Lifestyle
Just wanted to share some of the better shots I took when we watched NDP (National Day Parade) Preview (which is one week before the actual day) 08 @ Microsoft's Singapore Office. This show made me dream even more for Nikon D300... D70 is simply too obsolete for me...
This is a shot showing the flag flyby. The background is Marina Bay, with the Esplanade, which locals sometime call the Durian... Lower right is where the audiences are sitting, hence the flag is mirror images, just for the benefit of the overseas readers...
Shot showing the same flyby, but with newest addition to Singapore landscape, the Singapore Flyer. The shot shows the side view of the Flyer.
Fighter jets doing the salute.
The Black Hawks, Singapore's Aerobatic pilots doing their airshow. I couldn't take their show because of where we are, and also because I didn't know how to... My shots came out blurred...
Fireworks!
The finale fireworks was so bright that the shot was overexposed. D70's processing in low light condition was so slow, I missed so many nice fireworks... :(
Do comment on the photos, especially how to improve...
I've been playing with HyperV as an {Insiders} on the IT Momemtum initiative, thanks to Dennis Chung. When I travelled to Redmond to attend MVP summit, I did a video interview with Adam Carter, and the video is released @ http://edge.technet.com/Media/Loke-Kit-Kai-on-Hyper-V/.
Never did video interview before, and because of the summit schedule, I didn't prepare for it. Thanks to Adam Bomb, who tried to make the interview casual, but I still pretty much made mistakes. Don't know when I will get another opportunity, but will definitely improve if given another chance... :)
Been playing with SCVMM, and will be blogging about that soon. But that would be after I've published on CodePlex the enhanced email-enabled library.
It has been an eventful week for me... First, I was nominated as one of the 20 local IT hero by Microsoft. So I was @ the launch event to be honored, and I receive a certificate of thanks, and a wonderfully designed personalised jacket, which I love so much! Thanks Yasmeen for designing that!
Next thing I know, I was asked by Microsoft if I'm ok to be interviewed by 93.8 Live! Nervous, of course, but I want to experience how it was like to be on radio... So this morning, I went to mediacorp to meet Stanley Leong, the host, together with two other Global IT Hero, Lup Yuen, who happens to be my colleague, and Pom. I was surprised that my Marketing Communication people are there as well, since the program is interviewing the IT Hero, not my company.
Anyway, I really have to thank Steven Leong for being such a good host in helping us IT guys chat naturally. Personally, I think there are so many others out there that deserves the honour, countless hours you guys have put in, and yet not appreciated by your company. Making you guys work till 3 am, and if you leave at 9pm, you are branded as not committed. To you guys, I salute you.
But there is one thing that really got me pissed off. After the interview, the marketing communication person tell me that next time, if there is such interviews, please let them know, and prepare a script of what I'm going to say for them to vet. There are things they don't agree! But come on! The interview is about IT heros in the industry! Not IT Heros in my company! What I have mentioned is a common problem in the industry! Sales people basically oversell! Delivery people, has to deliver! PERIOD! Now that I'm in the position to do damage control to not oversell when I'm designing the architecture and drawing the proposal, that makes my company credible right?
Anyway, the experience was really cool. There is a repeat tonight around 10:30pm... Will be listening in and see how I sound... :)
Video speaks for itself. This should really put those who keep complaining about their situation (me included) to shame.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnLVRQCjh8c
I'm very pissed off with sound support with virtual machines. Virtual Server doesn't emulate sound card. Virtual PC 2007 chooses to emulate an old, no longer supported, Sound Blaster 16. Instructions to get the drivers off Windows XP cd failed miserably. I have no idea what MS is thinking!
Now with OCS 2007 out, but I can only install it on virtual machines (unless some one wants to sponsor me with hardwares), I cannot try out speech workflows with MOSS... Wanted to do IM workflows too, but documentation cannot make it and the process is really too complicated.
So for my topic in CTU2007, I have to fall back to MOSS workflow. I'm probably going to talk about the thing that you probably do not know about MOSS workflow. In fact, BPM vendors that came to talk to me, doesn't know this exist too. Let see how my research goes for the rest of this week...
Updates:
I found this page that gives you a little bit more details how to get the sound card drivers. Hopefully we can have some speech workflow demo this saturday!
