Mi Mantra

EMBA 17: PAN African University, Lagos Business School

2012-01-21T06:53:00.000+01:00

Yesterday (A few hours ago) marked my 1st day at LBS and the common threat is "You just sold your soul for 2 years". It is estimated every participant will dedicate at least 18 hours a week (oh yes, besides the time spent attending lectures) to consuming and dissecting case study materials. If I though I had my hands full it just became an understatement. Attendance and class participation takes about 30% of every course grade, meaning introverts are about to loose their talents for keeping to themselves. Friday classes are usually from 12noon while Saturday classes are from 9am till 3pm so imagine all the wedding ceremonies and birthday parties missed! It was said of a guy whose wife parked all his course materials and set them ablaze.

EMBA 17 Class of 2012, about 70 man strong

I've decided to make this a very practical year:, even more practical than the case study method adopted here. Apply whatever I learn using Evince Systems as guinea pig. My hope is to make the period more tolerable doing this but today is just day 2 and I'm already running late reviewing pre-course materials for Analysis of Business Problems.

Yesterday we had a tour of the facilities and it was slightly amazing what the eyes could see in a building I had hitherto considered tiny: a library, a rather large amphi-teatre and a number of lecture halls and facilities some donated by the big names in telecommunications and conglomerates in Nigeria Oh Yes I see a nice looking football pitch so I won't miss mobile FC at Unilag that much and not too far from this is a bar to replace the lost calories. Friday 20th will linger in my memories for a while.

The football pitch, beyond the last fence.

Impressive amphitheater, knitted somewhere in the building

I won't be the only one not forgetting Friday 20th January 2012 for a while, this day, Eneche Akogwu was shot dead in Kano. Eneche, a Channels TV correspondent was interviewing eye witnesses in Kano after a series of coordinated bombings. It was reported one of them drew a gun and shot him dead.
The bombings had since been claimed by the radical Islamic sect Boko-Haram. This bombing has been reported the most lethal till date with more than 100 people reported dead.

Kodearena is back

2011-09-10T12:36:00.002+01:00

After 5 years! (covers face in shame) and kodearena is born into fire nation. The next and biggest code jam and software developer conference in Nigeria. Kodearena disappeared in 2006 but we still believe kodearena can save Nigeria.

As usual, we advocate diverse programming languages. kodearena.com in 2006 was developed with django but 2011 will be asp.net mvc. The concept has changed slightly and we don't have a theme yet so I guess this is the best time for you to get on-board.

Kodearena.com has been renewed and set to auto-renew. The project for the website will soon be available on git. Watch this space for more developments.

Things have been happening

2010-04-01T14:11:00.002+01:00

Yesterday, I felt a very strong urge to return to my blog after such a long time. I'm a very different man as I speak.

Amarachi Omoniinioluwa Adewusi is born! [18th March 2010]

In case you didn't get it, I now have a daughter, wow!

Yesterday, I watched as another woman of virtue was sworn in by a majority of the senate for a second tenure as minister (Dr Mrs Dora Akunyili). Despite the beef by some members of the senate (one of them said she cooks for Turai, kai) the majority had better judgement, returning a glimmer of hope in the senate.

Lastly yesterday saw the result of determination overtake overconfidence: Arsenal drew 2 - 2 away at Barca in the champions league. FYI, I ain't no gunner!

Life is getting better, I've been happy for such a long time, God help me.

www2.ng.zain.com

2009-07-18T18:29:00.003+01:00

My team, this time Ope Adeoye, Akosa Onyebuchi, Ademola Adedeji and Kehinde Adewusi :) have been working on project x. It's not secret and x=www2.ng.zain.com.

It will end up being the replacement for www.ng.zain.com, hopefully we don't get to change name before it goes live.

Things to expect from www2?

Live chat with a few dedicated chat agent
Self service for our customers. Subscribers will be able to register with their mobile phones. Registered subscribers will be able to log calls which was previously available only through 111. Sim swap requests, illegible cards etc.
Interesting search. Product information will of course be available online.
Electronic bills
Yellow pages and a host of other features.

To catch an early preview, visit http://www2.ng.zain.com. The current site is still available while www2 is being perfected into a v1 compliant website.

Zain Strikes

2009-05-08T15:32:00.002+01:00

Yesterday we lost weight at Zain by about 300 employees, now ex. Last week, about 450 were transferred to ITS "So that anything that is not core to the business can be outsourced".

We've been expecting something like this for the past four months but the reality left a lugubrious cloud hanging overhead yesterday. Marketing, Finance, Service Desk appears to be among those affected.

More info soon.

Einstein on God

2009-02-27T19:33:00.000+01:00

http://www.stumbleupon.com/toolbar/#url=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.flickr.com%252Fphotos%252Fcallrw%252F3310109127%252F

Zain Millionaire Promo

2009-01-28T19:19:00.003+01:00

We've had a lot to do this year despite the fact that the world is experiencing modern day farmine otherwise known as economic recession. Anyway, So much for farmine, Zain is going to make some millionaires come February 14.

That is what the application we've (I, Ope Adeoye, Seyi Sodiya and Akosa) been building looks like. Ope has beautifully crafted the site in asp.net 3.5 mvc framework (what's that?), Akosa, now fondly called Zain Presentation foundation came up with that UI while I and Seyi did the bulk of the database programming and testing.

Ha! those thieves are out again to give money to their loved ones!

You don't get it do you? Promos are either done transparently around here or not at all. The data goes through 3 layers of integrity check before it's rolled out to the press. Zain revenue assurance unit starts the process of pulling the usage data from call data. The data is double checked by prepaid and post paid billing units before it's rolled out.

At rolling out, TC-QA or other external verification outfits are invited for quality and integrity checks among others. On the days of the draws, pressmen are invited to witness the drawing process and "men of the IRS", yes, that is what I like to call our internal audit are unleashed on poor "us" the whole time. I think they get promoted by the number of discrepancies they catch or what it their motivation?

Well, you get fired if anything goes wrong (I think?) and I don't think Festus Kiyamo will defend a scumbag :). By the way, I hear balls shrink when that dude writes organizations, you might want to try him out. The last time he (Festus) was on air he was yabbing the Nigerian police for parading a got as an armed robbery suspect. The robber it appeared magically turned into a goat to avoid arrest.

Back to Zain Naija talk your way to millions, to qualify: you need to have recharged up to N700 for the regular users and for postpaid folks, you must have used N700 worth of airtime. Naturally, the more you use the higher your chances of winning.

Zain will make 25 millionaires in 4 weeks and 100 people will go home with N100, 000 cash prizes.

Think the Naira is worthless, wait till people start winning and you will see the numbers of entries soar! Today we generated about 114, 000 tickets. I'll let you know when the figures climb.

Universal Studios Orlando

2008-12-07T15:14:00.003+01:00

Planning a vacation? I'll recommend Universal studios. Unfortunately words cannot express what I have witnessed. I did capture some moments in pictures here.
I re-lived Jurasic park and took a tour where the movie was made, the gate still opens beautifully with the same voice welcoming us to the un-civilization-before-man. The jeep that was attacked by the dinosaurs remain at a spot with one of those tyrex overlooking it, still ready to strike. The very interesting parts of the movie are still alive, the dinosaurs still tried to attack us :) and a final plunge down to safety got adrenaline pumping.
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At another spot, we were swept off into space by Dr. Doom and this remains our most intriguing experience because it was unexpected: we had strapped ourselves into seats and a slow ascent started, we were suddenly swept up into space and man, did I think death? It was worse when we were released from a height. I don't even want to talk about the incredible hulk crawler because I'm not looking forward to it ever again, ever ever.
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The coolest, imagine being loaded into an episode of spider man. You board a light aircraft and spider man suddenly lands on your craft with a thud and warns you to get back to the office but he gets attacked before he is done. You suffer attacks from a flame throwing being and the temperature in the cabin starts to heat up alarmingly. A blow from some monsters makes you duck and the cabin shudders terribly and spider man is back to the rescue. He attacks some sea monster and you get a spray of water. A monster with a megadrill lands on your cabin, tries to drill through and everything vibrates. The you start to ascend amidst the city's skyscrapers, the aircraft gets attacked by some really vicious offenders and start to plunge down with alarming speed and spider man rescues the whole craft by spinning a web.
It's indeed the best part.
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Before we left, we had the chance to watch a limited version of Shrek and Donkey where Lord Farquaad's ghost came back to steal Princess Fiona. "You died in the first part" donkey remind's Lord Farquaad. It's a 4-D version where you see flames and stuff coming in your direction and donkey sneezing in your face. I must mention Spider man felt more 4D than Shrek though.
We got to snap pictures with hell boy and Ope got a chance to slap him on the head. Chucky was in the house too.

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View all pictures here on picasa.

Chuck Berry

2008-12-07T15:06:00.003+01:00

Apparently there have been "stars" way back before we were born. I watched this short clip on TV and the internet. Really got me inspired to see the way men have faced challenges in the past and set standards.

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

Here, Mos Def plays Chuck Berry, now I'm looking forward to the main movie "Cadillac Records". Awards up for grabs I guess. Movie also features Beyonce as Etta James.

Orlando, Florida

2008-11-29T14:27:00.004+01:00

Thursday 27: 10-15am Lagos local - 10:30pm Thursday (Orlando local time)

Got into town Thursday night with Ope Adeoye. It was a very tiring ride on Delta, 12 hrs 42 mins, direct flight from Lagos to Atlanta. The ride however from Atlanta to Orlando International took 5mins (I slept for the 1.5hrs and that's how long it felt). I succumbed to the lure of duty free and got a Titinium plated Skagen and a new reading glass to replace the two broken items I carry around at the moment, damaging my "keep it low" resolve on this trip, we're really trying to manage our very low budget for 12 days.

Touchdown was great and we started feeling the Naira-meets-dollars saga immediately. We paid $50 for a ride to the Marriot villages Hotel in a long cab, the journey was less that 25 minutes! I can't forget that's N6, 000 Naija money, plus I got a N1,000 ride for a longer distance same day in Lagos.

At the hotel next, it's $140 (forget the .99cents that is ever present in UK and US) for the night and we're definitely shopping for something not 4.5 star in the morning.

The next set of issues to be breasted includes getting a SIM and adapters for the laptops. You won't dare roam or you'll accumulate bills in the range of N10k in 2 days. As for the adapters, remember the Yankee 120volts issues? luckily the HP machines nowadays support both voltages but the pins we have can't fit the walls, so we quickly use up the remaining battery life on my system, Naija NEPA don show Ope and I was lucky to have an inverter.

The rooms are however very cosy and sleep up for grabs.

Friday 3am - Friday 11pm

Got a smaller hotel today, just for the weekend and would probably be back at the Marriot Monday for the business of software :). Took a walk to Orlando premium outlets and only got a KODAK easyshare camera, now Naija police are going to get popular from my newly acquired Paparazzi skills. Black friday sales are slated for this weekend so we're taking our time not to overshop. Everybody is waiting for the weekend sales to get a great deal.

Ope got a phone, a net 10 for $30 and we bought a call card for $10. Now you can't call Naija directly from an At&T Net 10 without a call card, but beware of those cards. The one we got lasted less than 4minutes, approx 2 minutes talking to family, approx 2 minutes phone ringing without response burned out the credits. Horrible. Now we've given friends the line and we only get in-bound calls, unless it's a life threatening situation.

Saturday 4am

Notice I've been getting up really early, either my system is still running Naija time or I'm renewed by the scenery. Orlando is beautiful, day and night. We missed the opening of the weekend sales, slept off early but maybe it's not such a bad thing. The news have it that a Walmart attendant was trampled to death because of the teaming crowd waiting to start the sales weekend and the outlet (in New York) had to be closed for hours. A woman reported she was injured in the rush but waited till she finished shopping before going to the police!

