Shell Replacement!

Another day gone and all I have done is… actually I did a lot today. I managed to restart my system almost three to four times, isn’t that great. I restarted the system twice in hope of patching up the “uxtheme.dll” to allow myself to be able to install and use third party themes. I did that successfully but en the eng I ended up installing “Vista Inspirat”.

Inspirat is actually quite cool. It provides me with all the visual effects I could possibly ask for and without the slow performance as “Windows Blinds” and other shell replacement things do and to top it all it’s free and doesn’t cause any problems except for ruining the Alt+Tab window. But it might be because I had “Windows Alt+Tab replacement installed before Inspirat pack and seems like it continued in the Inspirat and is not compatible. Anyway it’s not a big deal to have a slightly crippled Alt+Tab application, I could live with that.

It has made my Taskbar translucent and even has a Mac like “Dock”. But I don’t think I’m going to use the dock anytime soon. Simply put I love the task bar too much to put it away. Task bar to the rescue again, use “Win”+Tab and happy switching…

I had planned on getting myself an extra monitor but unfortunately I forgot to look for the monitor. Anyway that can be done any day.

In the meeting with the boss today we went over the feature enhancements we are supposed to do in the next release and from the look of it, it doesn’t seem like lot of work to me. Some import export business, some configuration changes and some UI elements being redesigned. The problem would be to maintain the interoperability between versions of Office and we will have to look for a way to do it.

Apart from the normal work I usually do (nothing as of now) I also tried on the competitor’s product and I must say that in spite of the other guy offering more variety (basically twice, each type further split into two sub parts and possible one or two more features) it’s a real put off because although it is supposed to be an add-in it doesn’t function like one. It maintains its own files and doesn’t use the container provided and used by the host. If that’s not lame I don’t know what is.

On the home front it’s only two more days to go (including today) till I leave the comfort of the A/C room provided by the company for my own rented apartment. I and Goli are going to stay in the flat. The flat isn’t too far from the office and I don’t really like it. I used to love it in Bangalore when every day I had to drive 8-10 KM to get to office (did I mention that I used to go against the traffic, so I didn’t have to face the jams and traffic problems, both ways!). Here I won’t get the time of place to drive out. But I think on Saturdays and Sundays I’ll venture out and will try not to lose out on the mileage I had accumulated over time in Bangalore (30+ KM per day, given the fact that my office run was barely 18 KM per day).

That’s all for now and I’m going to sleep now. Good night!

The day of upgrades (Software!)

Wow, what a day! Today I got Office 2007 on my systems (Yippee). Anyway as always I wasted no time configuring the whole thing. Today was a brilliant day for my systems. I got Visual Studio 2003, a Source tracker and configuration management client also. The only thing missing was the lack of VS 2005. I can live with that!

By the way I finally got the Vehicle Entry Pass (VEF) and now I won’t need to get a temporary pass issued every day. I also got the Mobile Connection from Airtel activated.

I must say that the visual interface is really smooth and addictive. I seriously don’t feel like going back to the plain old “Menu” based outdated interfaces. Though some people might say that it takes up lot of real state on the screen but at the same time it eliminated the need of this pesky toolbars and the need to constantly hide/unhide them and reconfigure them to get that perfect customized look. This “Ribbon” interface is smooth, sexy and fluid and I really love it. More so it presents you a clear picture of what options are available at a glance instead of going down the list of long menu in order to find the menu item being searched for.

Other than this small thing I discovered the roof today and it seriously is better than the Third floor that I used to go to. It also houses the rooms for employees in case they are staying overnight or to sleep in during the day time.

I also sent out photographs of my desktop and laptop across to my old company and by got Vammu was impressed.

Anyway tomorrow I’m going to search for another monitor to put in my computer and configure it with dual monitors. That’s going to be some sight… let’s just hope I am able to find an unused monitor.

Documentation and Improvements in life.

Sometimes the only thing left to do in the world is read and read and read some more. That’s exactly what happened today. I read through some 4+ documents of SCORM detailing how and why LMS works.

As of now I am kind of through with the concepts and hope I will be able to carry out the tasks to which I get assigned (as if I ever had a doubt). All this reading was just for a small part of the business, rest of it still what I love most. COM add-in most probably, it could also be something else but whatever it is it’s based on windows and Office. I don’t think I’m eve going to have any problems with Windows based programming anytime soon. As of now I might not be well aware of XAML and WPF based programming but once I get hold of Visual Studio’s next version and some tutorials and Vista I’ll be on my way.

Coming back to today I finally got the confirmation of Bank Account’s activation and Airtel’s connection. It would be activated tomorrow and finally I’ll be free from Hutch’s roaming charges. Though I still don’t know what am I going to do with the Hutch connection?

