Rubbing off the mud

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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!

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:

1. Artemis Object Persistence Framework


2. Microsoft Data Access Application Block


3. NHibernate


4. Ado.Net (Traditional)


5. 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:

1. Open sourced


2. 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.


3. Out of the box support for other databases beside SqlServer


4. Support for persisting datasets/typed datasets


5. Development speed/Ease of use.


6. Performance


7. 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?

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

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?

"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

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

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?

1. Exit from Paris club of creditors


2. Negotiation underway fro exit from London Club


3. Publication of the monetary allocation to the different tiers of government


4. Resignation from a government who refused to understand

NGDevelopers.Net

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

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?

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 to give some kids a name, I'm thinking Sanaa for him or her cause I'm sure it will be one swell work of art.

End of an Epic

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

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

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?

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