Welcome 2007!

Another year has dawned. This time I welcomed the new year at home, with the latest addition to our family, our daughter Dinara. We were up at midnight, holding her close to us as she was getting a bit annoyed at the sound of all those crackers which were being lit by all our neighbours.

From that start, the year so far has been pretty good in many ways. Work was somewhat hectic, but then if it slows down too much I myself will get bored with it. So, in a way I like having a hectic work life, as long as I can manage it.

On the personal front, the first few weeks of the year has brought a lot of good news to me and my wife as well. The future looks pretty much exiting. I have a strange feeling, 2007 will be a good year!

VS2005 Crashes when loading a solution

Ok, it did it again, today.

I was trying to work on a project that was long overdue and when I finally found the time and sat down to do it this afternoon. So I fured up VS2005 and clicked on the solution from the startpage. VS loaded the whole project and then after about a second or so, gave me an error message saying it encountered some unexpected problem and closed down.

This is the second time that I got this error with VS2005. On the first occasion teh solution was to re-install VS2005. So again, now I am re-installing VS2005. This is annoying to say the least. And it seems to be taking ages to do it also!

December 2006 update

I just noticed that i have not made a posting since 1st of December. Well you can’t really blame me as this was one of the most hectic months of my life.

First, the baby kept me busy. She immediately had two impacts on my life. First, she made me impatient to run back home. I didn’t want to miss her growing up. And I was trying to compete for her attention with my wife, as she was practically spending the whole day with her. I was getting jealous!

Then I was down with Chikungunya. It was one heck of a sickness. I was feeling as if a train had run me down! Couldn’t eat, couldn’t do anything else except maybe sleep. And I was down mentally as well. I was messing with my mind too.

So with all these going on, I had a pile of work at work to finish. I still have the pile. Still trying to device a way to either do it, or run from it.

Anyway, we have come to the end of one of the most eventful years of my life. A lot happened this year. Most of it good! (Material for another post around the 31st, hopefully)

PMP

I have passed the Project Management Professional (PMP) exam! Now I am a PMP.

In my last post about the PMP examination I mentioned that there were a lo tof questions which I felt could be very subjective. I am glad to note that my thinking is in line with what PMI designates as body of knowledge in project management.

Also, with this exam I have completed my professional development objective for the year. This was a target that I had set for myself sometime back, but I was not sure about covering it this year as the PMP exam in Sri Lanka kept getting postponed. With the constant postponements, I also sort of lost my touch on the knowledge areas and I had to completely study from scratch. But I am glad to fulfil my objective at least towards the latter part of the year.

I wish to thank a few people who made this possible for me. First I would like to thank Madu Fernando, who was my trainer in the accredited educational program, Aruna Kooragamage and the PMI Colombo chapter team for organizing the exam in Colombo. And Kevin, thanks for pushing me. Last, but not least my family, specially my wife who kept pushing me to study and taking all responsibilities of the baby and freeing me to study. Thank you love!

del.icio.us tags: PMP, PMI, Project Management, Exams

CBNSat is back!

Good news to all CBNSat subscribers. Seems they have go the go ahead to start transmissions today. So we can look forward to our favorite programs again.

The past few months without any decent entertainment has been painful to say the least. There was nothing much worth watching on TV.

Wishing CBNSat a roaring success, on the rebound!

Technorati tags: Entertainment, CBNSat, TV, Sri Lanka

Had a peaceful Sunday, after all

It was nice to be home on a Sunday without having to worry about any work. I did have a lot of work piled up for this week (which I am tackling right now), I made a decision to not to worry about them, as I needed to give myself a break and to spend some time with family.

I have been spending time with my family but during the last week, I was pretty much drained out by the time I went home. Which left me falling asleep and hardly spending anytime with the baby. So I needed to properly spend time with them, by being there with the body, mind and soul. Not just physically. My wife was also getting annoyed with me for not spending any quality time with them (her and the baby).

So I spent the Sunday, just playing around with the baby. Meddling with my computer as it had crashed the day before and looking for a car to buy. I guess I managed to spend time on all activities, but this time, I managed to spend the time on it without my mind bothering about something else. I think finishing the PMP exam was one heck of a relief!

