Blogger's block

Can a blogger have a writer's block ? If so, should it be called a blogger's block ? Whatever it be, I seem to have the blues for writing even though this is probably the best time I must be putting down my thoughts on paper......pardon me, on the blog. With an extremely life-changing event about to happen in a few days, I have to gather my thoughts and stream them towards this blog. As my friend pointed out today, these thoughts may be very funny and interesting to read about once my wife and I have the baby and my whole life goes topsy-turvy !

As I was walking down to work this morning, I was plugged to my IPod and listening to vivaldi rendered beautifully by a string quartet from San Francisco. Add to that the effect of a light breeze blowing across the river on a sleepy morning. It was the perfect time to forget all the worries in this world and look forward to greeting new life around me. I started thinking about my yet-to-be-born son again....

My wife and I know that we are expecting a boy. We both have great dreams about the little fellow. Not that we have planned anything for him but we both are high with anticipation about how exciting our lives are going to be very soon. The last few months, we have been crazy buying new stuff for my son. Wow ! That feels good.....when I say "my son". It is a new thing to say and it feels good to say it again and again.

The only thing that I keep wondering off late is what will my son see when he sees me. Will he know that I am his father ? Will he recognize my voice ? Yeah, I have been talking to him for the last so many months now. He better recognize my voice ! The one thing I remember very clearly about him is his face when I saw him during the ultrasound. The Ultrasound apparently penetrates the baby's eyelids and so, the baby will look like he has his eyes wide open. So, when I saw him, he was actually staring back at me. I will never forget that look. I am very much looking forward to see if his eyes are as beautiful as it looked on that day.

The big day could happen this weekend or sometime early next week. Whenever it may be, my wife and I cannot wait to hug the tiny one and welcome him into our family. In the meanwhile, I am going to try my best to blog.....

SQL Server 2005 Service Broker

Today, I attended an MSDN webcast on SQL Service Broker in SQL 2005. Found it to be very interesting and saw a lot of scope for future development in that area. I am planning to investigate more into identifying practical scenarios for using this technology. I can see how distributed applications re-architected using SOA can use this technology to their benefit. But, I need to understand more on why we need to move messaging into the database instead of having it at the application level. I am sure there are pros and cons with both methods. I will try to write more about those when I get to read more on this topic. For now, I found this blog to be very useful in this regard -

http://blogs.msdn.com/rushidesai/

Also, check out this article on MSDN -
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnsql90/html/sqlsvcbroker.asp?frame=true

Ergonomics

Ergonomics has become a very important word in my work life over the last few years. As many of you may emphathize with me, regular keyboard usage and uncomfortable seating arrangements can cause long-term injury and short-term pain. Recently, I started working at a new client and my body was not able to adjust itself to the new workplace. Very soon, I had to pay a visit to my doctor for a stiff neck and throbbing shoulders. The client is very sensitive to such issues and they even have an ergonomics assessment team within the building. One of their representatives swung by my desk the other day, asked me a whole bunch of questions, observed my posture while I worked and then made a recommendation for me to get a natural keyboard. I was using a similar keyboard at my previous workplace and it seemed to help in a way. So, I have been using that for the last few days now and I don't think it has helped still. I may need to go in for some physical therapy.

In the meanwhile, there has been a lot happening on my personal side. My wife and I are expecting a new arrival in the house - our first baby. She is already four days past her due date and still has no signs of labor. So, this week has been "painfully slow" in all aspects for both of us.

Horrible MSDN Webcast

I attended an online MSDN webcast today titled "Advanced reporting using SQL Reporting Services 2005". I have worked with SQL RS 2000 and with my own share of whines and grunts, I still like the product. I have not taken a look at the Yukon version yet and was hoping to see more new features in it.

This presentation was a total dud ! The guy who presented it either did not have much time to prepare for this presentation or was feeling totally bored doing this. He had just two things on his agenda - URL access and the RS SOAP web service. Both these features are already available in SQL RS 2000 and so, there was nothing new that was presented.

The one code demonstration that he did was bad. I am usually not this critical but when I see a presentation done badly, my blood boils over. There are a few hundred people waiting online to learn something new and here the guy just blows the whole thing over. The demonstration had a few text boxes and list boxes horribly strewn around with no proper labels attached. The user is left to use his intelligence to figure out what the application is supposed to do. Not only does this guy need to go to a presentation skills class but also take up a course on information architecture !

He was done with this whole presentation within 25 minutes including a break for answering questions. So, I posted him a question asking him to talk about some new features of SQL RS 2005 since both the items in his agenda were already features in the existing product. He casually answered my question by saying that he does not have the time to cover the new features. He said this when he had another 25 minutes on the clock to go. The whole presentation was supposed to go for an hour. I believe some of the other people complained about him wrapping up earlier too. I just requested the MSDN team in the survey, not to bring this guy again for any other presentations. I, personally, think that he did not know much about the new features and hence, avoided my question like that.

Whew ! This blogging is good.....lets me take out all the passive aggressiveness and express myself properly. Later !

My First Blog !

I knew the day would come when I would be infected with the Blog fever. A good friend of mine at work, who was already a victim of the Blog-ola virus, was always suggesting that I take up blogging soon. Well, his wish was my fate. Here it is.....my own blog and now, I don't know what to do with it !

For starters, I just wanted to list out what I plan to scribble here. Being on the technology front, I surely want to use this space for some Geek-speak. Other than that, I want to see how far I can stretch my freedom of speech rights. So, watch out, people.....I am tomorrow's blogger.

Okay, I don't want to set the bar too high and then find myself posting jokes from filthy internet journals because I cannot think of anything to write. So, here is where I will stop for the day and ponder for tomorrow....