Got the ACE (Award for Customer Excellence) for Visual Studio 2005 from Micosoft. It looks really cool.

It's a 2" x 2" x 2" glass cube with a laser engraving inside.

Thank you Microsoft

Everybody is excited to see the VS Launch event. Guys who got the change to attend are thrilled. Guys who missed ... some are still crying, because they missed the best event ever hannened in the country. One guy made a request 'Wela next time when there is something please please please please make sure I get an invitation becasue I missed the VS Launch event ... so I don't want to miss any future events. Can I reserve my invitation to any future event now?" 

So, many are asking what is next?  Cople of things on the pipe. You will know on time to come .

.NET Forum is active than ever. Interlude session we did @ the VS Launch is a big kick for the forums.

Before we announced the VS Launch event we had 1507 Users registered. Right at this moment the count is 1732. I want to make this over 2500 by the end of this year . Let's see ...

Yesterday Morning I did a workshop type training session @ Jayawardane Pura University. Topic was Visual Basic Express.

And it was a totally new experience to me because the session was not for students. It was for the university staff memebers. Whole target is they want to teach .NET to the students from the next batch onwards. So this is a start where lecturers and instructures are getting there hands on to it first. Thanks to Mr. Lasith @ J'Pura and Mrs. Jina @ Microsoft.

Just came back to office after going to the 'bank with a heart'. They were good enough to keep me waiting for 50 Minutes just to get a cash cheque cleared. Reason was simple. "We have to fax it to the branch where the account is to authenticate it" ... which is fine :)  ... but according to my knowledge ... sending a fax takes only a minutes ... and for them to send the fax back another minute ... and for the authorizing person if we give 15 minutes it should take less than 20 minutes only.

Thanks to the 'bank with a heart' my entier evening plan and work schedule is ruined ... If anybody from there is seeing this I request to consider about increasing the speed of service.

I'M NOT GOING THERE AGAIN

Went to Wasgamuwa National Wild Life Park in the weekend with couple of friends. This time participation was very bad. Pathi didn't come because he got married few weeks ago, Nalaka got work to do on Independance day, and the worst case was 'Sunil Nana' couldn't come because his wife over ruled this time. and as usual Abey, Chamee, Mendis had various reasons. So this time the team was ... TD, Tarik, Nalle, Outa, Lakkana, Andos and me. Even though it was a small crowd it turned out to be a great trip. As for me it was really relaxing trip because the only electronic device I had was my camera. No computers, no mobiles :)

Off road Safaries were really thrilling. Elephants getting pissed off to the engine sound was sometimes a scary scene .. on the other hand it was exciting.

Have tons of photos. But as usual my schedule is back to busy mode. I'll put those up as soon as I get a chance.

YO! Tarik Nana ... Have a nice trip back to Oman ... be safe ... Keep in touch through emails.

It's the Best, Coolest, Biggest, Rocking event we have ever had in Sri Lanka.

Early morning I was in a kick ass mood prepared for everything. Slowly walked into the hall. I was shocked ... speachless ... WOW! . Couldn't even believe '' Is this the BMICH hall ''. Man .. the stage Rocks!

 
Stage and the enviorenment was really amazing.

King on the stage

Event started with a cool scene where King Auther (Sriyan) came and draw the sward from a rock. and with a rock track playing. and then after that the whole day was rocking.

I'm glad and honered that I did a presentation @ the Launch Event ... Thanks to everyone who encouraged me ... Merill, Alan, Chandi, Fiqri, Mahesh, Pras, Jinath, Ruwan, Buddhike, Jinashiri and specially Ed. It became possible all thanks to the guidance I got from our good old (i'm not sure how old he is ) mentor Ed. I'm glad that for the first time a Sri Lankan tech speaker got a change to speak at a big Microsoft event line this in Sri Lanka. Somehow my buddy Casper have shot me doing the session without the flash in the cam. I'm sure i'll be able to get a photo of that ... hmmm ... somebody will put it on a blog. I better start hunting for it now.

Anyways, I'm not sure about how happy the crowd was about my presentation. Because there were two tiny silent moments, because I forgot few bits. Dudes! It's not like doing a presentation in the user group. Trust me guys, Can you imagine ... when you are on the stage ... alone . I'll wait for the feedback summary. Fingers crossed.

Interlude session about the communities was also a nice one. MVPs Ruwan, Pras, Jinath, Buddhike, Dinesh and my self participated on this with our mentor Ed. Andrew and Manzi was not there. Manzi boy is eating snow in Sweden ... I thought he went for an office project . We missed you on the stage buddy. I think we gave a good intro about the communities and what we do. Hope we get more and more techies to power-up both forums.

Cool thing is Manzi boy is not even in the country but he became the first to post the event photos on the web. See how advanced we are.

Behind every successful event there is a team dedicated. Managed to catch some of them on photos enjoying the outcome of the hard work.

And we found that there are some heavy metal rockers among the forum members. Cool!.

More photos coming soon.

It's a busy day .. but there is no way that I can miss IE 7 Beta 2 Preview. So downloaded and installed on Windows XP. It Rocks!

Strange things is that FreeTextBox rich editor is working perfectly on my site, But it is not wokring on the .net forum. I wonder why?