Testing Windows Live Writer

This is a test of Windows Live Writer Beta.  For some reason I keep typing Liver instead of Live! Apparently, can't upload images to blogspot.  I am sure the integration is available on live spaces.  Let me test that next...

Back in Sugarland

Just to wrap up on my previous post, I eventually got on the 11:45 flight on Sunday -- nearly 24 hours past my original flight time. THe guy from the 1 AM flight's ground staff messed up the standby list pushing down waaaaay below others woh came after me and this really really helpful lady named Diana H. (or G? can't remember) pushed me to the top of the list when I explained it to her during the 9:30 AM flight (which is what I should really have left on!).
Anyway, I'm back and so are lucky and sasha. They seem pretty happy to be back!

Stuck in LAX

This is a worthwhile episode to resume blogging. Its 4:24 AM here at LAX on March 19, 2006. About 5.5 hours since I got here. Here is how it all began...
On the 3rd of March, when I booked my flights to India, I had this notion that 2 hours was a long enough period between my return from Singapore and my flight out from LAX to IAH -- well that notion has cost me dearly. My flight back from Singapore was ~2 hours late. I missed my 12:20 connection on the 18th March to Houston. As it turns out, this is spring break week and many people of the great state of Texas have apparently felt the need to go to LA for spring break; and they are all returning home this weekend. 3 flights have departed since I was listed in standby -- all full. I came closest to getting on a plane on the second one (4:10 PM), but turned out that they had counted wrong. So, I was taken all the way to the threshold of the plane, and then brought back through the jetway! :(.
That was the last flight out on the 18th. The next one at 1 AM on 19th was also full. Now I am waiting for the 6 AM flight. Should be boarding in about 20 minutes. Anyway, here are some pics I took while sitting around at LAX without a book to read.

Bored out of my mind

Location: Jakarta

The evening prayer has just started. I've spent most of this weekend in my hotel room -- working, reading, writing emails, more reading, watching Seinfeld and right now, I am waiting for 8:00 PM so I can video chat with Smitha. You can only ignore the constancy of your surrounding for so long I guess.

Anyway, its back to work tomorrow. And then 4 more days here. Then I'm off to Doha, a week there and then I will begin my crazy 44 hour trip back home.

Back from vacation

Smitha and I just got back from vacationing in Trinidad during Christmas. Lot of good stuff to see on my flickr page here.

Web 2.0

I have been reading up over the last several weeks about the Web 2.0 concept and its related technologies (mainly from Scoble's blog (of course)). I now have a flickr account, and a del.icio.us account. I wanted to develop a "community" site myself (based on my friend's idea) as a test, but unfortunately I forgot the site that had the freeware dev toolkit for developing such sites. So, I am scouring my newsgator feed to find it!

Rock the Launch

I, along with my colleagues Danny and Diane, attended the "Ready to Rock" Launch event for VS2005 today. Learnt some new stuff. The event was the launch of VS2005, SQL 2005, and BizTalk 2006. I realized after getting there that it wasn't for .NET Framework 2.0, so I was a little disappointed by the absence of content relating to .NET Framework improvements. That being said, some of the VS 2005 enhancements were the direct result of framework changes, and I did learn a thing or two. I am really looking forward to the release of CLR via C#. Jeff Richter's earlier book at least doubled my understanding of the framework and helped me to optimize my code.

Anyway, now the question is whether to go for Team System or not. I guess we will float the idea at work tomorrow and discuss the advantages of getting the Team System vs. not, and make a decision. Microsoft has finally decided to make a server-based source control system and that is good news. In fact, one of the speakers at today's launch mentioned that MS is going to use Team System internally for all their development, which is quite impressive (hopefully that's not just a marketing ploy). All the features related to code testing is quite impressive although it would be quite a bit of effort for us to migrate to that framework. The biggest factor is that we were fed up with Visual Sourcesafe when it decided to insert some Chinese characters in our code(!!) and decided to migrate to SourceGear Vault. As far as we are concerned, the most important feature is source control and Eric Sink quite craftily points out in one of his blog articles the shortcomings of source control in VS Team Foundation Server. So in then end, it may be an easy choice, but its worth discussing anyway.