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Umar SaleemiWork, Technology, News, Personal November 05 Election 2008Last night I, along with 300 million Americans and billions around the world, watched history being made.
What's so great about Barack Obama's victory is how multi faceted it is. The way it changed the electoral map, the way it has broken the racial barriers, the strong signal of dialog and compromise it will send, the fact that this is the beginning of the change of America's image in the world, the way it's a new generation taking over the world stage, the fresh start. It's just all too exciting. I've watched this campaign almost right from the beginning and I don't think there's been one quite like this.
Today is full of promise of bright future for the generations to come. America made it happen. Go Obama! October 19 A developer's view of Windows 7I have been reading the Windows 7 Engineering blog since it started (Windows 7 is the next version of the Windows Client OS scheduled for early 2010 according to the latest news and posts). Just recently a developer named Larry Osterman on the Windows development team wrote an interesting entry on how the development is taking place in Windows 7 project. I like how under Steve Sinofsky, management is making the Windows development process a lot smoother from decision making stand point. Steve has earned a lot of respect as the Office team head over the years and now that he is the Windows chief, I have a lot of good expectations around the next client release. We'll see in about a year. March 30 Windows Mobile 6.1 on T-Mobile DashA few days ago I was wondering if T-Mobile/HTC will make the latest Windows Mobile 6.1 update available for my Dash phone. So I did some Googling and sure enough the good folks at XDA Developers have an Excalibur version of Windows Mobile 6.1 ROM (I don't think there will be an official update from T-Mobile). I installed it yesterday and I am reasonably impressed. Before you read on, let me make it clear that it's an unsupported version and you should install at your own risk.
This is not a major update by any means but does have some nice features added like copy/paste functionality, change master security code, recent programs on start menu, threaded SMS, ability to define homepage in IE, added functionality in task manager among others. But the feature I liked the most is a sliding panel home screen interface which is a one-stop for quite a few tasks. It's less cluttered and improves the feature accessibility quite a bit. You can change most commonly used settings, sign on to Windows Live Messenger, view photos and play media all from the home screen. I think it's a step in the right direction. Now let's see what Windows Mobile 7 brings along. It will be at least a year but the wait is on. June 22 Airbus 380 test landingNow this is some serious testing that goes on before a new aircraft is launched. Amazing.... April 14 Chicago selected to bid for 2016 OlympicsThe U.S. Olympic Committe just picked Chicago over Los Angeles to bid for 2016 Olympics. It's going to be a long process before the final hosting city is decided in 2009. The other contenders will possibly include Madrid, Prague, Rome, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.
The plan will be to build a 80,000 capacity temporary Olympics stadium costing $366 million in Washington Park and a $1.1 billion Olympic Village on the lakefront. According to a Yahoo! article: "Also, a U.S. bid for 2016 could be helped by the idea of geographic rotation, because the IOC picked European cities for the Summer Olympics of 2004 (Athens) and 2012 (London), and an Asian city (Beijing) for 2008." It's going to be so much fun if Chicago can pull this off. March 25 JottI just came across this serivce called Jott. The way it works is you call a toll free number and dictate your message. A few moments later they send your message transcribed in an email. How cool is that?
Countless number of times I have something in my mind that I want to "process" (creating a task/appointment in Outlook or sending an email to someone). Now I can just call the number and I'll have it in my email that I can't miss to read. What I really would like to have is that the speech recognition software on their server allows to categorize my messages as reminders, tasks or appointments with date and add it to my Outlook. Guess I am too spoiled;) Anyway, Web 2.0 rocks!!! March 20 Windows Mobile 6 comparisonJust came across this comparison between WM5 and WM6 as well as different versions of WM6. I like the guy who put this together. March 13 CRM TrainingThis week I am home doing some online training on Microsoft CRM 3.0. I had some problems yesterday setting up the virtual pc images and making sure everything is fine to do the labs. Right now I am immersed in organizations, business units, hierarchies, sites, security etc. This is definitely a cool product to work with. I'll post what I learned when I am done. Good luck me. February 17 Live.com Collectionsok this is so cool. First, a little background: I've been telling my wife how I'll share with her some of the business/finance feeds I have so she can read those too (I was going to copy a link to every feed and let her add it or maybe export my feeds as OMPL file that she could import). Turns out now you can do that by just one click!!!! Check out the announcement from Live.com team. You can even share these with anyone on the web through Live Gallery. I added Hilary Duff page because it looked so cool;) Great job Live.com team!!!! November 08 Windows Vista RTMsWindows Vista is released to manufacturing. Finally!!!! See the announcement here. Hope it's available to MSDN subscribers a week from today. If not, it will be after business launch on Nov 30 anyway. Let's see. October 31 Windows Vista and Office 2007 packaging releasedMicrosoft released Windows Vista and Office 2007 packaging yesterday. Check out the Vista team blog here or to see all the pretty pictures, go to Log Zheng's blog and scroll down a little. October 30 InterviewingLast Monday I was asked to interview college grads at Purdue University, Indiana. I got to the campus the evening before in about three hours driving time. I knew this guy from college (he was my brother's classmate but was in my dorm). So I messaged him on Sunday morning and he got back with contact info right away and we made plans to meet up. It's always good to see old friends from college. After a short dinner and tea at a local coffee shop, I was ready to check into my hotel.