Other than the small improvements in the life’s progress the biggest one was that I got the papers of the agreement about the house and I’m going to get the bills tomorrow for the brokerage charges. Hopefully I’ll get that reimbursed and recover that money. Anyway I have to get the Air-fare and courier charges reimbursed and I think I’m going to do all at the same time.

With life going on as usual and as far as I can see I don’t see any potential problems or hiccups right now. Going to shift in the new home next month and with Goli being my flat-mate thing are looking up. At least I’ll have someone I can talk to at length about anything under the sun, I’ll have a long time friend with me. Life is looking up.

I'm finally going to "C"

Well I thought it was all over for me when there was a probability of me getting pushed into the Cold World of ColdFusion. Today my PM asked me whether I’m ready to take on some work and I said I would want to work in C/C++ and as luck would have it I got into the only project with C/C++ in the whole team. It is an Office add-in and hope I’ll get to work with what I’ve always wanted.

The team on this project is quite small, only 6 members and there’s going to be a lot of slogging to do (yahoo…). What better could have happened?

I’m sure that lot of people would have wanted out of this kind of project and work but not me. I don’t have anything else and all I have ever wanted to do was get to the core and code. I hope this would be great experience and I would get to shape at least one product which people would be use. WOW!

Another important thing, I finally got my Desktop and my ID card. Now I won’t have to worry about asking the guard on duty every time I want to go out or come back from canteen.

Getting around Delhi...

Well the weekend has passed and here I am, sitting in the guest house. During this weekend I’ve been to my local guardian’s house, been to the IIT and been to almost all over Delhi and lot of places in Noida. Last day has been real hectic with me going all over and at the same time trying to find myself a house. I’ve finally succeeded in the quest of the house and hopefully by tomorrow night I’ll have the agreement ready.

The best part of the quest was the landlord we got. They are an elderly couple and ex army man. So it means we won’t have to deal with the normal “blah-blah” of the normal landlords.

Anyways tomorrow I’ll be getting the ID card so I’ll be able to get a post paid mobile connection and finally I’ll be connected to the world. As of now all the connectivity I have is limited to getting and making “missed” calls. How funny is that? Having a post paid connection and not being able to make any calls just because you are in roaming. Ha ha.

With the Monday dawning its again back to work and I still have no idea what am I supposed to be doing.

The weekend started with me calling up my brother and finding out that he got the bike all right and is in IIT. He came over by around 1230. We left him in the mall and went house hunting (by we I mean me and Goli). Anyway after all the hustle and bustle of finding the home I dropped Goli and as we didn’t have another helmet my bro had to go till IIT in a cab. Yesterday was my first time on the DND flyway and I did my first mistake there. Got into the car lane and then had to track back till the bike entry point. But once on the flyway it was no stops. Went till 104 and would have gone a bit further if it was not for the ford in front of me and some other cars. The trip to IIT from there was rather uneventful as I had to find out my way amidst all the newly constructed flyovers.

Today I had my yet another first tryst with the “Dhaula Kuan” circle. It sure has changed and in a brilliant way. Gone are the days of long traffic jams and delays. Not its free flowing traffic. Way to go!

My room mate is still absconding and I have a feeling that he wont be back till tomorrow morning so it’s a good night for me… well I don’t have to go out every time I want to, I can be in the room all the time and be ok with it.

The world suddenly feels so cold!

I was supposed to be introduced and given an overview of the work going on in the team today. The anticipation was long and I resisted the urge even to go for short walk around the building lest my PM comes in with the news to go and meet the people.

The time wasn’t there till almost lunch time. He came by and introduced me to my neighbor. We started about the product as it exists today and the basic overview and how everything fits around and what the product actually is.

Later today I was introduced to another product (rather another component). As luck would have it it’s a web based components (as is the previous one) and currently the person introducing me to the component asked me to get familiar with “ColdFusion”. Now this ColdFusion is a server side scripted and tagged language. It’s got good enough database connectivity. But all in all it still is a scripted language and the syntax as I know it is archaic and unique to it.

Suddenly the world seems cold and fused tighter!!!

Anyways the time after office was good. I downloaded DAP and will download Visual Studio express editions for C# and Web Development and I will continue my .NET quest and will try to learn WPF and other technologies which have come out. My stint in Wipro left me high and dry on these fronts and I will not let any other work come in the way of my development.

I also had my dinner in the office itself and I must say its really good.

Its almost 11:30 PM and I’m still waiting for a call from bro about the delivery of the bike. Hope he gets it. Its really been a long time now.