Linked In - Sophisticated version of Monster job

I’m using linked-in from past one year now and initially I felt it is a nice networking tool for people looking to connect with people with similar appetite towards technology. Suppose, if I’m looking out for a mentor, it is actually tough to achieve this using linked in. What best you can do is this, message your friends and ask them if they know anybody who can mentor you and keep doing this till you get a nice mentor. Another point that I notice nowadays is that, I get random messages from people asking for recommendations. Few days back I got one message asking me to recommend him. Surprisingly, I never worked with that guy and my knowledge about his work is ZERO. I don’t know why people do these things. Linked in is becoming a place full of false recommendations which is very sad. I always make a point that I never make any false recommendations. I think it is bad for the industry. I feel it is becoming sophisticated version of monster job or naukri.

//Currently Watching - Biography Leonardo Da Vinci
//Cheers!!

Places where I'm blogging

Connected Information Security Group blog. This is now closed as our team name is changed.
http//blogs.msdn.com/cisg/

Our team got a new name, Information Security Tools, hence a new blog site,
http://blogs.msdn.com/securitytools/

My good old blogspot account where I started blogging few years back.
http://fun-with-blackhawk.blogspot.com/

I'll use security tools blog for topics related to my work and application security and for all other things I'll use my blogspot account.

Cheers!

Where is Gaurav?

Hello! everyone,

It’s been a long time since I blogged last time. Past year was very busy @ work as well as personal stuff. I got into Microsoft and got married the same year. No, marriage is in no way related with getting a job @ Microsoft (I can see you people laughing). Here at Microsoft I’m part of Information Security Team with specific attention on development of tools which facilitates a secure computing environment.

Last year I worked on applications built entirely on different technologies. I was part of one huge project using SQL Server 2008 and Integration services. Best thing about working at Microsoft is you get to work on top end technologies, that too, months ahead of their market release. I was working on SQL Server 2008 for more than 6 months when SQL Server 08 officially released. Working on SQL Server 2008 was not just using another new version of database by migrating all 2005 databases to 2008. It was all about using new features like Partitioning, Compression, Query Logging etc. Our SSIS package was so fast that it processed 20 GB of data in 4 hours. Amazing and our applications database is one of the biggest application databases on SQL 2005 and SQL 2008. Crazy stuff. All this was part of information security domain.

Next on my plate was a small project. I was asked to create some custom templates for Visual Studio. This was not that complex project but its impact was huge. Technology used, Visual Studio 2008, SSRS, pre XML, SSAS and MDX queries. It took me some time to get hold of MDX stuff but this was again fun.

Next comes a web based application with security issues all over. My task, act as a superman, get hold of all those bugs, fix them, release the application and wait for the results. From past three years in my career I rarely gave importance to security of the application that I’m developing. As far as I can see, code reviews were always centred around design patterns and multi layer architecture. No one talked about security. One reason might be the type of applications that I was working on in those days. But things are entirely different here in Microsoft. Here we have a group known as ACE which certifies that our application is 100% secure before we go into production. Without their certification application cannot be deployed into production. Great stuff. I worked on all kind of security bugs, XSS, SQL Injection, One Click Attack, cross site script forgery etc. I am also an ACE certified application developer now. This was great learning experience.

Apart from these things I also worked on some initiatives which were highly appreciated. One of them and closest to my heart is Build and Deployment tool built using Windows Workflow Foundation. This is an amazing concept which will now be available with VSTT 2010.

Currently I’m working with ILM, Identity Lifecycle Management, product team to develop customized solution for internal customers. Besides this, my time goes by in playing with Windows Communication Foundation, SQL Server 2008 and Application Security. Few weeks back I did some good stuff on SQL Server policy based management and after one internal demo I’ll post it . Till then.....


~enjoy cOdInG~

The Great Debaters

Just finished watching "The Great Debaters," and man! what a movie. Denzel Washington both directed and acted in the movie. He is simply great. I saw a number of his earlier movies but this time he is rocking. Movie is about racial bias around 1930's time frame. It is a real life story of few men that stood against majority.

All actors, specially the team members that participates in debates are awesome. Scenes where negro team competes with white students is overwhelming. I am sure this movie will be voted for Oscars. This movie is a must watch for everyone out there. Gandhi's non co-operation movement is also mentioned in the debate that occurs in Harvard. In simple words:

Amazing Movie

Old days are back again !

You know what, I got my brand new graphics card ( GPU a.k.a. Graphic Processing Unit)

Bought it from US at 79$ i.e. around 3,500 Rs. In India, its about 13,000 Rs. Isn't it amazing??? Nice deal I must say. A friend of mine, Ravi, went to US on official trip. He's the one who bought this one for me. I was bit scary regarding its compatibility with Vista, but all worked fine.

Installation was pretty simple, open your CPU side cover, fix up card in PCI- E slot, blah blah blah, nothing complex in it.

I don't know why manufactures assume that the people buying their products are blessed with a good Internet connection. It's same with every company, be it my beloved Microsoft or XFX. Why can't they [XFX or NVIDIA] supply Vista compatible drivers with the driver CD that came with the package. I have to download that 10 Mb set up package for installing Nvidia GPU drivers on windows Vista. I just don't like this type of marketing. Manufacturers should do everything possible so that their product is completely packaged together. It's like going to a shop for buying pants. You buy a nice trousers, you reach home, you open the package, waiting to try out, but package content reveals that Zip was not available when this pant was manufactured, and you should go and get your zip from so and so location. If they print on their package that product is 100% vista compatible, they should also mention that you will need to download this set up from their support web site. Funny and painful.

Keeping aside all these woes, let me tell you some of the specs:

Stream Processors:16
Shader Clock:900 MHz
Chipset:GeForce™ 8500 GT
Memory Clock :667 MHz
Dual Link DVI - Supporting digital output up to 2560x1600
Memory:256 MB
Bus Type:PCI-E
Memory Type:DDR2
Othe Features
Vista Ready, DVI Out , HDCP Ready , SLI ready , RoHS , HDTV ready

I have installed Need For Speed-Carbon and Quake 4. Amazing graphics and details. I haven't seen anything like this on computer before.

Quake Sceenshots:

If it's in the game, then it's in the game [EA Sports tag line]
~bLaCkHaWk~

Console.WriteLine("Hello World");

It's been almost 7 years since I started using web and computers. Blogging is around from past 3-4 years. Now, after spending about 7 years (30660 hrs approx.) with computer, finally I got some time to start my own blog. Let's see how it shapes up. Keep your fingers crossed and hope! this goes well.

Note: If you didn't get how I came up with 30660 hrs. it's not my fault. It uses some supercomputing algorithms and it's surely not novice's cup of tea.