Reazors

Off to another Looooong Trip

Reazors — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 06:43:00 GMT

I have a train to catch in another 3 hours, I am off to Bangalore and then to Hyderabad at night from there.

The past couple of days has become sooo hectic that blogging has become a luxury for me.Every time I open TheSpoke site, some thing or the other comes up and takes away my time.

Lets atleast hope that I would be able to start posting regularly once I am back from this Trip.

Talking about this trip, its the longest that I have ever had with in the country.
As of now its been fixed for 10 Days and 4 different cities, but it could turn worse.

I mean there are a few places that could be added and the trip could extend to 20 Days.

The Places that I would be visiting
Bangalore
Hyderabad, and the Microsoft IDC
Vijaywada
Mangalore

and I might also go to Cochin and Munnar.

Hope to tell you guys more once I am back from the thing. ;-)

Till then Keep Clicking

I am off to my First Project Review

Reazors — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 07:05:00 GMT

Well I am about to hit the sack now, but in a in about 8 hours I have my First Project Review at College.

I hope it goes on well.

And By The Way, I am doing the Same Project for the Imagine Cup SDC. ;-) and My Project has got selected for Round 2 of the National Competiton.

Once I come back form College, I will start posting "History".

Finally.. Awake from a deeeeep Slumber

Reazors — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 17:24:00 GMT

Hi everyone.

Man.. its been a long long time.
December 8th was my last post, and its been more than 2 months since then.

Well here I am again and ready to start rocking agian and hope to trouble all of you with more of my long posts ;-)

I was pretty busy these days and thats the reason Y i was unable to blog(I know its the usual excuse, but else can I say ;-))

Now that I am back , I plan to SPAM my blog with all that had happened since the 9th of Dec(thats when I went to see Billy G (live at Bangalore) till today(I just returned from a long and amazing Road Trip).

So Stay tuned Gusy

Microsoft Student Project Program : Registration

Reazors — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 07:32:00 GMT

Hi EveryBody,

Sorry for the Delayed Post.

The Registrations for Microsoft Academic Project Program had opened about a month ago and registrations are still on.

You can Click on the Following Link for more information and also download the Application Form.

Http://msapp.net

Bill Gates in India

Reazors — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 07:24:00 GMT

Bill Gates arrived in India yesterday on a 4 day Visit.
His tour started off with a meeting with Minister for Information Technology Mr. Dayanidhi Maran and disscussions on setting up a E-Governance Unit in Dehli.

But The Event that I have been waiting for the past 2 months is the VS Launch at Bangalore on the 9th.

Me and a few of my Studnet Champs from Chennai have made reservations on tonight's train to Bangalore and we all very eager and excited about the trip.

I am feeling too Sleepy now,
Once I return from Bangalore I will post on my trip sooon.

Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire

Reazors — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 07:25:00 GMT

I have got to tell you, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, is by far the BEST of the 4 movies of HP so far,

Though my University Exams are going on , my and my 2 cousins just could not resisit watching the movie , and we couldn't wait till the 8th of December for my Exams to get over, so on wednesday thanks to E-Bookings my cousin and I were able to get tickets for the Noon Show at Sathyam , one of the largest Cine Halls in the City.

The Graphics were simply astounding that me and my cousin(Dr. Nausheer) were still talking about it over Dinner.

I really have no words to say about the Movie, the Cinematography was simply the best in the world.

I really dont want to spoil your movie watching experiance by talking about the movie righ now, GUYS you have to go watch it in the theatres.

And to sign this off, I really hope it wins an OSCAR this year

Bill Gates is comming to India

Reazors — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:22:00 GMT

Well most of you guys might already know this, but Bill Gates in expected in India on the 9th of December for the VS Launch.

A lot of student champs here are real excited about the event, and hope to attend the Launch in Bangalore.

OK, but first to my regular readers, I was out of bloggin for some time, coz my university exams are comming. They are infact starting Tomorrow.
I just thought that I will write a Blog before I Slog. :-).

Immediately after the exmas, I am leaving for Bangalore, thats where they have the VS Launch and then, come back to Chennai for the Chennai Launch which is on the 15th and 16th of December.

