It seems like just yesterday that I wrote an article celebrating my 50th DominoPower tip. In fact, it was just February of last year. It was called, "Talking about Tips" in the Feburary 2001 issue of DominoPower at http://www.dominopower.com/issues/issue200102/tips001.html. Time flies when you're having fun. If you don't already subscribe to the DominoPower tip newsletter, go to http://www.dominopower.com, scroll down to the big yellow box, and sign up now.

Writing a new tip every week really forces me to keep up-to-date professionally. I subscribe to every Domino-related tip newsletter I can to make sure I don't duplicate what others have done. I regularly search some of my favorite Domino-related sites for ideas (Notes.net, searchDomino, etc.). I look at every detail of Domino-generated sites I visit for inspiration. And I have to say that over the last two-plus years of writing tips, my day-to-day perspective has changed to the point where I'm seeing ideas for new tips everywhere. I'm never at a loss for something to write about, but sometimes I do get in a pinch for time.

My process for coming up with a tip each week is kind of like a lotto ball machine spitting out a ball with a number on it. I have all of these ideas written down and bouncing around in my head in varying states of readiness, and eventually one of them emerges as the winner every week. The process isn't totally random, though, and I try to mix up the types of tips that I write (i.e., end-user, administration, development). But near the end of the week my mind starts to focus on the one topic that I feel is ripe for the picking.

The tips that I write are based on my own experiences; there is just no other way for me to do a weekly tip unless it's closely related to the work that I'm currently doing. What I try to do generally, though, is to both mix up the types of tips that I do and generalize my experiences as much as possible so that they will relate to the widest possible audience. Sometimes the tips end up being short and sweet (which is what my editors like), but sometimes they do end up taking on a life of their own and are either a little more lengthy and detailed or even evolve into their own full-fledged articles. Take a look at the list of articles below, for instance, that I've written in the past year that first started off as tips:

• "Solutions for your Preview pains" (June 2001) at http://www.dominopower.com/issues/issue200106/preview001.html;