Here I am, back home for a day.
 
The trip back was more tiring than when going, maybe I woke up the day before since 4am in the morning to head out to that open safari tour. God talk about close encounters with wild animals :)

TechEd was successful in all aspects el7amdulillah, my session was rated 4.1 out of 5 and ranked the 11th el7amdulillah

I got to make many contacts in Microsoft South Africa, and seems we secured a space in next year’s event.

Next big thing between Microsoft and Intel will be the 64advantage conference held in different places in Europe, I am projected to present in this conference too law Rabina araad, and that will be in Warsaw.

On the ISV perspective, we met with many top isv’s in South Africa, and things look cool! Seems we will be engaging there as well, but that’s not up to me to decide.

JoBerg as they call it, is a city of splendid paradox, some times I did not believe my eyes when I gazed at some of the buildings there or the wildlife, or the clenliness.

Sometimes though, I would see the poorer sects in the community. Trust me, some parts are much more worse than the worst places in Egypt. The gap between the rich and the poor is vast, with very little people in between.

Its like its either you have an Austin Martin, or your house is made of newspapers and/or asbestos :(

Last but not least, Sun City ROCKS!! Now that is a city you can really party in!! I uploaded as much pics as I could for now.

I’ve got to admit, MSFT DO know how to PAAAAAARTTTYYY :)

Now enough talk cause I got to go anyway, and check out the new album “Rami in South Africa” and be sure to look out for additions in the future

Talk to you all soon,

Ps, Chris...i arrive tomorow @ 14:30 isa, drop me a mail with your number, ill call you as soon as i get there isa, i hope you got in touch with Dan already, he has been there for 2 days now

Rami

Here I am, in Johannesburg finally! You cannot imagine how the past few days have been.

Basically, my passport was stuck in the American Embassy getting a visa to go to the United States after this trip to South Africa. After taking a month of security clearance until they finally asked me to send them my passport, the embassy took 7 days to just stamp my passport with the visa!! When they advertised that it takes only 3 working days.

So anyway, I already had my Visa to South Africa ready for a while, and I even bought my ticket, and my plane was scheduled to take off from Cairo at 11:20PM on the 19^th of October, meaning I had to be at the airport almost 9:30PM the latest.

Until 2:00PM on the 19^th of October, I had no solid evidence that I will have my passport that day. Ramadan timings were not of much help either, the embassy closes at 2PM and they told me that they should send the passports at the end of the embassy working day, and that it should reach the TNT courier at 4PM, but because it is Ramadan, I can only inquire about it at their night working hours starting at 7PM!

Of course I tried to get any information before that, so that I cancel my ticket if I will not have it, but I had no luck in doing that. From 7PM to 7:30PM, the lines of all TNT offices were busy!!?!?!? What the hell?? Does everyone have such a critical situation like mine?? Unbelievable! Then I got word that it did arrive, and that I could pick it up myself from the Dokki branch, because they could not deliver it to my home except the next day! Good courier service!! So I packed a part of my bag, and rushed out to Dokki all the way from Nasr City with my dad, getting stuck in all the wonderful traffic in our beloved Cairo, and got the passport.

It was 8:30 by then!. TICK TOCK TICK TOCK….running out of time!! Got to hurry up!! DAMN YOU SLOW DRIVERS!

I called the limo to pick me up at 9:00PM to go to the airport, when I actually arrived home 9:00! He had to wait for me to pack for like 10 minutes!.

I made it, seems like I packed everything..then on the way, MORE TRAFFIC JAMS!! CRAP!, then the airport was all messed up because again, masr omm el donia! J Not to mention like a million planes were taking off at the same time!

So I made it to the airline booth to get my boarding pass at 10:15PM, until I finished there and finished passport control, it was 11:00PM, and quickly started to board the plane! I arrived only 25 minutes before the flight took off!!!

its 2:30am, and I’m wide awake! Whoever said counting sheep jumping over a fence helps you sleep, is an idiot :) Being the geeky person i am, i ended up thinking of the following:

"Why would a herd of sheep, jump over a fence...not to mention, one at a time! And where did they come from, and where are they going? Is this part of a bigger AI problem or something?"
 
Hmmm...what the hell is going on in my head? I had a glass of water, to snap out of it, then went back to bed.
 
Then i started to think:
 
"I'd like to see 437.75 sheep jumping :) Now THAT would be interesting!"
 
I felt like Joey in that last episode where he had those voices in his head, telling him weird stuff :) So i turned the other way and again concentrated really hard...and what came to my mind was:
 
"One sheep, two sheep, three sheep... Brrrr...What if all words were like that? The plural is the same as the singular...I would say "One mouse, two mouse, three mouse...hehe, that would be cool"
 
Then it hit me! I must be hallucinating or something! because this is deranged! Maybe its because of all the sci-fi movies I watch? Movies like "The Island" definitively has a role! then I said"
 
"Talking about 'The Island", maybe those are cloned sheep? maybe the guy who invented this philosophy of counting sheep to fall asleep is behind the cloning experiments? Maybe he is a mad scientist or something? Maybe that’s why sheep were the first things that were cloned?"
 
AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGG!!!
 
I hit my head with the pillow a few times...and decided to stay awake a little longer, that’s why I came here :) My blog :)
 
But all what I can think of now...is "What in God's name am I going to keep on thinking about sheep this time!!!"
 
Good night!!
 
Maaaaaa2!!

This is what I was afraid of! It's been three freaking busy weeks ever since I last blogged L Let me try summarizing whats been happening since then, but first, I wish you all a happy Ramadan, filled with blessings, love and most importantly… atayef J

Well, let me try recalling things in the order they occurred, I guess 3 weeks ago Chris left to the States, persuing his long awaited his dream ofjoining MSFT. I miss you already man, but thank God we get to talk on messenger J I was the first to send Chris on his new email J I take pride in that J In return, Chris promised to send me unedited pics not available on his blog...yeah baby!!. Chris Rabina ma3ak, you deserve all the best in the world. Just take care of yourself, we tammena 3annak. I’ll see you in 3 weeks inshaa AllahJ

I guess Chris’ leaving affected my blogging, suddenly I had no will do to blog. Thank God Im back again J

What else, hmm I have been involved heavily in creating a "one of a kind" Lab session on porting .NET applications from Windows to Linux using Mono. Mono is a Unix/Linux version of the .NET framework, based on it’s open standards. I successfully ported a complete threaded application J It drove me into complete madness, for those of you who know me well, yes i started moooing, and barking, and growling for several nights like a rabbit dog! But as was the case with my previous lab, I enjoyed every bit time I spent working on it!

I had to get involved in the database porting to MySql. MySql has always been pretty strong I must say, but lacked some necessary features. MySql 5 is a complete jump though, with stored procedures, triggers, and a million other things, but of course, they all have a different format than Microsoft's T-SQL syntax! Grrr. To connect your C# code to MySQL, you need a connector. Unbelievably, I found a bug in the latest version of the connector, so I submitted it, and they fixed it J It was such a critical bug that they created a whole new release for it J Open Source sometimes rocks!! (Sorry Chris :P)

My beloved friend and colleague Daniel Refaat is also working on MySQL. He is compiling the MySQL 5.0 Source code using the Intel Compiler, A task, not for the faint hearted indeed! How you are surviving man, is beyond me! I can't imagin writing makefiles and all that crap again. You have to teach me all this stuff when you are done!. Dan is measuring the difference in performance of compiling MySql using the MSFT and the Intel compiler. Chris, again, I’m sorry to tell you, things don’t look good for you :P Show’em Dan!

Other than that, I’m getting ready to spend a nice portion of Ramadan in Johannesburg Inshaa Allah! Out of all the places in the world, I never thought of going to South Africa! From the pictures my colleagues send me, it’s a marvelous place, a little piece of heaven J I’m presenting a few sessions in the Microsoft TechEd conference there on changes in x64 computing, multi-core technologies, and Intel tools. I hope I get the chance to see around, tame a few lions, chase a few gators, maybe ride some elephants J This time I’m making sure my camera has free space for pics and is loaded with batteries J I only heard of South Africa's beauty, but I never thought it would be like this! I created an album in the pictures section with some pics of Sun City, the place where I will be going Inshaa Allah. A33at a2ool yekhrebeet el feel le7add ma ro7t lel feyala benafsy!!! J

Then I’m off to the US of A. After 15 years, we finally meet again! It should be an experience of a lifetime. I have been to California, so Oregon will be a cool addition to the list J Hopefully Inshaa Allah I take some time off as well and visit all the fancy places in the big apple!

Finally, I’m hoping to get to see my brother and his family next month as well. I’ve missed them so much. Nadeen Radi (the youngest Radi of them all) is 2 years old now J and has a smile that can brighten up your worst day. Kefaya the way she says "I yaav you Yamni" J Let me translate, that means "i love you Rami"

Ok, till my next blog, Ciao J and again, Koll sana wento tayebeen, we Ramadan Karim

Today I worked from home L I caught the flue, and gave it instantly to my parents J I guess I'm the kind of guy who when goes down, takes everybody with him J

Working from home is indeed a double edged sword! Its useful for days like these, but you end up carrying your work with you home, but again, at least you can leave work at reasonable times this way.

Anyways, so I get a phone call on my cell phone, an unknown number, so I answer it, and someone asks for "Tarek". So I said it must be a friend of my brother's (Tarek Radi).

So I said, "Tarek is not here, who is calling?".
He answered "Ana Rami"!! K

I mumbled for a few seconds thinking "WHHHHAAAT! I don't know any of my brother's friends called Rami!" so I told him "Tarek meen?".
He said "Tarek akhooya!, enta gebt el rakam dah ezzay!".
Now I freaked out K I told him "Tarek akhook ENTA??".
He said "aiwa enta gebt el telephone dah meneen?"