Then I am off to SriLanka, to a short visit( 1 day only) and then am going to Saudi Arabia for about 15days. Need to get my Visa Re-newed.

After that I hope to get back to Chennai and start with a new semester of Microsoft activities, and this time we guys plan to make it bigger then last semester.

Feeling Sleepy right now, so better hit the sack, and then start early for the exams.

Wish me Luck ;-)

Interenship with Microsoft

Reazors — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 18:45:00 GMT

I just got a mail from the local ADE here in India, they wanted an intern for about 6 to 8 months, esp to take care of the Student Community and also help out with the Imagine Cup, ( coz this year we are having it here in India).

But Unfortunately, :(,

My Univ Exams are about to begin in a few weeks and they want a person who could take up the assignment right immediately.
:(

Well anyways, I hope to get another opprtunity soon.

An Entry after a Week

Reazors — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 18:43:00 GMT

Its been quite some time since I last blogged on the Spoke.( almost a whole week now)

Classes at College are over, and all of us are getting geared for our University Examinations that start on the 7th of November and go all the way up to the 8th of December.

Guess my numbers on the spoke will be reducing :D

Microsoft TeckTalk : The Real Deal

Reazors — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 23:32:00 GMT

Sunday 9th October :

After all the hard work in the last few days, it was good to see a huge crowd at the venue, I mean the entire hall was full of people and my entire team was glad that we were able to pull it off.

The day started with Kevin D'Souza speaking on WinCE and anout Building Speech Enabled Applications. The Audiance just loved it. A lot of them it seemes had plans to work on some embedded project for their Final Year and this was just the session that they needed to get going.

Anand from Polaris just arrived on time for his session on VB.NET on VS 2005. He spoke about the refactory and how programming is made easier with the new platform.
By the end of Anand's session the crowd really wanted to get their hands on the BETA of VS2005.

Then we had a long break for Lunch. The food , a wide variety of Indian cusine from the 3star Hotel. I later found out from people that The Luch Session was the best of the day :-) ;-).

After Lunch, I gave a session on ASP.NET 2.0 and building Zero Code Websites. The crowd was really amazed, I could see the people gasping when they saw infront of them an entire website, with data access, data updation and User Authentication being built without a single line of code.

Once that was over, it was time for the Quiz Finals. In my book, I think that the quiz was the best event of the day, It was not only a battle for the 4 teams , but it also kept the Audiance involved. The Audiance had a lot of opportunities to win Windows Extreme Challenge Packs, which included WinXp with SP2 and Platform SDK.

In the end it was a fun-filled event, with a lot of technology involved.

Though we had a few problem while setting up this event, in the end , I am happy that the champs where there to pull it off. It was a great learning experiance for all of us, and we hope that next time it will be even better

Microsoft TeckTalk: Behind the Scenes

Reazors — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 13:54:00 GMT

It was Sunday 2nd October when I had called in all the Student Champs for an Emergency meeting.
Being the only Student Ambassador in Chennai, I decided that we all do some thing big.
I had choose a nice place where we guys could meet over lunch. About 8 champs turned up for the meeting.

Once I told the guys about the plan I had, all of them, were really enthusiactic about it and really wanted to chip in with the preparation of the event.
I was glad that there was support for this and we set out with the arrangements.

Our discussion kept dragging for more than 1.5 hours and had completly forgotten about Lunch. The waiter then came and reminded us that we will have to order some thing or leave the palce.
Once the Food was ordered it was back to planning.We split ourselves into 4 teams, 1 for Hall Management with Aswin in charge another for Registration , a third for Finance Management with Bhasker incharge and a third for Advertising and Marketing with Sumudu.

We finalized the date as 9th October 2005. That was toooo close. I mean we just had hardly 6 days to prepare for the whole show right from Scratch.

Everyone set out to work immediately, though being a Sunday a few of the guys went out to look for the venue and finally the next day we zeroed on to Hotel Shan Royal @ Koyembedu.Nice place, but it involved a lot of bargarning and stuff and we finally made a deal for 150Rs($3.4) per head.

