BongGeek - About Me

Name

Abhinaba Basu

Synopsis

Super-pathetic attempt to give an about page about me in MAN page format so that I can finally prove that I'm geeky. Just telling you that I work for Microsoft R&D India in Hyderabad as a developer and code for the .NET Compact Framework is no fun.

Description

I'm a Bengali or a Bong and a Geek. Even though there's some dispute on the first part there's none about the later. Even if there was then its closed by the fact that this page is in MAN page format (or something close to it).

Some facts about me...

I'm a bong
I was born in Kolkata (surprise!!)
I lived most of my early life in Kolkata (surprise again)
I have a BS degree in Physics from University of Calcutta (1998)
In the mean time I started coding on 286 and 386 machines in Basic,
Pascal, Fortran, COBOL, C, C++, Lisp, Prolog, VB, VC++, ...
Heisenberg was right and I was pretty uncertain at that point.
So I abandoned physics and got myself a B.Tech degree in Computer Science
and Engg from University of Calcutta (2001).
Fortunately I flunked my first campus interview which was at TCS
Fortunately I did not flunk at the next interview and landed up a job
in Texas Instruments in the Software development team
I got another offer at Microsoft and officially sneered at them with more credence.
Joined TI and wrote linker/loader and some dynamic SW verification tools. Then
went ahead to do some embedded OS work. Got throughly bored and moved to
more graphic areas
Got married to Somtapa. She is the best thing that could've happened to me
(you see she visits this page)
I then worked in Adobe Systems in the FrameMaker team
I got a call from a Microsoft recruiter. Since I was making frames anyways
I thought I could increase my charter and make a whole window.
I then joined Microsoft in Hyderabad in the Team Foundation Server team and not
the Windows team.
This time it is officially not my fault and the team itself changed charter and took up the
Visual Studio for Team System work.
My daughter Prokriti was born. She is three now and let me tell you parenting is
a full-time job where you actually get paid more than you deserve.
I got bored again.
I then drew this famous cartoon depicting why I had moved to the .NET Compact Framework team.
I now own parts of the execution engine and help make .NET work on various hand held
and larger (read XBox) devices.
I wanted to write up a list of things I've done, but felt that a list like this won't
help my career much.
In case you are a potential employer I want to assure you that I don't
get bored as easily as it seems from the above and there's actually 2-3 years
between each episode.

Author

Obviously myself, who else will write about me?