Hurricane Ridge Ride 10:26 PM, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2005 Last Saturday, Rey & I went riding, possibly the last long ride of this year. The weather was great and we took the ferry, again. We rode to the Olympic Peninsula and went on to reach Hurricane Ridge! The ride up the mountain was fabulous - the best so far, I'd say. The road is 17 miles long one-way and is winding all the way to the top - the best of its kind for motorcycle riders in the area. Since I didn't take a passenger this time, I was able to go really fast on the curves and thorougly enjoyed it! The ride back down was just every bit exciting as the ride up; in fact, a bit faster and scarier! I'm sure I'll be going back to Hurricane Ridge again, when the weather gets better again (which will be probably next Summer). PERMALINK | 1 COMMENT(S)

Randy's New Office 11:03 PM, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2005 You already know that Saturday was Randy's 15th year Anniversary at Microsoft. So, to celebrate that, Charles and I decided to play a prank. It's a tradition that the longer you stay in Microsoft, the better office you get. So, with 15 years in his bag, Randy usually ends up getting one of the best offices in the building. His original office (see picture below) is a corner window office (which means, there're windows on two sides). Very nice one! But, as with most other things, Randy was not satisfied with his office! So, we decided to give him a new office - the corridor! We moved the printer that used to be at the corner of the corridor to Randy's original office and moved his desk to the corridor. We set the computer up and moved all his personal belongings to this new office. We even moved his phone to the new office. And to prevent Randy from giving in to temptations, we locked his monitor to the desk with a combination lock. The funny thing is, Randy actually spent most of today in his new office! He had to move only because of the glare from the window. Well, the next time, I'll listen to Charles and get some curtains for the new office :) PERMALINK | 15 COMMENT(S)

Congratulations Randy 8:34 AM, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2005 It's Randy's 15th year Anniversary at Microsoft! PERMALINK | 0 COMMENT(S)

Latest Office Prank 11:21 PM, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2005 I switched the signs of floors 3 & 4 in the stairwell of Building 41 in Microsoft. That got people walking up the stairs, confused for a second or two. The best was Bill's friend, who, when he saw "4" on the third floor said, "Wow, this is the first time I've done this," and promptly started walking down the stairs. And then, there's Herman, who walks out of his office to get to a meeting, sees "3" on our floor and mutters, "but I could have sworn I was in my office just now." PERMALINK | 3 COMMENT(S)

For Pap 12:02 AM, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2005 It's about time you wrote something on your blogs. PERMALINK | 0 COMMENT(S)

My New Keyboard 2:09 PM, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2005 Randy points out that he got the keyboard that I was talking about, before I could. But I had it up and running before he did! And here's a (camera phone) picture to prove. Now, beat that, Randy!!! PERMALINK | 2 COMMENT(S)

Web Service Testing 12:08 AM, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2005 I'm submitting this blog from a client application that uses the web-service that I just built in my website. It is just a rudimentary app that I plan to extend soon, with more features. The web-service APIs available on this site are here. PERMALINK | 2 COMMENT(S)

Age of Empires III Demo is OUT! 9:01 AM, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2005 Go get it at http://ageofempires3.com. I just started downloading!!! PERMALINK | 1 COMMENT(S)

My Editor 3:01 PM, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2005 For all those that are wondering what I am working on in Microsoft, here's a sneak peek: This is a source code editor that is shipping with Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer, a designer targeted product that was announced by Microsoft in the PDC. And guess what, I developed the code editor! (The semantic features were provided by others in my team). You can see more demos of the product and a few more screen shots of the editor here. PERMALINK | 7 COMMENT(S)

Pap is blogging too! 2:48 PM, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2005 Whoa, blogging is da thing now! Pap's blogging too. Well, don't get too excited - he's just taken the first step. How about writing something on your blogs, Pap? PERMALINK | 0 COMMENT(S)

Oregon Road Trip Pictures 12:08 PM, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2005 ...are here. PERMALINK | 3 COMMENT(S)

