Of Dogs and Drinks

"... to ask the dog where it got the keys!" Then we can both have one hell of a party!

08/07/2006
 

  Crash landing.

The plane was quite full and shortly before we started the descent to land, a flight attendant went round distributing VNL face-caps and T-shirts. I stuffed mine into the back of the seat in front of me. Then suddenly the plane lost control and it was clear we were going to crash. I was a little nervous and started repeating the words "Jesus take my soul" - that's all I could think of - if I was going to die, I wanted to make heaven. Others joined and started repeating the same words. There was some hysteria of course. I believe Akintunde was on the plane as well. The plane crashed - crash landed on top of a tall building - hanging precariously by its landing gear.
And it the way of such things I found myself standing in the large space in front of the  building at ground level starring up at the unbelievably balanced plane. Soon I along with others started making our way up the flight of stairs in the building. we were heading for the roof and the plane so as to get our things. The building looked suspiciously like my office but while my office was only 4 floors, this building was probably about 20 floors high. Son after retrieving out stuff from the plane, I was back at ground level in a car heading with others to the car pack. Akintunde was in the car too. We were of course talking about the plane, the free T-shirts etc.

The following are facts:
Free T-shirts and caps were handed out at my office that day
The building next to my office is quite tall
I think I was given a ride by a colleague along with Akintunde to the car park after work the same day

Probably my tired brain mixing occurrences from the day up in the dream I had during the night!

29/06/2006
 

  That word . . .

  The Word of God

  Remembering Folarin George

I know your loving family will miss you. But time will pass and one day we will all be together to part no more.

16/05/2006
 

 Men and Women

  My case Your Honour

Some part of me wished he had broken a few fingers when he hit the table. It would have served him right! But he is a big guy so no luck there. There is a saying in Yoruba along the line of the reasoning that reaction should be commensurate with action - "kila gbe, kile ju" - say you abuse someone and the next thing he does is pull out a gun with the intention of gunning you down; that is taking things too far!

I heard him mumbling to his team mates that "it wasn't my fault, if not that we were working together in the same place..." This of course, is a derogatory comment  meaning that if not for work, I probably wouldn't be in his vicinity/class etc. To which I mentally went "who does he think he is?"

I try very had to accommodate everybody but in truth you can't be all things to all people. With the previous paragraph in my, the saying that "the trouble with humility is that you can't boast about it" comes to mind. As my pastors says, people are just proud and it doesn't matter whether rich or poor. The good book also says that God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. We were both proud and so is a lot of people. I try, truly I do.

The  facts of the case (he had no case by the way):
1. The application/server owner requested the change
2. The application/server owner is a member of his unit
3. The onus is on him to ensure that the server's owner knew of his using the server as a backup dump
4. The server is not live. If the server had been live, I would almost certainly have involved him more actively and we wouldn't just have accepted a verbal request to reinstall the server. In fact, there is due process (along with signed documentation ) to be followed for live servers.
5. The affected data are just backups. Yes, there is a chance that Murphy's law will kick in and any of those backups may be needed, but if as I had discussed with his team members, we create some space and they start to take fresh backups now, the chances are that within a day or two, they would have backups of all the servers in their charge. In fact, these same backups that were "lost" have almost certainly been copied to tape, so what was his problem?

He must have called my immediate boss who then called me. My boss agreed with me totally. So instead of creating some space, I read my mails, packed up my computer and headed for home! Good luck to him :-)

Passed him on the bike while he was walking to the car park. He was still grumbling to a team mate about the issue. Considering the size of him, I hope he does have a heart attack. Serious, I mean it (that is I truly feel concerned enough  to hope he doesn't)

So he called about an hour and a half later to explain and apologize. He was just concerned about what would have happened if something had gone wrong with any of the systems and there had been no backups to turn to ...

28/04/2006

  Time to Remember

  Knocking on heaven's door

If we are to be realistic about the issue, one is likely to be knocking on hell's barbed gates if one goes out in a blaze of gunfire (instead of a blaze of glory) like Smalls and Tu Pac did. But the myth is that everyone that dies goes to heaven and bad things may not be said about dead people.