In the mean time I was running around for speakers, Kevin had confirmed that he will be there, but the others.........
I tried calling in all the DEs(Developer Evangelists)Jani, Gaurav, Deepak, Vineeth e.t.c, but all of them were busy, they were infact scheduled to leave for Srilanka for TechEd 2005, so those guys were not able to malke it. I even tried the other ADEs from east(Pratiba) and west(Tejas), but even they were tight with other stuff on hands.
Things were starting to get a bit desparate over hereCoz I really wanted this event to be a huge hit.

The Sumudu and Hebron were in full swings, going places, getting things done like, banners, posters sponsor hunting and stuff like that. Meanwhile Bhasker was spamming all the top companies in Chennai asking them to support us in this event.He fianlly managed to get a few companies, but no Financial Help.
Everyday the 3 of us i.e Myself, Sumudu and Hebron used to meet with each other, working out the stuff and having a quick check on the Status of all thats been done.Since it was a UG kind of event Microsoft was ready to sponsor only about 15,000/-($340) and the rest we decided to collect from the participants, coz the total estimate was about 40,000/-($900).

I could see all the other arrangements comming along fine, but still no speakers, So it was decided that Kevin and I were going to be the only speakers for the day and that we would have to do 2 sessions each.It was also decided that we have a quiz competition at the end so that we could wile away some time ;-).

Just the day before the event I was able to contact Anand, he is the .NET lead in Polaris and was just back from the MVP Summit in the US. He readily agreed to deliver a session, ....man that just relieved some pressure off of us.

We had a Student Champ meeting at the Microsoft office in the evening just to have a last minute discussion and assignment of roles for the day. We went back home, that night hoping that tomorrow everything will go right, coz most of us had really worked hard on this and were sure that the event would be a grand success.

Microsoft TeckTalk , October 2005

Reazors — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 04:10:00 GMT

Hi there every one

Microsoft and Chennai .NET User Group Student is conducting a series of Technical seminars on Technologies that will re-define the future.

Also Microsoft will be Launching its Academic Projects Program what will allow Studnets from Any Department to do their Projects( Mini Projects also) with Microsoft.

The Seminars will be on the latest topics like Windows Embedded, ASP.NET 2.0, Building Speeech Enabled Applications and many more.

We are also giving away Windows XP with SP2 and Windows XP Platform SDK, that will allow you to access the APIs of the Operating System itself. SO don't miss this opportunity

Venue : Hotel Shaan Royal, Near Koyembedu Roundtana,
Date : 9th October 2005
Time : 9:30 am
Registration Fees : Rs 100/- ( Lunch Included)
Contact Mohamed Reza 9841212128 for more details.

I am now a Microsoft Student Ambassador

Reazors — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 02:23:00 GMT

Hi guys

I was formally made a Microsoft Student Ambassador for Chennai 3 days ago @ Bangalore.

It was a pretty big event on that day with Joe Wilson, Group Manager, Microsoft, Redmond was there to talk to the Studnets.

I got to meet a lot of other Student Champs from Bangalore

Sounds like I am bragging too Much about it :-) ;-)

My Bangalore Trip: The Real Deal

Reazors — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 00:28:00 GMT

We arrived early in the morning at about 5:30 and got out the the station to find an auto, we easily got one to take us to a Motel near-by.
Then I suddenly remembered, weren't the Transport Unions on Strike today, on questioning the driver, I found out that they were going on Strike form 6:00am, so we guys were just lucky.

We found a nice little place just enough for the 3 of us. After breakfast it was off to the Microsoft Office @ Prestige Talk, we had Kevin's car come and pick us up from the Railway Station.

Once at office we spoke to kevin for a few minutes, discussing about an event that we guys are planning on the 10th of October.

Anyways after that since Kevin had to leave for a meeting,we thought that we will go and check out M.G Road and Brigade Road, now these are the 2 central places in the City were most of the Buzz happenes.
We came out of the office and were wondering how to get there, coz there wasn't a single vehicle in sight.We tried hailing a few vehicles, but no response.
It was really crazy, a different City without the Local Transport System running, we guys did not have any idea on what we could do.We then approached a Police officer and asked him for some directions, he pointed out that these places are really close by and that we could actually walk over.