Technorati tags: a day in my life, personal, family

Live Writer Update for Blogger beta

I have been having this problem with inability to post to blogger blog, from the date I migrated my blogger account to the blogger beta. I knew that it had something to do with my migration but somehow missed out on looking for a Live Writer upgrade. When I faced this proglem again, only did I remember to look for a Writer update, and I found it. Seems it has been available for sometime. So if you too are having a problem with the blogger beta and Live Writer beta (notice that both are BETA's), donwload the updated Writer version from here: http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/

Happy blogging with Blogger beta and Writer beta.

Technorati tags: Blogger beta, Live Writer Beta

PMP Exam

Today was my D-day. Had the PMP examination. This was a four hour marathon!

I am not going to disclose anything about the exam. I did sign on a paper that said that I am not going to disclose the questions to outside parties. But what I can say is that it was a very subjective exam. Meaning they had asked about what should be done in different situations. I felt that those answers could be very subjective as what each person would do will depend on a lot of environmental factors, organizational culture and the personal preferences and characteristics.

But what I found good about the exam was that it did not hinder me because I did not know the inputs, tools & techniques and the outputs by heart. I did read all of it, but could not remember all of them. I am not good at memorizing things. But where ever it made logical reasoning possible, i remembered the process. The exam was not that heavily dependant on these. They had asked for some of those, but i managed to answer them using logical reasoning and logical elimination.

Well, all of this would hold true if I do get pass the exam. As I said, since it was a very subjective set of questions, I guess it will depend on closely my thinking and PMI's thinking aligns. Let's wait and see.

Seagull Softwares is a scam

Seagull Softwares was a company that was promoting a work at home data entry job system in Sri Lanka. They charged a registration fee upfront which was 1.5 times the monthly pay, which meant you become profitable only after you complete two months with them.

But apparently the work was pretty easy. You could buy work slots and for a computer savvy persona slot was only about 10 minutes of work per day. So this would have become a method of easy money in most people's eyes.

It also offered a convenience like no other earning opportunity. It was flexible and it required not special training. Also, it allowed a lot of those who were unable to work an opportunity to earn. Specially given the fact that part-time work is virtually non-existent in Sri Lanka.
So they had a great demand. I heard that people stood in queues to register themselves in this scheme. There had been people who had bought hundreds of slots and was employing others to do the work.

Guess what, about a three days ago the Police has busted the place. The scammers have jumped the country. Apparently it was a racket which was run by a couple of Indians. The web site is registered under the name of Raj Sekr in Chennai. They have not made payments to people for the last month or so for the work performed. And there and been a lot of people who have registered but who had not completed one months work to become eligible to pay.
Somehow another smart fellow has managed to scam a lot of people and vanish with their money.

Who said there is free lunch? Or rather easy lunch...

Affno Strikes GOLD (twice) at BCS Awards

Last weekend was a great weekend for Affno as we won 2 Gold awards (for the two entries in two categories we participated in), won the Overall Silver Award, across all 13 categories and won a special award from the Institute of Chartered Accountants.

For this years National Best Quality Software awards, Affno submitted entries for 2 categories. We made an entry into the e-government category with our Town Planning Services Management Solution (TPSMS) as well as the Financial Applications category with Retail Market Booster (RMB) - our online stock trading solution. Out of all 13 categories FA was the most keenly contested category as it had the highest number of entries (11).

After the initial category presentations both our products were called for a second presentation, this time for the overall awards.

TPSMS won the e-government category. RMB won the FA category beating other solutions like online banking solutions. I think it was a well deserved award as RMB has already proven itself in the Sri Lankan market, with 6 of the top stock brokers going online with it! RMB also bagged the overall Silver award as well the Institute of Chartered Accountants award for the best Financial Application.

This makes Affno the most successful products company in Sri Lanka. There was no other company winning two categories and four awards in total. Great show Affno team!

As for my part I am very happy to be a part of this great team and for doing my bit in getting the awards for Affno, because I was a presenter for both presentations for RMB. But I missed the party last Sunday night as I my wifee was not feeling well and instead of going to the party I decided to stay at home with her. But hey, I was there when I was needed most, for both of them, for Affno and for my wife!

Registering for PMP exam

Finally the PMP (Project Management Exam) is going to be held in Colombo. The date has been fixed for 20th of November. To be able to sit for the exam you have to complete the registration by the 20th of October.

Filling up the registration form for the PMP exam is a project by itself. Since I posses an accredited educational qualification I have to show 4500 hours of project management work experience. This gets more complicated when you have to show a breakdown of time spent on each of the process groups; initiating, planning, executing, monitoring & control and closing.