So I started to concentrate, and again I have no idea why, but my imagination took me to think that this was actually my brother (Tarek Radi), playing a trick on me! He DID actually sound like my brother too!

So I said "Ma3ereftesh tel3abha sa7 ya 3abeet! Fa2astak! Garrab gheirha ya shater!”
Immediately after saying that, a bolt of lightening struck my ears! J

"Enta meen we betkallimny keda ezzay!".

Now I freaked out! Talk about mixed emotions! So I wanted to put an end to this crap!

I said "Enta 3ayez Tarek Radi?"
He said "la2a!"
I said "wade7 7adretak talabt el nemra ghalat! Asl ana esmy Rami ana kaman, we akhooya esmo Tarek!"

We worked everything out, it turned out that he pressed a SINGLE number incorrectly! He turned out to be a cool guy. I can’t say I'm friends with him, the whole thing still gives me the creeps J It’s like I was talking to my clone or something! At some points in time i thought "Maybe this is all a dream? Maybe im hallucinating from the bloody antibiotics?"

What are the odds of someone with MY NAME, asking for his brother who has the SAME NAME AS MY BROTHER, and the difference between my cell phone number and his brothers is only ONE DIGIT!!?!?!
Brrrrr…Maybe I shouldn’t have watched “The Island” Last week J

Ok have a great day, and remember, when someone asks for your brother, who has your name, tell him from the beginning….”WRONG NUMBER!”

Have a good day, and take the bloody vaccinations!!

I just noticed that got the following question maybe 100 times in 6 months. 'You are a software engineer, yet you are employed by Intel, What the hell do you do there?". Of course i get the occasional "beteshtaghal eih ba2a inshaa Allah...berosessor? (that's 'processor" in Egyptian English)" from time to time, and although it made me laugh at first, Enough! :)
 
So I’m wondering, maybe if I publish it, people will stop asking me :P Well its worth the try. So Here goes nothing:
 
Basically, to help ensure that Intel's technology regularly re-sets people’s expectations for what technology can deliver, Intel works to enhance virtually every aspect of the development, delivery, and adoption of our technologies and the experiences of people who use it. Intel’s comprehensive approach includes developing software development tools such as compilers, analyzers and so much more aimed to enhance the performance of applications developed for Intel Architectures.
 
So as a Senior Software Application Engineer, a member of Intel's Enterprise Software Enabling group, which is part of EMEA's (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Software and Solutions Group, based in Egypt but responsible for all of EMEA, I work with Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) that develop their own applications on Intel Architectures, by acting somewhat as a technical consultant to help them in any way possible in enhancing the performance of their software.
 
This includes, finding area's in their applications that might need tuning, whether on the design level, implementation level, algorithmic level, database level and unfortunately, even on the micro-architectural level. This is all part of a big plan to advertise that this application now run's best on Intel Architectures.
 
Gamers might have felt the marketing impact of this. If you ever played Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, you will know what I am talking about. The game starts off with an awesome small video saying "Runs Best on Intel Pentium 4 HT".
 
Anyway, so my work includes, training ISVs as well, where we give them insight to Intel's future technological roadmaps, which gives them a competitive insight into the future. When this amuses them (as always is the case :) , like for example when dual core machines were still not publicly talked about as they are today) we tell them what they need to do to get their applications ready for these technologies. For the example of dual core processors and hyper threading, we train them on how to multithread their applications, be it C++/Java/C# or anything you can imagine. We also train them on how to use Intel's C++/Fortran compilers to get more out of their application, and this involves hands on training. Finally, we help them find bottlenecks in their applications or what is known as hotspots using the VTune performance analyzer to find problem areas in places in their code that they never imagined.
 
The list goes on and on as you can now imagine, and the thing is that while doing all this, we give our feedback to Intel about any new features/enhancements we feel are needed in the tools Intel develops, along with any bugs we might have found.

 
That’s for ISVs! In addition to all this, we also participate in many developer conferences and exhibitions like Microsoft's TechEd and PDC for example. We deliver papers, sessions and talks on hot topics at the time of the event, that the region the event is taking place is interested in.
 
So last MS TechEd in Amsterdam, my talk was titled "Enhancing ASP.NET Applications for Multi-core platforms with Intel(R) Tools and Technologies". That was actually awesome, we showed a typical design for a Web photo album, measured its performance in loading heavy albums and so on, then we showed bottlenecks in this typical design, and then changed the design to allow multithreading. After doing this we threaded the code and measured the performance now, and found a nice percentage increase, then showed how the performance enhancement scales with this design when more logical processors (HT) or cores are introduced especially when using some of Intel's graphical libraries. On a typical Pentium 4 HT system, speedup was 2.4X! :) As Joey Tribbiani would say...Saucy!! :)
 
So I hope this makes my job a little more clearer to everyone :) thanks for listening, and please if you have any questions on what I do for a living now, don’t ask! :P. Well what the heck, i'll cut you some slack, if you do have questions, please bug me all you want ;)
 
Have an awesome day!