately reflected that. I didn't spend as much time at the booth as I had envisioned, but that leads me to what was, without a doubt, the highlight of my time at Lotusphere this year: my participation in the GBS College event.

I'd heard great things about the inaugural version of this event last year, but was honestly just too busy with other things to be involved in any way. This year I had no official responsibilities. I wasn't presenting any sessions. I wasn't moderating any BOFs. I wasn't even officially assigned "booth duty". So I volunteered to join the GBS College luncheon.

This was a very unique experience. Approximately 750 students sat at tables filling the room that, in previous years, has been the site of the fabled Engineering party. But at most if not all of the tables, they were joined by at least one employee of either IBM, GBS, or another customer or business partner. This allowed each of us to mingle casually with a few of the students and just be there to answer any generic questions they had about the industry or the notion of social business. As lunch itself was wrapping up, there was a panel consisting of an IBM executive (sadly, I've already forgotten which one), a professor who was instrumental in encouraging students to attend the event, the CEO of one of our competitors, Mitch Cohen, and Adam Lazarus, who attended GBS College last year but now works for GBS. So, needless to say, this was a very diverse panel. But this wasn't the scripted panel so prevalently featured in last year's OGS... this was a Q&A panel. Handheld microphones were scattered throughout the room, allowing attendees to ask questions, most of which were answered by each member of the panel in turn. While I personally found the diverse, but often consistent, answers provided to be quite insightful, I was still surprised by how engaged the attendees remained throughout; at the end of the panel, the applause was rather enthusiastic.

Later in the day, I also participated in the Career Fair. In addition to IBM, GBS, Elguji, and several other partners had representatives sitting at tables placed around the edge of the same room we'd been in for lunch, accepting resumes, describing internships and other employment opportunities, and fielding questions from students. In 90 minutes, I only got to talk to about 15 attendees, but their curiosity and enthusiasm was, for lack of a better word, intoxicating. One of the things I love about my current job is the unquenchable curiosity of my colleagues, but even we occasionally get bogged down by the baggage of decades of experience in the industry. These students, by contrast, have only passion. They haven't yet had their souls crushed by managers who didn't respect them or even understand what they do. They haven't poured energy into a vision of possibility only to see it tossed aside by those who could only see risk. They have only the future.

Every year I return from Lotusphere infused with energy. Spending time with people who share my professional passion, learning new techniques and perspectives, and discussing exciting ideas with the most visionary people I've been fortunate to meet all remind me of why I love what I do, why I'm so lucky to have met so many amazing people, and what is possible if I continue to discard assumptions of limitations. But this year that energy was unique. I was keenly reminded that (as Nathan has lately become fond of reminding me) the future is not like the past. The impossible just isn't finished yet... and, most exciting of all, neither am I.

Posted by Tim Tripcony At 7:57 PM Location Home | Permalink | Comments (2)

Category xpages
XPages support definition of a page-specific ACL, allowing you to refine permissions for specific portions of an application, as described in this article. As Paul mentions in the comments, you can also set an ACL on a specific panel component; this allows you to define entirely different permissions for distinct portions of the same page. For example, if you were to create an "in-view editing" interface using a repeat control, you would typically create a panel inside the repeat, with a panel-specific data source bound to each document that is being iterated. In this scenario, you can define an ACL specific to that panel, which would allow you to block editing of information associated with records the user should not modify. This is a very useful feature.

There's a problem, however: the Directory API, in general, is rather buggy. While I haven't personally repeated my previous testing of the API within 8.5.3, there were serious issues with it in all prior 8.5.x releases. In fact, simple username queries could even cause server crashes. At the time, IBM told me they were able to reproduce the behavior, so I'm assuming the problem has already been resolved or is, at least, on their radar. But, again, I haven't yet confirmed that 8.5.3 fixes the problem.

As such, it is inadvisable to define a page- or panel-specific ACL if the application will be accessed on servers that support Directory Assistance. Keith and I have both gotten burned by this: specifically, if a user authenticated against an account in the primary Domino Directory accesses a page with an ACL, the page functions as expected... if, on the other hand, the same page is accessed by a user authenticated against an account in a directory registered with Directory Assistance (whether LDAP or a secondary Domino Directory), a 500 is often thrown. Replacing the ACL with an alternative approach to managing security and visibility of data resolves the problem.

Posted by Tim Tripcony At 3:20 AM Location Home | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category musings
This post is the result of a dual inspiration: ISW's fascinating new offering, Kudos Badges for IBM Connections, and Lisa Duke's excellent article on the Social Business Insights Blog, "User Adoption - The Final Frontier of Social Business". If you'd like background on where I'm coming from, check out both before proceeding.