My life was made a bit easier by the fact that the application form is available online and it can be filled and saved to continue later. Also, as you go along filling it, the application itself tells you how much more you need to cover in order to become eligible. This is the most interactive exam application form that I have filled. I have to admit, this is IT used in a practical manner.

I realized that I needed to run through my projects as I needed to first workout the time I have spent on each of the projects that I have managed earlier as well as to gather the time I have spent on each of the tasks so that I can work out the tie spent on each of the process group. Life was made simpler again by a spread sheet that was forwarded in the PMP study group email. This spreadsheet calculates the contact hours when you put in the dates. Good for me!

So now I have raked my brains and have come up with the projects that I have managed along with the time lines. A lot of my former colleagues helped me to find the dates lines of older projects. And having the old emails archived helped to a great deal too. The spreadsheet tells me that i have covered my 4500 contact hours. So now I am off to the online application form to put it all across to PMI.

Does pregnancy make a woman less capable?

I am prompted to write this due to a recent experience of a lady.

This particular lady was working for a very progressive (at least on the outset) company successfully managing a division of about 50 people. She was instrumental in setting up this division and she has trained the workforce single handedly to achieve very successful service levels. Her job was particularly made tough by the fact that Sri Lanka does not produce qualified people in this area. So it is essential to recruit and train the correct people for this job. And this particular division earned respect in general from within the company as well as from their customers for providing an efficient and courteous service.

Then this company expanded. Naturally this division was also expanded and diversified. She had participated on all the activities related to the expansion. She met the potential clients and had performed some activities beyond her scope such as training potential client organizations on behalf of her company. She identified her best staff to man the new operations and trained them further. She did everything that was expected out of her division to tackle this new business opportunity.

On the day before the launch of this new business, she was told, over the phone mind you, that the higher management of the company has decided to put another guy in charge of this operation because they felt she would not be able to handle it due to the fact that she was PREGNANT! And the person appointed was someone who had no clue about the operation, but because he was a guy, they thought he would be able to put in more time!

It is true that being pregnant she will not be able to spend her every working hour to the company. But they did not seem to have an issue with that when they got her involved in setting up the new operation. But after her doing the hard work, if they have a concern with her going on maternity, they should have the decency to discuss it openly with her, explain their concerns and let her be heard. But what they have done is unprofessional and unethical. Letting her find out from others that she will be replaced and after realizing that the cat has been let out, just confirming it over the phone, without giving her the due respect of telling it to her face to face!

What beats me is does it mean that being pregnant makes a woman less capable? They knew very well that she was pregnant when they requested her to help out with the ground work. They knew the time frames when she will be going on maternity leave. But still they never had any issue with her pregnancy then. But despite her doing all of that they had no decency to tell her properly that someone else will be appointed, probably because they know that their case was not very strong. So they get away by telling her over the phone!

It's pretty funny to me. Seems these guys have missed out the point. They are here because at some point their mothers decided to give birth to them. Obviously for a woman being a mother is more important than anything else. But holding that fact against her is a violation of her human rights. They are lucky that it is Sri Lankan lady and she does not want to take them to courts over the matter. But I believe that she has a pretty strong case. At least I think it is essential to bring such practices out to the open. Such companies should be avoided by the citizens, for their unfair and unethical treatment of mothers!

Contracting Vs. Permanent Employment

Came across this interesting post which was trying to compare the difference between permanent and contract positions. Where.Deers.&.Antelopes.Play It is a post that has started a very diverse discussion from different view points. What triggered me to write this post was because I was also once a contractor and I faced a few issues by virtue of being a contractor, especially in the case where I needed to raise some capitol from banks.

In Sri Lanka, no bank will ever lend you any money if you are a contractor. They seem to have taken the notion that permanent jobs are forever and contract jobs are temporary. I guess what they have not realized is the fact that no job is permanent, whether it is contract or permanent.

When I took up that particular post, I had no hesitations on taking up a contractual position as I had confidence on my self. I was confident of being able to get a renewal at the end of the term. I always believed in giving back my worth to the company that work. If I feel I am not doing my worth, I get worried before anyone else does.

So for me it was not much of a differentiator. What I was more interested in was the challenge and the environment. I was more concerned about delivering what was expected out of my, because one thing that I cannot bear, is being a failure in my own eyes.