20/01/2006

  Aroro

The bus conductor: all these passenger wey I carry are all aroro people. I know them. Na for this hour I dey carry them. Them go full bustop and when you stop for them, the first thing dem go ask a "elo ni"
Busr Driver: "awon eloni"
Bus conductor: "E be like se dem dey go school for the thing"
"Na the money wey someone go pay from Apongbongon to Ojuelegba na hin dem go wan pay from V/I to Ojuelegba.

20/01/2006

  Word for Today

  In Remembrance ...

Should this stop us from:

loving,
friendship,
schooling,
marrying,
 

No I think not.

Could days, months and years be given by one to another, I know you will give.

Instead let us live as it is said
as if today were our last and plan as if we would live forever.

Let us speak words of love; express the passion that makes us human;

It is true that one cannot feel another's pain no matter the effort.

Death where is thy sting

As David declared " I shall not die but live and declare the works of HIS hands.
So shall we in this world no matter how brief, and surely in the world to come ...
. . .  forever and ever   . . .
. . .  Amen

"I will see you in a bit"

(In remembrance of the father of a friend whose surname starts with the same letter as mine. Though I knew him not, his family did - as surely as I know mine)

R.I.P.

09/01/2005

  The Real Santa

Who says children don't believe in Santa? They just know when they are being taken for a ride :-)

24/12/2005

  Lemon grass

Me thinks that is a lot of query that's about to get sent out. All you married women without lemon grass at home, "you are just about to be served" :-)

24/12/2005

  Compliments of the season

May the New Year be filled with God's mercies and blessings for everyone.

22/12/2005

  All ...

A couple next to me at some point in the film made a comment about death to which I have added a couple of lines.

The brave die young
The coward die many times
The poor die unsung
In the long run all die

21/12/2005

  Sleep...

"Good evening Oga, do you have Okin shortcake"
"Yes, I do"
"How much is it"
"3 for twenty naira"
"OK. Let me have 6"
The man did not appear to have heard me. He is just sitting there not doing anything until the other mallam (maybe his friend?) also sitting in his stall shouts "eeh!" - apparently the man had fallen asleep (again).
So he manages to put 6 packets in a plastic bag and hand it to me. He the picked up his "change cardboard box", fished out my change consisting of 3 twenty naira notes and then goes into suspended animation again wit the notes in his hand.
His friend shouts "eeh!" again and he wakes up and hands the change over to me.
I laughingly commented that he must really be very tired to which he readily agreed.

16/12/2005

  Time and flight (Virgin Nigeria)

  Social Commentary

  Of bikes and bikemen

(28/11/2005)

  A little Wisdom

It seems I will start carrying around a little black book with me now. So that whenever I meet someone (new, friend or acquaintance) I will first whip out the book, look up the guy (or gals) name and only, yes only shake the person's hand if his/her name does not turn up in the book. So what is the book for? Well, anyone who uses the toilet and refuses to wash his/her hands afterwards. While it would be easy for me to populate the male part of the book, I would need help with the female part.

I am not a neat fellow - you need only see my room, but I believe that some level of hygiene should be maintained especially when it comes to things such as ones health and hands. Who knows, you may be eating sausages with your bare hands the next minute after shaking that guys hand!

So when someone offers me his hand, I whip out the little black book, see his name in there and say "sorry, no can do. How do you do. My hands are full"

I have an hypothesis that it may be safe enough to shake everybody's hands before 10am in the morning.

(28/11/2005)

  Singles

I guess she took me up on my second offer - I never heard from her.

Now to that story told by one of the participants. She was asked why she wasn't yet married. She said she and the man had been together probably 5 to 8 years, but that the guy said he would only get married after he has built his own house and acquired 2 cars and that about 5 years later he still hadn't realised any of his "dreams" and that she was fed up of waiting for him which is why she found herself attending the programme.

One can't blame the poor girl!

(19/11/2005)

  Guilty by participation

OK. It was all just a dream, but I practically woke up with the frustration of seeing him so close to the police with the bag in his shoulder.

