As uaual the schedule got nuts and couldn't blog about this.

Last Saturday we had our first MVP open day event. Manzi was in charge of organizing the things and he did a kick ass job. Selected destination was Royal Palm Hotel @ Kaluthara. We were planing to start the drive @ sharp 9 AM, but guess what ... as usual we started bit late. How can we start early and break the traditions. Once we got there first thing in our agenda was to have the planning meeting before we start anything with the booze. Meeting went on about 45 minutes and we discussed about all the .NET Forum activities for the next couple of months, which included stall at Tech.Ed, Deepdive session, Community Day etc. So guys stay tuned ... there's going to be lot of cool things happening in the near future. After the planning meeting it was all fun + fun + fun. From the MVP team Manzi, Jinath, Pras, Dinesh, Padman and me participated. Merill and Buddhike couldn't make it. And from Microsoft Alan and Indica Joined (a big thanks to Alan for initiating the whole thing). and we invited our buddies from the .NET forum ... Razor, Casper, Charith, Chandana, Rajah etc. but Chandana and Rajah couldn't make it. Looking forward for the next MVP Open day ... who wants to join ?

On July 3rd I opened a new account at the Nations Trust Bank. Actually a sales gent from the bank came to meet me and he processed the whole thing. at that time he was really helpful and it happened smoothly. But until today I haven't received the pass book or the ATM Card. Last time when I called the guy it was about a month back and he promised me to deliver the card. But he never showed up.

As usual my schedule was busy and I couldn't follow the case up. Finally got some free time yesterday and I went to the Colombo 03 branch to check what happened. And they called the Nugegoda branch (account was opened @ the nugegoda branch) and found out the sales guy no longer works there and his superior officer promised to deliver everything within the next week?  

Today also I got some free time, so I decided go to the Nugegoda branch and close the account and finish it off. Because there is no point in having an account like this. After I explained the situation branch Manager came and explained that there has been an issue with the sales guy and he was fired. Branch manager was really helpful. So I decided not to close the account. They issued the passbook immediately and the ATM will come latest by Monday.

I was actually planning to maintain this account as my primary account from September onwards. Considering what has happened there is no way I'm going to do that. I'm having second thoughts on continuing the account !!!!!   Because ....

• If the card or the passbook is not delivered to a customer isn't it the responsibility of the bank to check why?
• If I didn't get a time to go and check it yesterday what will happen? Account will be just there and I will never have access to it ... is it?
• If the sales guy was fired shouldn't the immediate officer look into what he has been doing? Why did they wait till a customer complains.

Anyways thanks to the Branch Manager and the other Gent for explaining the situation and helping out.

Has anybody else experienced similar cases with the Nations Trust Bank?

I have installed Windows Desktop Search Beta 3 because every time I open Outlook 2007 it says ... dude .. you need Windows Desktop Search to perform search stuff. And now it is taking up about 200mb of memory and a considerable percentage of the processing power. I have kept the machine on for several hours for it to do it's indexing stuff and give all the resources to me, but the dang! thing stays up all the time.

What to do? I badly need the folder wise search facility in outlook. Without it I'll be lost and will be wasting lot of my time to look for things. Maintaining several mail accounts and many folders is not an easy task. Windows Desktop Search Beta 3 is very useful but very resource hungry.

I'm wondering .. is it ever going to stop this indexing process?

Imagine Cup 2007 is going to be @ Korea and the theme for the competition is 'Imagine a World where Technology Enables a Better Education for All'.

Sorry about the logo is not that clear. just took it from a photo I shot at the world festival. Couldn't find a good quality logo in the net yet :)

It is strange that the world festival was not very big in terms of the head count in the audience. Last time it was couple of thousand in that big auditorium. Anyways that's not the important thing. All the required people were there. I think that's enough. World festival was filled with couple of interesting and inspiring speeches, Indian modern cultural dancing items and of course the prize giving. Following is the final results.

Short Film invitational is a very interesting category in the imagine cup. Teams who made it to the world finals are given the challenge to do a short film within 36 hours. So basically they have to work 36 hours straight. and the out come was really amazing. Thursday evening we got the chance to see all the short films. I loved the Canada and Poland films which made First and Second places later on.

Thursday was a very long tired day because the day started very early morning with a long ride from Agra to Delhi. I'll tell more details about this long trip later :)    And then the software design final six presentations happened and after that there was the digital theater which showed all the short films etc.

Italy, Denmark, Japan, Norway, Brazil and China made it to the final 6 and we got the chance to see all 6 presentations on Thursday afternoon. All six solutions were really amazing. Checkout the following URLs to see more details about these projects.