But in general I think the environment also has to adopt to be more flexible towards contractors, specially in Sri Lanka. If the banking system shuts down contractors from basic needs such as getting a housing loan, car loan etc, then that is going to force some people to seek permanent jobs. This will create an undue demand for permanent jobs as well as makes it harder for companies to fill short term man power usages through contracting.

A lot of contract staff in Sri Lanka tend to work for foreign companies. This practice is adopted by these foreign companies to stay more flexible because of old labour laws that are in place, which makes it almost impossible for a company to fire an employee, unless that person commits some serious crime. So in order to not to get locked into carrying un-necessary luggage they prefer to get people on contract.

If the government wants to promote foreign investment, they will have to work on bringing in legitimacy to the contract workers, by amending laws that would ensure that they are treated in the same level as the permanent employees. If this is done, I think eventually Sri Lanka will also have a talented pool of contractors who will be able to quickly move in to a job and fulfil the requirements. This will also enable the companies to be more agile as they will have flexible access to talent; proven and exposed talent. People who are exposed to new technologies and more diverse situations, thus providing solutions that are proven and tested, avoiding the invention of the wheel over and over again.

Chinese @ Peach Valley

Ended up going out for dinner last night. We had no plan to dine out, but when we ran in to Lasal, we figured the best way to kill some time was by doing dinner. I hope the lie he told his mom to skip the dinner invitation he had would not be traced back to us!

Tried Chinese at Peach Valley last night. Lushi has fallen in love with a menu we tried sometime back and we went to try that again. Then we moved on to IlGilato down Duplication Street to have an ice cream. There was is a Cafe Lavinia that is co-housed in the same building. Tried the Caramel Latte. It was pretty good. Thankfully last night was not one of Lasal's vegetarian days, so we were free to try out the meat and fish as well.

Peach Vally is pretty amazing. You find the place packed to almost capacity almost on all nights. I am sure one part is their food. And the other is the fact that have a bar inhouse. So it doubles up as a restaurant / bar.

After a pretty hard week the weekend is finally here. I look forward to chillout, relax and some quality time with my family. I haven't visited my mother in about two weeks so must go see her. Amma I hope you would understand why I was unable to visit you as I was buried in work.

As for this weekend Lushi wants to do some cleanups around the house. Let's see how things go. I just hope that I wont catch a cold after the cleaning, which sometimes happens to me when I get exposed to dust!

Blogging using Windows Live Writer (Beta)

I am posting this entry using Windows Live Writer. So let's see how this turns out.

Out of the tools that were listed on live.com, this was one of the tools which I liked because I thought that it would enable me to post to multiple blogs. Seems it does, but strangely it did not allow me to setup a Live Spaces Blog! Talk about ironies!

And one more thing. I ran a spell check after writing this post and it caught blogging as a word that is mis-spelled. This in a blogging tool. That's funny!

30 Day Trial for Regular Exercise

Steve Pavlina proposes a good technique for installing new habits. It is analogous to the shareware industry which allows you to try it before you buy it. Similarly, Pavlina suggests, when you want to adopt a new habit, without fretting about it and its impact of doing it forever, to make a commitment to adopt it for 30 days. And at the end of the 30 days, you can asses the benefits and decide whether you will continue with it or abandon it.

The mentality of starting something for 30 days is it will lessen the enormousness of the task. When we want to try something new, we usually get scared on the idea of doing it forever. But if we set our mind to do it only for 30 days, this initial resistance will be lesser as our mind will think of it as a temporary habit and will have less resistance for the first 30 days. But by the end of the 30 days, it should have got installed as a new habit.

I was thinking of areas that I can personally apply this principle in my life. One area that I really need to develop a habit is in regular exercise. Hence I decided to adopt this habit building method for exercising.

I have started exercising several times in the past but for some reason or the other, everytime I gave up after sometime. The last reason being my exercise machine broke down!

But this time I am going to start an exercise regime that is not dependent on any machine. And I will make it public as well. I will update on this blog everyday about my progress. This way I am adopting two methods of installing a new habit. the 30 day trial method and the public credibility. I will at least exercise to keep my credibility in public.

Hopefully, after 30 days, this would have become a habit!

Having a good day, everyday

This is a concept that is very valid. We are conditioned to think in terms of accomplishments and we spend a lot of our time, locked in tasks that we absolutely are not enjoying. We do these tasks targeting a goal and we forget to live each day in the process.


