I switched to Windows Phone 7!
First off, my iPhone died. Well, not exactly died as in dead. It’s more like it got crippled. The phone is working. I can answer incoming calls and take out going calls as well. But, that’s about all I can do. Because the HOME button, is dead. Ok, so it’s not that the phone died, but the HOME button died.
I am not complaining. It’s an iPhone 3G (not even a 3GS). So, I think it lived its life cycle. I’m sure nothing is made nowadays to last decades. 3 years or so is probably the maximum for a consumer electronic device. Otherwise how can they sell their new models, which they churn out every year.
So in short, it was time for me to get a new phone. So I switched to WP7.
I know! Why not a new iPhone or even a droid. Well, let’s just say I liked WP7. I liked its tiles. I was never an Android fan. I think they try to copy the iOS too closely. At least it seems like it. And besides, I wanted to start writing phone apps again. And the shortest learning curve for me is for WP7.
But it wasn’t easy finding WP7 devices here in SL. The choice was like 25 Androids for 1 WP7. But I settled for the HTC Mozart. It’s a pretty neat phone. More or less the size of my old iPhone 3G. Nicer display. And I’m impressed with the features too. Both on the Phone and the OS.
Everything seems very much more responsive. Hopefully it’ll remain the same as it grows older. And Im particularly impressed with the voice recognition on the device. It’s pretty much spot on with the SMS responses. Too bad there’s no way to use it on other apps like Twitter! Time to buckle down and get to writing that app!
I was never a gym person. I’ve never been to a gym in my life, ever!
My attempts at working out at home had been sporadic. I own three exercise machines, but they lie around, unused. I’ve attempted to walk, which kind of worked while I was working from home, alone, but after I moved to an office, it fell by the wayside. I’ve attempted to go for a walk during the weekends and that too was never regular. One thing, which I have picked up is cycling on Sundays with the Pedal Pushers, which has been somewhat regular.
With my weekly cycle rides one thing I came to realize was how unfit I was! All this time my fitness was not an issue as I hardly engaged in any physically demanding activities. But cycling 25-30km’s just showed me how unfit I was. And secondly, my wife become pretty interested in staying fit. She took up a Zumba class twice a week. I joined her once a week and and it was an eye opener to my fitness level.
With all this when my wife wanted to join a neighborhood gym, I tagged along and joined too. So now, I’ve committed myself to working out three times a week.
I was asked to define my goals of joining a gym and here’s what I came up with:
- Lose 10 kgs of weight
- Lose 2″ on my waist line
- Generally improve my fitness and stamina
The last time I coded in classic ASP was about 7 years ago. Ever since I moved to ASP.NET 1.0 it was the way of .NET for me. But, we recently landed two relatively small projects, for two pretty large, world wide corporates, which required us to use classic ASP. And these are not small companies. These are billion dollar global companies.
Both these companies own pretty extensive IT infrastructures. Both of them have their own server farms. And I reckoned this was one of the reasons they are still sticking with classing ASP. They have invested heavily on hardware, software and platforms and it is not an easy task to keep updating them with the latest and the hip things that come out year in and year out!
All this time I didn’t have a hobby per se. My work takes up most of my time (as a result of working across two timezones 12.5 hours apart) and the remainder of the time (which actually boils down to a little over couple of hours on weekdays) I try my best to spend with my family. So there never was time any time to spend on anything else. And during weekends, I would spend time with family (and doing a poor job of being there then) or lounge in front of the TV.
I’ve not been a great photography fan lately. I remember when I was in my early teens I tried my hand in photography. I had an old 35mm Yashica film camera, which was my fathers, and the cost of the films and the development never really worked for me.
When the digital camera’s came along, I was a late entrant to the scene. I just used a point and shoot digital camera to capture occasional family gatherings and functions. And I never really pushed the cameras to its limits. I would mostly use it on the ‘auto’ mode and would switch to other modes rarely. I went through an Olympus u700, which died on us soon after the warranty expired, and then a Cannon Ixus.
Ont the other hand my man, Rukshan’s was into photography. I always used to think he was addicted to photographs (and honestly he looked very good on them). And since he lives overseas, he always used to pester me to take photos around the house, and people and share them with him. But I was too lazy to do that on a consistent basis and after a while he stopped pestering me for photos.
