Microsoft Launch Party

Yeah! I finally get the chance to attend the launch events for Microsoft's 2008 products. These include Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008. In case you haven't already registered, here's the website for the launch events held worldwide. Strangely, Singapore does not appear on the list. This reminds me of how Oracle stopped holding developer events in Singapore after 2000. For Singaporeans, the nearest venue you can attend the conference is in Kuala Lumpur. That shouldn't be too expensive.

Busy Busy Busy

That's what it has been for me this past week. To kick off my week, I had a fantastic haircut and now I am feeling so much better without long trains behind my ears and on my neck. I guess the only time that I deliberately wanted to keep my hair long was back in 1993 - pre-enlistment times. Ya know... would you?

Anyway, I have been busy trying to grapple with some new stuff, geeky stuff. Ya, and I had fun. So here's a gist of what I have been toying around with the whole week:

• Longwell - a software written by the good people at MIT for browsing RDF data.
  
• Freebase - a collaborative effort to compile knowledge similar to Wikipedia, but with greater structure.
  
• Freebase-suggest - is an AJAX library for auto-completion using the Freebase dataset.
  

And for this weekend, I need to work on a PHP-based search engine for an intranet portal. Remnants of a past project that urgently needs some upgrade. So that will occupy my weekends. And yes, I need to work on my website too. I spent some lunch time today brushing up on my CSS, at the same time, working out a skeletal view of my website. And I should think it will be ready in a few weeks time. It better!

Train rides have been rather fruitful for me this past week. Last Friday, I picked up two books from Chapters: Dangerous Ground and First Team: Fires of War. Both authored by Larry Bond. I have a few other novels published by him, and I really enjoyed reading them. I guess I really like fictitious full-blown war scenarios such as Red Phoenix and Vortex. Larry also co-authored Red Storm Rising with Tom Clancy. If I remember correctly, I read this novel over 3 times. The other books that I have are Cauldron, Day of Wrath and The Enemy Within. Only when composing this post did I find out that Larry has his own series called "First Team". Well it seems I bought the 3rd part of the series and might have to source the other 2 and the 4th to be published soon. If you have read Red Storm Rising and you haven't read Larry's books, then I'd suggest that you start. ;)

Reconciliation and God's Gifts

Each year, there was always some saying or teaching from Father Scott at St. Clare's that I would remember for a long time. In 2006, when I visited Canada during Fall, I remembered his sermon and key message: "What would Jesus do?"

In his New Year Eve's Mass yesterday, he ended the service talking about the show Evan Almighty. Evan asked for God to change him, but God gave him opportunities to change instead. The underlying message is that God doesn't always answer our prayers in the way we want it.

A while ago, I asked for God for the gift of reconciliation. And instead of answering my prayer in the way I expected Him to, He brought me reconciliation with someone I haven't spoked to for a decade. That cheered my heart so much, and I move to the new year with greater hope and happiness.