(26/10/2005)

  Just the way it is ...

The man on my left has got his trouser legs rolled up to his knees, he appears to be praying. We are all looking for solutions; the rich also cry so what option does the poor have.

The man on my right is smoking. he's got the lighted cigarette in the the cup of his palm. Smoking is no longer an acceptable vice. Science is doing all it can to keep us alive so we have all found vices that don't kill as easily. In my father's time smoking was a fashion or class statement.

I looked across the bay at the ships anchored in the harbour. It would be nice to be able to forget all my cares and just sail away for a couple of weeks maybe as a deckhand - but the age of innocence has passed and I have got responsibilities now.

I will spend 30 minutes then go back home.

A group of 8 kids walked past. They were so dirty, the wind from the ocean wafted their "smell" up to me.

2 riders on a horse sped by, one of them singing Reggae - "... if you smoke weed you will get high..." How I high I wondered and for how long?

I called Tope this afternoon and he told me that Stella is dead, and that 118 people went down in Oyo on a Bellview airplane. He said I should go and switch on my TV and listen to the news. I replied that I have had light for about 2 days. He said I should go and put on the generator. I told him I will wait and hopefully NEPA will return the power supply. 

Sometime one wonders "what is the point of it all"

I believe every person should have 2 plans: the long term "I will live forever" plan, and a short checkout plan that acknowledges the fact that no one has control over anything plan.

The man on my left runs towards the waves one last time, bending down he scoops up some of the salt water and drinks it.

I have spent 30 minutes. I will go home now. If there is still no light, I will put on the generator and hopefully NEPA will return the power supply soon.

Epilogue: The following day I learnt the following:
Stella died as a result of complications from a liposuction procedure he underwent.
The plane was about 24 years old. Also, a family member told me that at about 8:45pm on the faithful day, she was in an area quite close to the airport and that when a plan flew overhead sputtering like it was grinding stones together in its engine, she and a friend looked up in concern and that with the details of the planes flight revealed now, it was most certainly the crashed plane.

My final comments: it is well known that all surgical procedures no matter how simple carry some risk and that the likelihood of complication increases with the patients age. Ultimately, the best method of looking and feeling good is to stick to  a good exercise regime. I am sure this will make anybody thinking of the same procedure think twice. While I don't know her personally, I still feel sorry for her - it is not a good way to go. I was going to change the title of this entry to "How Stella lost her groove" but on second thoughts ...

Nigerians treat planes like they treat their commercial buses. They seem to forget that there is one fundamental difference between a plane and a bus: if a bus develops problems on the road, the driver can pull over to the curb, either sort out the problem or let the passengers "find their levels" at it is said. But with a plane, their is no pulling over, "all go down." Maybe if the plane had turned back early enough, it might have made it to land safely. It is surprising that pilots would risk their own lives for their corporations knowing the full implication of a failed plane in the sky. Maybe Nigerians should start being alert and demanding as a body that a plane that sounds or performs awfully on take off should be returned to the landing strip at once - even if it means hijacking the plane!

Once I boarded a plane at Kano airport going to Lagos. At first there was a little delay and we noticed that the cabin was sort of hot. We then took off and within minutes the plane became so hot that people started fanning themselves. After a few minutes in the air, the pilot realised that there was no way he could make the journey to Lagos with the plane in that shape - it also appeared that the problem was starting to affect the engines. We turned back and were kept in the airless cabin for about 30 minutes while the airline's mechanics tried to sort out the problem with the plane's cooling system. We took off afterwards with the cabin  temperature just bearable - the idea was to get the plane to Lagos where they could take a better look at the problem. I noticed quite a few people mumbling prayers under their breath that the plane should make it safely to Lagos.

I suspect there were people doing the same on the ill-fated plane. Maybe there are just times when we should act and not pray, but that is the benefit of hindsight.

I was looking through the manifest of the flight and came across a name that I know. While only the initial of the firstname was listed, I became quite worried, of course their could be lots of people of the same gender with the same Initial and the same marital status in Lagos - I hope so. On a lighter note, a customer of my sister's firm who was supposed to be on the flight but didn't make it can be presumed as one of the living-dead as his name appeared on the manifest. As someone pointed out, in other countries contact would have been established with the family members and obvious errors such as this would have been either flagged or avoided.

