Recently, I saw a cool demo on the "Round Table" device...Boy, is it neat or what! "Microsoft Office Roundtable" in my opinion is a totally new meeting experience with a rich set of unique features. This baby can detect & display the active speaker at any instant. Using six cameras, it stitches together different (360 deg) views & displays a panorama view of the conference participants at the remote end.  Imagine how a typical conference could be now ... and compare that with the traditional cumbersome Video-Tele Conferencing (VTC) where I would have to struggle to be "in the view" ! ['course the flip side is that now I can only hide under the table ;)]

Jeff Raikes said "you can record meetings, you can have synchronized views of the speakers or data, which also means that then if you miss the meeting you can attend after the meeting.

And one of the things that we've learned from our research is that it's possible to view the meeting in about half the time just by using good compression of the normal pauses in human speech, which, of course, leads to the great paradox: if you can review the meeting in half the time after the meeting, who wants to go to the meeting in the first place?"

The round table has the potential to change the way you and I collaborate in the future. Having said that, now the question is, how soon will it make to yours and my conference rooms???

So, when I joined for my internship there were two things I was super-excited about.

1. Write code [or rather to see if I can live upto the challenge of designing & writing code at MS] &

2. Get to go to Bill Gates's house. Today this happened.

So about 200 of us (graduating interns) set off in buses at around 5.45 pm. We stopped at a church near Bill's house for some security check. We were told ahead of time not to carry anything except keys & ids. The security check was to ensure that we checked in any electronics/weapons/forbidden material with them if we carried any. We changed buses there and went on this winding road uphill in the middle of what seemed like a jungle. Narrow road on which only a single bus could pass at a time. We disembarked and took a long flight of stairs down to get into the yard at Bill's house where we were to spend the rest of the evening. Yes, the house appeared big [though most of it was probably underground from where we looked] and the yard was big. The view was awesome with lake washington around & trees all over. Also worth mentioning is the little beach [artificially made close to the lake shore by the house] and a rumor floating that the beach sand was actually imported from hawaii. Interns seemed quite happy with the food & wine, I wasn't much of an eater/drinker.

I was chatting with some interns when one of them whispered "he is here" and I asked if Bill Gates was really there. A small group of interns had already surrounded him and in a few minutes, the entire intern group was standing around Bill. ...First few seconds of sheer silence and Bill just looking at all of us. It was one of those moments, I guess everybody felt the same way. Just quiet watching Bill, mesmerized, filled with awe. Then there were smiles and polite comments about "Big yard", "nice house", "thanks for the party" from some interns. After about what seemed like ~7min people started asking questions. Later in the evening Bill gave a small talk and stood around to answer interns' questions till the end of the party. A couple of VPs were there through out walking through the intern groups & making conversations. Soft music was playing throughout - you could hear it in the same low volume by the dock, in the yard, by the beach and by the little pool.

The party got over at 9.00, I came back to office and thought to myself "This place looks a little different from there. Just a wee bit"

Oh, my internship is so worth it thanks to today evening. Wow, its not the wine that's keeping me high :)

Having understood some of the ideas & the vision behind WinFS (and also having worked on WinFS for 11 months during my first stint at Microsoft), I wish it was otherwise, but for now it looks like WinFS as a product by itself is not shipping.

Read http://blogs.msdn.com/winfs/archive/2006/06/23/644706.aspx for details.

From http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/jun06/06-15CorpNewsPR.mspx:

Working full time at Microsoft through June 2008, Gates then will continue as chairman and advisor while increasing Foundation efforts; Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie to assume expanded roles.

Responding to Anand's tag. Anand your quota of tagging me is done for this year

1.Grab the book nearest to you, turn on page 18 and find line 4.
.... build robust mobile applications

2. Stretch your left arm as far as you can
Have been stretching both arms all day. Once again doesn't hurt. [Who come up with these questions?]