My interest in DSLR’s picked up when I was asked to pick a DSLR for Rukshan from Malaysia. Just before the trip and soon after I returned with the camera (which was a Nikon D3100), my general knowledge about DSLR’s were greatly enhanced, thanks to him. During that trip I was compelled to pick the same camera for myself, but instead, being the computer geek I am, I picked up a laptop. This was about an year ago. And I thought my interest in photography will subside.
But it was not to be. So I started to put small sums away with the idea of getting myself a DSLR. And by last month, I had saved enough to afford one! So I got myself a Nikon D3100 with a 18-55mm kit lens and a 55-300mm lens. So, equipment-wise, I am content. There are only two more items I would buy in the foreseeable future and those will be a 50mm f/1.8 lens and a flash.
So now I am in the process of experimenting with my camera and finding out what I can do with it. So far it’s been mainly used as a point and shoot, but I am trying my hand at manual focusing and other manual settings. And hopefully, I would come up with photographs that I would be proud to show off (other than those of my family’s!)
There were several days on which I logged into wordpress.com hoping to post something here. But in all occasions there were one of two issues that prevented it.
1. I was disturbed – either I was required to sort something out, answer a question or manage something. Then I lose the thought train and I end up saving it as a draft, but never get to finishing it later, as it is very difficult to figure out what I was going to write previously.
2. So many things were running through my head I could not zoom in on one thing to write. So many things on my plate and trying to do more than one thing at a time and the stress of running a business.
Even right now, I do not have a specific subject to write about. I am staying online for a client meeting, and thought of mumbling something to keep me from falling asleep.
I think I need to focus on doing some meditation to bring about some serenity to the chaos going around me. In a way I am used to the chaos in my life. I walk into the office fully expecting a lot of things to fall into my plate when I open my inbox. And then I go about sorting them out and getting things out of the door. And usually on such days I end my day with a sense of having had a productive day.
I am pretty used to that and if it is a slow day, I become quite lethargic. I think a little stress keeps me going. Like a race car needs to be driven hard!
Oh, my client is calling. SO this post is getting published!
Whoa! I have a blog. I had almost forgotten it. Life and work had consumed me and I forgot I had a blog. Well, the problem is I have more than one blog. But still I have not blogged consistently across all of them.
I am not sure what I will end up writing on this. I wasn’t planning to make a post. Basically I have nothing specific to say. But I had a mail from wordpress.com because someone had tried to reset the password for my username and I just came to the blog to make sure that it was not hijacked by anyone else.
In the process I discovered a few things about my blog. I’ve had this for almost 7 years now. And there was a time when I used to be pretty active (in this blog). There was a time when my family used to comment about my posts. People who didn’t know me that well discovered about me through this blog.
Then I got pretty private. I think it happens. I got cold feet about shouting out everything in my mind. And also, Twitter came along. I started to tweet more than I blogged. But then again, I am not a consistent tweet either. I can go for months without a single tweet.
Well, that’s about it for now I think. I don’t know when I will post back here again. There are some things that I would like to talk about. But still my thought train is not complete. So, maybe someday, I will get to those on this blog.
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.
Crunchy numbers
About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every year. This blog was viewed about 27,000 times in 2010. If it were the Taj Mahal, it would take about 3 days for that many people to see it.
In 2010, there were 14 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 260 posts.
The busiest day of the year was February 4th with 153 views. The most popular post that day was moBlog.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were w3avenue.com, ryeblog.wordpress.com, wordpress.org, speckyboy.com, and dead-pixels.co.uk.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for moblog, proactive language, fancybox close, clear print spooler vista, and moblog windows mobile.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
moBlog December 2007
548 comments
Running ASP.NET 2.0 Applications on IIS 5.1 (Win XP) March 2006
16 comments
Installing Blackberry desktop software on Vista March 2008
8 comments
Connecting to SQL Server Express from a Pocket PC application March 2007
9 comments
Tyre expiry date July 2006
7 comments
Happy Anniversary Wifee!
I can’t imagine the last 6 years. Its been a bliss. I know we’ve had our ups and downs, but hey, we’ve stuck through things together and I don’t think we’ve done that bad!
I have a lot to thank you for, besides the unconditional love you shower upon me. To start off with, thanks for putting up with me. Thanks for putting up with my weird work schedules and un-godly hours. Can’t thank you enough for understanding my urges to do somethings differently.
