But now it’s time to move on, new challenge, new industry…

I’ve now joined Mimecast as a Technical Operations Engineer.

Mimecast provides email management as a single service in the cloud that helps you slash on-premise email storage requirements, ensure complete email availability, email security and email compliance, while providing services to help you get more from your email. We call it “Unified Email Management”.

Here’s a video that explains how mimecast service works.

I’m really excited about this new role and the new challenge where I’ll be working with core grid team to maintain, design and build core infrastructure, network and security.

The out-of-the box experience was similar to iPhone. Small package with gorgeous and slim iPad inside. I ordered a 32GB Wifi + 3G model, mainly for the GPS and mobile internet. I thought extra 100 quid was worth it. I bought the apple iPad case as well, which is probably the best case for iPad available. It really suits the iPad and can become a stand while watching movies, slideshows or when you’re turning your ipad into a digital photo album.

At first glance it looks like a big iPhone/iPod touch and if you’ve used them, it’s exactly the same way to use it. After all it runs the same iPhone OS. However, you’ll immediately start feeling the difference – mainly due to the speed and screen size. Everything is so much better than on iPhone. It was easy to connect to iTunes and get started (exactly like iphone). First thing I did was to connect to wifi, it couldn’t be easier! I ordered the O2 micro sim as well (pay & go). It was easy to insert and 3G internet works well.

Physically it looks gorgeous and perfect in every way. I thought it’s slightly heavier than it looks, but feels very nice to hold and use. It’s very much like other apple devices with few buttons (one home, one power on the top, volume and orientation lock at the side).

Once you start using it, the first thing you notice is the speed – you touch the safari icon and it immediately springs into life, same is true for photos, ipod and every other app. It’s amazingly responsive! The soft keyboard is similar to the iphones, but keys don’t popup when you press them. They’re quite big, and you can actually do some real typing with it.

Default Apps

I setup my Gmail account in Mail app. It’s nice, I like the sidebar, where you can easily navigate the emails and once you click the mail you want to read, it opens that email in full screen. You go wow…! I think Gmail (mobile version) in the browser is quite good too, I like the way Gmail natively organizes conversations. The google reader mobile version on the web is also very good.

Photos is amazing, you feel like a magician when you pinch and expand photo collection with two fingers. Videos is fantastic, I can actually foresee watching full length movies on this screen, while on the move. The iPod is much better than on iPhone because of the larger screen size. Built-in speakers are not that bad too. Youtube is another great entertainer. Maps is stunning, specially the street view.

Third Party Apps

After using the default apps that came with iPad, I started browsing and downloading the free native apps from the app store. Some of my favorites are ibooks, pages, marvel comics, the guardian eyewitness, tweetdeck, rightmove, WordPress, IMDB Movies and TV, Jampad, and … There aren’t as many native iPad apps as iPhone but I’m sure this is going to change with time. Anyway, you can use most of the existing iPhone apps too.

Network Admin/Productivity in iPad

Obviously web browser and the email client are the most important apps but besides that built-in VPN client works like a charm (it’s a cisco ipsec vpn client), I could easily connect to our office vpn.

RDP Lite and VNC Lite (both free apps) work very well to give you remote connectivity to windows machines.

I couldn’t find any free SSH Client, so I bought iSSH for £5.99. It’s a decent ssh client, which also supports telnet and vnc.

Skype doesn’t have a native ipad app yet but the iphone version works well on ipad as well.

Although you can read pdf files online and attachments in email, there’s no way to save and organize them locally in ipad, so I bought GoodReader for iPad (£0.59). It’s a pdf reader as well as file organizer, I can now carry my pdfs around with me. It’s really nice.

Initially, I thought I would continue to use Google Docs to create and manage my documents, but unfortunately mobile safari can only view the docs, not edit them. So, I bought pages for £5.99. But I think it’s useful and worth it. The interface is well designed for touch.

Few things I don’t like

- No front-facing camera. I think there should be no excuse not to include it, but I’m sure second generation iPad will have it.
- No third-party multi-tasking capabilities. Apple is bringing them on with iPhone OS4, so that’s good.
- No file management. I think apple should have something like GoodReader built in to the OS or at least as a free app.

Conclusion

Currently I see iPad as an excellent content consumption device but not-so-much content creation. But it has the potential to change all that with future upgrades from apple and new apps from third-party developers. My son really loves playing games and watching youtube in it and my wife loves browsing facebook Unlike iPhone, which is my personal device, I see iPad becoming not just my personal device but our family device. Also, from now on I can go on short trips with my iPad, confidently leaving my notebook behind.

Here’re some unboxing photos that I’ve taken, enjoy…

Click on the photo for larger image.