• http://www.imaginecup.com/finals/Software_Design_Brazil.htm
• http://www.imaginecup.com/finals/Software_Design_China.htm
• http://www.imaginecup.com/finals/Software_Design_Denmark.htm
• http://www.imaginecup.com/finals/Software_Design_Italy.htm
• http://www.imaginecup.com/finals/Software_Design_Japan.htm
• http://www.imaginecup.com/finals/Software_Design_Norway.htm

Every year quality, technical and business value of the applications are getting higher and higher. And the competition theme ... if you see these final 6 presentations you will understand the importance of the theme in this competition. Innovation is only one factor in this. I'm telling this because there are lot of Sri Lankan fellows who couldn't understand this after the local competition :)

I lost my iPAQ stylus during the India trip. Not exactly sure where I left it. Maybe at the Jay Pee Palace Hotel @ Agra. Nevermind it's just a stylus. But I have to wait few more days till
I get a new one. Until then a toothpick will be my acting stylus. Yeah right .. a toothpick. It looks funny. 90k rupees phone with a touch screen and a toothpick to operate it.

Yesterday I saw one gent @ KFC giving me a weird look. What da hell!

Just came home after a week of tour de India ... the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2006 World Competition. I was actually planning to blog the whole thing everyday. But couldn't do it due to the bad Internet connections. Connection speed was good at the Jay Pee Palace Hotel, but every ten minutes or less it had a habit of disconnecting, so i gave up hopes of blogging :) And things were too busy to check any Internet connections after coming to New Delhi.

Anyways .. a glimpse of what happened ... whole week was filled with tons of activities which included the first rounds of competitions, couple of awesome parties, getting to know lots of new friends, community activities, visit to Red Fort, visit to Taj Mahal, city tours, and the world festival ... and Italy won the Software Design Invitational.

Have couple of thousand photos and several videos and have tons of info to write about. So ... see ya'll later with more details.

Yesterday afternoon my self and the Imagine Cup Sri Lanka winning team started the trip for the big competition ... Imagine Cup 2006 World competition @ Delhi & Agra.

We left Colombo around 3.15 last evening and landed @ Delhi around 6.15. From the airport we were taken to a hotel for some quick refreshments and then we were taken to Jaypee Palace Hotel in Agra which is about 200 Km away from Delhi. At first when I saw our ride I thought ... what da hell! this looks like an ambulance. But inside of the vehicle is a full luxury looking with wooden floor and really comfortable seats etc. Another cool Indian creation. Ride to Agra from Delhi was a long slow one which took almost 5 hours.

Anyways competition officially starts today evening with the welcome dinner and the next couple of days is going to be really exciting and intense for all the competitors. Also there are lot of activities in the schedule :)

Woo! Hoo!

Finally the waiting is over. I got my Tablet PC on Friday. Shipment was almost one month delayed due to various reasons. What da hell. Finally it is here. a Big ... i mean a very big thanks for my buddy Sasinath and Revanka for hooking me up with this.

It's a Toshiba Tecra M4, with 2Ghz mobile processor, 2 Gig RAM, 128 nVidia VGA, 60 Gig 7200 RPM HDD, Bluetooth, WiFi and it costs me a fortune. But it's all worth it.

Last Wednesday (2nd) we had the August User Group Meeting. This time it was a different location. Previous month we decided to have it at a different location just for a change. So August meeting was held @ Microsoft Sri Lanka office. Thanks to Alan for helping to set this up. Also for the next couple of months until we inform a change of the location we'll be having the meeting @ the Microsoft Sri Lanka office. Yeah! we are in the process of arranging a new venue for the user group meeting which can have a bigger crowd. More details will be provided later.

However enthusiasm was well demonstrated this month because we had a house full registration count even without sending the monthly newsletter. We planned the meeting only for 40, but within a day registrations went up to 54. Even though the confirmation mail was sent to all of them about 15 - 20 didn't show up for the meeting. Two of them were generous enough to inform me through an email about they wont be able to make it. A big thanks to you guys. Few who called me and requested for a seat also attended. So guys, next time if you register for any event we expect that you will attend or at least will inform us early so then we can allocate the slot to another .NETter.

Anyways for the next meeting there wont be any registration page. We really want more guys to attend, but if you come late you might have to stand :)    demand for the user group meeting grows every single day.

At this meeting Rajah and Dinesh did two presentations. Raja's presentation was on New Features in Windows Forms 2.0 and Dinesh's presentation was focused on SQL Server.

Also we (MVP Team) finally managed to have that meeting we have been planning for quite some time now. My self, Merill, Manoj, Jinath, and Dinesh from the MVP team and Alan from Microsoft participated the meeting. We discussed about the list of activities scheduled for the next couple of months. Guys! there are some cool stuff in the list for you. So stay tuned.

Also we finally selected the list of board members for the user group. List is as follows for the next year.

• President & Membership Director - Wela
• Vice President & Program Director - Manzi
• Secretary - Merill
• Director Online Services - Jinath
• Treasurer - Dinesh

Thanks for the team for selecting me as the head. I know it is a big responsibility. I'm ready for the challenges.