The next morning I met up with rest of the interviewing team and we drove to the campus after breakfast. Purdue is an old university and I wasn't terribly impressed with the buildings. There were tons of kids flocking into the classes in the morning. The career center staff showed us our rooms. Their internet wasn't working which was bad!!!!! It's interesting to see yourself on the power side of interview table:) I interviewed quite a few (no numbers here) grads. Some of them completely blew it but the smart ones were very really good. I try to guage students for what they know and not what they don't. It's a BAD idea to make up answers. If you don't know at least be honest, it will be much appreciated.
Lunch was at a local food court and was pretty good for a college town. After lunch my colleagues and I went to the book store and roamed for a while before getting back to more interviews. At the end of the day we got together for a debrief. Again, I am not going to
disclose the number of candidates we plan to bring for final in-office interviews but it wasn't a lot. Personally I was expecting a bigger number to go through from the impression I had about Purdue but in the end it's not worth sacrificing quality over quantity so we were pretty
satisfied.
Finally I started back to Chicago and arrived home in a little more than couple of hours which is fast!!! I've made a commitment to my fiancee that I'll not drive that fast again;) Overall it was a fun experience and I am looking forward to doing more of these. September 29 FlyingThis past Monday I got a call from my career manager, Dave and he had an exciting offer. He is an amateur pilot and loves to fly whenever he can. And he was inviting me to go with him that evening after work. Super excited, I said ya right away. (Un)fortunately the other two guys he offered couldn't make it which meant I'd be the co-pilot:)
After work I drove to a regional airport in Palwaukee, IL where we were going to meet. Dave showed up minutes later and we were off to a near by hanger to pick the plane he had booked. The one we had was a white DA40 Diamond Star which is a small four seater plane. After their staff took it out of the hanger, Dave explained to me a few things and did the pre-flight inspection. At about 6:45pm we took off and flew due north near Gurnee. On our way I took control for a few minutes and boy that was fun!!!!! It wasn't too bad but definitely challenging trying to balance it while maintaining the altitude. But even if you lose altitude, there's more space to go down so it's all good. A little movement of the stick and you are soaring again. Wow!!! the planes are good stuff;) In about fifteen minutes we entered the airspace around Great America and it was pretty cool circling it (btw I am going there tomorrow on a corporate arrangement).
Next we turned south and started towards Schaumburg airport. That small journey we were on auto-pilot. There's this medium sized restaurant called Pilot Pete's overlooking the runway. It was amazing to see a lot of people who flew in to have dinner with planes parked outside. The dinner was delicious. I got Mango Latitude Chicken (chicken breast sautéed in a homemade mango cream sauce and topped with a mango-pineapple relish). Yummy.
After dinner we took off again, this time going to downtown. It took us about twenty minutes and a very expert flying by Dave between the controlled airspace around the area. The night was very clear and the downtown was bright as ever. It's a very different experience to see the lights so close when you are flying at a mere 1500 feet above the ground. We started west side of the Hancock building turning right on to the lake and then circling, with the downtown skyscrappers on our right. Just fabulous. Sears tower looked gorgeous and so did the streets I roam around every day with colleagues for lunch.
Finally we started back to Palwaukee the same route we had taken to come to downtown and it took us about twenty five mintutes to get back to the airport. This was definitely one of the best experiences I've had in a long time. Thanks Dave for a wonderful time and great flying. I hope we can do it again soon.
Check out the pictures here. September 17 Back from hibernationIt's been almost three months since my last post. Let's see what all has happened since then. Personal: I got engaged on July 24. This is the biggest (and the only) one. I am planning to have the wedding service (Nikah) in Pakistan on Dec 30. I couldn't have been happier. These three months have brought me immense happiness and I hope it will get even better in the coming months and years. Work: I've been working on quite a few different sub projects at this client. And recently I got news that I'll be here till December. I'd have liked to be at a different place now but it's not all that bad. I've liked being home taking care of a lot of things. There's been a lot on tech horizon that I'll blog about pretty soon. For now I just wanted to get the blog going again;) Thanks to all who've been asking where I've been all this time. June 25 Pulling the plug on WinFSAfter the entire day out of home I am going through my feeds and found this post from the Lead Program Manager on WinFS. Turns out that the product is not going to continue in its originally conceived form. Instead the different components will be packaged with an array of future products e.g. next release of SQL Server (code named "Katmai") and next release of Visual Studio (code named "Orcas"). In terms of its impact on Windows Vista, he just said "it will continue to adopt work as it's ready" (not exactly sure what it means;))
All I have to say is: "Wow! I'd not have imagined this". Not because I'm in love with the product or something but it's kinda surprising (though not completely unanticipated) how it marks a major shift in strategy for MS. For a long time, we've been hearing what wonders WinFS was bringing. I think it's been all about setting and managing expectations; an area they've failed at least in part.