Yesterday was my wedding anniversary. Time flies. Today, I just new about photo gallery beta, hence I installed and started publishing some of my wedding photos that I selected for my Vista Gadgets. Not bad, very convenient to publish the photos to msn spaces. Though Google can already do this with Picasa, I didn't really went to install and play with it. Anyway, here is my wedding photos taken by a studio...
Maybe I will publish my honeymoon ones as well... since my server is also on vista... :)
After my 6th ICT, quite sad to say that my commanders don't seem to understand this.. From the top, they hold us so tight, it is worse than being in a active unit. In this ICT, there is a change in commanding officer, which I noticed a change in the way the unit is run. More welfare, with explaination given why certain things (like booking in at 1900 hrs which was then postponed to 2000 hrs after complains from the ground) to lessen the pain why certain decision is made. But it will get some time to filter down (cross fingers) to the respective officer who seems to only care about themselves under the leadership of the previous CO (at least in HQ, but also not every officer. Not fair to put a blanket statement)
Just ranting here also because it happens in real life as well. In the army, we can't quit in response to this kind of ***, but can only slow things down, or stop working intelligent as a sign of protest. But in real life (and I have witness it happen before), we can quit and move on. So this post is just a reminder that hopefully will surface again from my subconcious mind that if, and a big if, I become a manager, I need to take care of my guys...
This is just a ranting....
I sign up with M1 broadband, mainly because of the unreliability of Wireless@SG, super restrictive corporate network, and potential lack of Internet Access in seminars. Seems that organisers from the other camps thinks that Internet access is so distruptive that since they cannot cut my Internet access, they cut my power supply.
Please... I absorb by taking notes using OneNote, google to suppliment what I do not know, and IM to discuss concepts with my friends. Don't you know that if I listen only, studies shows that I can only absorb 10% of what is being shared. Actual fact, I may just absorb 5%!!! So stop being childish and cut my power supply! We are all ADULTS in the class!
It is very interesting to be attending a technical sales train conducted by trainers on the other side of the fence. I've been through Day 2 of 5, and can really see the effort they have put into their SOA story, and focus they have in the same story, as shown in their product backing, and also the aggressiveness and confidence in knowing and taking advantage of their competitor's weakness, and turning their own weakness around. I'm especially impressed with their virtualisation story.
As I sit there listening, how I wish I can say the same for the side of the camp I'm in, but I guess I just have to wait and see…
But I'm also pretty amused with some of their misconception with Microsoft camp. I'm going to share some of these just for your amusement…
- One of the students ask, "There are more .Net developers than Java developers in the market, so it is difficult to convince the .Net shops to convert". The trainer replied, "Sure, they just took their VB programmers and stamp them with a .Net chop. Schools can teach .Net as it is more primitive, which don't have 2-phase commit, security, [can't remember]".
[Kit]I don’t know which country the student is from, so I'm not sure how much truth is there really, but there isn't any truth in it as far as Singapore is concern, from what I know...
- The Web Services you have created has to be re-written to be used in yukon, the next version of .Net, when it is released.
[Kit]I was thinking to myself, "Huh? What does web services got to do with database? Can your own database host custom developed web services? BTW, Yukon is already out, and they are preparing to release Katmai!"
- You don't find much .Net applications in the market
There are a few others, but I can't recall. But to see them being so ill-informed over the rest of their competitors does show something. But I'll leave that to your own interpretation. But I feel quite sorry for the sales executives, for not being able to know the true story. That, I'm thankful that I'm in a company that is platform neutral. There are still lots of things to learn… :)
I was working on a POC for a client that wanted to implement SOA for his company. Microsoft sold them a story of using BizTalk for the Enterprise Service Bus, and SharePoint (or OBA) for the frontend, portal, workflow, integrating with SAP, and other databases... It's a two weeks project, and we asked for competent people for the job, since time is little, and each team member has to be skilled (or at least know how to find solutions to solve the problems themselves). Was working with an empty shell, which made everyone (including the customer and Microsoft) panicked. WOW, you can be amazed the gap between the level of competency they declared and what they actually have... (So much so I decided to do part of his job to make sure I can get my part working... BizTalk orchestration have to be working for me to test out my InfoPath forms)
In come this hero, and after a week, with two nights of hardwork, we managed to complete the whole POC (which would otherwise failed terrible) around, gaining much confidence from client. At the end of the presentation, two thumbs up was given, and praises was flying around...
And this hero is now blogging here...
I was going through the SharePoint conference dvd on a cab on my way to office. I came a cross a track called "Forms". For some reason which I can't figure out, my brain was telling me, that track is "for ms", and obviously curisority got the better of me, and wonder why would Microsoft put something for internal use on a SharePoint conference DVD!