So much for the yanks, we're getting ready for breakfast now.

FW: Is this democracy? Harry Arogundade

2008-11-06T10:35:00.001+01:00

To: Kehinde Adewusi
Subject: [Mi Mantra] FW: Is this democracy?

Let him be remembered as the "Rear Admiral" who ordered his "Men" to beat up a lady on the streets of Lagos.
May his barbaric acts linger in our memories.

View Video here

From: Ope Adeoye
Sent: 06 November 2008 10:20 AM
To: IT Application Development
Subject: Is this democracy?

Let us immortalise the name 'Harry Arogundade' such that when anyone googles for him they'd only get results that show him for who he is even when we have all passed on.

Simply contribute to the 'noise' on the internet... Facebook, Digg, Nairaland, Blogs, Nigeria Village Square, Punch...

Please pass this on...

Flickr

2008-11-03T21:34:00.001+01:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Zain Search Trends

2008-10-27T08:29:00.003+01:00

Google has enough good stuff for web entrepreneurs really, I did a quick comparison of search volumes for Zain, MTN, Glo, Etisalat and got the chart above, not good for Zain really (they put bread on the table now). Zain is in marine blue and the blue topping that chart is actually MTN. It's not because Zain changed name too, the red line is Celtel so I figure the company's web presence is kind of low.
Glo is in yellow so I wonder what's going on here, anyway you got the gist, here is the live link.
Enjoy the trends you can, I compare my old name "kehinde adewusi" to "keni adewusi", google to yahoo and fried eggs to scrambled eggs.
You bring it on and let's see what's going on out there, remember to separate you keys with commas.

Dubai's very best

2008-10-22T12:49:00.001+01:00

There!, my little nieces dancing away in the middle east. These little girls dance at the slightest sound of music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMIAJJbv-Ko

Postcard from Lagos: The 7 Wonders of Nigeria - Part 1 - Okada

2008-09-15T13:32:00.000+01:00

Postcard from Lagos: The 7 Wonders of Nigeria - Part 1 - Okada

2 Much Jo

2008-09-05T22:23:00.002+01:00

Indeed google has changed the face of the internet. I cannot but comment on google translation service.
I stumbled on a site that did some comparison between ajax.net and jquery (if you know what I mean). The interesting part is that I noticed the site is french, I don't speak french.
The solution? I copied the url and pasted into http://translate.google.com and got a great English version.
Supports enough major language to take your worries away!

Still no .ng domain name

2008-08-19T19:38:00.002+01:00

I thought I would register a sexy domain name today, something l could extend to in.comi.ng because I have fallen in love with sites like del.icio.us and script.aculo.us. I even thought re.veali.ng would be cool. Imagine the possibilities you get from something as cool as a top level domain .ng. because of continous tenses ing, going, coming, beginning etc, it's just cool to have .ng at the end of everything (every.thi.ng).

My searches reveal all I get is .com.ng or one of it's variants. Why can't I just get .ng?
I keep searching though, and notice that you have to go through some bureaucracy of the Nigerian Computer Society to register a name too.

For now, I'll stick to .com.

Dreams are forever

2008-08-17T10:29:00.002+01:00

Today, I slept on my feet, I fell asleep behind my computer. When I woke, it marked the end of a dream.
It's not the first time I'll have a dream like this: some things happened, not necessarily bad and then I was pulling stuff from my mouth that didn't seem to want to end. I think I was sucking or feeding on something that I considered not too healthy after some time. The pulling stuff from my mouth and throat is not the first time.
Crazily, I decided to google it and the 2 topmost results from Yahoo! answers and experience projects sounded like it's me they're talking about.
One mentioned I was probably overworked; overworked is an understatement for my situation currently, and my output is about 25% now, somewhat close to the output of Nigerian oil refineries I guess :).
The other interpretation suggested I had something in me I wasn't letting out, I think I speak my mind too much already though or do I? Maybe not to everyone. Another variant said maybe there was something God would have me say that I'm not saying. Maybe, not been too much of a good church person for some time now.
Anyway, both calls for checks and balances that truly apply to me, it seems dreams do make sense afterall.

The Naija Police

2008-06-22T23:53:00.004+01:00

Earlier today I was in church, one of those good days you'll say. I saw a printout for a program, the venue read, "Egunje Bustop". This busstop is the church busstop.

Now "Egunje" is the word for bribery in yoruba. and guess what, it's so named because of the police check point nearby. I have fallen there victim once too. They (the police now) harass people with their guns and make motorists and bikers pay for going about their normal activities. Recently they just beg, albeit forcefully for money.

An interesting consideration about the Naija police, they are the law enforcement agency of the executive and in their spare time, double as the judiciary. They slap and harass people if they think they can get away with it. They lie against you to buttress points, and they are especially brilliant when it comes to dictating count charges. Once a new law is promulgated, they start enforcing (the good part) and cash in by quickly sentencing the public to certain amount, usually a percentage of what the law stipulates for offences, which naturally goes into their wallets. That you may consider welcome, depending on your orientation.

I'm so motivated to buy a camera now so I can take shots of the Naija police in action, and the other traffic law enforcement agencies in their dubious everyday acts. It's so easy to capture an incidence anyway because they are always at it. Today, they stopped the pitiable bus I was in for taking an overhead bridge; apparently the government recently announced busses should stop taking the overhead brigdes for some reasons. The guy parted with N700 (about $7) in settlement.

Dictionary.com has an entry about them too! Interesting...


There Justice Minister Bola Ige, confronted with the general incivility of local police, placed a malediction on the cads. Said the Hon. Bola Ige, "I pray that God will make big holes in their pockets."
-- "Sic Semper Tyrannis! Oppressors Face People's Justice", American Spectator, May 1, 2001

The Zen of Python: By Tim Peters

2008-06-17T07:20:00.002+01:00

Beatiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit
Simple is better than complex
Complex is better than complicated
Flat is better than nested
Sparse is better than dense
Readability counts
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules
Although practicality beats purity
Errors should never pass silently
Unless explicitly silenced
In the face of ambiguity, resist the temptation to guess.
There should be one - and preferably only one - obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you are Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

www.python.org
Don't click that link except you love programming :)

5MB Hard Disk!

2008-05-29T07:45:00.002+01:00

I stumbled on this picture of an IBM 5 MB hard disk drive, made back in 1956! In September 1956, IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, the first computer with a hard disk drive (HDD). The HDD weighed over a ton and stored a whopping 5MB.

Ticket Reservation in Nigeria

2008-05-26T18:42:00.002+01:00

I chose to visit PH this weekend, PH (Port Harcourt) is one of Nigeria's oil rich region. Its a coding weekend, lots of Python code for those who know what I'm talking about.
I made a reservation, luckily I decided to call customer care of Arik air after the online booking.

Point No 1: There is no way to make a payment online, there is an option to confirm though, so I confirmed.

Then I called customer care, truly I was not too shocked to hear that all bookings will be discarded that night, at least for those of us who made online booking.

Lesson 1: Online reservation is a waste of valuable time.

I got the cue though, so I made one friend of mine (poor guy) get the ticket very early the next morning. booked me on the last flight for the day. I got to the airport late, or just on time for the flight, which is still late because there is no room for check-in.
I was told the flight was fully booked!

Lesson 2: Paying for the ticket does not guarantee you will make the flight.

I think they usually sell more tickets than there are seats. So if you don't show up you are advised to re-schedule for the next flight.
That was the last flight of the day I just missed, so no Friday night in PH for me, I did try to re-schedule though, and was asked to just "re-present" ticket the following day, and that would be all. Hmm, how sweet of Arik air, after all, the seats were fully occupied, so I don't get to pay extra, just rescheduled, fair enough.

I got there early enough the following morning, got to the front of the queue to get a boarding pass, and someone raises an alarm that it was yesterday's ticket. "Sir", she yelled, "you have to go pay N3, 000 extra".

Lesson 3: Nothing is free man, nothing! and don't trust the airlines.

And I had to wait to get to the front to know. I thought I would just add a knowlegde base article here for them, so I wrote this. And luckily, I managed to get N3k from my pockets, what if I didn't have enough money, wow. And I was running late, and the guys were rude at the payment, warned me severely too to wait for the next flight, because, he reasons correctly, I will have to pay another N3k if I miss this flight. He added something like, "And don't come back crying to me".

Finally I'm on board the first flight to PH, and got a good view of gas flaring, 2 really tall pillars of fire where two wells were being flared. It looked so cool from the sky for something that is just not good for the environment.

I will link this to postcard from Lagos, as one of the intrigues of settling down in Nigeria, after years in the Yankees (US) or Jand (UK).

The Google-Like Workplace

2008-05-03T21:39:00.002+01:00

I pondered on what would be the kind of workplace that would be ideal for a developer growing old and getting tired of doing chore-like, so called "Enterprise scale" development for a company whose primary business is not software development.

Let's play with the metrics first.

Majority in-house are driven by money and the next big job. True, I'm motivated by money too but the next big job for me would not be another telecoms firm. At most telcos, the dba is king. They mine and manage tons of call history data all day long, which is alright, I mean that's where the money come from. Luckily we get a lot of respect as developers and surprisingly all the liberty I need too. I don't even mind that a lot of people in senior management are less techie and earn more, but that's normal too!
So, the only painful part is that there is too much segregation and they remind me all the time that I'm a "mere specialist". Only managers can park close to the office among other little annoying things. It took me 20minutes deliberating if I should come in this night cos I wander if I would be made to park at a building a few meters off at this hour. I don't even drive to work because of this.
So, when I own a business, I will play down positions and all that, developers have pride the size of everest.

Reflections

2008-04-30T07:12:00.002+01:00

I took a moment to review my first quarter performance on new year resolutions. I noticed I have not done too badly, somewhere I feel I'm at a better %completed than Nigeria but Yar'Adua and Fashola seems to be really trying :)

The were the originals:

Complete all uncompleted projects, mostly software, 60% done, started some 2 new ones now.
Fix my eye glasses and stop punishing my eyes, see a doctor for checkup: Glasses fixed,
Not leave a project midway: Hehe, not doing well here, say 20%
Better accountability, I somehow manage to spend, not loosely but undocumented: Documentation has improved some.
Document and manage my gently growing assets, thank God! Trying sha, trying...
Blog more: 60% improvement.
Settle down more, go for several breaks, visit at least 5 interesting places: London for the past 2 weeks was really good, concluded Nigeria is more than 20 years behind civilization like I always thought, more like 50 years and growing. I'll save that for another day.
Start a blog of "My success story". Something I will hopefully make into a book in the future if the good Lord spares my soul. Now that my account has left red and is gently rising. I will not like to be like the torrents of Naija millionaires without success stories. Well, money stalling, will let you know when things start to yappen!

VerveEarth

2008-04-28T11:33:00.003+01:00

http://www.verveearth.com/ is pretty cool. You find blogs by drilling down into regions on a google maps arrangement. The finer details at some points then display blogs in the region.
With verveearth, I quickly found Lola's blog and Omosewa's. You get to write on people's walls, something like facebook, and their is that link on the notes you leave behind that takes those same people to your own blog.
Oh, and you can view their blogs directly in the popup, and there is rss too, how cool.
I still haven't found a way to add more than one blog, I can't find my own blog but I want to presume its because I'm logged on.
Kind of cool, and how else would I have found this new song Olomma, by Nkem Owoh!