Thanks for giving me the courage and the strength when I needed it most. I wouldn’t have started a business of my own by stepping out of a full time job, if it wasn’t for your courage. Thanks for standing by me and letting me choose freely. Pretty soon we will be reaping the fruits of all that labour.
Above all, thank you for the two wonderful kids you’ve given me. I know I’m not doing much for the kids, though I am physically there at home most of the time, because most of that most of the time is spent in front of my computer. And trust me live, you’re doing a wonderful job!
Here’s the the last 6 years and for the rest of our lives!
A cool notepad trick: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ddysart/archive/2006/07/06/658295.aspx
System.Web.VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute("~") does the job of ResolveUrl on the server side.
We are a new company which specializes in building web applications. We are experts in Microsoft Technologies and are at the forefront of new technology adoption. We provide our services mainly to the US market and in particular to the start-ups emerging from the West Coast.
We are a truly virtual company operating without boundaries. We make use of technology and Internet to blur the boundaries and create a virtual and collaborative work environment for teams spread across continents and time zones.
Out US partners have been impressed by the talent of the Sri Lankan team which worked on their projects and now are keen to find more people with the correct attitude and skill set to join our team.
- Do you want to work on the latest technologies?
- Would you like to work on cool projects for US clients?
- Want to have control over your schedule?
- Want to be treated with respect and your ideas heard?
- Do you keep abreast of the technology evolution?
- Is coding an art form for you?
- Are you responsible?
- Can you work without having someone watch over your shoulder?
- Can you manage your time effectively?
- Do you take pride in your work?
- Do you pay attention to details and deliver well tested code?
We believe in allowing our team members the freedom to work from anywhere and anytime, as long as you adhere to certain guidelines. What matters to us is whether you deliver error free, high quality product on time. After the initial probation we wont pester you to come to “work” everyday. You are free to work from home (or wherever you like for that matter).
Skills and Competencies:
- Are you an expert in ASP.NET 2.0 and above?
- Are you a ASP.NET MVC guru?
- How are you with ORM’s like nHibernate, Subsonic and EntitySpaces?
- Do you test your code with tools like nUnit?
- Can you do client-side interactions with jQuery/CSS?
If you fir the bill, please drop your resumes to talent@enablerworld.com.
I don’t know whether it is a rediscovery of the love for writing or the love for fountain pens. But I tend to put pen on paper every day these days to record my thoughts!
I used to like writing when I was younger. During my school days I was pretty good at essay writing and always scored well, be it in Sinhalese or English. I stopped learning languages and literature around the age of 16, and from that point onwards it has been all technical subjects for me. Then, I had to master scientific writing. I learned to keep things concise and to the fact. I lost the art of writing.
Soon after I left school I did a short stint as a journalist. It was for a weekly paper and as a cub reporter. I did it purely because I liked to write. Of course that was also the time I was going through university and after a while I decided to give up my journalistic career and concentrate on my university life including the fun side.
Then onwards it was purely scientific writing., I studied mathematics and physics and I ever considered myself a master of any of those subjects to write about them.
And after I started working, being into IT, I spent all my time with a keyboard. Hence my writing became typing on the keyboard.
Until recently I could hardly write for five minutes with a pen and paper without feeling an uncomforting feeling around the wrists.
But throughout I carried forward my passion for fountain pens. I always carried a fountain pen if I ever carried a pen. I lost a few along the way, most notably though my university career. I remember once while running in the rain, the pen I carried got thrown out of my pocket and fell into a ditch full of water. I searched for it ended up being wet but didn’t find the pen. I remember how I sad I felt at that loss.
I have also had several occasions where the fountain pens leaked in my pockets. I remember once it leaked on my way to a job interview. Luckily I had some time so I went into a shop, and bought a new shirt and ended up walking out of the shop clad in new shirt and headed straight to the interview. (I landed the job and signed the documents using the pen that leaked!)
Back to the topic, I plan on using all my fountain pens now. I had them packed and nicely packed away in a drawer. But now that I want to write with them, it is time to make use of my collection. After all, what’s the point of a collection if they cannot be used.
Earlier, a refill used to last for a month or so. But at my current rate, I think a refill will only last a week or even less. Therefore all my pens will have an opportunity to scribe on paper in my hands.