Lately all the talk is about "social" (which I'd like to remind my readers is an adjective, not a noun... unless you're referring to a specific gathering or party), but many have pointed out that, for those of us in the collaboration space, this concept is not new to us. We've been "social" in our use of software for decades. During my participation in GBS College (more about this in a subsequent post), it was obvious that this notion is not new to the incoming generation of employees either. They've spent the past few years sharing their personality on YouTube, broadcasting snippets of their lives on Twitter, and creating, strengthening, and renewing social connections on Facebook. Nobody trained them to do this... they just do.

And this, I feel, is what is being overlooked by many organizations looking to become a "social business", as well as some (including IBM) who are hoping to profit from those efforts.

Long ago, there was this thing called MySpace. Lots of people used it. I used it. Then Facebook came along. I can't remember the last time I logged in to MySpace. The tool itself is not what drives and maintains adoption; if a better tool arrives, people will use it instead. Understanding how to use a tool is not the key to adoption; if a user wants badly enough to use it, they'll figure it out. The key to adoption is cultural need.

Everyone who uses Facebook - all 800 million of them (as of the time of this writing) - have a reason. For some, it's simply the easiest way to stay in contact with people they already know... for many of these, it's replaced email entirely, as Facebook's internal messaging features suffice. For others, it's a way to forge new social connections by discovering people who share common interests. If my news feed is any indication, some just use it to play games. But for each, the tool meets some cultural need. If it didn't, they wouldn't use it. In fact, many Facebook users use it grudgingly... but they continue to use it because the perception of that cultural need still exists. I'm among that group: when Google+ initially went live, I had planned to defect, as it seemed it would be less annoying than I find Facebook to be. However, it hasn't yet reached a critical mass that allows me to use only that tool instead. As a result, I now only log in to Google+ when I receive a notification from it... the rest of the time, I continue to use Facebook.

For social business tools to gain adoption sufficient to provide true value, they must meet a cultural need that already exists.

At GBS, it is instinctive to use Connections. The most obvious reason is that we're an IBM Business Partner. We're not going to recommend a software solution to our clients that hasn't already proven to be successful inside the boundaries of our own firewall. We use Domino for email and many of our internal applications. We use Connections for internal blogs and wikis, and on my team, Activities has proven extremely useful. The less obvious, but arguably far more important, reason it just makes sense for us to use Connections is that the very soul of our company culture fosters social engagement. When I empower others by sharing my knowledge and insight, management notices. I am seen as adding more value when I distribute information than I would be if I simply hoarded it. We seek out ways to make each other more powerful and reduce duplication of effort by maximizing the sharing of our expertise. If Connections didn't even exist, we would find another way.

In contrast, at least two of my former employers maintained the opposite culture: hoarding knowledge was fundamental to job security. I survived at least one round of layoffs (and, in all likelihood, several) purely because my employer recognized that they'd already terminated everyone else who understood my job. If I had invested time and energy sharing my knowledge with my coworkers, that not only would have been viewed as a wasteful distraction from actually doing the work, I would have been viewed as comparatively expendable. That didn't sit well with me, and it's the primary reason I left.

Another facet of this that extends beyond simple professional survival is the notion of fulfillment. At heart, I'm a trainer. I love seeing the twinkle in someone's eye when they learn something new, particularly when they're energized by the possibilities, the implications of what they just learned. It's why I love attending and speaking at conferences. It's why internal training is among my favorite job responsibilities. I'm happier as an employee when I know that someone now understands something that also excites me because I was willing to share it with them. One of the many reasons I'm more content than ever in my career is that GBS welcomes this instead of punishing it. It's a key reason why we started the GBS College program last year and grew it this year.

GBS knows that social engagement is fundamental to our organization's success. Nathan and I have a long-established pattern: one of us gets some wacky idea, the other expands it into some insane goal, and then we try to make that goal a reality. That's how most of our open source projects, such as Decepticon, Medusa, and the XPages SDK got started. But sometimes the result is something like Transformer. The AppBuilder technology some of you may have seen last week at Lotusphere started out the same way, but in a sense, for me that's even more exciting, because it wasn't us that took it to the next level. We developed a proof of concept a couple years ago, but an entirely different team picked it up off the shelf, dusted it off, and made it awesome. But that didn't happen in isolation; we continued to share ideas with them that eased their efforts and helped them push the technology in exciting directions. And it goes both ways: lessons they learned are finding their way into Transformer as well. If our CEO only dictated from above what opportunities we will pursue, and how, not only would this type of communication not occur, these technologies would never even have existed. Instead, any employee's idea might be the seed of future success for GBS.

