It's been more than 3 months that I've written anything on my blog. Not to mention that blogging has overall seen a trend of moving towards a niche, trust me it’s a good thing! But then again you don’t need me to tell you that, you can form your own opinion. Before I start digressing into matters that are completely out of the context, let me state the big 2 reasons why I have not blogged in such a long time. One is professional & the other is personal. For those of you who don’t know, I am working with a startup which, like every other startups is driven by challenging environment, tighter deadlines and long work hours. This however doesn’t leave much room for you to do anything else. And not that I don’t like it, it is the spirit of a proving yourself is what draws me romantically towards working for isango!
And speaking of romanticism, the other (personal) reason is that I’m getting married on the 11th of October, 2008. Yes, this Saturday!
I’ve known Monica for almost a year now, and I thank my parents (my Dad, in particular) for introducing us to each other. This semi-arranged marriage is going to take place at 2pm at Sacred Heart Cathedral, New Delhi.

Well, now you know!!!

"I'm starting to think of Reflection much the way I think about Regular Expressions. If you have to solve your Problem with Reflection, you may just end up with Problems, plural!" - Scott Hanselman

I figured waiting to publish something unique/rare/useful would take too long. So here's the first post in 2 months of hiatus.

A lot is happening in my life…

New job, new girl & a new car. I need time to settle down and make time to blog on a regular basis. This whole month has gone blank simply because I was a bit overwhelmed. And whatever time I did find at my disposal I have been spending it watching Justice League Unlimited; God bless the internet & torrent for that!

I had a lot to write about, some of it has bitten dust as I didn't kept notes about what I was gonna say, some ain't relevant anymore, e.g. xp SP3. Few required little research, like Microsoft's interest in Farecast.com while others absolutely mindless rantings like the Heroes soundtrack… (its not bad, but it ain't good either - kinda like the 2nd season )

I hope that as far as my time management is concerned an optimum balance is restored very soon. In fact I am working on that. Wish me luck!

The TED conference organizers have graciously uploaded the video of the presentation made by Dr. Roy Gould, an astrophysicist from the Harvard Center for Astrophysics, introducing WorldWideTelescope in partnership with Curtis Wong, principal researcher of Microsoft’s Next Media Research group and head of the project (you might remember him from the Media Browser video on Channel9 with the sexy transition effects and cool sorting and organization features). Besides the streaming Flash video there's a .mp4 video is available for download on the same page.

I remember when I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronomer and we couldn't afford a good telescope and what my father bought for me was barely powerful enough to be able to see the bigger planets; like Jupiter. But thanks to Microsoft Research, soon children who can get online (ofcourse on broadband) will have a whole new universe to explore on their fingertips and right in front of their computer screens. Now, isn't that exciting?

On a more personal note, my long hiatus from blogging can be best explained from the fact that starting from March, 10th 2008 - I'll be joining isango!. The preparation and my commitment towards finishing my last project kept me really busy. Couldn't find time for socializing or even blogging

My 4 years’ stint with MediaWeb India ends this week. It's like an end of an era for me, have so much memories from this place. It saddens me that I'd be getting away from regular interaction with PHP code, but then I'm glad too that I'd be working fulltime on ASP.net.

I have been down under in God's Own Country - Kerala on a family visit from the beginning of the month until the 11th. Had I been vacationing I wouldn't have picked this time of the year to go there, but my grandfather was unwell and my mother wanted to go see him one last time. But there's been an outbreak of Chikungunya (a rare form of viral fever) in some parts of Kerala and upon our return both me & my mother have fallen sick since last weekend. Although I have been able to  return to work since yesterday, a full recovery is 5-6 days away. And with the catching up with the backlogged work, email and what not, I'll be slow in posting to this blog this month.

This is the 2nd consecutive summer that I've fallen sick for a fortnight, I never liked summers anyway's, I'm beginning to hate it even more!

I wish this past month never should have been, I wish it could have been erased somehow. Absolutely nothing went the way, I hoped it would in May.