Another level to customer care

2008-01-11T22:32:00.000+01:00

www.webfaction.com is true to its motto: agile hosting by helpful humans.
I tried to make a payment online for a python web hosting today and had some generic errors on payment. I was getting red again, another hateful company who will not accept master cards from IPs originating from Nigeria. After complaining to customer care, a dude called David Sissitka got in touch and offered to set up my hosting and I can pay later, wow! When I did not respond on time he sent me another "hello" prompt.
Wonderful, I was registering the site for Bayo and now I'm a customer waiting to happen.

New Year Resolutions

2008-01-03T09:27:00.000+01:00

Complete all uncompleted projects, mostly software.
Fix my eye glasses and stop punishing my eyes, see a doctor for checkup.
Not leave a project midway.
Better accountability, I somehow manage to spend, not loosely but undocumented.
Document and manage my gently growing assets, thank God!
Blog more.
Settle down more, go for several breaks, visit at least 5 interesting places.
Start a blog of "My success story". Something I will hopefully make into a book in the future if the good Lord spares my soul. Now that my account has left red and is gently rising. I will not like to be like the torrents of Naija millionaires without success stories.

Vmobile-Celtel-Zain

2007-11-07T12:30:00.000+01:00

Yes, Celtel is changing name for the upteenth time. This time its going to be Zain. Here we trying to break it to the public gradually so the impact is reduced. Many Celtel operations in other countries already bear Zain and I figure they are going gently on Nigeria just because peope may question the stability of the company.

If your question is "So, will it change?", the answer is YES, soon, very soon.

I mean when you marry a wife, the name always change albeit with a few exceptions. In Africa, marrying a wife is like owning the wife. Yes, I hear the women activists are already on my tail.
I heard Stella when she said her uncle compared Celtel to Nigerian cops, you never know what surprise is up next.
Celtel has evolved from Econet Wireless to Vnetworks to Vodacom to Vmobile to Celtel and now Zain. This is status quo.

Doing business the Nigerian way

2007-10-15T10:08:00.000+01:00

12 million litres per month! 12mn!.

Thats the kind of figure the likes of Celtel Nigeria will be consuming by the end of the year due to network expansion.

12, 000, 000 X 12 = 144mn litres per annum, man the world must have a huge reserve of those things.

The pepper (money) part of things now...
144 000 000 X 66 = crazy figure per annum. People in Naija have learnt to transact in dollars now but this figure is still massive.

Now to this interesting piece alluded to Bayo Ligali,

"Today, we operate four networks instead of one: GSM Network (which is indeed our core line of business); a security network; a power (electricity) network and a transmission network. "

The security network, Celtel has about 5000 security operatives guiding installations nationwide, rightly described as more than 8 batallions. Crime rate had been on the rise in the last 8 months and mostly attributed to the lions and termites who were armed and cashed during the last elections and now still have the arms and need to maintain the cash.

I simply can't help but feel we've been wondering purbling for the last 8 years in Nigeria.

Sudan: The good in the evil?

2007-09-07T14:26:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I found out that Celtel Sudan has a hundred developers, phew!
Staggering figure if you consider the meager five we have in Nigeria. In fact, I do not know of any full software house that can boast of more than 30 developers on this side of town.

Genesis:
Ordinarily, Celtel would not hire a 100 into IT systems development and the only unit that enjoy numbers in the hundreds is customer care, makes sense huh? Celtel Nigeria is approaching 30million in subscriber base.

I understand there are sanctions by the United States government on Sudan as a result of the crisis in that region. I usually look up most of the info I pick up so I would not be spreading what could culminate in an urban legend. I googled the info and came up with a few links:

In accordance with US export controls and economic sanctions regulations, we are unable to permit the download of Google Earth in Sudan. More information about these controls and sanctions can be found here and here.
http://www.ogleearth.com/2007/04/oh_the_irony_go.html

Interesting article on difficulties being experienced by users of google earth in Sudan.

I could not get too many relevant info but for someone as naive (haha) and geeky as me, I'm willing to overlook my fears of the Dafur crisis and go work at Celtel Sudan for a little while. Sounds like a developer heaven. I could imagine interesting tools like Microsoft VSTS and I envisage lots of gusto! I wish they have a team blog I can look up and see what those guys are up to. I can't imagine the kind of co-ordination it will take to manage 100 fiercely independent humans and what it would take to harness such but it sure feels good.

My dying wish at Celtel is to visit Celtel Sudan, in fact I won't mind paying my way. I also remember my Ghanian friend Francois Bonin (MVP) did mention girls in that region are exotic, real live Cleopatras.

Bring it on guys, can't wait for that suggested exchange program to happen!

The love of men shall wax cold

2007-09-05T08:31:00.000+01:00

"For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, ... [Iniquity shall abound ... the love of many shall wax cold] ...
Endtime News: Discerning the Signs of the Times

Today in the News in Nigeria:

Girl arraigned for murder, kills 2 through food poisoning, original target was her boyfriend
Man stabs girlfriend to death at Ijeshatedo, Surulere,
Nurse injects baby with substance suspected to be Novalgin, baby dies

Last month in Nigeria, enough horrible crimes as robbers take on banks, killing several in Ketu areas of Lagos state, another bank robbery in Kwara state and Oyo state. Principal witness killed in the North, a muslim cleric who was supposed to testify at an election tribunal. Let me not even go into the killings in the Niger-Delta. Truly Nigeria has changed, these kind of crimes were alien a few years ago.

Well, I attribute a lot of the gun crimes to the politicians in Nigeria who armed the guys to rig elections and gave them money. Now there is no money but they still have the guns. The other crimes I won't claim to have answers to.

Federal Road Safety Commision

2007-08-17T15:59:00.000+01:00

These guys have not been doing terribly. They make sure people wear seat belts and carry fire estinguishers. Believe me this is good if you think of the average family owning a 10 - 20 year old car that have seen many "re-wires and mechanics".
well I can't resist putting up these pictures because it appears they live by a different rule.

People put out FRSC car fire with sand.

Ignore My Photo Post

2007-07-27T10:47:00.001+01:00

This is how I can get Janice to show up beside my name.

Africa Outsourcing

2007-07-27T10:25:00.000+01:00

I just read this post http://nubiancheetah.blogspot.com/2007/01/africa-outsourcing.html, thanks to a referal from Oluwatosin of Ngdevelopers (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ngdeveloper/).
Its good to know some guys out there appreciates Africa still, well the guy is African though. His belief is a vision I share. I got thoughts running wild about how we could get some guys like this to speak at kodearena or subsequent events. The guy did say he is a capitalist/social entrepreneur and I do hope he can use the later for our course :).
Back to the outsourcing thingy, he did leave out a couple of important factors though. Probably because he does not experience these things, remember he lives in DC Metro area. Power is still a major issue in Nigeria and I'm sure Nigeria is a major part of his prophesy judging by our number alone. New kidnapping trends in the Niger Delta is giving us yet a more innocent face you'll say. The roads are still bad after Objs 8 years and the educational sector sucks. The 419 stigma is still there and a google search for Nigeria is not encouraging at all.
http://kehindeadewusi.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_archive.html
There is hope though. I'm suddenly feeling more private sector effects in our everyday life and some more Nigerians are getting statemanly.
Veering off I do like the new president of Nigeria, Yar'Adua. If I say I still like the guy in another 4 years then I'm sure Nigeria will be a swell place then.

Rubbing off the mud

2007-05-23T12:32:00.000+01:00

The mud is popularly known as 419 or advanced fee fraud, the mud is Nigeria's battered image.
I tried to buy a web template and PayPal does not have Nigeria listed in its country list, a mammoth country floating on the Atlantic. Well, its for obvious reasons.

I could not get my dial up connection to work and I'm in this cafe called "Heavenly Lifestyle". So much for the name because their customers are the very retarded guys who make up all sort of funny and ridiculous scam letter. Not that I blame the management, but these guys are so proud of their doings they talked about it loudly. A guy goes ahead to mention how he bought his car december last year from a scam he pulled off and how much more his father now regards him, Nna!

Back to PayPal and DNSkin, someone did mail me back because I mailed them about the inconvinience of paying through paypal that has decided makeNigeria's over 120 million people suffer for the crime of a few and luckily someone replied.
I guess i will be able to make my purchase later tonight but I wonder what it will take to rub off the mud.

Microsoft Vista: Start Here

2007-02-24T15:09:00.000+01:00

Thursday 22md Feb 2007 and Microsoft is launching Windows Vista. It’s a little past 11 a.m. and I’m lounging at the Civic Center, Ozumba Mbadiwe Street, Victoria Island Lagos.
It takes the like of MS to afford Civic Center, its lovely with a grand view of the ocean so close it’s breathtaking. Some motor-boats sit nearby by that’s by the way. The place is so good looking I sent an s.m.s. to Stan, “Come over, this place is enchanted”.

Jim Ovia: MD, Zenith Bank (Left)

The launch gains momentum as FRANK Edoho of “Who wants to be a millionaire” climbs the podium. There was a recital of the National Anthem by a lady that made it so romantic. For some time, I wasn’t sure it was the Nigerian national anthem.

Frank introduced himself. Of course we all know who he is. He goes on to tell how people have found it difficult to dissociate him from “Who wants to be a millionaire”.

“One day”, he begins. “I was walking along the marina looking for the Nigerian Stock Exchange and waits to ask for directions”.

Frank: “Excuse me, where is the Nigerian stock Exchange”;
Stranger: “Em, Frank, I don’t know that one o, can I call a friend?”

Victor Okigbo, Marketing Mgr of Microsoft Nigeria (Dreadlock RastaJ) gave a little speech, some MS advert held people spellbound and then the truly interesting Chinenye takes the mike. After a rhetoric that made everyone sober, he goes ahead and talks about how he was a teacher 20 years ago and asked J.S.S. 2 kids to draw the layers of the earth’s atmosphere. A lad goes ahead and labels his 3 layers Earth, Sky and Heaven to the amusement of all. He goes on and relates this to how little of original things we’ve had in Nigeria and how given the right mindset we can achieve a lot more.

Chinenye, Country Manager, Microsoft Nigeria

Akin Akinwolere did a short Vista demo. He shows off the new search features, the 3D windows Presentation Foundation, the cool one, adding more memory to your system using a flash drive, security etc More MS Vista features

Everything was all charged up again when Jim Ovia of Zenith bank made an appearance, more men in black really. For some time I thought it was El-Rufai that came in. People gave him a loud ovation as he goes on and mentions how he intends to self-install Vista on his pc. He also got a signed copy of Vista Ultimate, signed by Bill-G.

The very interesting Chinenye is back and speaks on how he gets a BSA (Bandwidth Separation Anxiety) once he is disconnected from his mail for a few minutes. He talked some more about how technology has changed the face of doing business and the future. He wraps it up with a very beautiful Igbo piece, “What an elder sees sitting down, it takes a child climbing a palm tree”.

Vista: WPF Demo

June, the first female presenter demoed the new features of Office 2007. She selects some text, selects formatting options and its cool the previews that comes up as your glide over the formatting options. She showed off the new Ribbon control and all the tabbed menus. Everyone wows away as she demos conditional formatting and the all new “context based grammar correction” A guy behind me was so thrilled he sighed, “Nna, this people don finish everything”.
Office is definitely a good buy if you can afford it.

Very few was said about Exchange 2007, probably for fear of boring the not-so-geek audience.
MS partners in attendance included HP, Zinox, Infographics, Bi-trax Axxent. Altogether, a good day at the exclusive Civic Center.