In summary, if employees aren't secure in the knowledge that their expertise, ideas, and feedback are welcomed and valued, you can train them all you want on how to use the social software you just installed, but they still won't use it effectively, if at all. They may even see the tool's arrival as a threat to their professional existence... this decade's "efficiency consultant". Conversely, if social engagement is already threaded into the very fabric of your organization, your employees will find a way to keep that engagement active and vibrant, whether or not you provide them software that fosters it. Connections will simply make them more powerful in doing what they already find culturally instinctive to do.

Finally, happy belated Squirrel Appreciation Day.

Posted by Tim Tripcony At 3:15 AM Location Home | Permalink | Comments (2)

Category security
I got home from Lotusphere last night, and could no longer log in to Skype. My password has apparently been changed. Except that I haven't recently changed the password (which, admittedly, is probably why the account was compromised), so someone else must have changed it. I followed Skype's password reset procedure, twice, and both times after receiving an email containing a reset token, and immediately attempting to use said token, was told the token was invalid.

Skype provides no way to contact support unless you're already logged in, so their recommendation for contacting them if you can't log in is to create a new Skype account, then contact them from that account. So I did. I received an automated response, but have not yet received a personalized response. In the meantime, if you receive any odd communication from my Skype account (or my Skype phone number, which concerns me even more), it's not just me being my usual eccentric self... it's some bastard who hacked my account. I apologize in advance for any such annoyance.

Both my wife and I have used Skype for many years with no problems of this sort... about six weeks ago, her account was hacked. Now mine has been. So, Microsoft buys Skype and suddenly there's an indication of security vulnerabilities with their service... who could have possibly predicted that? </sarcasm>

Posted by Tim Tripcony At 1:22 PM Location Woodstock | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category lotusphere
OK GO opens the the OGS with a 3 song set, including "All is Not Lost"... can't help hoping the audience is listening to that one.

Alistair calls attention to the 800 students GBS brought today.

Michael J. Fox takes the stage as guest speaker.

By the way, this live blog experience brought to you by Verizon 3G Mobile Hotspot... since the Lotusphere WiFi is, once again, completely useless.

Alistair retakes the stage, talking about the value and implications of "social business".

"I would probably shut off email too, if I wasn't running Notes."

"Imagine the possible: grab a Red Bull and the nearest nerd, and get going."

Alistair gives the Champions a shoutout, invites Novak on stage. Asks him to choose on behalf of the community, "demo or no demo". He chooses demo. Enter Jeff Schick.

Jeff describes some of the features in "Connections Next", hands off to Suzanne Livingston. She shows a notion of "embedded apps" within the Activity Stream. Showing reports, applications, email and calendar all integrated into a single coherent interface. I think this is what Portal was supposed to be a decade ago.

LotusLive Symphony (a.k.a. "IBM Docs") demo gets enthusiastic applause.

Community-specific activity metrics for community owners.

Real-time group video.

"Related Communities" feature allows integration across Connections deployments.

New mobile interface looks slick.

Jeff comes back and announces "IBM Connections Mail": front end for Domino or Exchange.... "strategy that will outlast Outlook".

IBM Docs: "content at rest equals cost, content in motion equals value"... Sharepoint is a "document coffin".

Ron showing Symphony viewer on iPad. Uploads a presentation from email to Connections in a couple finger gestures. Shows next version of Android interface for Connections, including more native device capability integration. Chatting via Sametime on the iPad, Briaplaces a video call directly from iPad via Unyte.

Jeff introduces CIO of Bayer. On a side note, apparently it's pronounced "buyer"... guess I've always mispronounced it. They have deployed Connections to 125,000 users.

Larry Bowden arrives to talk about "Web Experience"... I forget, is that what they call Portal now?

Larry introduces Brian Cheng to do some demos, crowd goes wild. Brian's a rock star. He shows integrated web content management driven from the iPad mobile interface, including basic video editing. Cool stuff.

Brian introduces Sandy Carter. Sandy describes the "social business adgenda", then announces CIO of Premier healthcare alliance.

Kevin Cavanaugh and Doug Cox now on stage, announcing some new features for Notes and Domino, and now Ron is back, showing the same kind of embedded experiences Suzanne was showing in Connection, but in the Notes client.

XPages can be embedded applications... XPages can also consume embedded applications. Ron pulls up Designer and calls attention to the Connections Client component from the Social Business Toolkit.

iNotes supports these embedded applications as well.