But one thing I am in need is a good notebook with fountain pen friendly paper. Most of the notebooks in the market tend to have very thin paper which, when written on with a fountain pen, the ink blots through the page. I would also like something which has a nice bound cover.
I am now finding more ideas for my blogging also through writing. I tend to write my thoughts on the paper and then convert them to blog posts if I feel if there is some significance in them. This post in itself is one such incident.
Enough typing, off to more conventional writing!
I haven’t actively developed moBlog for sometime now. I think it has been about two years since I did anything on it.
But according to my box.net statistics, it is still being downloaded. At least once a day. And occasionally I get requests for features and asking me if I am planning on a new release.
I have been toying with the idea of open sourcing it for sometime now. I am not sure why I didn’t consider it from the beginning. I think it could have gained a lot of momentum had I done it before.
But as the saying goes, better late than never, today I am making moBlog open source. I am uploading the source to codeplex as I write this.
The codeplex url for moblog is: http://moblog.codeplex.com/
If anyone needs any help in setting it up just shoot me a line and I will walk you though it. I will add the instructions needed to get it working on to the codeplex site eventually, as soon as I get some time to write it. I would also do a roadmap if there is still interest for new features.
If someone wants to join the team and develop the app I welcome you! It would also inspire me to contribute more.
The reason for moBlog becoming inactive was due to my shift from a WM device to an iPhone. That left me without a real device to test the application. When I did the shift I searched for a similar app for iPhone but found none that supported all the platforms that moBlog supported. There is an official WP app for WP blogs, but I couldn’t find a good free app that supported blogger and live spaces on iPhone. If anyone can direct me to one I would appreciate it.
Also, if there is a free version of an app that converts the .NETCF app to iPhone compliant code, I think moBlog will be quite popular among iPhone users as well. I was thinking about porting moBlog to iPhone but I don’t have a MAC to do the coding. So that idea never saw the light of the day.
It has been raining since this morning. It has now healed a bit but still the drizzle is on. I am forced to write blog posts in offline mode as my broadband is also not working.
I made use of this offline time to rearrange my desk. I raised both my LCD and my laptop using two plastic low-stools. Now the monitors of them both are slightly above my eye level. I am going to give this arrangement a try for a little while. At least it will make me lean back on my chair rather than an leaned forward hunched position that I am usually in all the time.
I have been looking at some lifehacker posts of featured workspaces with raised monitors. Some of them have the monitors raised even more. But I am not entirely convinced of the ergonomics of those arrangements. But in the process of typing this what I realized is that with my current raised monitors I can easily lean back on my chair and rest my head against the head rest and type. Which is something that I was unable to do with the level the monitors were in earlier.
My workspace is my never ending project. I get inspired to do something with it every once in a while. But with the absence of an Ikea or a Staples in Sri Lanka, most of the tweaks are out of reach unless I attempt to do them DIY. I have been thinking about investing in some power tools for me to attempt the DIY. But have been putting it off as I can think of better uses for money. Therefore I am making to do with what I have.
The other reason that prevents me from spending a lot on my workspace is a conversation that I had with my client. When I told him that I finally got a U shaped work area he congratulated me and then said that he is working with two small desks one enough to fit his laptop and another for the mouse. That point made me wonder whether I was on an overkill!
But I want to create a workspace that is both practical as well as inspiring. I want to have a workspace that makes me want to spend time in it rather than something that would make me want to get out of it every few minutes.
A few things that are pending: need to fix the speakers on the walls. And I need to hang some fun/inspirational artwork on the walls!
I recently attended seminar series about investing in Unit Trusts. The whole idea of a unit trust is it allows lay investors like me, who are clueless about the stock market and all the acronyms that are associated with equity investments to put their money in a Unit Trust, so a fund manager can invest in the investment instruments available in the market and get me a return on my investment.
The last presenter, who is the CEO of one of the fund management companies touched upon planning your financial goals and wealth creation. This was an eye opener for me.
Personally, for me, investing in the stock market has been like a game for me. I did it because the general perception was that it was a place where you can make money. Also my interest in the stock market was kindled because in one of my previous jobs I managed a project that attempted to build a back office application for stock brokers. And they also had an online trading solution which caught my interest.
