Life At Microsoft - The Truth Revealed

Bill Gates @ CES 2008

Halo, world!

Today was a great day for the gamer side of me. I completed both the Halo 3 and Gears of War campaigns (normal and casual levels respectively, I must add) on my new Xbox! I don’t think I can pull off the façade of a hard core gamer even if I tried hard enough. So I will refrain from blogging about my gaming skills and more about my experience playing both of them.

Halo 3

Unlike most other Halo 3 fans, this was the first time I was playing the game. Having not played the previous episodes probably disqualified me as a real ‘peep’ very early in the game. Either ways the game was mostly fun but what I loved most about it was the multiplayer custom matches. After all who can hate a game type called slayer that reads “Kill your enemies. Kill your friend’s enemies. Kill your friends.” The variety of vehicles and weapons were the deal maker for me when it came to the multiplayer casual “kick each others' ass” sessions! As for the campaign mode, it was mostly OK but I hated the penultimate mission, “Cortona”. May be it was just the weird creepy slimy freaks I was expected to shoot down in numbers throughout the mission.

Gears of war

Gears of War was very different from Halo. For one, the game play was way more realistic and involved much more strategy. In campaign mode I found it way better than Halo 3 because it felt lesser of a shoot-all-that-moves kind of a game. But I was disappointed in its multiplayer versus mode. Biggest deal breaker was the fact that it allows only two players to compete locally from a single console and for someone like me who is not-so-frequent on Xbox Live, it was kind of a bummer (specially with my friends all fighting for the grab at the controllers)! To summarize, lemme just say I can’t wait to play the next one!

PS: Excuse the title, could not resist the pun on every programmers most popular phrase!

Finding self...

Some how some where during the course of our onlie life in this Web 2.0 era everyone starts to suffer from the multiple identity syndrome and in my case I have had the pleasure of living under multiple aliases (such as meet_ra13, prodigal.prodigy, and bhaskar.mitra) already. So it was very nice to see one of my most desired feature requests for Live Services actually come to fruition - the ability to link multiple Live IDs. Its one of those small things that makes a big impact for a selective group of people who due to some unfortunate circumstances have split their Live Service data over multiple logins.

Actually if you think about it, it's not that rare given initially to get a Live account you needed one associated with a hotmail account and for those (like me) who already had .Net Passport IDs associated with their non-Hotmail mail accounts it was somewhat of an inconvenience.

If you are also suffering from the pains of managing multiple Live IDs then go to https://account.live.com/managelinks.aspx and click the hyperlink 'Link an existing Windows Live ID'. That should take you to a page that looks like the one below.

Just type in your other Live ID and the password for both that ID and the one your are currently logged into... and hit 'Link'. At this point note that currently it allows you to link a maximum of 5 different Live IDs among themselves.

While this feature is super-useful for me, I am still keeping my fingers crossed that the Live IDs team is also looking at taking this to the next level by merging contact lists, favorites, Spaces contents etc. between linked IDs and creating the opportunity to have the true 1-ID feeling for people like me.


As for now, just wanna say kudos to the guys who pushed for this feature. Go team!

Going elite...

Nothing says elite to me like a sleek black XBox 360 console in the bedroom... specially when it's my bedroom! Yes, my dream set is finally complete! Since yesterday evening I am now a proud owner of a XBox 360 Elite console in addition to my 40" Samsung LCD TV which I had bought sometime back.

...and to top it off, I am told by the Music World representative who delivered the console to my house that I am only the second person in Hyderabad to have bought the Elite console! If I am not mistaken the official launch of the Elite console in India is almost a day away and that makes it even more special to have my arms around my new precious possession.

Note: In the near future if you are trying to contact me and find me unavailable over phone or IM, don't strain your brain cells to guess what I am doing because you are not even remotely as interesting to me right now as my XBox wireless controller!

Sharod shubhechchha... from Hyderabad

The beats, the scent, the words, the sight… all enamoring with the strange sense of familiarity… a sensual trailer of the place I call home… Kolkata.

It was Navami yesterday and my parents who were in town decided to adventure in the search of Bengali Puja celebrations and needless to say I was dragged along. We were lucky enough to find couple of places where such celebrations were being held but not before a disproportionate amount of confusing detours. From Bengali book stores to Anandabazaar Patrika’s stalls, they were all there. The Bengalis had found a way to curve a niche for themselves in the high-tech city of Hyderabad. It was in a way fascinating to see so many ‘bongs’ congregated within the same precincts... all strangers and yet did not feel so.

It felt nice to rejuvenate the Bengali feeling yesterday but don’t ask my dad because you will end up hearing about it in way more detail than you may have bargained for! ;)

Love Addiction

My first published book of poems! You can either buy it on Lulu.com or download it for FREE by clicking the "Buy Now" button below. Waiting eagerly to hear your reviews! :)

And watch the following space for my future works!

The Google Welcome!

Yesterday unexpectedly I found myself wondering in the corridors of the Google Hyderabad office. No I was not kidnapped, I was invited by one of my college mates from Google for their Bring-Your-Friend-To-Work Day! It would have been a real nice gesture if it wasn't so starkly evident that their HR dept. had a big role to play behind the organisation of the event.

Walking into the Google office I became reminiscent of my internship days in Amazon. Overcrowded cubibles... and yet it was different in a way that they all appeared submerged in their own little world. There was a chaotic sense of life that I used to love among the Amazonians that somehow seemed missing here, but may be I wasn't looking hard enough. My bad.

But my biggest disappointment came from the content of the event. Frankly it was a sorry attempt of beat-my-own-drum in the name of explaining the Google culture. Most people who know me also know very well that I have been a Google fanatic for a very long time and yet each time I see someone from Google India representing their culture I find myself looking into the void and wondering if we both are even referring to the same entity! Had the very same experience when a Google representative had come to my college campus during placements and now again yesterday. May be its the "can't talk about the cool things publicly yet" syndrome but honestly, if you are not going to show the cool side of things then save us from the drudgery of the rest as well!

Google HR if you are listening, none of us needed a lecture on data warehousing or backrub. We can read the published papers ourselves if we are interested (and I am and I did long back when I was back in college). You didn't reveal anything that was not common knowledge anyways! Please don't doubt my intelligence by talking about database tables during such an event. If it's not evident already then let me spell it out... talk of things that will get you a WoW from the crowd, not a "Ya, I knew that already!"

I apologize for my cynicism but don't get me wrong. I have lots of respect for Google and it makes me sad to see my favorite rival being under-represented so badly. Frankly all I walked away with yesterday from the event was a strong sense that Google India is NO Google!

Thanks for all the goodies but we could have done without the deliberate "there is life after Microsoft" pitch. Next time you wanna have a HR event please have the courtesy to call it so. Almost every other "friend" seemed to be from Microsoft. Co-incedence? Don't Think so.

<wink>As someone very eloquently summarized on the signature board - "This was a great Microsoft puller event!"</wink>

The Ray of hope...

Being away from one's soil can have strange effects on fading memories and sense of heritage. In that sense I felt very lucky to bump across some of the great man's work which, even if for just a few moments brought back a fresh wave of childhood memories. If I had to describe Satyajit's work in one word, that would probably be "simplicity".

In a fast moving world of competition it is downright strange to see a man stitching a story of simple people and their simple existences. It may be hard to be simple but we can all take a step back and take pleasure and satisfaction in indulging in his fantasies.

Goopey Gyne Bagha Byne

Goopey Gyne Bagha Byne: Hirok Rajar Deshe

Feluda: Sonar Kella

Agantuk

A good laugh... with Russell Peters

I must say... This shit is good! ;)