3. What is the last thing you watched on TV?
Can't recall, watched TV about an year ago.

4.Without looking, guess what time it is?
~5:45 pm

5. Now look at the clock, what is the actual time?
5:50 PM.

6. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?
The guy next to me typing away

7. When did you last step outside? What were you doing?
Few minutes ago. Got myself a drink.

8. Before you started this survey, what did you look at?
Roshan's blog.

9. What are you wearing?
IU T-shirt & khakhis.

10. Did you dream last night?
Yes.

11. When did you last laugh?
Can't remember. Not today. Yesterday, may be. I remember laughing at Anil's PJs. Don't ask me which one.

12. What is on the walls of the room you are in?
Nothing, Drab!

13. Seen anything weird lately?
Yes, 1st 10 min of a malayalam movie yesterday - some "Wanted" or something. This man speaks hindi in a very funny accent "Desh kee aghandathaa aurr ekthaa". Also the dream last night.

14. What do you think of this quiz?
Silly.

15. What is the last film you saw?
Fanaa

16. If you became a multimillionaire overnight, what would you buy?
Phew! Its a long list. Could be a separate blog entry

17. Tell me something about you that I dunno.
Mmm, I am nervous to speak before a crowd.

18. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?
Do something in the direction of stopping wars, perhaps erase memories of past wars & different religions?

19. Do you like to dance?
Absolutely. I love it.

20. George Bush.
Funny to see everybody around here have an opinion on this. I don't, yet.

21. Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?
Can't imagine

22. Imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?
Can't imagine

23. Would you ever consider living abroad?
Am living now

24. What do you want GOD to say to you when you reach the pearly gates?
Miss Poooja, wee (I) missed you.

25. 4 people who must also do this meme in their journal.

Responding to Quills' tag

The task: Name 10 of life's simple pleasures that you like the most and then pick 10 people to do the same (optional). Try to be original and creative and not use the things someone else has already used.

 Oh well, lets see if I can come up with 10. These are in random order.

1. Solving a riddle/puzzle. Ah the satisfaction of cracking one of those.
2. Talking – I could go on and on and on…
3. Traveling -  be it a slow leisure trip, or an unplanned backpack trip, I enjoy seeing new places, new terrains and new people
4. Meeting up family & friends
5. Buying electronics – absolute pleasure to get some of those.
6. Spa – Love the slow, long therapeutic/rejuvenating massages. Yeah 5 & 6 explain where all my money goes
7. Games – word games, board games, strategy games, unreal tournament [I suck at it, but the pleasure stays], ultimate Frisbee, badminton, squash, throwball. And seven tiles for old times sake.
8. Eating & sleeping – Never valued these few years ago. Now you could blackmail me for these
9. Biking – recently restored pleasure
10. Software– design & coding. Sometimes it is extreme pleasure and other times it is extreme pain.

Na, I can't think of anybody who will be happy to be tagged (or am I wrong?). Will leave this empty for now.

I figured I was really bad with directions & maps a couple of years ago. To be precise when I started my undergrad. That is precisely when I started traveling on my own.  By bad I mean not as good as an average Joe, really bad. And I think I think I know the reasons. Here’s a short, quick list

1. I am a girl
2. I am from India
3. And most importantly, May be I just never did anything on my own that required me to think in terms of directions. Or like some would say I don’t have the knack for it – hardwired or otherwise

Before the points above send out the wrong vibes, I will elaborate them to clarify what I mean.

