Vandalur Zoo, Chennai Trip

Writing this post to share our trip to Vandalur Zoo a.k.a Arignar Anna Zoological Park. Another primary reason is that when I planned, I was looking at web to see how I should make it and tips for a great trip. Found some real interesting ones but they were old. So thought of putting this new one. Date of this post is Dec 30, 2011 (Friday). We visited a day ago which is Dec 29, 2011.


For more information and history about the zoo, please refer Wikipedia post 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arignar_Anna_Zoological_Park


We had guest at home and planned to visit the zoo. But right from the morning we had a big challenge of the cyclone "Thane" warning and it has been raining. So ignored the rain and warning was after 24 hours, so packed and gone there.


Location of Arignar Anna Zoological Park, Vandalur: 12.879162 ,80.095394
http://maps.google.com/maps/place?q=Vandalur+Zoo,+Chennai,+Tamil+Nadu,+India&hl=en&cid=12893818695027825798


How to reach?
-> Personal car will be best a option
-> Metro train that goes upto Chengalpat from Tambarm.
-> Plenty of Deluxe, ordinary and Volvo buses go there. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MTC_Chennai_bus_routes


Entrance into the zoo:
-> For personal car's Rs.20 to be paid and you have plenty of parking space
-> For adults Rs.20 and for children its Rs.10
-> For still camera Rs.25 and video camera its Rs.50
-> There are three rides you may need to book
     -> Electric car ride: Eco friendly electric car ride if you go with family and kids, elderly person. Tickets will be sold fast so early visitors can easily get it. This ride will last for an hour and they will stop at only 3 or 5 places based on time you take at each place. Charges are Rs.20 for adults and Rs.10 for kids.
     -> Lion safari: This is about 30-45 minutes van ride inside the forest area where you can see the lions at wild. You will be in a covered van. Try to get tickets as soon as you enter into the zoo. Try to avoid seat numbers 20+ in the van. Who gets 1-6 are lucky in this case. Charges are Rs.20 per adult and Rs.10 per children.
     -> Bicycle ride: At zoo, you can hire bicycle for rent. Rs. 15 for a non-geared cycle and Rs. 30 for a geared cycle per hour. Those who like to take more photograph, enjoy watching the animals and planned to spend a day, you should take this option. A refundable deposit of Rs.200 per cycle is to be paid.  


What to carry?
-> Food for yourself as there is only one Tamilnadu hotel restaurant inside the zoo
-> Water bottles for yourself
-> Good walking footwear, towels, cap, sun cream and sun glass for any sunny day.
-> Preferably a SLR or DSLR camera as P&S cams doesn't work good. At times animals will be far away from boundary. Make sure your SD card is pretty empty and batteries are fully charged / backup battery.
-> Light weight baggage and food items packed in a paper cover as plastic covers are not allowed


In the beginning, you will start with deers, monkeys, and they you can find several other mammals including White Tigers

Also you can find nice and beautiful deer and monkey

Also found some beautiful pair of river otter kept in there...

And a lot of birds there in the zoo and you will definitely spend a lot of time and photo shots there. Also you can find the zebra, giraffe, hippos  and crocodile (about four or more varieties including american alligator).

During the lion safari, please try to get a P&S cam with you. The mesh outside the van will not be enough for the SLRs to skip them and shoot. I would highly encourage you to have this safari. Below are some pictures from the lion safari.

the last picture was taken on the way back from lion safari... very interesting to see the fight. 


In general, a nice place to go and spend. Plan for a full day with full energy. Go early to get the rides, prefer a weekday rather than a weekend. Personal car would be so easy. Carry your own food and water but carry lesser weight :-) Have a nice time!!

MS Project 2010 Pro & I.E 8

Everything has been going good on setting up and testing MS Project Server 2010. How nice it would be if you don't see any issues. Yes, this is the time. It's on the compatibility issues that am undergoing. No blaming of such a nice product, but yet it doesn't work on IE 6, of course on other browsers like Mozilla, Chrome and Safari.

Here is the scenario. We are on IE 6 though we have many people started using either IE 7 or IE 8. However the people who are to evaluate P14 is on IE 6 for very specific reasons, which is becoming a challenge. So right now I am hunting for the solution.


I know I will be able to provide remote connection to the host that has IE8 and MS Project 2010 installed. This can not be a solution rather than a work around. So am looking if there is any alternate to overcome. Right now evaluating IE Collection1.7 version which allows you to keep multiple version of IE on your computer for the same computer. 

My assumption and what I heard from consultants is that MS Project 2010 Pro will be looking for IE 7 or 8 as a base IE on the computer. Let me see what finding I have. Good weekend!

Unable to Activate MS Project 2010 Pro

This was an interesting issue that I came across. We had a team piloting MS Project Server 2010 and we provided MS Project 2010 Pro for project managers. 

Initially we began with trial version and it expired after the limited days. We then decided to use the volume licensing copy. The media remained same for all the installations. And below is the scenario.

1. All the users had Windows XP

2. All the users had trial version of MS Project 2010 Pro installed

3. We uninstalled the trial version. Installed the full version later using same media.

4. Activated the product using Internet.

Problem:

Out of all those installations, it went wrong for one user. It showed an error message as below.

An unspecified error has occurred. Your request cannot be processed at this time. Please try again later ( 0x8004FC12)

Solution:

We tried multiple time with reboot and it didn't help. Finally went through Premier Support of Microsoft. Had the solution and it was damn easy which we didn't think. There existed a proxy configuration on I.E that blocked the user having the installation activated. 


Caution: 
This works when the identified problem is on IE Proxy Settings. If you have proper proxy settings and still the error appears, I would strongly recommend to take support from the product support group.
Also changing the proxy configuration of IE may result in interrupting your other day to day work. Purpose of this post to share the experience that I had.

Let me try to edit this post later to add more information. But basically you have the solution for this scenario for now.

The American Days 2011

 
            I happen to be a typical Indian software engineer to board a flight to the United States of America on January 9th 2011. I never had this experience of flying for more than 2 hours and that too a different country. Well I could say that I've never been abroad like this ;-)

           It took 4 hours to reach the transit at Dubai. Was a a terrific as I started in mid night and seat was not good as I expected. Spent an hour and half in Dubai International Airport and took the next connecting flight to San Francisco. It was a straight 16 hrs flight. After some sleep, movies, watching around, watching outside and drinks I finally reached at SFO. 

            Here are the things that I came out so far... and will blog on each of them going forward.

1. 17 Mile Drive

2. Livermore Temple

3. San Francisco - Golden Gate Bridge

4. San Francisco - Pier 93 (The Aquarium Bay)

5. San Francisco - Wax Museum