(25/10/2005)

  The psychology of Marketing

I automatically stopped at the first table since it was closer to me.

As I picked up a packet of chips, the girl stood up to attend to me with a nice smile on her face.

I picked up another pack and then she goes "No. Take the fresh ones. You work in Vmobile right? I know my customers. So when you come ask from me eh?"

When she saw that I was not sure which was fresh and which wasn't, she actually took the pack from me and selected 2 by herself and put them in a polythene bag.
I bought the 2 packs and moved on and I thought about everything she did right which may make the difference between a thriving business and one gone burst.

1. Location - now this could have been purely by chance, but she was closer to the office gates than her mate so the likelihood that she would take the lionshare of the market is almost a given.

2. She stood up and acknowledged my importance as a potential customer. And we all like to be acknowledged.

3. She showed an interest in what I was doing whereas she could just have sat there like a member of the M.U.M.U. or just starred at me like I was just another Martian from outer space.  After all, how many packs did I buy - just 2 which equals N200 which won't take her home anyway.

4. She had a smile on her face. That automatically makes one welcome. The expression on some peoples face alone would not make a dog go near them.

5. She offered help without my having to ask - she was proactive.

6. She didn't miss an opportunity to make a sales pitch i.e., she said "so when next you come ask from me eh." She is making an assumption that a satisfied would return again and again.

With all that I left her stand with a smile on my face too. Now she could have been fobbing off her stale chips on me under the pretext of selling me the fresh ones. But even with all that, assume I got home to find the chips stale, I would still have been inclined to think that she made a mistake rather than thinking the worst and consigning all her generation to some unmentionable place.

Now that is a good salesperson, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this piece with a smile on my face, would I?

(11/10/2005)

  Knights in shining armour

(09/10/2005)

  Of languages and men

(09/10/2005)

  The reunion  ...

(08/10/2005)

  Up the creek ...

(01/10/2005)

  The Twins

(29/09/2005)

  Book Launch !  Book Launch! Book Launch! ! ! !

See scan of I.V

(16/09/2005)

  Menace to society . . .

May be I should have gone back and taken a good look at his face. So that next time we cross paths, I will know to politely turn down his services!

(20/09/2005)

  What didn't get said during the "chat"

Don't get me wrong, he is definitely a good guy and widely-read.

I know he reads a lot. I do too. I love I.T. I love experimenting - seeing what works and how to get things working. I would have loved an informal chat with him -say a 3some. Then I could drop terms like virtualization, ethernet bonding, dynamic reconfiguration, emulation, DLPAR, Xen, EMC/Vmware, Microsoft (Connectix) VPC. Server consolidation, SUN containers, etc . . .  but that didn't happen. Instead I thanked him, bid him good night and headed into the Lagos night :-(

(20/09/2005)

  I am not . . .

  That last button . . .

Sidekick

Thy works

Save Oh Father

747  ... booooorrrriiiiing!

The bus driver

Congratulations !!!!

And following Mr Albert Campion's lead (in "The Question Mark"), I will now cross the madam's name off my private list entitled "Elegant Young Persons Whom I Ought to Take to Lunch" and write it neatly at the top of my "People I Must Send Christmas Cards to" folder.

21/08/2005

Just men?.

This morning . . .

The exam . . .

The CEO Roadshow  . . .

Good food can Kill . . .

How to Know a Nigerian . . . a.ka. Nigerians can't sing

Blue River

I set to thinking what it was that made me do the things I do (read more)

Revelation 13:18

Wisdom is needed to understand this. (read more ...)

Social Life

I Hmm. How come this section is blank?

Best of the Rest

If you have any computing project you want handled professionally, by all means check out my business page. Check my Blog if you are interested in how I spend my day. Everything else goes on the Best of the Rest page. Friends, utilities, interests, colleagues etc. I think that about covers it, but if there is anything else you need to know, please contact me.