But this seminar, opened my eyes to the more important aspect of planning your investment and to treat it as a mechanism to create wealth. The aspect of growing your investment at a rate greater than the rate of inflation so your money retains its value down the line. And also choosing your investment instruments that match your financial goals.
Upto now I have never thought of planning for retirement. I have also never planned to save for my kids future, or higher education. I live with the thought that when the need comes I will be in a position to meet the needs. So far, I have managed to do that, upgrading my income as my expenses grow. I would worry about them when they become the necessity, but not prior.
But this seminar opened my eyes to the fact that these are things that are better addressed through planning and smart investing. Of course, they positioned the Unit Trusts as the smart investment in this case, but nevertheless the point about the need to plan is very valid. If planned and executed gradually, myself and my family will not feel the pressure when the need arises.
There are a few things that I need to plan for, and start investing and growing the money for:
- Retirement
- Children’s education
- Holidays/vacations
- Life-style upgrades
Out of those the first two are paramount. But thankfully, those are things that can be done at a slower pace.
Retirement
I haven’t foreseen myself in retirement. I would like to be actively engaged in some sort of gainful activity till my death. I always thought that I would have some kind of a business, that I can hand over to my children or to an able management but would still keep me occupied. I don’t think I would want to go into a full retirement and end up doing nothing. I would find that to be too boring.
But in any event, it would be a good idea to invest for retirement. So that there would be money, for expenses and to indulge in whatever activities, be it charity or social service or travelling or having fun, that would take our fancy, without having to depend on others.
As we grow old, our battles with health can also become more intense. In other words the health care expenses can go up. So an income stream that can foot these expenses would be welcome.
Saving for children’s education
This is probably the expense that would occur first and the most pressing and necessary requirement. I want my kids to follow their dreams and desires when it comes to what they want to do with their lives. I will give them only one piece of advice. ‘Be the best you can be!’.
So in order to fulfill their dreams I want them to be able to get the best (higher) education or training that they can get. Cost of which should not be a worry on them and definitely not hinder their dreams.
In any case, the one general lesson is that investments should be made in instruments that give a real return, a return greater than that of inflation. And the value of money should be greater than the value of the amount now. Considering that our needs are going to grow as we age as a family, this is a basic need. And these investments should be done regularly and be made to become a habit, much like the habit of saving, but instead of saving, it should be investing. As things stand now, the simple savings schemes do not cut it anymore.
http://codebetter.com/blogs/jeffrey.palermo/archive/2004/11/22/33047.aspx
This is posted as a reminder.
Back in December last year I wrote about upgrading my old laptop to Windows 7. It originally had Vista home premium on a AMD 64 bit processor. Then I upgraded to Vista 64 bit and my experience was somewhat limited as I could not get all the drivers working on it. My decision to upgrade to Win7 was mainly to overcome the bad Vista64 experience. Somehow with Vista64 bit I always felt as if I was on a test PC.
My initial experience with Win7 was fantastic. It almost found all the drivers. I managed to get the wifi and Internet working. And I set up VS2010 also on it and started coding up a my latest side project on it.
Alas, contrary to all the goo rjinhs I have been hearing about Win7, my laptop developed a random hang syndrome. I would work perfectly for a while and suddenly when I was using the scratch pad the cursor would stop responding. Then to see the whole computer has hung. Also, if the computer has gone in to power saving mode and the attempt to wake up, would also result in an unreponsive computer.
The problem became aggrevated when I installed InputDirector in slave mode to control the computer with my keyboard and mouse attached to my daily use laptop. Thinking it was InputDirector I got rid if the program on both my laptops (what’s the point of running the maste when there is no slave?). But the problem still persisted. I tried the route of elimination to try to figutlre out what is causing the problem, by uninstalling one program after another but so far I have had no luck. The random hang syndrome is still there. I have hardly had a full days use on it without it hanging on me.
The write part is the windows event logs also have nothing logged to point me towards what the issue could be. I ran memory diagnostics tools from Microsoft website thinking it is my memory, but the tests came out all right.
Now I moved my personal project also to my main laptop as I have lost quite a bit of work due to this problem.
The reliability of Windows 7 on my Acer has been pretty bad. I sincerely hope te issue is some hardware issue with my laptop. I am disspointed that I have not been experiencing the rave reviews that I have been reading up about Win7.