Oregon Road Trip 11:27 PM, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2005 I took a day off on Friday and went on a weekend road trip, with Jessie. We rented a car from Seattle airport and started on Thursday evening, stopped at Salem, Oregon and then continued on Friday morning. After a brief stop at Eugene, we entered the Wilamette National Forest. The weather was gorgeous and the drive, enjoyable. There was this sparkling lake, right by the road - here's a picture. At around 4:00PM, we reached Crater Lake. Crater lake is the deepest lake in the US and the water is one of the purest. Because light can penetrate deep into the lake, the water is deep blue in color. Usually the lake is very still and it reflects the mountains. But it was very windy that day (you can see ripples on the lake) and so, no reflection. We drove around the lake, stopping by for some spectacular views. Here's another view. By the time we've driven around the lake once, the weather changed dramatically. Clouds appeared from no where and the lake looked completely different. The water wasn't blue anymore. The sun showed through cracks in the cloud and it made for an absolutely stunning view. That night, we went to Mazama village to camp. Right when we finished pitching our tent, it started pouring. And the temperature dropped to freezing. The logs we had for a bonfire were drenched and we had no source of heat. So, we decided to pack up and find a hotel. We drove a bit and spent the night in Medford. The next day, we started drove west to Coos Bay and then continued driving up north on highway 101, along the Pacific Coast. We stopped at this little town, Florence, where there was a car parade in progress. There were a lot of old, exotic cars, most of them driven by old men. Apparently, Florence was voted as the best place in the US for retirement. We had some wonderful sea food in a restaurant (International C-food Market), right by the bay. On Sunday, we continued up north on 101. The views were spectacular, and we stopped by all the little town on the way. Each town had a light house, and I managed to get pictures of a few of them. The one on the left is the Umpqua river light house. And then on the way, we stopped the get this picture of Heceta light house. We drove up to Newport, from where we took Highway 20, which joined I5 and back to Seattle on Sunday evening. Altogether, we drove close to 1200 miles in 3 days - both the drive and the stops were fun (including the rain spoiled camping) PERMALINK | 6 COMMENT(S)

Suresh is blogging! 4:39 PM, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2005 Next one in! Suresh is now blogging. PERMALINK | 5 COMMENT(S)

Weekend Trip to Ocean Shores 11:14 PM, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 07, 2005 I went on a road trip to Ocean Shores on Saturday. Here's Elaine's description of the trip. PERMALINK | 7 COMMENT(S)

The Keyboard Blog is back! 11:12 PM, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 07, 2005 Now that Microsoft has officially released the keyboard, here it is! PERMALINK | 1 COMMENT(S)

My sister's visit 9:02 PM, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 06, 2005 Vijitha, my sister, visited me a few weeks back and we drove down to Portland to meet up with a friend of hers. We took this picture when we were at Portland. PERMALINK | 3 COMMENT(S)

12 Minute Record! 11:29 PM, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 02, 2005 Yesterday, I managed to make it from home to work in 12 minutes, which is a record, beating my earlier time by a full 3 minutes. I was riding my motorcycle and most traffic lights were in my favor and that helped shave off those precious minutes from my previous record; not to mention some blurry speed limits, the details of which I'll leave to your imagination. The distance from my home to work is 8 miles and I was curious why it takes such an enormous effort and bucket loads of luck to make it under 15 minutes. So, I did this little analysis. I divided my route into 8 segments, based on speed-limits. Segment 1: 0.2 miles at 25mph Segment 2: 0.3 miles at 35mph Segment 3: 2.4 miles at 45mph Segment 4: 1.1 miles at 40mph Segment 5: 3.0 miles at 60mph Segment 6: 0.1 miles at 30mph(?) Segment 7: 0.6 miles at 35mph Segment 8: 0.1 miles at 25mph Between these 8 segments, I cross 2 Stop signs and 12 traffic lights, 7 of which are, by default, Red. If the conditions were ideal, say, there was no traffic, no stop signs and all traffic lights were green, it would take me approximately 10.3 minutes without breaking any speed limits. (Remember, this calculation conveniently ignored the effects of slowing down for turns) After doing this analysis, I understood how difficult it is to even make it in 15 minutes. So, the next time someone asks me how long it takes for me to drive to work, I'm not going to say, "15 minutes!" PERMALINK | 5 COMMENT(S)