Schedule got busy and couldn't write about this earlier. And then I forgot :)

On 10th I did two presentation on Windows Vista and Office 207 @ Amal International School. First it was the presentation for about 200 students. Man! those kids were awsome. Amount of questions they asked about Vista.

One thing I noticed about IT Education in Amal International is they are very keen and enhusiased about it ... not only students ... right from the top ... school principle is also very enthusiased about IT Education in the school. and it's a very good thing that they have computer studies starting from the very junior level.

Thanks to my friend Fazmil for organizing the event.

As you all know :)  my HP iPAQ sucked big time earlier and even after getting the replacement unit still it sucks with a new set of problems. Things becomes worst when the response from the HP Services team in Sri Lanka is not responsible and reliable. It's even pointless to talk to them regarding this issue. I really don't want to submit this again for warranty replacements and want another 5 months to get it.

So I have given up all hopes on the phone and very soon planning to buy a better Windows Mobile with Windows Mobile 6.0.

I'll NEVER go for any HP branded products. Not even Computers of Printers ... (may be I'll consider only printers, because those are pretty good). Not because they are bad products. Just because the service is terrible. Recently I wanted to buy couple of HP Computers and a Printer. Can u believe that the distributor/supplier took exactly 2 months to deliver it ... I'll avoid mentioning names in this case :) So on the last moment I had to cancel that order. I was given MANY false dlivery dates, may be that was a trick to keep the customer occupied. There were many reasons in the list of excuses given to me. One was delays in shipping. I think even if you ship goods in a small sail boat you can get it faster than this. I'm really pissed about this because I'm still suffering from the losses caused by this delay.

Anyways ... may iPAQ rw6828 goes to hell.

Last evening almost had an accident. I was driving on Union Place towards Slave Island and suddenly a cab driver put his car into the road without even looking at the road, and with a phone in one hand taking a call. Idiot just ignored it and started going forward. So turned back and stopped right beside him and the bugger started shouting at me for no reason. So I call the cab company and informed about this incident with the vehicle number.

I hope they'll fire this idiot or at least take some other necessary action because it might save someones life someday.

Just notice that the times in the blog entries are taking the server time ... will have to fix it within the weekend.

It's going to be more challenging this year as 6 teams are competing in the Sri Lanka finals. Final event is hapenning on 18th June. Due to various reasons I had to push the date a little bit. All the teams are working super fast and the ideas in the battle are really amazing. Also we had 2 teams who made it to the second round in Short Film Category. Will publish more details about the projects and teams later. for the time beign take a look at the following.

Best wishes for all the teams.

Team: The Enterprise Application: Geolink University: Informatics (IIT)	Team: SARA Application: ISECED University: University of Moratuwa Faculty of Information Technology	Team: Sanhitha Application: Iddhipada University: University of Moratuwa Faculty of Information Technology
Team: iLearn Application: iLearn University: University of Colombo  School of Computing	Team: MaTHaKa Application: KAMZA University: Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT)	Team: Ravana Application: VirtualDesk University: University of Moratuwa Faculty of Information Technology

Yup!   It's being 3 years since our last DevDay. I still remember the good old days where EdQuek and Stanley Tan gave some kick a** presentations @ the DevDay and gave a big boost to our User Group Meetings, which resulted in many good things after that.

Several months back I remember I regularly called and bug my (now) colleague Alan 'Hey Ala, when is the next big event happening' ... now he is asking me 'Hey Wela ... when are we doing the next big event' ... ha!

Hmmm!   things are in preparation stage for the next DevDay ... so guys ... stay tuned :)

Last evening we had the SQL Server User Group Meeting. Technically I don't understand most of the things what Dinesh and the SQL team is talking about :)   but i'm pretty dang! sure that those are some interesting topics. Because there are lot of new faces in the SQL Server user Group Meeting. Hats off to Dinesh, Dinesh and Gogula.

Following was what happened at the meeting yesterday ...

Replication in SQL Server 2005 by Dinesh Asanka
Replication is a set of technologies for copying and distributing data and database objects from one database to another, and then synchronizing among databases to maintain consistency. SQL Server 2005 has seen many new features added to Replication. This session will look at an overview of the Replication technology, new features in Replication such as Peer-to-peer Replication, DDL Replication and advanced features like Conflict Resolving.

Overseeing Indexes by Dinesh Priyankara
Querying, Querying, Querying... All sorts of SQL statements... It's part of a DB guy's world. Are these queries performing well? Are they using the indexes that are added? Do they need more indexes? Are the indexes fragmented? The list goes on and on... These are the questions that make a DB guy's head spin. Let's see how this DB guy diagnoses, manages and resolves these issues.

Special Session:
Red Gate SQL Refactor^™
SQL Refactor^™ is a refactoring and formatting tool for your SQL code. Find out about this must have tool from Red Gate Software at this special session.
Presented by: Dinesh Asanka

Date:  May 16, 2007
Time: 1800 hrs
Location: Microsoft, Sri Lanka. (31st Floor, West Wing, WTC, Colombo)

was realy busy and couldn't blog about anything. So just thoght of starting again :)   Even though the User Group meeting was over, just thought of publishing the details about the sessions we had. So you folks can figure out what you missed ... if you couldn't make it to the meeting :)

Session 1: Introduction to SQL Server CE Programming
Speaker: Fiqri Ismail (MVP - Visual Developer - Device Applications)
An Introduction to access the System.Data.SqlServerCe class libraries programmatically. This will allow you to create/delete Databases, Tables and add/modify/delete Data programmatically using Visual Basic.net

Session 2: Introducing Microsoft Silverlight
Speaker: Merill Fernando (MVP - ASP.NET)
Microsoft® Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Join Merill to learn from a developers perspective on how you can extend your web applications with Silverlight.

Date: 9th May 2007
Time: 6 PM onwards
Venue: NDB Auditorium, DHPL Building, Nawam Mawatha

It's beign a while since my last blog entry. Dang! more than a month. was running on a creazy schedule which included, couple of events, training sessions, day to day work and sending hundreds of emails. Phew! However I made sure I check all the important blogs and just found that Bink.nu just reached 10000 articles.

Hats off o Bink.