Scenario:
We are using a fancy box to present a form to the user to enter some data. Once this data is entered and the user submits the form, if the processing was successful, we want to show a message to the user and then close the fancybox (which is the form).
Code:
HTML
<a href="<%= ResolveUrl("~") %>RegForm" class="iFrameRegister" title="">Register</a>
Open the form:
$("a.iFrameRegister").fancybox({
‘frameWidth’: 400,
‘frameHeight’: 400
});
Close the form:
parent.$.fn.fancybox.close();
This seems to be a topic which has been floating around for a while. The main argument for this seems to be the plethora of smart phones and cheaper laptops. It seems, that the phones are getting smarter and more like computers. In fact today’s phones pack as much computing power as earlier generation computers which occupied large rooms.
Then there are the laptops and the new kid on the block ‘netbooks’. While a decade ago a laptop was an expensive piece of equipment that was the forte of CEO’s and travelling executives, nowadays they have become essential tools of almost all business executives and even high school students.
The most notable a difference between laptops and desktops, apart from the foam factor, was the price. Or more significantly the high price tag associated with laptop computers. But lately the prices of notebooks have become more closer to the prices of desktop computers of yesteryears. I remember, when I first bought my (desktop) computer, I paid around Rs. 80,000/-. But when I bought my first laptop, I paid less than that.
And compared with the hip-ness and the mobility of a laptop, coupled with free WiFi that seems to be available everywhere, or a 3G broadband connection, the desktop seems to be fast becoming extinct.. or is it?
On a recent poll over at LifeHacker.com, where they asked their readers to name their primary computer, desktops slightly edged out laptops. Personally, I too, after working for years exclusively on laptops, am now currently inclining more towards a desktop. So the desktops are going to be around for a while, it seems, or am I from an older generation?
Compared to the price of a laptop, a desktop is still pretty much cheaper. I think nowadays there is still a price difference of about 25%. But it is not what is pushing me towards the desktop. The flexibility of upgrading, that is driving me more towards the desktop.
For me, personally, it is a project to build myself the ultimate developer rig. I want to be able to tinker and milk the computer to my needs, add more hardware progressively and bring it to the level I want over time without making a significant improvement. It is a accepted norm that desktops can be made to perform better when compared to laptops.
Then the flexibility of upgrades is what is appealing to me. I have a pretty high spec in mind for my ultimate rig. But I don’t have the cash to invest in to it once. So I want a setup where I can build it over time, while still using the rig from the first build. I cant do that with a laptop, unless I have a lot of cash.
Thirdly, I got fed up of laptop keyboards, scratch pads and small screens. I found the solution for all three, by hooking a wireless keyboard and a mouse and a LCD display as the primary display and the laptop screen as the secondary screen. But after experiencing a dual monitor setup, I want to try out a triple monitor setup. And I would like all three monitors to be the same size. I know that I can probably achieve this with the help of some third party hardware device that can be hooked to the laptop, but I’d rather try that with a desktop and use my laptop for ‘mobile’ computing, when I need it out of the house or when I want to escape the environs of my home office and feel like working near the fountain, watching the fish!
That’s from a personal front. Another possible scenario that can emerge, by playing the same factors that were thought to cause the demise of the desktop could also be its savior. The ever powerful smart phones are increasingly reducing the need of lugging around a laptop. For example, I rarely carry my laptop around nowadays for meetings unless I have to do a presentation. Most things I would need to do on a laptop at a meeting, like retrieving an email or a document can be done on my iPhone. So the scenario that can evolve is that, smart phones may replace the laptops. And for homes, with the advent of media center PC’s, desktops may be the ideal devices sitting there with your movies and music and photos, serving them to different playback devices and constantly downloading new content from the Internet.
Well, as you can see from what I have been rambling all this time, I don’t think desktops are going to be gone anytime soon.
We finally moved. After a lot if coaxing and pressurizing we managed to get the house into a movable state. But the work was not complete and even to this date there are small finishing up tasks being done.
The move was hectic and was done in stages. First night it was just me and Lushi. Then a day later the kids came over. Stilk some kf out stuff are at Wattala. We will be getting them over the next couple of months. There are a still some more work that needs to be done, like getting the closets built in some rooms before we bring the stuff. But it was a good feeling to be here finally. The little bit of finishing touches are being done now and being here helps to get them done exactly the way we want with constant supervision.
