GuruStop.NET

I’m joining RAYA Software starting next month (October), part of RAYA IT, a business line of 3 main business lines that form RAYA Crop., a well known name in the IT industry over the Middleeast.

My role is very interesting. The entire company is interesting to me, not just for the size and brand, but for the nature of how things are going in there nowadays, which makes RAYA the perfect place to join at this specific time.

About the role

I’m joining RAYA with the same title I hold current, a senior software engineer, yet, I’m going to be a member of a team of only 3 guys, M. Yosry, whom I haven’t met but is said to be a real guru by all guys I met in RAYA, M. Zahaby, an ex-RAYA returning in it recently and a personal friend of mine whom I had technical chats with and even worked with in a single freelance and knew what kind of a geek he really is, and myself!

Mostafa Murad, a great UI designer whom I’ve worked with in two companies, was having a BIG dish party yesterday. Maybe in the occasion of himself recently becoming a team leader in ITWorx or just out of hospitality. He put few simple rules (I’m quoting him here):

• It is not solely barbecue anymore, you are free to bring whatever food you like.
• You are free to invite your friends or family members. Many people will bring their spouses and children. There is a big clean garden which is very suitable for children.
• We’ll have football competitions etc

He made a Google Spreadsheet Guest book, where you put your name, your favorite food, whether you have a car or not, how many friends/family members you are getting with you, and, how many kids are coming with you as well.

It was GREAT. The garden was SO BIG. There were over 50+ guys out there: .NET/Flash developers, graphic/web/UI designers, QA, Project Managers, and many other roles, from a number of well known software companies in Egypt, like ITWorx, LinkDev, ITS, SilverKey (myself), and other companies I guess.

Introduction

In Egyptian Developers Conference (EDC) 2008 this April, my geek network noticed a very nice, cute, and sweet little girl with me that I was very proud to introduce not just as one of the cleverest developers in SilverKey, but also as my life mate, my fiancée. Not sure if any of you noticed that by then, although being engaged, we were not wearing rings, yet!

Well, WE DID FEW HOURS AGO! Yes, I now wear a ring with Mona’s name on it. What a pleasure that is? To understand, you just need to meet her once. I’ll try to give a VERY limited summary of it.

Getting deep into the picture

Mona is a solid geek who just “gets it” when it comes to C# 3.0, jQuery or ASP.NET MVC and all this patterns stuff. That’s easy to guess about my fiancée and is very true about Mona. However, this is a VERY MINOR great thing about her, and didn’t get much of my attention because it is one of near infinity (at least I’m discovering new great thing every other situation/talk). Besides being so smart and having this great look that makes you feel so calm and comfortable when seeing her, she also has a TRUE pure soul that accepts no harm to anybody on earth and perfectly matches her soft but not easily to be broken nature. Somehow, she merges all this with such a cool nature with a great sense of humor, all this with a very admirable respect to herself being a moderate Muslim.

Mobinil, one of the 3 mobile phone networks in Egypt, owned by the same owner of Link dot NET, one of the leading ISPs in Egypt as well have come with a WiFi service for cafes, just like other ISPs provide.

When I’m in a cafe, I just use the Internet connection that the cafe provides via their ISP WiFi, and that’s it. I do NOT have to pay extra money for the Internet service. I do NOT have to register my Email and mobile phone number anywhere. I do NOT have to buy scratchy charge/balance cards like those for mobile phone credit. This is how it has been for years.

Mobinil screwed that all.

To get to the Internet in cafe, you have to do this the first time you connect:

• Register your Email and mobile phone number
  • Refresh the page (clearly hosted by Link dot NET) if you get this exception
    
    I’ll not get into the details of how horrible  is getting much detail of an exception. It’s not the first time.

This is collected from some quotes sent in dotNETreporter.com‘s “Weekly Top Posts” newsletter messages in the past months, in no particular order:

• “Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.” (Albert Einstein)
• “I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.” (Mark Twain)
• “The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore. (Dale Carnegie)
• “The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance.” (Confucious)
• “The father who does not teach his son his duties is equally guilty with the son who neglects them.” (Confucious)
• “The royal road to a man’s heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.” (Dale Carnegie)
• “Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.” (Albert Einstein)
• “History is strewn thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill, but a lie, well told, is immortal.” (Mark Twain)