Oh well, I think many of you would have read the track name correctly. It's all about infopath and forms server...
I need some sleep!!!
After lunch, as I was listening to the first presentation about security, I started to panick already... So I left the room, and walk around. when I was back, the 2nd presentation was already over. Shirley (techmex) knows I was nervous, and asked me to go get a drink. When I was back, I saw Dennis at the front row, and went up to him. He was very supportive, telling me what to look out. Nuqman, who joined K2.net last month suddenly appeared as well, and gave me support.
Finally, it was my turn... Went up and started speaking. At first I thought I was doing ok, though I started forgetting what I wanted to say, but my notes helpped me a little bit. But when it is demo time, things started to screw up.
I switch to my virtual server remote control client (vmrc), and switch to full screen. Instead of the login prompt of my SharePoint machine that greeted me, it was my vista desktop, without any icons, task bar... Tried to get my task manager up, and it is working, but still no SharePoint login prompt... Panicked. Dennis asked me what happened, I told him don't know. Oh no, the VMRC is not working on me... Log off, log on, and all the icons came back. Started the VMRC again, but this time, I dare not hit full screen again...
Started with the demo on Slide Library in SharePoint. But when I tried to publish my slides to the slide library, I couldn't, because SharePoint can't find my AD to authenticate. Quick check with the network settings and found that my AD is connected to the my wireless adapter, which I specifically set it to internal network during the keynote. Sigh, don't know what is going on...
Continued with my demo, but all these hiccups is making me more nervous... Went through the demo of content types, initiating workflow, records center... Came down the stage pretty demoralised.
Dennis told me that my demo wasn't really effective, as I didn't explain a lot through the steps. But without a trainer background, and it was my first time speaking at this scale, it was pretty good. He then sit with me through Vincent Oh's presentation, explaining to me what he was doing. Nuqman, Chewy was pretty encouraging as well. Bernard called me too, and encouraged me as well, telling me I have to continue presenting, and not be affected by this. Just make sure I don't repeat the same mistakes.
It is a valuable experience, and really glad to have friends who supported me yesterday. Special thanks to Wee Hyong, who came just for my topic.
Now, it is back to SharePoint! Looking forward to a POC that involves integration with SAP, Sibel and Lotus Notes!
Finally, the last day with my current company has finally came. As I look back to my first day at work, I've grown quite a bit, though I'm still quite small...
But as I bid farewell to my clients, as well as informing some of my friends about my next move, most of the responses was, "What are you doing to yourself?!!! Are you sure this is the right move?". :) Well, I had the peace of God when I made the choice...
Anyway, one of my client was actually excited (to the point she was jumping about) for me. And she gave me a very good advice. Though I will be hoping to be a good architect one day, acquire as much soft skills as I can, as technology will become obsolete, but soft skills won't.
Though my first day at the new company is two weeks away, I won't be able to relax much as there are lots of new stuff in Microsoft camp to get up to speed with, before I get to play with technology from other camps. And I'm looking forward to the other THE day, the day where I start work with my new employer...
A few months back, Softwaremaker asked me a question, "Am I happy?". And that triggered a series of events that never in my career happened before to me. Already stressed with house matters and marriage preparation, I am put under more pressure as it is a first time I have to choose between two jobs that I like. Company A offers me a chance to become an architect, while company B offeres me a chance to make a difference in the portal team.
Lots of things to consider, and while company B has been in my radar ever since I graduated from Polytechnic, the fact that opportunity in company A is very rare, and the chance to work with Softwaremaker really ease some of the worries I had with regards to company A.
After much consideration, I have decided to bite the bullet and accepted the offer from company A, and not look back. Went to purchase a powerful desktop even though I shouldn't have as there are other needs to meet, so that I can spend my two weeks break, learning the new features of MOSS that came out after Beta 1TR, and get ready for a new job.
Early this week, I met up with Softwaremaker, and he broke the news to me that he is leaving the company. I think my face got the word "Shock" printed all over my face. He started assuring me that I will do well in company A, and we will still get lots of chances to work together.
Softwaremaker, I've said this in my wedding, that I'm very grateful for all the advices and guidance you have given me in the past. And I am even more grateful of the things you have done for me, with regards to this career move. No words can express my gratidude to you. And I'm looking forward to the future!
More Posts
Next page »