Gaveen Prabhasara

Archive for

December 2009

My 2009...

... went fast.

So full of events (almost to the level of drama)...

  • Learned from the School of Hard Knocks (esp. about employment & trust),
  • Worked hard (almost to the level of physical abuse, on my own will),
  • Completed undergraduate studies ("about time!", I hear you say)
  • Enjoyed the end of the country's war (which was 3 decades old)
  • Got even more disconnected with politics after "the fallout"
  • Tweeted a lot

really...

  • Went on a great hiking trip (to Roomassala & Kanneliya, also climbed Kabbale)
  • Had Dilan breaking the news about wedding plans (on "Punchi Wella" beach)
  • Got one of the best buddies married (and all the gang was there running around)
  • Took part in a couple of pre-wedding traditional occasions of the family
  • Held back Kasun in Switzerland until the war was over (for national security)
  • Saw couple of buddies getting into relationships :)
  • Created a Facebook account because everyone kept posting photos there
  • Watched the highs and lows of Sri Lankan Cricket
  • Got addicted to Stargate SG-1 (was a fan from the start) and Stargate Atlantis
  • Loved Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (regardless of what others say)
  • Watched the new Transformers movie twice in a row on the same day (at Majestic cinema with the guys)
  • Listened to Rock more than usual (mainly SoaD, LP, Evanescence & Metallica)
  • Couldn't stop listening to Kasun Kalhara's album "the Romantic Opera"
  • Still couldn't find a copy of "Cry Freedom" to watch (big fan of Washington)
  • Read a lot of poetry (works of Rathna Sri, Sekara and Kumaragama). :)
  • Almost completed compiling my poetry into a book :) (expect to hear news)

and technologically...

  • Found my sweet tooth for coding (thanks to Ruby over the years),
  • Switched my main text editor to Vim (and gVim)
  • Found a few interesting programming languages (Eg: Erlang, Reia, Vala, etc.)
  • Learned a few great technologies (Eg: Puppet, AMQP, etc.)
  • Switched my main working distro to Fedora (technically it was in 2008)
  • Started heavily using GNOME Do
  • Stopped reading Slashdot daily (relying more on Twitter for Tech news)
  • Started hanging out a lot more in IRC (at Freenode on #fedora, #hanthana and a lot more)
  • Switched my web hosting personal preference (to Rackspace)
  • Regained faith in smart phones (thanks to Maemo and Android)
  • Renewed the interest to work seriously with C (still not C++)
  • Took active part in FOSS communities (including LKRUG)
  • Started contributing to diGIT free online IT magazine

... and more stuff; some small, some huge.

I'm pretty sure I forgot some quite important things to go on that list. Some I left out deliberately. And I'm pretty sure people who don't know me closely enough might get confused trying to deduce what sort of an aesthetical taste I have according to the above list. ;)

And oh, I'm currently working on the servers of a big web sites (with well over 4-million unique monthly visitors and growing very fast). So the end of the year is looking up despite how the year started.

Anyway, thinking back, I can't say that I wouldn't want it any other way. But as much as the year was tough, it was great too.

I know the next year's going to be the most challenging year in my life until now. It's not a rhetoric, but a crystal clear fact for me. But hey, I'm looking forward..... as usual. :)

Wish you all a Very Happy upcoming New Year 2010!