We guys had a nice time there, enjoyed ourselves, had Lunch @ KFC, its been a pretty long time, coz there is not KFC in Chennai so we don't have that Luxury. Then went to Coffee Day and had some thing to Drink and we also managed to do a video shoot of out trip to Bangalore and it came out really cool.

After that it was Back to the Office, where we had Kevin's Car take us to our motel where we freshned up and then left for the Hotel Grand Ashok.
We had actually arrived a little early and none of the other Champs from Bangalore had actually come there. So we decided that we guys go ahead and check out the Faculty event that is actually going on. It was pretty good, with Pratiba(ADE, from Hyderabad) speaking about how Faculty and Microsoft can acually work together.

After that the Student event started,
It simply outstanding. I mena, these guys are really enthusiactic about what they do as Student Champs. The passion that these guys have is no way near the interest that Student Champs in Chennai have.
Those guys had a lot of fun activites lined up for the Day and they went about it really well.

And then some thing great happened, I was fomally made a Microsoft Student Ambassador.

After that it was dinner where I got to network with a lot of people and we guys made a few plans for the future, hoping that we guys can work together and build a stronger community.

After dinner it was time to head back to the Train Station and we again used our Savior for the Day, Kevin's Car, with out which we guys would have been stranded on the fateful day

We guys were soo tired that the moment we got into the Train,we guys fell asleep only to wake up @ Chennai.

The entire trip was a great experiance for all of us. It really boosted the interest of Hebron and Sumudu to do more.For me personally it was a good opportunity to meet Student Partner form bangalore, coz we guys had been in touch over the Internet and it was great to meet in person.

Also it gave me an idea of how to go about with the Student Champ Community here in Chennai and how we could get more people to participate in our activities

My Bangalore Trip : Prelogue

Reazors — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 01:17:00 GMT

As posted yesterday I am all set to go to bangalore for the Joe Wilson event.

I kind of never had an idea that I would post this, but I thought that it would be better if I did.

3 of us, Myself, Hebron & Sumudu have decided that we would be travelling. The others well, they weren't that sure about it. So we decided that there was no use waiting for them.

Yesterday I found out that all the trains to Bangalore are running Full and tat there was no possibility of getting seats to the place.

Fortunately there is a Scheme with the Indian Railways called the TATKAL which allows people to get confirmed seats on an extra payment of Rupees 150/- (3$)perr head.
Since Microsoft was Paying it wasn't a Big Deal.

I went to the Booking office only to find out that there was a huge queue waiting for the tickets,
I prepared myself for the long wait , knowing that in India, you will have to wait for anything and everything that you want.

But Thankfully Hebron came there on my request to give me company, and time just went by. Though it was a long wait for 45minutes.

We just managed to get the tickets 3 minutes before the Sytems Shutdown Automatically...

I really don't know Y the railways do this, but its the policy of the railways to start sharply @ 8 am and close @ 8pm.

Now the tickets I bought were only for the journey from Chennai, I had to buy the return ticket the next day(TATKAL policy)you can only buy tickets in TATKAL the day before the Journey.

I had to return Today to buy the return ticket.I arrived there @ 11:30 am, under the assumption that it will be empty, coz its peak Office Hours.BUT I was Wrong.
The place was more crowded than last night.

There was not other way out of this, but to wait.The Hot Sun outside, and high level of humidity made my wait even more punishing.
The clock seemed to move very slowly. I kept looking at it and it seemed to stand still for a very long time, minutes seemed like hours.
I was really begining to get annoyed with the Entire system and stuff.

Finally after 2 hours I managed to get the Tickets andcome out of the torture chamber.

On the way back I purchased 2 shirts for the Trip tomorrow ;-), I kind of did not want to use the Clothes that I already had on me.

If this is what happened before the Trip, I really don't know what will happen during the Trip, coz all PUBLIC Transports Systems are on a Strike tomorrow and we don't know how we will manage the travel around.