Closer and Closer

2006-12-17T10:15:00.000+01:00

I noticed I've been in high spirit throughout this week; Francis Ibikunle mentioned how he stumbled on KodeArena 2006 from a google search. He would like to be one of the sponsors of KodeArena Reloaded.
Francis gave me Mr. Toyin Ogunseinde's contact, he turned out to be a truly interesting person. I'm sure he must be a very busy man but out of his Omatek hours he managed to reply my mail twice in 2 days. He thinks he will have a booth for KodeArena at his next ICT show in Lagos sometimes in April and he intends to help with sponsorship. He adds he will use the about 3500 email addresses of who is in Nigerian ICT to our benefit, great!.
See why it feels like Christmas in May? Hehe, its actually Xmas around the corner.

No Anticlimax!

2006-12-11T10:21:00.000+01:00

The code jam has dominated our talks for several weeks, even now that its over. It feels so fulfilling given the challenges we faced: Delayed pay-packets, a 6 week plan, the politicians who nearly seized our first day, the participants (mostly students) who showed up without laptops (we should have known that, those are expensive in Nigeria right?), the car I damaged the second day, the support we got anf the ones we didn't.
Even though we're still so broke as I type but we're presenting the cheque tomorrow after announcing a winner today. The spirit is just so great. We take walks around talking about KodeArena 2007 which we already dubbed "KodeArena reloaded". We already have plans to archive the current site http://www.kodearena.com as http://www.kodearena2006.com. kodearena.com will always host the most current version. KodeArena will be registered as a non-profit, non-governmental organization and we foresee a first prize of no less that N100,000 for the next edition mid 2007.
And the comraderie is great! People looking at our Sponsors page believe its sponsored by multinationals. Krapt software is another name for Bayo Opadeyi, Conquest creative aka Tunde Famakinwa, Kradlepoint aka Bode, Stan Madueke, Gbenga Faniyi and me decided to keep our faces bland :D, its a case of putting a company on the face and not the reverse :). Yea, Parkway project gave money and expertise, Leapsoft's Essien was the toast of day 2, Softcraft's Dapo made the code session rock, Diran gave good company and made the wireless network possinle, Pat made sure we had food in our tommies, Ope, Remi ... and no one left early, it was as if these thing has been long delayed.
Now I know people are intrisically "good". Everyone seems to have a plan to make things better in a little way. The guys on http://www.ngdevelopers.net who didn't come showed great love and those who did come made the day swell.
Stay tuned for KodeArena 2006.

KodeArena 2006 : 8 days to go

2006-11-30T12:55:00.000+01:00

Moral is just right today, we spent yesterday combing the hotels in Abeokuta and getting price lists for the rooms. We're thinking we should make this info available online so that those whom we cannot host will know beforehand.
Gbenga was thrilled at the number of hotel in this seemingly small town: mostly 2 and 3 stars. and Bode wondered how the make money We rated Gateway hotel a 3.5/4 star cause they have the most add-ons; a large parking lot, beautful poolside, a gym, large grounds, shopping malls all surprisingly well maintained by s state government. Dusnar Hotel is alrite too, a large ground and parking, reasonably cheap rooms ($40 - $200 a night) compared to gateway's $60 - $600. We could not help noticing that a meal at Gateway is what others charge for rooms :). Dusnar has fewer attractions but the environment is serene and equaly accessible. continental sutes has a small parking lot as well as the other hotels we've seen and rooms range from $40 - $60.
Rooms at Wemby Suites right down the road from Splashers HQ are second most expensive and all rooms are booked beyond the event dates of 8th and 9th December.
Akin is helping collate the hotel room costs and it will be hosted later.
Some more guys indicated interest in the event: Niji an ex-Unaabite is coming in from Jos Plateau state and so is his colleague Chykes from ado-Ekiti. Bayo invited some more friends from PH and I'm beginning to worry about providing refreshments for our guests :) but this is something we have to pull through.
Yesterday I mailed William Makassa in South africa and there is a chance he will come in. I know he has links with Canonical amd Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu Linux.
I presume Dapo has nt gotten a response from Microsoft but I'll wait till I talk to him today. I will be catching up with office job for the rest of today and continue publicity tomorrow, maybe a little fund raising.
I wil send reminders to promising sponsors; we've started feeling the heat, hehe.

On KodeArena 2006: 9 days to go

2006-11-29T11:45:00.000+01:00

We've resolved to keep the hype up till D-Day. Dapo sent a mail to Microsoft today and we're hoping to get banners and some giveaways items from them, the web team created a page to view registered users, those who do not mind of course. Today the web team continues work on Faqs page. Tunde continues work on fixing up speakers, Stan's team worry about the structure and questions of the code sprints. I sent a mail to NGDeveloper.Net yahoo group.
I did notice that Shina of Leapsoft and Wazobia linux opened the mail I sent yesterday, promising. We sure hope they sponsor a few drinks and that reminds me, we'll need a DJ but maybe Sese will be boss of the mic.
Today, I'll probably spend my break getting room prices from nearby Hotels, the web team will probably host the Faq page and add some news item. I got a digital camera and will still try to get as many as possible to capture the event. We'll be updating content on the site and NGDevelopers.Net throughout the event.
Stay tuned.

KodeArena 2006

2006-11-28T23:48:00.000+01:00

This is the biggest thing around. This is our combined Code jam and software developer summit and its happening live in Abeokuta! Really many things are debuting: The first code jam in Nigeria, and who would have thought it would take place in ancient Abeokuta.
Initially we thought it should be a code jam, just a code jam. But during publicity at University of Abeokuta, Nigeria (UNAAB), we realized we may have a larger turnout than the intended 50 and have since decided on 2 mostly parallel tracks.
Since then its been energy everywhere: KodeArena Website has been built, thanks to Stan, Bayo, Tunde, Bode. We also got our first 2 sponsors: Tunde donating 10 crates of drinks and Bode 4. We have since gotten our dream venue of South-West Resource Center, a digital projector, LAN and internet connection all from the same source, thanks to all the people at Gateway ICT and Resource center.
NGDevelopers have been alerted and we have some speakers, yes: Emeka Onwuka of Parkway Projects, Essien Ita Essien of LeapSoft and Wazobia Linux, Jide from UBA and Muyiwa Asagba of Interswitch.
I spent some times today sending out invitations and finding out hotel rates for the website. Bayo, Stan, Bode and Tunde pumped in Faqs for the live site. Bode agrees to visit Obafemi Awolowo University this weekend, Gbenga Ogun State University, Keni (me) University of Ibadan. Some of Tunde's friend are coming in from Port-Harcourt and Vicky is expected to lead a team from Ladoke Akintola University, Ogbomosho.
The energy is everywhere, I feel love in the air!

2006-11-24T02:07:00.000+01:00

We had a talk about adopting an object persistence framework for development. As a part of standardization and

reducing project delivery time, we decided to review the OPFs we have and adopt one(?) for development.
We considered the following OPF and not so OPF frameworks:

Artemis Object Persistence Framework

Microsoft Data Access Application Block

NHibernate

Ado.Net (Traditional)

Ado.Net 2.0 Database Factories

We decided to not rate 4 and 5 (ADO.Net and Ado.Net 2.0 Db Factories) since they are fundamental and the others

rely on them.

We did acknowledge the easy of use for small applications and the fact that 5 (Db Factories) can support other

data providers beside SqlServer.

The serial numbers are used as keys.

To rate, we came uo with a number of criteria that have immediate consequences on our everyday coding:

Open sourced

Best Practises: Not MS Best practices per se. We attached best practice to stuff like not having to hack ugly

codes tp provide some functionalities, e.g. connecting to other databases, creating an object just to return a

bool etc.

Out of the box support for other databases beside SqlServer

Support for persisting datasets/typed datasets

Development speed/Ease of use.

Performance

Active support/development.

We rate on a yes/no basis only. Yes = 1 and no = 0

NHibernate and Microsoft data application block DAAB tied on point and after some more debate we agreed:

Since almost all splashers job use a SqlServer backend, all new projects consider it as a first option except:

The project uses a data source different from SqlServer and is significantly large, we consider NHibernate first. If small, we consider the traditional Ado.Net or ADO.Net Db factories.

We continue to support Artemis OPF because of legacy projects.

What about Nigerians?

2006-10-26T21:07:00.000+01:00

I remember the last time I google Nigeria , it was the same as doing a google search for scam. Today it really got on my nerve.

I wanted to put up a DNN site for a friend and followed a referral on DotNetNuke.com to www.infosaic.com. It was all rosy; I mailed support and got a response in minutes. Sweet, these guys are the bomb man! They must be bad (means excellent) and will definitely have a ton of DNN experience since they are sponsors of the open source initiative.
Then I paid online. In Nigeria we don't have ready access to credit cards. Some banks make arrangements and give MasterCard to customers but its not exactly credit, its prepaid.
Anyway, I made payment for a month to rev the hosting package, got an immediate email with dns information, then waited...I waited.
I mailed support the following day and got no response. Waited another day and mailed and still no response. Why have these guys suddenly gone cold? What happened to the immediate, almost automated emails I’m already used to?
Well, I got this response from a support personnel:

Hi Kehinde,

Your transaction has been voided due to previous fraudulent activities.

Thanks again,

April Sherry
Infosaic Technologies, LLC
asherry@infosaic.com
614.855.7084 x70 (local)
888.855.7084 x70 (toll free)

I was furious, suddenly I realized I was Nigerian. A renowned scammer for all they care. Anyway I was still mad and sent a strongly worded letter back. Got a flimsy response of how I have tried to pay for the same domain name with different numbers. Gosh, I was not even buying a domain name, just hosting.

I soon found this to be the trend, web hosting companies shying away from Nigerians, Sad. Sese had a similar experience where he registered a domain which was not honored after they found he was from Maryland in Lagos and not Maryland USA. Harris also paid for a domain on yahoo and though the money was debited, he never got the domain.

Things happen, Shitty things.

Like I promised the support personnel, I have started tendering my case before courts of public opinion.
If only they had a banner saying "Nigerians not allowed".

Its Bayo's day, and Nigeria's

2006-10-01T20:30:00.000+01:00

Today was a good day, 1at October is Nigeria's 46th birthday and Bayo's 46? :-0 birthday? Haha, we spent the first few hours debating who would be older, Bayo or Nigeria since he won't reveal his age. We concluded Bayo would have too many candles on his cake and thats why he does not have any, someone thinks the share number of candles would burn the cake, haha.
So we started out slowly, Keni (me), Stan, Tunde, Victoria(Tunde's sunshine) and of course Bayo. we had some good stuff to eat at sweet sensation, lots to talk about, a lovely environment, sweet food and aroma. I had sukiyaki and some fried rice, delicious plaintain and some etceteras. Stan curry chicken, Tunde, Vicky...I almost got a ride at the kiddies groovy section.

Then we had more company; Fabulous Carlos and some nice ladies; Lively Adun, Adaora pronounced adore-her, cute Omoh and Chichi, company! and more excitement. Carlos is an incredible guy and the girls are lovely and soon we found Carlos knew Sese in school, we sang some birthday songs, abridged so Bayo don't have to answer for his age :) and man, we had much to drink.
Now the girls are sitting in a bunch, we are slowly getting to know them, the first half was coming to an end and we were thinking, well its ok and a bit of fun and then we decided to hit the road, go to Olumo rock. And then it was fun all the way, ancient abeokuta unleashed, good company unleashed, them girls now flowing, gist unleashed and finally pictures. The second half

Here, the party arrives Olumo Rock, where Abeokuta got its name, Abeokuta means a city under a rock.

Here, I play the devil, "If only Tunde will bow, I will give him the whole world he can see from the top of this rock".

The guys covered some distances to make Bayo's and yes, our day bright.

We squat in an ancient 5 bedroom cavern

Traditional drummers

A guy and his family comes for some air

I celebrate the peak with Adun here.

Bayo and Carlos dicusses the future? I mean after conquering Olumo rock, whats next? Kilimanjaro?