Ron shows the Notes browser plugin. Thunderous applause.

"LotusNotes Social Edition"... sometime later this year.

Cavanaugh mentions GBS Transformer as an option for turning Notes apps into XPage apps.

Doug describes the XWork offering.

Kevin describes OpenNTF as "exremely vital".

Trilog wins "Innovation in Social Business Application Development".

Doug introduces Mike Rhoidn to talk about SmartCloud.

LotusLive is now IBM Smart Cloud for Social Business.

Rhodin hands off to GAD, another customer testimonial.

Now Kristen Lauria. Should be interesting to hear her perspective.

"Delivering Better Business Results through Social Business Solutions in the Cloud": Applicable Limited

Final award (CTO Award): Ascendant wins.

Kristen introduces Dr. Jeffrey Burns from Children's Hospital Boston.

Inspiring story about creation of a social network for doctors to facilitate better treatment worldwide.

Alistair announces there will be a Lotusphere 2013.

All in all, a well-paced OGS. Nothing earth-shattering, but the crowd seems to have enjoyed the show.

Posted by Tim Tripcony At 8:08 AM Location Orlando | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category xpages
A common misconception, due primarily to the content of this blog and my occasional public speaking, is that I write XPage applications for a living. But that's just my hobby. My day job is writing extension library controls for others to use in their XPage applications. And for me to use in my hobby apps too, I suppose. As such, my Package Explorer might look subtlely different from yours:



Because the differences are likely subtle, let me call attention to just a few:

• Only the Package Explorer is in my perspective, not the Application Navigator. This is because I write library controls, not XPage applications.
• The menu bar at the top indicates this is Eclipse, not Domino Designer. This, again, is because I write library controls, which doesn't require Domino Designer. Periodically, as changes to a given library are deemed stable, I deploy them to an update site from which others can then install the library into Designer. But to do the development, I don't actually need to have Designer open.
• The system path of the JAR files referenced as plugin dependencies for the project expanded in the screenshot refer to "xpagessdk". This is a nod to the XPages SDK project Nathan contributed to OpenNTF on Monday. This project makes it easy to configure a vanilla Eclipse installation for XPage control library development without the need for the Expeditor Toolkit.
• Finally, as may already be obvious due to the name of the JRE, the location of the menu bar, the colored circles above the toolbar, and, of course, the frickin' Apple logo, this Eclipse installation is running on a Mac. Not inside a Windows VM in Parallels burning through half my RAM... just a Mac. And yet somehow there are no nasty little red X icons telling me my projects won't compile. I can perform my primary job functions as a Domino developer without getting hassled to reboot to install Windows updates that fix what Microsoft should have gotten right the first time... or consigning the bulk of my CPU's processing power to an antivirus program intended to protect me from script kiddies exploiting the weaknesses for which Microsoft hasn't yet released a Windows update. I can just open the lid of my MacBook Air, write some code, commit it to the source repository, then close the lid again. I haz a happy.

Let me be absolutely clear about one point: this is not a Domino Designer client for Mac. It doesn't (yet) understand the Designer VFS, so you can't just install the XPages SDK on your Mac and then start developing XPages on that Mac. You still need Designer for that (and, for Designer, you need Windows). However, you can develop artifacts that facilitate the development of, and enhance the user experience of, your XPage applications: controls, renderers, data sources, converters, validators, managed beans, phase listeners, custom EL bindings... the works.

I'm often asked to define the benefits of shifting most, or all, of an XPage application's logic from SSJS to Java. Those benefits are legion - improved performance, increased compile-time error management, true object oriented program structure, straightforward consumption of third-party libraries, and so on - but now you can add one more to the list: the higher the percentage of your application logic resides in Java, the less significant a role your operating system plays in your capacity to develop that logic. Write the bulk of your code on whatever machine you prefer (or are provided), in a comparatively lean and clean installation of Eclipse, and minimize the extent to which Designer - and, therefore, Windows - is required.

Posted by Tim Tripcony At 1:11 AM Location Home | Permalink | Comments (2)

Category terminology
I saw a post this morning stating that the Federal Reserve is migrating to Exchange. Perhaps it's because I've been sick the past few days, but I found myself getting annoyed by some of the terminology used in the post. I left a long, rambling comment to that effect, but have since decided to duplicate the content of that comment here, as it's something I feel strongly about, even when I'm not sick. Enjoy:

---

Sorry for the nitpick, because a lot of people make this mistake, but it doesn't make sense that any customer would be migrating from Lotus Notes to Exchange. I don't mean it doesn't make sound business sense (though one could argue that mail migrations rarely do)... I just mean that you literally can't migrate from Lotus Notes to Exchange. You can migrate from Lotus Notes to Outlook, or from Domino to Exchange, but you can't migrate from Lotus Notes to Exchange. Well, I guess you could, but then you'd be running a mail server on every user's desktop, which seems kind of ridiculous, and then you wouldn't have any mail client at all, so what's that supposed to accomplish?