It was a life changing experience being at the the operating theatre during her birth (I wasn’t allowed in the labour ward when my son was born in Hong Kong in 2000). Words can’t explain it! I’m sure all the dads who’re present at their child birth understand what I mean. The pain women has to go through and courage, love, care and tenderness that they show throughout pregnancy and birth is one of many things that make them so special. I think that’s one of the reasons mothers are so special in our life.

Here’re few photos I’ve taken.

Minutes after birth

With her mum

With her brother

With her dad

I was keeping my eye on the price of D90 in UK at Camera Price Buster (very useful site indeed!). When I was ready to buy it from Currys (it was £709.00 at that time), just decided to do a last minute check on Amazon (I prefer buying from Amazon because never had any problems in the past) and to my surprise Nikon D90 Digital SLR Camera, 18-105 VR Kit was there for just £649.99 by a seller called “rodneyjwillis”. Almost £60 cheaper, Excellent – I thought. Checked the sellers profile/review – it had 100% positive feedback from the buyers, nice comments and seller was with Amazon for almost a year. So, ordered it from Amazon marketplace. I didn’t see anything phisy at that time and anyway I was aware that paying via Amazon will guarantee my purchase with their A-to-z guarantee scheme.

When all other stuff I ordered together with D90 arrived (camera bag, sd card and d90 book), but there was no sign of my D90 being dispatched, let alone delivered. I sensed something was wrong. Went back and checked the seller’s profile – there was one new feedback saying

“BEWARE! This account is being used in a scam – items don’t arrive!”

That got me worried. Sent seller an email and alerted Amazon that this might be a scam. The storefront of the seller was immediately taken off (I guess by Amazon)

Contacted the seller for the status of my delivery – got an email next day saying, the item was dispatched (without any details):

I then replied asking when was it dispatched, if he was sending it from UK and if he could give me the tracking number. In reply I received another copy of exactly the same email. Called Amazon several times and sent several emails. By now I had no doubt in my mind that it was a scam and I wanted my money back, but amazon was sticking to it’s policy of waiting for the 3 days to pass after the seller’s advertised delivery date, which was 11 to 23 June ( I actually placed the order in 5th June). That meant I could only file a-to-z claim after 26th June (which is 3 weeks after my order), and would have to wait for amazon’s investigation (one to two weeks), then when they transfer the money back, it can take up to another 10 days to end up in your account. Almost 2 months before you get your money back in worst case scenario.

I think it’s totally unacceptable for a clear fraud case like this!

When I sent a last email to the seller (June 16) – got this auto-reply saying his amazon account was closed.

After a week of persistent complaining Amazon finally filed the a-to-z claim on my behalf. All in all it was a very dreadful experience. What a waste of time! I’ve spent most of my last week just checking the sellers profile, reading other victims comments, contacting Amazon and worrying…

Here’s the link to scammer’s amazon profile, at the time of this writing more than 70 people have fallen victim to this scam.

I’m sure everyone who paid via amazon will get their money back but Amazon has failed here in a big way. Looks like the seller has duped Amazon more than the buyers. At the end of the day buyers will get their money back. Amazon is the real loser here – the lost customer confidence is more costly for them than the refund they’ll have to make. Amazon should have been more proactive to refund the money to customers since it was a clear fraud case, which happened due to weaknesses in their Marketplace system, but they kept on dragging.

Every amazon’s email had this signature:

“We’re Building Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company”

But I wasn’t convinced. You couldn’t reply to any emails they sent you because the emails were sent from addresses that cannot accept incoming emails. There might be a valid security reason for doing that but as a customer it was quite difficult to track my email conversation with them (the online contact form didn’t keep any record of my previous emails to them either). I found Amazon’s telephone support to be better than their email.

This just shows that it’s not all safe and well on online purchases. The scammers can trick not only innocent users but successfully dupe big companies like Amazon.

Finally the money refunded by Amazon has appeared in my account. I’m off to local Argos store to get my D90.

After Googling a for a while I found about MacBook Pros with faulty Nvidia GPU.

Apple has determined that some MacBook Pro computers with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor may be affected. If the NVIDIA graphics processor in your MacBook Pro has failed, or fails within two years of the original date of purchase, a repair will be done free of charge, even if your MacBook Pro is out of warranty.

Good – I thought, if that’s the case it’ll be a free repair. My MacBook Pro fitted all the descriptions, but I decided to do some further troubleshooting myself as per apple’s recommendation, tried external display and even changed the RAM (I had the original 2GB RAM, which I’d upgraded few months back to 4GB). Finally called apple, and the support guy asked me to take my MBP to apple store to be seen by a Genius.