Adora and Omoh adores the scenery

I don't know how well it went for Nigeria, but as I type, Bayo is dozing and savouring a beautiful hangover.

view more pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30092685@N00/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/99562911@N00/
http://kehindeadewusi.blogspot.com

Database Haiku?

2006-09-04T21:51:00.000+01:00

"To this level, i will never descend".

This is supposed to be some geek poetry.

Server is lifeless The customer is distraught Where is the backup?

Performance is slow All the disk drives are busy Where was the where clause?

As leaves fall from trees Drive enclosure falls to floor Time to visit Dice

Dynamic SQL Or SQL stored procedure Which one should I choose?

To be certified Or not to be certified That is the question

Documentation Would be nice to see, said I As snow falls outside

In darkness I lie The pager sounds so shrill I'll make the coffee

The server is built Everything is now installed What was the password?

No changes made I Says the developer to me Void is the table

Robin plucks some seed On the porch while eyeing me Wireless is so fine

See original

Now tell me what in geek heaven that is?

That Ancient Ilorin Township

2006-08-12T22:11:00.000+01:00

The last time I was here was in April, before then, it was year 2001.
I graduated from the University here some 5 years ago, the campus has developed faster than the town.
There are very few changes in town, the black cops have started extorting drivers here too and its evident people are wary of fighting for their rights; it never yields much. There are more fast food joints, more bakeries and loaf outlets...not much has changed in this poor town. I heard the state government spent N37M sad notes to plant some ornamentals in readiness for the presidential visit, haba!

The campus can boast of more structures. Someone has also paid more attention to sports. There is a nice looking indoor games hall, one more basketball court and the facilities seem to be seeing some use.
I see some nice looking chicks too, i decided to go off in search of developers first and come back to better company :)

Walking around some blocks revealed students are still active at posting notices and articles, good. The ACES (Association of Civil Engineering Students) board still looks functional, I remember being editor for this board for a year. I was dubbed Electro-Civil engineer for deserting my department and writing for another. Well, I must have done a good job because no-one complained when I did get an award fot it.

QA point: Back to the present, I saw a "Do not litter" sign with the picture of a basket but no basket. I threw a piece in the picture and of course it fell to the ground. So much for dumb signs.

I think I chose the wrong day to look for developers, I'll just leave the browser pointing at NGDevelopers.Net and invoke secondary protocol i.e. using known or new contacts and maybe leave a note on the message board.

Always keep your head up

2006-08-04T10:55:00.000+01:00

I became her critic when she took up appointment as foreign affaris minister. Hey, she is in it for the money too...they all say its administration that matters, but it does not make her a professional, imagine a former world bank VP.
Even though my tutored mind kows very well a foreign ministry has a lot to do with economic financial prowess, I still didn't feel a thrugh professional should just take up any appointmentm then I found out she was still head of the economic team, I'm sorry madam.
and she resigned when she was removed, savagely by that ...Its so un-Nigerian. she has pride and I love a professional. Its evident her professionalism has started bothering those goats and they knew she woild resign if they did that. Is it the transparency she advocates in goverment financial expenditure?
whateva, I hail Okonjo-Iwaela, don't don't resign in Nigeria, they cling to office, money and power becaue that is all they care for. I'm so happy anther is not one of em.
Monumental huh?

Exit from Paris club of creditors

Negotiation underway fro exit from London Club

Publication of the monetary allocation to the different tiers of government

Resignation from a government who refused to understand

NGDevelopers.Net

2006-06-07T20:49:00.000+01:00

Thats our pet project, its the Nigerian .Net user group and the site is 10% up. Great jobber Tom set up an empty DotNetNuke site for us.
My weekend is going to be busy sweet, I'll be tweaking the skin package I and Ebenezer made while I hope Ope will help with the article module while I tweak some other modules.
Dapo is a bit excited; hez had some bad time recently and just disengaged :(. Life goes on anyway and it can only gt better.

The challenges of software outsourcing in Nigeria - a case study of splashers technologies ltd: Part 1

2006-05-16T21:36:00.000+01:00

Software outsourcing is its simplest form involves seconding or contracting of software development jobs by one company (The Owner) to another (The Outsourcing). Companies will generally indulge in outsourcing for a number of reasons, the commonest of which is cheaper labour and professionalism.
Overall, companies outsource for the following reasons:

1. Cheaper Labor: Companies/Individuals in developed countries whose economies are generally stronger will outsource to competent hands in the third world to get better deals in terms of per hour charges
2. Professionalism/Dexterity: Certain countries have made a name from their prowess in software development. E.g. India. Certain firms in some little known countries have also made a name from their competencies.
3. Specialization; some companies started up with a technology arm that may primarily do jobs like networking. In their quest to give their customers a total solution, they often need to float a software arm. Rather than embarking on the intricacies of taking on the challenges of setting up a software division, outsourcing is a handy option.
4. Companies have also been known to outsource for reasons ranging from a need for more capable hands, large volumes of outstanding jobs and a need to train their own internal staff on the job.

To those who will question under whose authority I write or what has placed me in a position to write an article about outsourcing in Nigeria. I have been into the outsourcing job with Splashers Technologies for 3 years. Most of our jobs have been sourced from Artemis –solutions group, MI USA. Splashers must have started out with a very small team because by the time I joined in December 2003, I met a team of 3 developers and that included the GM. Well I replaced 1 of the three so we were back to three.

Since then, we’ve scaled. From a double room that was more of a single room divided into 2 in Festac town Lagos to a big building in Obantoko, Abeokuta to a much better neighborhood in Ibara Abeokuta. In addition, the number has risen to between 11 and 13 developers, an admin team, office maintenance crew and security personnel.
There are plans to scale even larger: a permanent building, a consulting arm in Lagos or/and Abuja Nigeria. There are plans to take on local outsourcing (so far we’ve completed 3 jobs and more are queued). Other plans include more community development and an initiative that kicked up among splasher’s developers is being supported by the company (NGdeveloper.net).

Back to the mainstream, I must emphasize there are challenges in software outsourcing. This writing was motivated by a friend in the USA, Francis Ibikunle. Francis wanted to start an outsourcing initiative, the regular send jobs down to Nigeria, get it done and uploaded, make a few sales and start up a stronger company in Nigeria. Well, I buy his idea but not the approach. Francis would rather do business with me than with Splashers Technologies. Now Francis is a motivated guy, he is definitely a business man and he has not given me room to forget the fact. Where I am a self motivated entrepreneur too, I must say I’m probably in the line of deep thinkers. I have seen a lot of the problems of outsourcing and I intend to learn from history. I tried to persuade him (Francis) to do business with an established company rather than an individual, tried to make him see and ended up presenting him with options. Well like Jesus Christ, I was biased; something like choose life so that you may live.
Francis has since chosen to sign a deal with a guy in Lagos. As a good friend, I told him I’d write this article and relate more with him. In his chosen path, I offer as much help as I can because I like success stories. So that we may learn from history, I write.

I have identified a couple of challenges over the years, most we’ve succumbed but not without some agonies, some we are gradually overcoming. I made up a little list that’s not exhaustive.
1. Evolving and managing processes
2. The goal, getting the team to buy into the long term vision and mission
3. Professionalism
4. The huge challenges of Infrastructure
5. The development abstraction layer.
6. Managing scalability

Because each item in the list above can generate a lot of steam and writings, I have tried to be as succinct as possible. Part 2 and maybe subsequent parts will handle items not covered in this first part.

Evolving and managing processes;
I was told by management sometimes ago thatI have the credit of being the first to package a deployment document with a solution; a readme.txt, scripts, at least formally. Since then this has become standard practice.
The company has since evolved a process of software development. The beauty of this is that the processeses evolved. Unlike the evolution of man, however, the process despite the fact that it’s stable now is still evolving.
The process is a long drawn one; methodologies of successful companies were researched, articles were shredded. What’s important however was that only the part that works for us in practicality were adopted, and more often than not, with some modifications.
Presently, we have processes that handle general software development process. A process called CADIUM may soon be patented by Artemis-solutions group and another company in Michigan has already adopted the process. All thanks in no small way to splashers Technologies.
The quality assurance (QA) process is core to business. If you think quality assurance is a small deal, try doing business with people other than family or ask Joel on software. Before this process was fully embraced, several iterations were wasted. By iterations, I mean the series of we’ve completed and uploaded this milestone, client test (in this case, project owners that outsourced) and alas, uspRegisterUser is missing and the solution is back at home. Somehow, that was thee last piece worked on by developer A and it skipped his mind during packaging. Another common scenario was, “You said this was fixed but it appears that not the case!”. These expensive iterations were emphasized by the time difference between Nigeria and the USA. We have a about six hours difference between us and if we upload stuff around 5pm Nigerian time and they discover the bugs 2 hours later (say 10am MI time), overall the rest of the day is bad since we’ve gone home in Nigeria.
A number of solutions were quickly presented to combat these issues: a night shift was pushed. We thought of the fact that we ran a private power generator for the better part of the day, our current facilities just won’t support a night shift. A more versatile QA process was adopted instead; a QA team was commissioned consisting of mostly dedicated QA guys. QA methodologies like unit testing and hallway testing were adopted. Other more intrinsic details included rules like checking out of a source safe repository and never testing on the development machine.

Version control was another process we adopted early. The was a need to store codes in a central repository for reasons including needs atimes to revert to a stable version of a module, track changes to create change logs, keep code safe among others. Many version control options were considered taking into account the poor internet connections prevalent in Nigeria. We eventually settled for subversion and all client machines now run tortoise svn.

A hiring process became necessary to hire highly motivated and genuine coders. A matriculation process for new signups includes introduction to coding standards and existing frameworks, never failing to mention just how much innovations are welcome. For instance, we had a team evaluate our in-house object relational modeling framework ORM and we’re seriously considering dumping it for NHibernate. A training process saw us starting a geekify session every Wednesday. A developer researches a topic for a week and presents the topic to the rest of the team.
Other processes that have been evolved in the process include a backup strategy, project management process, process evaluation process, project management, productivity management and client satisfaction evaluations.

Watch out for part 2

Uncle Keni, no?

2006-05-16T20:17:00.000+01:00

I'm close to loosing my chance to be the hottest new Uncle in town this year. My sister is having complications with her baby. I read Ryan's blog where he speaks about how he is used to being an Uncle now. Uncle Doom is cool though scary. I relished that Uncle Keni period where I would indulge and spoil my niece or nephew. I need a miracle, prayfor me when you stumble on my blog.

Maybe I'll get a chance to give the Kid a name, I reserved Sanaa for him or her cause I'm sure it will be one swell work of heart.

End of an Epic

2006-03-06T14:02:00.000+01:00

We got to the end of a long drwn and almost embarrasing bug last Friday. Dan Lash is the consultant on EMR (Electronic Medical Records) and He sent this refreshing mail. I guess Bunmi was so relaxed he got life going on again by sending a link http://lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060304/NEWS03/603040314&SearchID=73237458875562

The mail as sent by Dan Lash

Ladies and gentleman, I am proud to announce we are the end of an era.

About two months ago the users of EMR started to notice a subtle bug in the scheduling system. It appeared that there were problems with the patient name that was listed in the subject of the schedule not matching the actual patient attached to the schedule. This was observed through several reports:

Viewing a loaded patient’s schedule list
Viewing the branch calendar, and editing schedules
Noticing that some schedules changed branches

These observations led to several hypotheses for the cause of the problem:

Auto-compose was turned off
Creating schedules when a patient was/was not loaded
Recurrence was updating non-recurring schedules

While brainstorming possible causes, we also instituted policies to prevent errors and help track the bug:

Always verify auto-compose is on
Change the patient if you notice the subject doesn’t match the attached patient
Don’t use recurrence

These policies and continued user reporting helped us narrow down our frame of debugging.