I'm being facetious, of course. I know what you mean when you say they're migrating from Notes to Exchange. Everybody knows what that means... or do they? Does the customer know what that means? I know at least one Domino developer who works for the Fed, which almost certainly means they have at least one Domino application. So what does it mean that the customer is migrating to Exchange? Are they just moving the mail but leaving the applications running on the server? If so, then IBM isn't losing a customer. They're still getting licensing revenue. Perhaps not as much, if the licensing terms are being changed to reflect discontinued use of the Notes client to access the Domino applications, but it's still revenue. It's still a customer kept.

Or are they shutting down Domino entirely? If so, then they aren't migrating to Exchange: they're migrating to Exchange and Something Else. Most likely it's Sharepoint. But it could be PHP. Or Ruby on Rails. Or ColdFusion. Or Node. Or Salesforce. Or any of hundreds of other application platforms within which their Domino applications' functionality could theoretically be reimplemented. But regardless of the target, it won't be easy. Migrating mail is easy; there's always risk, of course, but it's essentially just a field-to-field and record-to-record mapping. Migrating applications is NEVER easy, regardless of the source or target platform. You need serious technology, serious workforce, or both, to successfully pull it off. And the differences between the capabilities of the platforms, especially when compared to the differences between mail platforms, are potentially enormous.

Many of us have been, and will continue to be, critical of IBM's apparent lack of effort to drive home to existing and potential customers the value of the Domino platform. But every time one of us refers to a "Notes to Exchange" migration, we're making their job more difficult, because we're reinforcing the delusion that such a thing exists. We're perpetuating the lie that Notes is a mail client. It is an application client; mail is one of the built-in applications it supports.

Mail continues to be a very necessary business tool, and its value should not be underestimated, but mail is not enough to keep customers, because the incremental differences between mail platforms is minuscule. In the face of Microsoft's tactics, IBM cannot stop mail migrations without resorting to their tactics. But they CAN sell Domino as an application platform. They can drive home to customers and to the market the truth that there's no application platform on the planet that does what it does. And we can ease that effort by avoiding the trap of describing the platform precisely the way Microsoft wants us to: as an email platform with nothing significant to distinguish it from their own offering.

Posted by Tim Tripcony At 12:09 PM Location Home | Permalink | Comments (6)

Category lotusphere
For various reasons, this year I will only be at Lotusphere for about 24 hours. I'm still looking forward to seeing everyone, so if you want to find me, I can already tell you where I'll be:

When	Where
Sunday
6:30 PM – 9:00 PM	Welcome Reception (a.k.a. Beach Party)
9:00 PM - TBD	Kimonos
Monday
8:00 AM – 10:00 AM	Opening General Session, front row (or thereabouts)
10:00 AM – 6:00 PM	Solutions showcase, Pedestal 423

Posted by Tim Tripcony At 6:49 PM Location Home | Permalink | Comments (3)

Category personal
A very dear friend of mine is going through a difficult time right now. Her brother is gravely ill, and she could use your help:

Our sister and their mom are both servers in the restaurant business.  Thankfully, both of their employers have given them the time off they need without their jobs being in jeopardy.  However, there is no paid time off and no vacation time in the restaurant business.  While they have always been able to just make ends meet, I am concerned about them not being able to spend time with Justin during his last days– either before death, or in the case that his heart miraculously recovers– a liver transplant.  If he does recover, he will absolutely be at the very top of the list because he is currently so very sick, so the transplant could happen very soon.

If, he does not make it, then I know that none of us have the means to pay for a funeral.  Either way, at this point, I’m looking for one of three things, or all three if you’re feeling generous:

• Can you help with even $5 for my fundraiser?
• Can you please pray, send light, send good juju, good energy, wrap him in healing, or whatever it is that you believe?
• Can you tell everyone you know about this story?

I realize that you don't know my friend or her brother (well, actually, a few of you do), but if you have $5 to spare, would you consider helping a deserving stranger? At a minimum, please take a few minutes to read and share her story. Thanks.

Posted by Tim Tripcony At 1:13 AM Location Home | Permalink | Comments (7)