I wrote on this topic a few weeks earlier as well, but at that point I was concentrating on finding enjoyment in everyday tasks. But another thought hit me. What if we populate our days with things that we enjoy doing? What if we do things that we like doing and set our goals in such a way, that they are achievable by doing tasks that we enjoy doing. Doing that will help us come up with goals that are more congruent with the tasks that we enjoy, and the goals itself will be more congruent with our inner self.

There are a few basic things that you need to set in order to have a good day everyday. If you are stuck in a job that you hate, or hate your boss or your co-workers, I don't think you will be successful in having a good day. If that is the case, then may be you should look for a change. I know this personally because for a while I was in a job that I absolutely hated. It was such a relief to change that job and I found an immediate increase in my happiness levels and effectiveness. So find a job that would mean something for you. According to Stephan Covey a person looks to fulfill 4 aspects through their work, body/mind/mental/spiritual. Look for a job that fulfils all four aspects for you.

If you find this job, then that will solve a greater part of the equation for you. After finding this job, or converting your job to fulfill these aspects you need to look at ways to convert your tasks to enjoyable tasks. Some of the things like doing small tweaks to your environment, etc will help in some ways. You can find tips for these in Steve Pavlina's article here. Here Steve actually speaks of ways in which you can get more enjoyable tasks done in a day. I guess you can take that as a guide and come up with a list of things that you may like to include in your day. A few things that I enjoy having each day is the time that I spend with my family, specially my wife. I enjoy the time I spend driving to and from work with her. This is our private time that we talk about a lot of things.

In the mornings we talk of what we intend to do in the day and the evening ride is spent talking about how the day went off. This time is very important as it is the time that we spend on strengthening our relationship, finding out what's going on in each others work lives. This also frees up our evening for deeper level of communication!

In my view it is far more productive to enjoy the process rather than to focus on the end result. If you are going to spend the majority of your time locked in things that you don't enjoy for a few minutes of glory, you should really question the rationale behind your thinking. Your life is essentially the combination of all that time, not just a few moments of glory. So is it really worthwhile to sacrifice your life for a few moments of glory?

Live the moment

I have been having this image on my desktop because the moment I read it, it touched a very deep vein. And I realized that if this moment is not enjoyed we are never going to be happy, ever!



I remember a piece of advice that my father gave me long time back while I was back in school. He told me, that I should live my life in a way such that anytime you stop and look back, you should not have any regrets for things you have done and things you have not done. I never really understood the true meaning of this until I saw the above.

I was browsing Steve Pavlina's blog after a long time today and here it was, a post where he talks about living the present moment, called The Power of Now. Well is it a synchrocity or not I don't know, but it sure is a sign that is telling me that I should concentrate more on enjoying the present moment.

The way I see it enjoying the present moment has a lot to do with being contend with what you have. Either you are happy with what you are and have or you learn to be happy. My religious teaching tells me to find happiness with what is already there. And I never realized that it did not mean that we should not be ambitious, but rather it tells us to enjoy the present moment and not to leave living your life until your ambitions are achieved.

Reading Steve's post opned my eyes a bit more. That is why I thought of sharing the news through this hoping it will help more people. When you hear the good news, you should share it!

Presentation Tips

This is a very useful resource for anyone who will be making presentations as part of their work or education courses.

Whilst most of the tips can be attributed to common sense, it does give some points that you will not think of. It is a simple presentation in itself which is very easy to retain. I hate tips that run for pages. I think tips which are longer than a few short points defy the purpose. You are not reading the tips to remember a long list of tips. You are likely to pickup a few that will stick with you or appeal to you. In that sense this is a very good reading…

The Craig Web Experience: Presentation Tips

The power of conditioning

I got this story on an email today. If this is true, it is the power of conditioning. Something that we need to break free from. It is interesting to read, and even more interesting to think long and hard about…

As I was passing the elephants, I suddenly stopped, confused by the fact
that these huge creatures were being held by only a small rope tied to their
front leg. No chains, no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could, at
anytime, break away from their bonds but for some reason, they did not.

I saw a trainer near by and asked why these beautiful, magnificent
animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away. "Well," he said, "when
they are very young and much smaller we use the same size rope to tie them and,
at that age, it's enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to
believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them, so
they never try to break free." I was amazed. These animals could at any time
break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn't, they were
stuck right where they were.

"Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging onto a
belief that we cannot do something, simply because we failed at it once
before?"