Last week all of the development and management team for EMR decided on a plan of attack. We installed a hook (SQLProfiler) into the EMR database to watch all transactions for one day. We also created two isolated copies of the EMR database (one before the hook and one after). Once we had that information, we compared individual records and found one that had changed during observed time period. That record was then used to track through the report, generated from the hook, to watch for a particular pattern of stored procedure calls.

Once we pinpointed the series of stored procedure calls that caused the damage, the development team started combing over the code to find the pattern that executed them. Luckily we were able to find the code! The code was then examined to find all possible ways it could be run and then each of those ways were analyzed for possible mistakes. To everyone’s relief one of the ways the code was executed was identified to have a slight oversight in the code; a check was not made to distinguish a workflow schedule and regular schedule.

From there the development team patched the code in question and analyzed other areas of the code for similar problems. While this was a huge step forward, it was only half of the battle. The EMR database still contained damaged records that had wrong patients attached to schedules. So the development team then went back to the database to fix it. They were able to exploit a feature added to EMR some time ago to generate a fix for the database.

The fix for the database was then tested to check that it fixed most (90% range) of the schedules. Some schedules remain that have a wrong patient attached, but the frequency of these broken schedules has been reduced to 1-3 broken schedules per week. These schedules must be corrected by hand.

During this two month battle there were many people that played an important role in tracking down and fixing this bug. I would like to thank Beth, Michelle and Kristeen for their reports. Also I’d like to thank Keni, Demola, and Seun for their hard work in tracking down the code. Congratulations everyone, we did it!

More good days ahead :)

An "un-Unusual" Day at work

2006-02-20T18:54:00.000+01:00

My spirit was high this morning, last week was not very good because I shuttled between systems. I was trying to see if I could fix the monitor of my probleme(R) Dell (TM) Inspiron. The Dells we bought then 2004 are all jinxed, the Dvd drives were replaced at about the same time, the power packs followed and then the batteries. Its a desktop now with a flat system unit.
Back to how my spirit dimmed today; it was the internet link first. After a bit of trouble-shooting, I recorded a few non-bilable period and got it up, just conflicts on the network.
The main frustration...our source-safe server is down or is it just not responding? It was not a quick fix like the network issue. I jumped from system to system, restarted the make shift source-safe server. Wait, the system is really overworked. It carries an AMD 1.1GHZ processor and just 256MB of RAM. This is a bit disgraceful sha because aside source-safe, it runs Active directory and exchange server. Alas it also carries sql server and now more horror, share point and biztalk servers.
I see why people do dope to cool off.
I'm mad and screaming inside. I have not billed an hour today. OK, here I am blogging to cool off, at least the internet link is up today or I could get suicidal.
Maybe I need to move on for real, huh?
A sad day. I don't want to be like Okonkwo in "Things fall apart". Okonkwo was a man who said "yea" but his chi said no.
I'm saying yea and the situations around me is trying to kill my self motivation.
see why guys can't exactly be very productive in Naija? See why the same Nigerians make great achievements out there but not as much back home? You see why equations are more difficult to solve when you have too many variables?
And its not even an unusual day.

Hear God on money

2006-02-08T20:01:00.000+01:00

One man pretends to be rich,
yet has nothing;
another pretends to be poor,
yet has great wealth.

A man's riches may ransom his life,
but a poor man hears no threat.

Proverbs 13:7,8 NIV

__________________

Better is little with the fear of the LORD than
great treasure and trouble therewith.

Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a
stalled ox and hatred therewith.

Proverbs 15:16,17 KJV

__________________

A man with an evil eye hastens after wealth
And does not know that want will come upon him.

Proverbs 28:22 NASB

Recycled Political Wastes?

2006-02-07T11:37:00.000+01:00

This is Ahmadu Ali, as at this writing he is the PDP national chairman. PDP is the ruling party in Nigeria.
The series of meeting they've been holding lately is to plan the third term democratic coup d'etat of incubent Obasajo. A third term? what does he need 12yrs for? These guys are going to tweak the constitution of Naija to support their desires. Anywa, the God that dealt with Abacha after using him (Abacha) to deal with some nothern mafiosos playing God is still on the throne. God, don't let this guys get away with their evils while they live o, in Jesus' name, Amen.
This is Ali's

Naija students of then will never forget the "Ali must go riots" of 1978. A very undemocratic entity of the then Obj military regime. He placed a ban on the Association of Nigerian students (NUNS) and it seems logical for him to be a part of a regime of the old wines again and their undemocratic exploits. Among their unorthodox weapons is political thugerry.
Read more http://www.dawodu.com/oduyela26.htm

Black Men Don't Quit

2006-01-26T10:01:00.000+01:00

This is supposed to be the governor of my state, Oyo state of Naija [throws up]. The product of illegality. Look at him, they now call him Kollington after a flashy (or unflashy) musician in Naija.
Today, his deputy is in the news:

The founder and proprietor of Timi Agbale Grammar School, Ede, Osun State, Chief Gabriel Ojo Falegan, has described as untrue, the claim on Monday by the new Oyo State Deputy Governor, Mr. Hazeem Gbolarumi, that he graduated from the school in 1974

He even claimed to have attended the Pacific University in the US, I hope these guys will come out and deby him too. FYI his name is Hazeem Gbolarumi, so I hope someone is checking it out now. Punch newspaper did and found nothing.
The worst part is; they never resign, no matter how bad they cling.
Men without honor!

A new york cabbie

2006-01-24T12:04:00.000+01:00

And one more related item: Tonight I saw a new form of undercover cop car. As you may know, many precincts have taxis that are used as undercover vehicles, which is pretty smart as it is. But tonight, for the first time ever, I saw a church van with tinted windows blow its cover by flashing its police lights to get through a particularly bad traffic snarl. Most drivers were so surprised that they didn't take it seriously enough to pull over and make room until the van made the sirens blare. Who knew?

I came across her blog on yahoo insider and now she has +1 viewership. I guess nobody told her about AdSense; she gets between 4000-9000 hits and a wow from me. She has a theme thats New York, the night life background and she managed to capture the wild lights too, her blog is like traditional NY.
Interesting, she a grad of Univ. of New Mexico and she has refused to go back to office job after a lay-off.
Anyway, thanks on your insight on New York cops; In Naija here, policemen breaks all traffic rules to get nowhere fast; they never obey traffic lights, drive on the wrong side of the road. If you think I don't like nthe Nigerian Police, wake up, I detest them.

Objectionable Obj

2006-01-21T18:59:00.000+01:00

There is a naija edict that may mean I'm risking 20years away for speaking again obj on the net, so I will make sure I don't break the law.
Obj is evidently one who does not believe the judiciary can measure anywhere close to the executive(obj). As much as I like the his rotweillers (EFCC), its evident they are choosy about their preys.
I love the ones they have gone after in the past, Alamiesegha of Bayelse, I would have mentioned IG Tafa if he had not escaped with a mere 4month term when I actually forecasted 4 life sentences b2b.
How can an unelectable Adedibu (Godfather of Ibadan polity?) say this on tv, "If the governor can earn N60mn on security, am I not entitled to a quarter of that?". I feel like throowing up, a man whose only trade is political terrorism. Of course, only the masses heard that proclamation, you can be sure obj missed that despite the number of times it was aired.
Back to the judiciary, its a ridiculed arm of government in democratic Nigeria. The naija police will only listen to Mr President, and they were doing exactly that when they provided security for the outlaws (according to the people and the judiciary) in power in Oyo state. aside such, there rulings are effected if they are in support of the government or it concerns the ordinary citizens whom the government knows not.
Is it unfortunate my dear cousin is a barrister at law? I think not, a time will come when people will not be able to attempt a third term bid on laws they make in the dusk of their second term in office when they remember the faith that befell some...Let me not break that 20 years law.

Nigerian failed banks

2006-01-20T11:34:00.000+01:00

14 of 'em. I wish I could put the names of the failed ceos against it too. This is as at January 16 2005.
By the way, some of the existing ones are a merger of losers, beware!

African Express Bank,
Allstates Trust Bank (Bros Ebitimi Banego, I know this for sure)
Assurance Bank,
City Express Bank,
Eagle Bank,
Fortune International Bank,
Gulf Bank,
Hallmark Bank,
Lead Bank,
Liberty Bank,
Metropolitan Bank,
Societe Generale Bank of Nigeria (Uncle Olusola Saraki, so ti jeba?)
Trade Bank
Triumph Bank

Won't some guys get prosecuted?

Sometimes for the greater good

2006-01-10T20:58:00.000+01:00

sometimes for the greater good, sacrifices must be made - Pharaoh: Prince of Egypt

Last year's resolution was to take time out for some training and cover skill gaps, especially in web development.
This is the year of the green back for the company I figure. Last year's result was not very interesting or maybe not?. Some notions that money was not coming in was erased and self motivation among guys here is crazy as usual. Forget the manu variables of working in a third world country.

Why do you think guys have to wait to het out of Nigeria before they start building the fastest chips

There are many variables when you take the equations in Naija, more constants in Yankee, You feel why they have the answers all of the time?

FYI, I'm still at splashers.
We resolved to fill in the blanks that have seen Artemis having so many projects and very few coming to Splashers. 2 days ago, I remembered "Who moved my cheese" and migrated to DotNetNuke in a few hours. After 24 hours I had finished my third integration. This plus the few modules I have built makes me a DNN semi-guru.
A nice beginning.

Competition Vs Monopoly

2006-01-05T09:56:00.000+01:00

While you enjoy a monopoly, never stop to think and plan ahead for competition, competition is brewing nigh.

Thats me trying to sound like the proverbial old men on yonder days. My motivation for this post are two case studies around me. The first is a gas station in Abeokuta and the second is a fast food joint. They both enjoyed near monopoly in business and location but could not handle it. Cab drivers complain about shortages in gas sales but still fthinks the gas station is better than the others not as big. The fats food joint has a very wacked service, is almost stagnant on innovations and you bet, the food is wacked. They even increased the price of my favorite fillet 3 times in a week.
Along comes the saving grace in competition, Mr Biggs for fthe fast food and monsterous NNPC for the gas station. Behold a change in fortune. The only customers they have now are the impatients.
Sorry, got to go, Dapo just got nominated as an MVP!

Dead body get accident

2006-01-05T09:47:00.001+01:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide bomber struck a funeral for a Shiite politician's nephew Wednesday, killing at least 32 mourners, wounding dozens and splattering tombstones with blood — part of a surge of violence as Iraqi leaders try to form a coalition government

December 15 2005 was "democracy day in" Iraq? A bid for a coalition government is leaving fewer people alive to be governed.
Guys feel Naija needs extremists like these bombers to get our politicians thinking, maybe. The bloats think they can squander our wealth simple because we love life too much to challenge the guns fthey've earned with their positions.
But maybe we don't need them, maybe...The truly developed and democratic world don't have none of those do they?

Dead body get accident

2006-01-05T09:47:00.000+01:00

New Year Resolutions

2006-01-03T09:29:00.000+01:00

1. Never late for work, meaning I adopt a new resumption time ahead of office by at least an hour.
2. Draw up a timetable. Detail time for office work, research etc. Allow exceptions only in extreme cases.
3. Do a lot of web development and research.
4. Adopt more open source technologies.
5. Spend some more time on user groups and social groups.
6. Blog a lot more.
7. More good God time.
8. Take no BULLS__T from nobody.

So help me God. Amen!

Brealing Loose!

2005-12-14T16:15:00.000+01:00

Breaking dogma!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
-steve Jobs (At Standford Graduation). read the speech

He ends by saying, "Stay Hungry, Stay foolish". For real, you will start seeing the changes in me.