The major thing that they have not done so far is my office room. Since there are people still working, they have been using it as their quarters. I am hoping to get them off of the place within the week and tart setting up my homebase there soon. I will be writing a seperate post on setting up a home office. I went through a lot of blogs about setting up offices and want to record my own experience.
It is a major convinience living here. Dinara’s school is just ten minutes away. Lushi’s office is also ten minutes away. All the malls and the offices that matter are also within ten or fifteen minutes away. Once this convinience sinks in, it will be very difficult to move back anywhere else.
Finally a big thank you to Lushi’s parents for all the trouble they went through in getting this place ready for the move.
Man I feel old. 2010 is already here and I can’t imagine a decade has gone by since the dawn of the millennium, which I remember pretty well.
One thing that doesn’t wait for you is time. And we need to make the time spent count. I am hoping to spend a couple of days in retrospect and figure out just that.
There are things that I know that would count. Mainly the family. During this decade I lost my father, got married and raised a family. And a lot of things are falling into place right now.
2010 would see if the new directions in my life would actually going to go somewhere. I think this is going to be a decade that would count a lot more! If last decade was about finding direction, this decade will be about reaching a destination.
Whoa 2010! I am looking forward to you!
I upgraded my old Acer Aspire laptop to Windows 7. This is the second upgrade it went through in probably a space of three months. Earlier I upgraded it from Vista 32-bit Home Premium to Vista 64-bit Ultimate.
So far this has done gone through any serious performance tests. I am still setting it up. Installing software and tools that I need to out it to any kind of effective use.
But I am going to put it through some tests pretty soon. I have hooked up my normal use lap top to a LCD monitor so it is currently acting more like a desktop now. So maybe it is time for me to start using this (I am blogging from the Win7 machine) more as the mobile computer. Only thing that prevents that is the pretty bad battery life this machine has got.
I always wanted to put this machine to effective use rather than just keeping it collecting dust as a backup machine. I think this still has a good two to three years of life left in this.
When I setup Vista 64-bit on this earlier I was going to use it to sharpen my RoR skills on it. I wanted to do something effective with RoR and was planning on using this as my non-MS development tools machine. But with me getting swamped with work, RoR was a non starter.
But with Min7, I also installed VS2010 Beta 2. So at least this time I will use this to test drive VS2010 and to start migrating some of the projects to VS2010. So hopefully, this time this machine will be used more frequently and will see me reaping performance out of it.
I need to vent some seriously annoyed steam off my head. I am as p***** as I can be with the people who are doing up our house. No wonder they never seem to be improving their quality of life. Those buggers cant figure out sh** if their lives depended on it!
They have no sense of time and no sense of a deadline what so ever. If I had a signed contract with a project timeline I would have sued them to their last penny. In the absence of such a legal document the best I can do is to beat the crap out of them. Wait, I don’t think I can do that, there are too many of them.
This is the third deadline they missed. What was initially estimated to take a month to do, now has spilled over to over two months and they are still not done. Damn!
Wow! Another year has gone by. Whatever happened to time? Doesn’t it always make us wonder.
But for me, I felt the year going by. The year 2009 had been a year of major changes. My life has taken a new path!
The year started a bit rocky for me. I was not seeing eye-to-eye with the owners of the company that I was working for. So the year started with me contemplating my future. It was clear that I was not going to have any future working there.
The good thing that came out of it was instead of looking for another job, me going into business for myself. I turned into a freelancer. While I was transitioning from being a monthly paid normal office worker to a uncertain and new territory of freelancing, my wife was expecting our son.
While all of this was going on, our son came into this world. That made us forget all our woes and enjoy his arrival. I think he truly brought in a new dimension to out lives. I stepped into the unchartered waters without much excitement or nervousness, initially. And I have to thank wifee for standing by me through all of that. She was brave to accept that I might have to go for sometime without a proper income or any income at all.
For me, things didn’t turn out that bad. First of all, a friend of mine came into my rescue by giving me a project. That kept me busy initially. And during the first month itself, I landed a gig with a LA web development company. And I am happy to say, 8 months and few projects later, I am still working for them. And we are exploring the possibilities of taking business to the next level.
