Pursuits in times of indolence

I've been sick for the past few days. I was given medical leave for two days but I guess going back to the office last Friday wasn't such a good idea after all. Then again, my work backlog would have piled sky-high had I not dragged myself back to work that day.

Being idle these past days rekindled my interest in some of the things I used to do a lot in the past (especially when I was away from my family years back). I downloaded the full Visual Studio 2008 Express DVD and started a few small projects, both for work and for fun. I just finished an animated screensaver of my kids photos using Visual C#; nothing fancy but the sort of thing to re-sharpen the "programming" saw, rusty from months of inactivity. I also started on a proof-of-concept for my project in the coming fiscal year which is all about harmonizing our secure and restrictive computing environment in the fab across the Asia-Pacific region; this POC will be a front-end for a CMDB-cum-Baseline Configuration solution. Configuration drifts, especially for those handling the standard operating environment of an enterprise, is a real pain, I tell you. Anyway, I am not a developer so this C# application will just be a rudimentary solution and I will have to hand this over to a "real" developer when the project kicks off. I also finished our login script which is specially crafted for the Vista OS as we are in the midst of deploying this OS, updated my backup-restore script for our users in this migration to include some error-checking routines, plus some Powershell exercises.

Since the TV is glued to either the Cartoon Network or TFC (I'm telling you, this world will soon be ruled by kids and mothers-in-law), I found time to do some sketching. I used to have a sketch pad which I lost when I got assigned in Bangalore a few years back. It had in it a number of doodles, squiggles, cartoons, portraits and what-nots which I've done during periods of boredom inactivity. I just might start on this hobby again; I just need to get sick more often, I guess.

Oh, and yeah, I found time to start a new blog. ;-)