A dew more sweet stuff from the page above...
"When you come to the fork in the road, take it" - L.P. Berra
"Always make new mistakes" -- Esther Dyson
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
-- Arthur C. Clarke
"You Gotta Believe" - Frank "Tug" McGraw (1944 - 2004 RIP)

Heaven has no rage

2005-12-12T18:24:00.000+01:00

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.
That was William Congrieve.
Yvonne Chevalier was particularly interesting. She killed her husband the day he became a minister in France. She had been a lowly nurse and Piere, her husband a Doctor and decorated war hero. It turned sour somewhere along the line and despite her efforts to improve herself and her social bearing, she meets serious rebuke from her husband.
He started having an affair, calls his wife a cow...
Well, she shot him 5 times I read, 4 times after he made an obscene gesture after a lot of abuse.
The public called for her head but had a change of heart when they saw and sorrow and mask of a feature. Piere had openly been keeping a lover whose husband seemed to be content being cuckolded by a decorated war veteran (Piere), a male complascent I think they are called in france.
The jusry fell so sorry for her they were going to give her just 2 years but one of the wanted to know what obscene gesture Pierre had made which earned him the shots. The jury acquited her when they she showed them the gesture in private, It must have been bad.
There was another who got a light term for stabbing a lover. The public evidently felt sympathy for her. Crime of passion as they are well known in France. Other parts of the world are not known to be so lenient.

Barely 42 Days

2005-12-12T18:14:00.000+01:00

Another plane crashes in Naija (10th Dec 2005), 42 days after the ill fated bellview crashes (that was more like a bomb on board from what was "not left" of the plane). In between a little plane crashes in Kaduna killing about seven. How are we going to commute in this country?
God, and it took Pastor(ess?) Mrs Bimbo Odukoya, 52 school children (3 kids from same mother who is well past her menopause) among others. About 103 dead again. Save us Jah.
For the many whose faith suffered from Bimbo's death, you might want to see from my (proxying her) point of view, "God, I know how much you love children, why spare me then?". Not convinced? its left between you and God.
May God help the leaving lead a good life.

Torture?

2005-12-05T19:24:00.000+01:00

Nasty Tayo drove Dapo's new Acura Legend into a ditch, now Dapo's playing cool and putting me to torture. He won't mention the car, he won't even veer close to the topic. At least he is talking and I'm the one who is reserved. I'm using my last dose of anti-frustration and anti-worry.
I'm paying a lot to get th car fixed up and Tayo's folks ain't responding too well. I will get over it anyway, I always do. Never allow stuff like this to worry you, get on, keep on moving; I've syched myself up but is it working? :)
For real, the only thing thats making me feel bad is that Dapo probably went out of his way when he dropped the key as he was leaving for Abuja. I feel terrible.
Life goes on...never worry your butt about the inevitable.

Tinapa

2005-11-01T20:15:00.000+01:00

Tinapa is the place I'm looking to visiting. Its so exciting to have a Governor whose is thinking right among 36.
I'm so proud of the project that I'm going to put a link to www.tinapa.com on all my sites and blogs.
Kudos to a man who is seeing beyond his tenure in office.

Common guys, put a link to Tinapa all around, I'm hoping this trend will catch on.

Ghana

2005-10-31T21:33:00.000+01:00

September 9th -11th saw me in Ghana. Whats wrong with Nigeria somebody?
The nation is rich but fast rottening (Naija). Ghana does not have too much of everything but what they have is cool.
The first few places I went included busy internet. The organization was impressive. They have a bar outside where I listened to African hiphop. They payed Idris' "Nigeria Jagajaga" 3 times back to back. No, it was not supposed to be a slap, they love Nigerian music. Hmm, and most of them want to go to Nigeria, na wao.
I noticed they had a lot of jokes about Nigeria, we don't have any about them and I felt a kind of superior edge.
I meet Victor and Francois my second night. Francois is an MVP and Vistor is just a cool guy. I felt at ease immediately and my respect for Ghanians swelled by the minutes. We had fun at Paloma and went to a French dance later.
The girls? they are not all exactly the very black, busty and not too snooth pictures we have drawn in our Naija minds. Benice was really cool. The average girl sure knows how to behave here.
The streets are lovely and they have reasonabe nightlife. I went to take a meal at Papaye around mid-night. And the sweet part, no power cut all through my stay.
Notice I edited the girl gist? Hahaha, evil laugh(R) TM.
I'll supply more details about my trips some other times.

Life Advisors

2005-10-31T21:19:00.000+01:00

I've got many of those, my Dad, Uncles friends.

Yesterday I was with one of my advisors whose has been through a lot.
Advisor: "Do you take Okro soup?"
Keni: "Sometimes"
Advisor: "When I was very poor, a priest advised me against it".

Advisor was not supposed to eat okro if he hoped to be rich at all.

Advisor: "But when I go out to eat, I see people eating Okro soup with large pieces of meat, and I couldn't afford meat".

Advisor is a very rich man now, he takes a lot of Okro soup when he feels like.

All time low

2005-10-12T12:50:00.000+01:00

My morale is at an all time low this period. I signed up for splashers almost 2 years ago and it has never been this bad. A lot of our processes have been refined: QA, communication, architecture and knowledge level among devs have increased. However administration keeps declining.
Why can’t I have pay slip every month? Why can’t I have tax clearance after working for 21 months? Why don’t I have a common ID? Why when the gen messes up there is no quick response or alternative?
And worst I am suffering from going on vacation because my finances are messed up…yes, because my pay has been delayed till mid-month as it has been for a couple of months. The money I should fall back upon has been delayed because my colleague has not been paid. No leave allowance because it is normally included to make my pay look hefty…its sad man.
Imagine, I’m complaining! And I had always told myself I never complain until…I’m at that point! Grrrrrh! I have o talk to one of these guys s before I loose it.

A prayer request

2005-08-07T19:52:00.000+01:00

I heard a prayer request from the NASFAT (A muslim body) next to my apartment today. A sister has a christian lover and is ready to convert to christianity for his sake. The prayer request was for Allah to give him a change of heart, probably he could turn to Islam.
I smiled. People that loves deeply prays. I said a prayer for the one I love.

EMR is going live tomorrow

2005-08-01T15:54:00.001+01:00

We've been working on an EMR (Electronic Medical Record) solution codenamed "Belagio" for a little over a year now and its sudden shock when Dan announced it was going live soon.
Anyway, its mixed blessing because its something that have taken over 75% of my processor for some time now. Finally I can retire from splashers...can't I?
Please, please understand if you are reading my blog, I have been waiting for EMR to get to version 1.0. I will get married soon and I won't be able to keep the pace :)

The codename I guess is Bunmi's idea. A medical record solution named after gamblers' love. Interesting. Hey offence meant o.

Withdrawal Symptons

2005-08-01T15:54:00.000+01:00

Yes, I have been loved in the last two weeks.
With "Dem" around, we had food and fun in surplus. I kept on warning Dapo about the after-effects...greying of hair, nausea hehe, nahhhhh. Its none of those. It just going to be loneliness and bad food.
Yesterday I slept in the office because there was no use going homne. I was going to be too lonely so I decided to work on EMR on a Sunday. Stan was there too so it was better than having Perl (a female Rotweiler named after a programming language) for company.
Today will be a second terrible night for a chronic bachelor, and to imagine we thot this was normal lifestyle, damn. You never really know what you are missing till you get there.

He remembered a smack

2005-07-19T07:47:00.000+01:00

As I read on about Raven and the guy who remembered a smack, I was perplexed about the conclusions a man had drawn about life.
Somewhere I found I was reading from "The Book of Ecclesiates". Naviating Raven some more, I found out he had somethings he called favorites and beliefs too and I was relieved.
Raven, I must say, made an interesting read.

Wanna get to Raven? I hope I'm not annoying someone now.
http://www.freewebs.com/ravenique/

Hello World

2005-07-15T15:51:00.000+01:00

I wrote Hello World in phyton today. It was a cool one-liner - print "Hello World".
I made Essien say welcome to the world of phyton.

A more professional Splashers Technologies

2005-07-07T19:03:00.000+01:00

Its amazing what communication can do. Intra office communication gives this unique sense of confidence and professionalism; even more importantly, progress.
I felt really cool today with the way update mails flew around our Michigan and Abeokuta office today. Status getting communicated quickly and forwarded to clients. It took us a lot to get here and I see us getting better.
It was so good I just had to blog. Dan concluded by saying, "Hey, you guys rock!". I could see the snile on Bunmi and Demola's faces miles away.

I love two girls

2005-07-05T10:42:00.000+01:00

Impossible? Well I need some counselling.
I met Ibukun first then I started avoiding Lara because I know something crazy like this might happen.
I tried to be logical and see it this way; I'm just fond of the two, then I love Ibukun and I like Lara, then the other way. My nigga mind then begged God for a way forward. Then Ibukun doesn't seem to care about me (so I felt) and I though I had a way out. Then she was herself agaun. I thot to myself that I'll just let it play out and see how it goes. But man, I know I'm messed up.
Hear Stan, "If your grandpa hears this thing thats disturbing you, he'll just laugh and arrange yams and gifts to be taken to the two family. You'll just marry the two of them".

NEPA to PHCN

2005-06-20T10:34:00.000+01:00

I got this offline from a friend, read on.

Don't be deceived by OBJ's changing of NEPA- National Electric Power Authority(NEVER EXPECT POWER ALLWAYS) name to (PHCN) Power Holding Company of Nigeria and go and sell ur generator if you have one.Infact it is nothing but a hoarse, a camouflage and ordinary change of nomencleature to deceive the easy trusting Nigerians.The true meaning of the new acronym by a reliable source in the power sector is (PROBLEM HAS CHANGED NAME).So be Aware.

Waking up with a technology

2005-06-08T10:41:00.000+01:00

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 is in its beta stage and MS is pushing this really hard; my resolve - go out all way and grow with this release.
This is actually the first time I'll be fully involved with a major release from its beta stage and I plegde to go the whole way with this one. No catching up with the new technology in 2005 because I'll be there all the way.
So help me God.

Sane Developers

2005-05-27T11:45:00.000+01:00

Stan and Ope ook turns at the air conditioning system today; sticking their heads into the vents. Hehe, guys are really wacked in this environments, even Demola is struggling to keep his cool.
I remember Sadiq coming out of the "Mad room" before we left for the new office, taking a few strides back and kicking at a metal door. There goes the last supposedly sane developer!
As for Seun, haba, forget o. Even his babe noticed he has changed a lot since joining splashers technologies. Essien, Dapo, Ope, kai my guy, he don tey, when all this ones do stray. I can't help but feel really endangered.
Along comes Tolumi to the rescue, his mum is chief something at Nuero-Sychiatric hospital popularly called "Aro" in the neighborhood.
Tolumi, abeg o, you are the last hope these guys have.

Dapo is on vacation

2005-05-26T13:22:00.000+01:00

But he won't stay put on vacation. When he is not calling the office, he online chatting or sending emails, geek :). And you will complain if you get called back to fix some codes or were not gven the break at all.
You see, the geekify process is gradual, you become a part of your work and your work does the same.
As for me and my house, I won't leave for my vacation with a laptop and will go to some elite enclaves in Kenya. I'm still saving for the vacation thats probably why I'm still coding.

UEFA never fails

2005-05-26T11:08:00.000+01:00

3 first half goals and everybody gave it to AC Milan. hehe, wonderful Liverpool won on penalty shootout.
Essien, don't blaim me for shouting "things happen".

