Who are you Hem?

I have been with the Windows Installer team (i.e. MSI Team) for three years now. During this time I helped the team ship XPSP2 (MSI 3.0), 2003 SP1 (MSI 3.1) and now Vista (MSI 4.0). It has been a rewarding experience working with this dev team.

When I am not coding, debugging or staring out of my office window, I work out or play some sport. I like most of raquet based sports like tennis, squash or badminton. But my goals for these sports are realistic. I don't see myself giving up coding and turning into a sportsman. I play them to refresh myself, meet new people and move on.

Like most people here at Microsoft, I love Seattle summers and try to utilize them the best I can. There are good hiking/biking trials all around Redmond/Seattle area for any level of enthusiast. Fall and Winters are not that bad either. It does rain more than say, San Francisco (I did my internship in bay area. My parents and friends always brag how great it is in SFO/OAK/SJC area). But, it at least doesn't snow for nine months like in Minneapolis (I got my Masters in CS from University Of Minnesota). And if you are a skier or a snow-boarder you are at the best place. You are in Redmond where it doesn't snow and you can always drive a couple of hours and be at Stevens Pass and goof around in snow. That's awesome!! No headaches of shoveling the drive ways and driving in chains.

Though I will be signing of as Hem (rhymes with name, fame and shame) I'd like readers to know that Hem stands for Hemchander Venkateswara Sannidhanam. I know, it is a long name that ever so often results in character overflow on various application forms that I fill out. The truncation is to conserve energy (human, print and electronic).

Live long and prosper.

Hem