Professionally - Server crashes, hardware failures, security breaches, application vulnerabilities all marred the 31 days of this month that haven't happened in 3 years I've been on the job, in fact I don't remember hearing more than 1 of such scenarios happening simultaneously or in quick successions when Raj Shekhar was the captain of this small ship nor did I experience anything of this proportion the 2 years since I have taken over his place. There are delays and there are delays!". This project; that I'm heading (supposedly last for my current employer), is at a stage today where it should have been exactly a month ago. Efficiency is one of the strongest traits of my character, and of course there have been occasional lags in the projects I've led but never so much.  Dealing with undesirable client requests for old projects and shifting of priorities enforced upon by higher management were instrumental in demoralizing the team's zest for the new interesting & challenging project.

Personally - So I can't brag about my skills with the ladies, nor am I a party animal but even hanging out with friends became so hard that we were able to catch (a rather disappointing) Mr Bean's Holiday happened after 5 reschedules by someone or the other including yours truly requesting it twice. This only added to my social misery. And even though I try to forget about it I was reminded at least 5 times how much of a productivity killer Migraine can become.

"You've been a busy little bat, haven't you?" - Superman from Justice League/Cartoon Network - A Better World. Yes I've been and I think it's easy to say I'd continue to be for a couple of months more.

And if it wasn't for such a great work by the guys at Telligent I wouldn't have upgraded to Community Server 2007. And it is because of the upgrade I'm doing a customary post. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't be posting on my blog the next couple of months, I'm more of a "in the moment" writer anyways, so they'll be as unpredictable as earthquakes.

And to make the long story short... I'm working on the last project with my present employer. So I'm closing in on achieving the number 1 item on my resolutions' list for this year.

How much time should it take to return to your normal routine when you've been missing out from it for almost a month? It will be 2 weeks today since I returned back to work after a not so nice Chicken Pox experience, but still haven't returned to what I would call One Hundred Percent Efficiency. Trust me when I say it's best to get it in your childhood, than mid-20s. But the new Scarface is more charming around the ladies than the soft spoken, handsome, homely, nice guy. So I guess I should be happy.
But not all is good, I am still stuck at the same chapter of Professional ASP.net 2 I was on June 28th, rather I am 6 chapters behind (as I am on a revision tour).
I figure I need something inspirational, like a little more than a month ago when I learnt of the new found romance of a certain friend, it had the same effect on me as Spinach on Popeye. I reloaded my web site's design, I doubled my learning speed of ASP.net, I got rid of a time wasting habit. I finally managed my personal routine. Boy! Talk of a Project Manager with serious time management issues… All of this in the short span of 10 days before I had to put breaks because of the Chickenpox.
I guess watching Apollo 13 one more time; will do for the time being.

So I'm out of action for 2 weeks… since 28th of June (if you want the exact date) but who cares? Perhaps a venomous bite from Poison Ivy or may be it was the Joker?
I don't know what is sad, the fact that I contracted it from Robin. Or perhaps that no one… neither Kent nor Gordon check up on me or my health. Hell, Catwoman has her own demons to fight so can't blame her. Maybe that's what you get for being Anti-Social.
Anyways still need a couple of days before I make a complete recovery and start again on my night patrols.

Community Server 2.0 was released this monday, 20th February 2006. It is a very significant release with a large number of exciting features. Most prominently I know frequent vistors to my blog will appreciate this, when they don't have to do the annoying one extra click to post their comments, this has been a long known issue with CS 1.x.

But I gotta wait a while before I can upgrade my CS installation as apparently the web installer for ASP.net 2 isn't out yet. I cannot install via MSI package installer as I do not have rights to do that on my webhost.
I specifically want to install the ASP.net 2 version instead of the ASP.net 1.1 version because I just spent $50 (Canadian Dollars) on Professional ASP.net 2.0 co-written by Scott Hanselman.
It wouldn't make much sense if I installed the ASP.net 1.1 version does it then? Kevin Harder will have some idea, maybe I should email him…