1. In our family when I was growing up the women never went to places by themselves. They didn’t drive, navigate or work with maps. This is what the men did [when needed, if at all]. Either the father, brother, cousin, uncle or chauffer – all men. I grew up oblivious of what was north, south, east and west. Well that is only partly true. My mother followed some vaastu shastra and so the beds faced north south and the entrance was east or west I forget, etc. So when we had visitors and they asked about west/south we could immediately point it out in our house and then they could decipher which direction to face for their prayer and stuff. However, if I was driven to some place and asked to find my own way back I am sure I would have made more mistakes than anybody else in my place.
2. In India we rarely talk in terms of NSEW directions. If you ask for directions in India you will hear something like this: “Go straight, when you reach the junction take a left, then take the first right, then go straight for 2 kms and you will see a temple. Take the road behind the temple and ….When you get there you can ask somebody”. And then you would walk a little and ask somebody again for directions. This is not the case when you are walking only, it’s the same for people who are driving. In the US, I initially found it quite difficult to follow directions. If you ask for directions you are likely to hear “Go north 2 blocks, then east on <abc> St…” or “Oh, it is in the far South end along <xyz> Ave” or they will point it out in a map saying where you are and where the destination is. And ofcourse this is for people walking. If you are driving, you carry your own map/directions and if you get stuck your best bet is to stop at a gas station and maybe ask somebody in the store there. Actually, you carry a map whether you are driving/walking or riding a bike. People here grow with this around them, holding and working out maps all their life.
3. Nothing much to say here. May be it is a good thing that I didn’t become an architect or anybody who worked with directions, projection, proportion, dimensions & space. I understand better why I found my engineering drawing lessons so un-intuitive despite a lot of help from this man.

Finding your office room at Microsoft can be a challenge in the first few days. And this is from a returning employee. [I told you I am bad.] I bought a bike recently and have been biking around some of the trails around where I stay. I stay in Kirkland and didn’t realize that I had an amazing neighbourhood until I biked in a random direction last weekend feeling the breeze and the lingering fragrance of flowers after a light downpour. I saw some huge houses, i.e. small houses in huge areas, massive yards with thick blades of grass all over. It was beautiful. And I tried hard to recall the last time I was in a similar situation. Just looking around and looking up at the sky and smiling to myself. Saw a woman riding a horse [I stopped biking when I saw the horse, it was big. Yeah I was intimidated and she politely came close and said “don’t be afraid, he isn’t afraid of you, see”] and saw a huge stable a couple of miles away. Yeah, ‘huge’ is the key word.

In short I am having fun. Work @ Microsoft is very exciting, I should check with my mentor before I blog about it. But I can say so much, its fun writing code after a long time and fun to do so when you believe that it will be shipping soon. The interns are well taken care of, I feel too old most of the time to join in for any of the intern socials [In the past I didn’t like people who sounded like this], a good majority are undergrads. A bunch of young, enthusiastic folk. It would have been fun to have the concept of internships when I was pursuing my bachelors, I could have used the experience. Met some Indian students, i.e students studying in India and doing their internship at Microsoft Research, Redmond, its good to see interns here all the way from India.

I am also eating a lot of Indian food and will watch Fanaa tomorrow. Yeah, its almost like being in India J

And now I need to collect some mapquest printouts, yeah need to get somewhere. These maps are not difficult to read/follow. Its like an installation read me file. I'll be fine. Also, I declare myself a beans thoran expert. Made it twice, came out just the way I remember it from Kerala.

I heard from Ank last week about the status of his asianet broadband connection. Apparently some months ago, he had connected to the asianet server, looked around and found user accounts information including password information of their users in clear text. He then logged on other accounts and checked logs to discover that the accounts were being used by  other users [other than the accountholder itself]. He then chose an account with unlimited connection and used it during the hours that apparently were not being used by the account holder. This went on for 7 months after which asianet probably realised this was happening. So they called him and asked him to pay for using the unlimted connection. The funny thing is that I had heard from a friend 1.5 yrs back about a similar incident when asianet called him up during his 1st month of bandwidth stealing to warn him. And in 1+ years they seem to have done nothing about their security. Nothing far-fetched, but how difficult is to use some standard encryption to store password hashes.

Apparently, this is public information in Ank's classroom - how to get unlimited connection when you have a limited asianet connection!

Besides asianet are there any other cable internet providers in Cochin? I heard city cable is yet to come. BSNL data one seems good but their starter package is data based rather than time based: 250/- month, upto 400 mb only.  Looks like we are still a little far from fast reliable afford-able internet connections at home in India. And secure. I hope I am not violating any *rules* by blogging this.