I made an appointment with a Genius in Apple Store, Bentall Centre. A friendly Genius took my MBP in to do some test (they’ve a special test for nvidia issue) and came back to tell me that the logic board was faulty. I told him that the OS is actually booting, only the display is not working. Showed him that the volume key works, but he told me that volume key actually works without the OS (but I was not so sure). So, finally he gave me a £771.65 repair estimate quotation for the logic board replacement. I came back with my MBP and was already thinking about buying a new one.

Back at home, I turned on the MBP again and left it on for a while, I could see it joining the wireless access point and could even ping it’s ip address from another pc. At this point I was pretty much convinced that it’s not the logic board but only display problem. I booked another session with Apple Genius, but this time in a different store at White City. Showed my MBP to this Genius, explained him what happens. He said – he’ll need to do one test, booted my MBP using an external hard disk and told me “Yes, it’s a NVIDIA issue, we’ll repair it free of charge”.

So, apple took exactly 2 weeks to repair my MBP, the logic board was replaced. The receipt shows £771.65, but with payment method – “No Charge”. I’m glad to have this fixed free of charge (was nearly duped into paying £771.65 or even buying a new MBP).

If you have a MacBook Pro with display problem it’s very likely to be a NVIDIA issue even if one Genius says it’s not!

As for myself, I decided to go to office but my car needed some work.

After 15 minutes of shoveling the snow, it was ready for a drive.

The road was pretty slippery, it took half an hour to drive to work (it’s a 10 minutes drive in normal conditions).

Office was almost empty. No public transport and road closures made it impossible for most of the staffs to get to work.

Came back home and played in the snow with my son.

Just came to know that my sons school will be closed tomorrow as well. He’s very happy.

Delivering customer-focused managed network and application delivery solutions that leverage a global network with unrivalled reach, depth and breadth to multinational, service provider and global carrier clients. Over 1400 enterprise customers and 200 carriers depend upon Reliance Globalcom to manage business-critical network solutions and address complex requirements for their businesses and partners throughout the world

Vanco is now Reliance Globalcom, Anil Dihrubhai Ambani group, which is also well known because of it’s chairman Anil Ambani, currently 6th on The World’s Billionaires List.

I feel myself privileged and honored to have this opportunity. At Vanco my role will be exclusively focusing on security, I’m really excited about it. This is a perfect opportunity for me to bring forward my previous network/security expertise as well as learn and grow at this truly global organization.

Watching news about the economic downturn, global credit crunch and job cuts is one thing but experiencing it firsthand is a different matter altogether.

How does it feel?

Awful, I felt something swirling in my stomach I can tell you it wasn’t a pleasant experience to be on this side of the table (it used to be other way round). Anyway, there’s first time for everything. It felt awful for a while, but the fact that this redundancy had nothing to do with my personal performance, and I had no control over it provided me some consolation. I was over with it pretty soon. I didn’t see it coming though and was caught with a surprise after enjoying my Dashain holidays…

After all it’s just a business decision for the company. I believe that whatever happens, happens for good. So, hopefully ShipServ will be able to weather out this storm. As for myself and other affected colleagues at ShipServ there might be something good waiting for us.

Its slightly painful now (you know you start thinking… oh my god how am I going to pay my rent, bills, food, blah blah…) but I’m absolutely positive that something good will come out of this. Lets see…

BTW, Cnet has an excellent list of 14 things to do if you are laid off from a tech job

Looking at the brighter side… I’m excited about new opportunities and have attended few interviews, which look promising. Also, it’s a good news for prospective employers; thanks to the credit crunch there’s one more very talented and experienced network, security and infrastructure engineer available on the job market

Anyone interested?

Grab my CV here.

On personal account, life is pretty good, trying to climb a property ladder, probably good (or bad) time for first-time buyers… On professional side, enjoying the challenges at ShipServ, grateful for the opportunity to serve and learn… My son is having a good time (very little homework and lot of play). My wife is quite worried about the teenage stabbing, drugs and alcohol abuse…

The weather was very good last week. It was warm and sunny for the whole week! That’s something to celebrate here, English weather is so unpredictable… you can truly see 4 seasons in one day.

Here are few moments I’ve captured from my life in UK…

April snow, my wife and son enjoying their first encounter…

Bird’s eye view of London from London Eye. It’s 135 metres above London, and is the world’s tallest observation wheel.

London Marathon. It was quite an experience seeing 37 thousand people running for good causes.

At British Museum, mummification: wrapping the body…

Huge pelican at London Zoo. My son enjoyed a close encounter with different animals.

Yum… roasted ducks in China Town.

People enjoying the rare sunshine in May.

Beautiful tree in Greenwich Park…

Me in front of the National Gallery.

Here’s a nice iPhone SDK comparison chart by engadget.

Another good news for iPhone users in UK is that BBC has launched iPlayer video on demand service for the iPhone and iPod touch. I just watched the BBC News on my iPhone and it’s just awesome!