Cyclone Sidr Hits Bangladesh

Very Severe Cyclonic Storm Sidr Hits Bangladesh at Nov 15th early morning with winds blowing at 250 km/h and gusts of 305 km/h.The storm from Bay of Bengal caused large scale evacuation and after it hit the SouthWest part of Bangladesh, so far 2388 death has been reported. This storm is at decisive as 1991 and 1970 cyclones and the death toll is rising in every hours report.

I have tried a lot to contact my family back home and could get them only the day before after 28 hours electricity black out finished. All of my relatives and friends are fine as most of them are in Dhaka, although the storm went through 85 miles away from Dhaka with weakened force by the time it reached the center of the country.

Pray for Bangladesh. We have seen a major flood this year and now this one - too much in one single year.

Meaning of my name

Today I got an email from a sports journalist and chess fide master of Belgrade asking the meaning of my name Ashik. The word Ashik, derives from Arabic word Asheq (عاشق), and means the one who is in love. Zaman is derived from Zamana, an Urdu/Hindo word that means the age or time. So Ashik Uzzaman means one who is in love with his time. In other words, Ashik Uzzaman is the lover of the age. I live in information age, its my profession as well and I love it. So to me my name resembles that I am the lover of information age.

GMail 2.0 and Windows Live Hotmail

I have been using the newer version of GMail for the last few days and I like it very much. The first thing I noticed is that it's faster than the older version. But the feature that I liked most is the Filter Messages like these action. Its wonderful and is saving me so many more minutes everyday. The other new action Mute takes out the message from my inbox, but I am not sure whether it archives it or deletes it do what with it. The replies by you are marked with a > sign in a discussion thread to easily distinguish between your responses vs the others responses. And of course the Contacts section has changed significantly in terms of visual appearance compared to other parts of the GMail. The embedded google talk now gives optionto show the list of contacts to chat in different sizes - tiny, small, medium, large.

MicroSoft made its Windows Live Hotmail available for general registration. I tool my new live id ashik@live.com . At first look, I think the calendar, calendar sharing and task integration in it will be useful. They are giving 5 GB space to start with which is cool. Let's see how it goes.

I Joined Salesforce Yesterday

I joined Salesforce in San Francisco yesterday as a Software Engineer. So far it has been a wonderful and competitive corporate environment. My manager took me to a Thai Cuisine for lunch and explained me how Salesforce is growing so fast! I will be probably be assigned to AppStore and Phoenix projects soon after I finish my admin training next week.

Last Friday (2nd Nov) my Philips colleague gave me a farewell lunch at Red Kwali in Milpitas. Although Jeff could not attend it and instead gave me a phone call to say good bye; everyone else in Philips Milpitas R&D team joined that - Imtiyaz, Brian, Dan, Jade, David, Tho, Ba, Franca. It was a nice time with them.

In that evening I, Shusmita, Ahyan, Nitol, Ezaz, Shaki and Mahi started for Klamath Falls, Oregon with our hired 7-seater Minivan. We reached the Trendwest Resort there at 3:30 PM. The long drive was quite wonderful with all of us singing by turns. The next day (Saturday) we went to Crater Lake first. We returned in the evening and Ezaz led the barbequeee party. The next morning (Sunday) we went to see Lava beds and chimney near Merill town. We forgot to take flash lights and could not go upto the end of the dark caves. While returning Nitol even got hit in head head by the sharp rocks. While returning back home in the evening, we took exit to see Shasta Dam as Ezaz, Shaki was not with us when we saw it last time in July this year. It was a wonderful trip. Here are some pictures from the trip.

http://picasaweb.google.com/shusmita/Oregon
http://picasaweb.google.com/nitol.shabbir/Oregon

http://picasaweb.google.com/shakilab2002/OregonAndShasta