After a long (really long) travel including delayed flights & long airport waiting times I reached Bloomington without my baggage. Yes, all my bags didn't make it. Same with Roshan who travelled back with me. I flew from Rome to London & London to Atlanta (in US). The scene at Rome airport wasn't very good. Besides the no-carryon-liquids, pens, lipsticks, pencils etc restriction, the flight was delayed by several hours without any announcement in between. Things were much worse at London airport. I spent 4 hours there to receive my baggage form Rome. People were quiet & patient. Most of them lay on conveyor belts, trolleys, their luggage and some on floors. People who were walking by seemed to carry a lot of suspicion in their eyes. I can only imagine how tough it can be for a guy who appears to be a muslim to travel in these circumstances. I sincerely hope that the situation comes to normal soon & there is peace.

My bags were delivered the next day, intact. I hope to blog about my travel with some pictures after getting some rest.

Today is my last working day at Microsoft as a SDE intern this summer. I had a great summer, I worked in the office integration team to display contact presence information & initiate a collaboration session with contacts from documents using Office Communicator. The internship has been a great learning experience, more importantly it boosted my confidence about writing code . Here are some pictures of my team from a cruise that we went on last week.

I am going to spend the weekend packing & shipping my stuff to Bloomington. I will leave on Monday to Bloomington. Spend a day there and then I hope to set off for a short vacation (15 days) in Europe. Places on the charter as of now are London, Paris & Rome.  I will get back to Bloomington on Aug 15/16. And then I will have to gear up for the fall semester that will begin in the last week of August.

This is going ot be my first Europe trip & yes, I am super excited!

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.