Perl

2005-02-19T22:40:00.000+01:00

What else will you call a developer' dog, and a female for that matter.
But Rotweillers can be dumb and undumb, she still doesn't know where to mess up.
Now Perl could be so cool and uncool, her idea of play is biting me and the other developers. But Perl can show stunts when its comes to food time, stands on two legs to claim whats hers, wakes you up with her bowl in her jaws when you sleep beyond 7 o'clock in the morning. Different things bring out the best in different folks you know.

Valentino

2005-02-14T22:27:00.000+01:00

Its crazy the things guys do for love...Essien can't help but feel like Don Nino each time he calls Bola, D__o sends love messages to about seven girls, hehe, talk about multi-tasking, multi-processing guys and me, I got a cake for Ibukun with two hearts; One on the carton and another on the cake with "Ibk" on it. She beamed when she saw it. The heart on the cake was a little bit smeared, "Thats not the shape of my heart" I whispered.
A cool night, Bidemi, Helen, Keni and Ibukun. It was so different from normal "party animal" me. Cool music, grilled fish and free air; My new idea of a "nuit de l'amour".

Romeo?

2005-01-31T22:34:00.000+01:00

Dido scared me with her songs "Do you have a little time". So I started paying more attention to the good things in life because I don't want to be reminded of all the "good things" I have missed.
One good thing was certainly good that I met on the 11th of Dec.....in the land of far far away.
Now I call Juliet at odd times I usually spent in synchronized coding, sometimes I wake her but she doesn't mind and for the first time in a long time I hummed one of Bob Marley's greatest "Is this love that I'm feeling?"
Haha, crazy dude is feeling like Romeo now, I'll do crazy things for love u know and I kinda enjoy what I feel like after calling her. Today she is staying up late to read for a paper in the morning, working and studying is a clumsy combination but "ma Juliet" will survive; Among other things I wish her success and love. I've set a reminder on my Outlook to alert me at 1 O'Clock a.m. when I'll wake her to study some more. This is an erstwhile domant side of me that ladies will applaud and guys like former me will scorn, but then, time changes you know.
Hey!, anybody knows where Ol' man Shakespear is buried, I need some tutorials.

Black Cops and recapitalization

2005-01-20T12:05:00.000+01:00

Cops in Nigerian wear a black uniform and they've given people reasons to believe they are equally black on the inside.
Two days ago, the Inspector general of police resigned his position, nobody of course resigns in Nogeria from a money spinning political position unless you've been directed to do so and Tafa Balogun is no exception. It was reported in the national dailies that he must have resigned as a result of lodgements of large sums in certain Nigerian banks, largest among this is a whooping 7.5Bn Naira, this brings us back to the title.
Now the CBN recently directed banks to recapitalize to the tune of 25Bn Naira in 2005. My weak mathematics infers each bank requires a fraction less than four Nigerian IGs to meet there targets. Its ackward our government goes around begging for debt forgiveness.
As to the question of how he made so much, well the Nigerian police force mount the largest numbers of toll gates in modern and ancient history and its now evident why nothing had been hitherto done about the situation. And did you see the size of Tafa's belly, things like that are allowed only on this side of the globe.

Jajajajanice

2004-10-31T11:17:00.000+01:00

I met her today...hehe, today i'm feeling 12
Ok, it was when I was jejely updating my blog o. I have time to play around and why not, loosen up. Today I'm feeling lucky and decides to click on the "who moved my cheese" link on my blog. Its a book I enjoyed reading for a book i finished in a few minutes.
Hmm, a list of people who loves this same book came up and there is Jajajanice on top.

She has a way with words that I couldn't resist adding her to IM with a "pleaseeeeeeeee don't click ignore". Her interests: she likes reading, and boy! pirated dvds :) loves family, but she has a way with words.

Her blogs are called Janice Rocks and Inertia knocks at my door; url: http//swingjanice.blogspot.com. I think she must have been keeping a diary from when she was 1. Janice expresses herself from a "free fall" mind thats kind of hyper-relaxed; I mean the state of mind many achieve only with dope. She probably doesn't read through her blog a second time.

And her picture, she shows only one side of a "Cleopatraic" face ... reading her blog is finally teaching me how to keep a diary, an art I've always avoided like a plague.

Personalities

2004-10-31T10:13:00.000+01:00

Funny, I took yhoo's personality test and got some funny not too funny results. Some I agree with, not all though. But I think its given me some insights into myself and areas I need to improve on and all that.
Here are some of the results if you think you have the patience...

As an Idealist, your mission in life is to make the world a better place. You bring a unique
combination of skills that make you a capable diplomat, advocate, and champion of those in need.
You care about big ideas and big issues, but you're also dedicated to the lives of the people
around you.In many ways, you're the ideal friend or co-worker. You have great empathy skills. You give sound
advice, but more importantly, you know when to just listen. At work, you're a natural leader,
facilitator, and energizer. You have a gift for promoting harmony and cooperation at work. In fact,
few things bother you more than conflicts at work.Your hopes and dreams are very important to you, so you take other people's dreams seriously, too.
Your friends and family know they can come to you for a booster shot of support and optimism,
whether it's for pursuing their dream job or dream man or woman. Similarly, you can motivate teams
and organizations to pursue more meaningful objectives.Most people have goals and dreams, but you're more likely than most to actually achieve them. You
have a clear idea of what you want in life. You anticipate and plan around obstacles, and you're a
sharp problem solver. Plus, it's pretty darn hard to discourage you.Idealists come in many varieties, from the academic to the applied. You have the capacity to
balance both the ideas and the pragmatics. Only you know what you'll do with your many talents.
Ultimately, whether you touch the world, your community, or simply your closest friends and
family—it's Idealists like you that give us all the inspiration to dream and strive for something
more. Agree? I do

For you, falling in love is like being reunited with the other part of yourself that finally gives meaning to everything in your life. This "soul mate" completes you. You empower each other to be the best you can be. You get each other's jokes and love the same books and movies. You talk until you go hoarse. You enjoy an intimacy that most people can't even imagine.The downside of the Destined love style is that you typically have to search for years and years (and go on lots of bad dates) to find this type of love. Destiny is on your side, but doesn't always follow your timeline. Given how hard it is to find a potential soul mate, it's easy to understand why you would take it so seriously. Just don't forget the equally silly and sexy aspects of love.Your approach to love can change over time. You may go through periods when you need a more casual love style, especially after a painful breakup with a potential soul mate. For now, the common features of your love "style" include:You're looking for a very close, intimate relationship. You want to share every aspect of your life with her and not hold anything back. This means knowing about each other's pasts, including the unflattering parts. Most importantly, though, you should be very open and totally honest about your life now. If you love her, you'll want to know about her hopes and dreams, as well as her fears and insecurities.Love means sharing your life completely with someone. Her friends and family become your friends and family, and vice versa. You're willing to sacrifice some of your independence so you and the one you love can share a life together.Like the song says, "If you want to know if she loves you so, it's in her kiss." You want passionate kisses and won't settle for anything less. The two of you will probably be instantly attracted to each other. You're not a purist who thinks love is a saintly connection between "friends." You have plenty of friends. You want a lover!Both partners have to decide when they're ready to make a commitment and at what pace. Rushing into a commitment only adds to the pressure of forming a relationship. The two of you have to find the type and level of commitment that makes sense given your feelings and how long you've been together. Agree? Not totally

Idealists go out of their way to promote harmony at work, in their families, and among their friends. You're a natural peacemaker and take it upon yourself to mediate disputes. And whenever possible, you try to prevent them. On more than one occasion, you've probably asked: "Why can't we all just get along?!"Yet conflict doesn't have to be destructive—there is such a thing as healthy conflict. Even heated exchanges can be useful as long as both of you play fair.Part of your challenge is learning to tolerate uncertainty and being disliked. As a creative person, you know that some of your best ideas come after long periods of frustration and feeling "blocked." You may find also that some of your relationships are equally blocked and require "creative conflict" to move forward.Asking an Idealist and peacemaker to have more conflicts is admittedly ambitious. Still, one of your strengths is that you're always open to new ideas and trying new things. In that spirit, here are some other possible challenges to consider:You hate to be alone. Your challenge is learning the difference between solitude and loneliness. Try scheduling a "date" with yourself. Cook yourself dinner or order take-out and pick out a great movie to watch by yourself. When you spend all your free time with other people, you end up spending your time alone doing chores or dealing with problems. So you have to remind yourself what great company you can be. Agree?
You're constantly taking on new projects at work and home. It's hard for you to say "No." Yet, you have to break the cycle of creating more and more ambitious ways of winning everyone's praise and proving your own worth. Agree? Maybe

Cotonou

2004-10-18T14:11:00.000+01:00

It started at the Kuramo beach in Lagos (Bunmi, Kenny[me], Dapo, Essien and Dele). Now Bunmi opted to take a seat where there is this elite African band and girls dancing with “Semi-Detached” waists. The scene was lovely with Microsoft office in the Octagon building standing tall in the nightline across the Lagos lagoon.
The next stop for the night was this dance all club in Lagos where we partied till dawn (details withheld). Here Essien is the toast of the day with his “bone-less” maneuvers We headed back to Festac under Dapo’s piloting, grabbed a few hours sleep and we were up again discussing technologies, Splashers migrating to Abeokuta, the night and so on.

Now it’s about 10 o’clock in the morning; Demola and Bunmi heads for Abeokuta while I started a journey alongside Essien to Cotonou in neighboring Republic Du Benin for the second day of this exiting weekend.
On arrival at the “Marche Dan Topa” in francophone Benin, we took a walk round town. Now Topa is Lagos with a fifth of its population. Sweet girls riding on mini “Harley Davidsons” are a site to behold traffic is light. Friendly people, we concluded they were having too much fun in Benin.
Now Essien’s elementary French was beginning to falter in the face of competition, his sweetest phrase was “mon Françoise des deficille” meaning exactly what you think; still we were able to cross many language barriers with wild gesticulations and bad French and sometimes we meet guys who speak Yoruba and English.
Now to the really exiting part, we walk into this restaurant called “LA PENICHE” where we meet these 2 girls…Arshelle and Plazon…(I couldn’t figure out the second name). Now Arshelle is truly exotic and Plazon starts exaggerating her catwalk to catch Essien’s attention, Arshelle having already caught mine. Somehow we were able to place orders with a mixture of Essien’s flavor of French and sign language, the girls were both understanding and helpful. We placed our orders from leader bound menus and settled for this meal called “ Daurades Guillees avec soup de poisson ” 3500 F apiece The waiting begins.

5 minutes, 10, 15, 20 minutes, finally the meal arrives and it was awesome!, well worth the wait Although the meal looks to good to be eaten, the poisson (Fish) was survived by its head, ribs and tail, I got Arshelle number and Essien made them know we’ll be visiting again soon. And God! Was it cool, I can’t wait to get a break and go back to my exotic “propriété de unadulterated aussi belle femme avec le coup masculin de foudre”.

How I wish my worst weekends were like this., by the way, Arshelle speaks only French and Fon, so I better start working on my languages…

Dying in the midst of plenty

2004-06-09T10:42:00.000+01:00

This is like the proverbial saying "Dying in the midst of plenty".
Today in Nigeria, workers downtooled because the Civillizan government (We have since stoppped referring to it as a democratic government) raised the prices of petroleum products or yet the third time this year.

It may be surprising that someone like me, who is a developer have chosen this topic for my first posting, well this thing affects everyone in Nigeria. Its crazy for a government to inflict sufferings on its people for their own short comings.
After a fourth republic that started 5 years ago under the same ex Military General Obasanjo, one would have thought the "Man from the prisons" would among mother things put Nigeria's four refineries in shape.
Well here we are and every boby is obeying labor leader's stay at home orders. Anyway, the fuel hike affects everyone from a capenter to a developer.