The hurt in her eyes probably would have haunted me even if we didn't share the tribal affiliation of being members of the Lotus administrator community, a sect of technical cognoscenti. Yet, I think it registered so strongly simply because she was one of us.

I've run this scene through my head a dozen times since. Even if Denise and I weren't so tired, I'm not sure how we could have helped. We couldn't have offered her our cab, since we were later in line and probably going somewhere different. Offering to pay for her cab wouldn't have helped the situation and might have insulted her further. Inviting her to write for DominoPower would have been completely insensitive. So I'm not sure how we could have helped, and instead we would have just added to the cluster of chaos. But we were there and one of our own was being hurt.

This editorial will be seen in our December issue, our holiday issue, that time our society mandates we all practice good cheer and good will. And so, we need to do something. We're dedicating this issue to that woman, in the hopes that she'll read this and know that people did care, did respect her, and did feel a measure of shame for not knowing how to help and for being part of a world where this sort of thing happens.

Here in DominoPower we're going to do our bit to bring our Notes and Domino tribal members closer together. We can't stop this sort of discriminatory behavior from happening everywhere, but we're going to do our best to bring our small part of the world together. Have a great holiday, and don't take crap from cabbies.

Thomas Duff is a software consultant in Portland, Oregon working with Marquam Group. He starting to blog post-Lotusphere 2003 and will be speaking down in Orlando this year at Lotussphere 2004. He recently published a series of articles about Java for Lotus Advisor Magazine. You can read his blog at http://www.twduff.com.