Aside on this, it reminds us again how difficult it is to build complex computer systems even today with the best (well for now) tools we have available. I think the work of building successful systems boils down to two things: Business needs, and careful planning and design. We can build the most sophisticated systems but if they don't solve the business problem at hand, we can bet they'll fail. Similarly defining scope (both in terms of features and packaging) is a challenging but very important aspect. And not to mention, customer focus always comes first. I hope all of us can learn a few lessons from this. June 20 Google on TV or TV on Google???I've been reading quite a bit these days about HDTVs, Windows Media Center, related peripherals and possibilities they have to offer. On the sidelines of that, I saw this article about Google enabled search of video content on your TV screen. Interesting!!! June 15 Human Side of MicrosoftMicrosoft has donated one million dollars to six Asian countries to combat human trafficking. This grant will help such victims and those who are vulnerable, gain computer skills to get good jobs. The NGOs from these countries will help 130 community technology learning centers that will train about 100,000 people over the next three years including Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Even though one could agrue this is a very small amount, I believe it's a very good step in right direction and will go a long way in curbing this menace. It gives you such a good feeling that there are people and organizations who are immensely resourceful and also using their money for betterment of mankind. Just the other day a few colleagues and I were talking about Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest philanthropic initiative to help fight AIDS in Africa and funding research to find cure to some of the deadliest diseases, among other things. This is just awesome. June 08 One year at AvanadeToday is my one year anniversary at Avanade and it's amazing how this past year flew by so quick. A couple of weeks at Chicago office after joining, a few colleagues and I flew to Seattle to spend a month of corporate orientation and some kick ass technology training. It was a lot of work, fun and time together. I made some good friends there. Then I had a four day bench time before I started my first project at this financial client. The fun part? My team had to travel to Salt Lake City, Utah for nine straight weeks. I had no expectations with that place but I must say it's a beautiful place and quite fun, and of course per diem is the best thing ever. The project is awesome and I am still working on the same one. I've learned a LOT in this past year from all the smart people I am working with. Avanade is pretty cool; a lot of nice opportunities, cutting edge technology training and adoption, good career growth potential and the best of all, the people I work and interact with. The leadership is extremely supportive and you get every chance to be heard no matter what it is. They are transparent about where the company is going, the future opportunities, how things affect employees and so on. Not to mention, everyone gets a Career Manager (a mentor role) who advises you on everything related to your growth in the company. I couldn't have been at a better place than this!!! May 23 Stock markets in IndiaI've been reading news since yesterday about collapse of Indian stock markets. The stocks have slided 16% marking an 8 year low and Indian currency has touched a new low against U.S. dollar. There are news about police teams on alert to curb suicide attempts by brokers and traders.
Even though Indian economy was already suffering new lows in industrial and agricultural sectors, I think it's a bit unusual how things are unfolding. Let's see how soon they are able to rebound. May 16 Windows LiveI've been using Windows Live as my homepage ever since it was launched and I couldn't have been happier. It's aesthetically pleasing and easy to use. I've not used a lot of gadgets so far but the ones I've used work pretty good.
There are a few things that could be improved though e.g. speed, ability to configure how often the entire page is updated and adding links to other Live/MSN services e.g. mail, spaces and maps etc. on the main page. Another very useful feature will be the ability to tag the content for future reading.
Overall, great job Windows Live team!!!! May 01 Immigration march in ChicagoAs I am sitting, working in my office, down the street there's this immigration march going on with an estimated half a million people attending. Ya, that's right. Half a million!!!! The Jackson street is just flocked by these people with five choppers circling the sky. Pretty cool to watch from 17th floor. Seems to be the biggest one in Chicago so far! It was interesting how we made our way through the marching people while coming back from lunch by joining them, crossing the street moving forward and getting on to the other side. April 10 Our work got mentioned in Fortune magazineI was reading the cover story of the latest issue of Fortune magazine and guess what? It mentioned the project my team is working on at this Fortune 20 client. This is pretty cool. The article mentioned how it's contributing to the big picture when it comes to cutting cost in operations. This is exactly why I love consulting; making a huge difference with what you do. Way to go team!!! |
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