Freelancing turned out to be better than I bargained for. Of course the initial couple of months, though I had an income, it wasn’t what I used to get in the job. That was mainly due to my erratic schedules and getting used to being my own boss slippages. But once I came to terms with my new life and the fact that no ones going to look over my shoulder to make me work, but it is the paycheck at the end of the month that will suffer, if I don’t out in solid work, I turned out pretty well.
Actually from about the third month of being a freelancer, I caught up with my salary and from the month after started to exceed it. That was the best thing and also took away my worries of financial stability. I have been earning much more than what I had earned in any job, for the past four months as a freelancer. The beauty of this is, if you have the capacity freelancing gives you the option to earn more. But if I was in a job, I would have had to wait for the annual reviews and all the other bullshit to get a raise. Even then, with the current economic condition,that was a far cry. With my last boss, it was definitely a non-starter.
And the other major thing is that we are going to be moving houses. We are moving to our own place and we are currently in the process of doing it up to our tastes and needs. And that gives me an opportunity to setup my ideal working environment. I have already designed the furniture and setup. Now it is just a matter of getting them done.
All in all, 2009 has been a good year. An year of changes, but looking back, it is an year that I am happy about. It has been an year of achievements. Looking forward to the house move and starting 2010 in a new house with a new lease of life!
We planned to move closer to the city when our daughter starts schooling, which is January 2010. We evaluated several plans and finally decided to move into our own home in Colombo 5. That house was given on rent, but we decided the benefits of living in the city will out weigh the rent income benefit.
We decided to do a few renovations and to give the house a bit of a face-lift before we moved there. We decided it would be easier to do the modifications before we moved so we don’t have to go through the hassle of living in a construction site.
We gave our tenant notice to leave but he overstayed by a month until he found a suitable home for himself. Then we started the renovations, with the initial plan of moving there by the beginning of December. And I was determined to put the project management best practices that I apply daily in my work to the construction and keep it within the plan and the budget.
The first thing that went off the window was the budget. When you start building, you cant always keep to the original budget. While some of the estimates given to us were way inaccurate, we also overspent on some things. It just happens that when you shop for stuff, you always end up seeing things that are far more expensive and you end up buying them.
For example, we are adding a new room to the house. First we weren’t sure if we were going to go ahead with this plan. Then our architect convinced us that it was a good plan. Building the walls of the room was the easiest thing. But getting finishes for it, was another story all together. Our bathroom is going to end up costing three times the initial estimate. Then again, we are going to build only once and we want to build it up to the standard we want.
Then came the time lines. As it turned out, the contractors estimates were etched in rubber. They kept stretching. First he would tell us that he’s finish something in three days. Then on the end of the second day he’s tell us that he needs another three days. Then at the middle of those second three days, he says he lost two days of work due to rain. Man, software is far more easy to manage.
To be fair by him, the weather didn’t exactly go our way either. We had some of the highest rainfalls to hit Colombo during this time. So he and his crew actually did lost a few days of work (about 20 man-days all in all so far).
The third issue was coordinating the different contractors. We were working with separate contractors for the masonry, carpentry, electrical wiring and aluminum excursions. As all of them were independent contractors, coordinating their schedules were a bit of a nightmare. Made me realize how better I am in committing and keeping my commitments to my clients as a freelancer.
So on the brink of the month of December, I am there at the site trying to supervise the work. But our chances of moving during the first week of December are pretty bleak. Now I would be happy if we can move within the month of December.
So the lessons learned:
- When building a house, either go with an open but realistic budget or be ready to not to have the dream home. The dream home, costs money, lots of it. I am somewhere in between. My theory was things that are hard to change/remodel, go with the stuff that your heart tells you to get. For things that can be changed without a fuss later, go with the stuff that suits your budget.
- Get professional advice on estimates. Our contractors are trades people, not engineers. So their estimates change, and they don’t feel bad about it. They are used to that. They don’t feel bad when they cant meet a deadline. On the other hand for me, as an IT contractor, that is one of the hardest things to do.
- Have some buffer. We lost our buffer time when we allowed our tenant to over-stay.
Finally, wish for loads of luck. So that you’d find the things fast. We scouted for days sometimes to get the things we wanted. Some examples were bathroom fittings,tiles and light fixtures. After weeks of scouting we still didn’t get the things we had in our minds. We settled for the next best things, at a higher cost than anticipated.
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- Wesak, Wesak, Wesak!!
