Oladipo Ademola Esq

I once saw a cartoon that sent me on a rollercoaster of thought. it contains a couple of skeletons seated at a table with the caption: ladies waiting for the perfect man.

I asked myself a couple of questions including:

• why is it always ladies looking for the perfect man and not the other way round?
• are ladies truly looking for the perfect man?
• is there a perfect man?
• how would you know a perfect man?
• aren’t men also looking for the perfect woman?
• is there a perfect woman?
• how would you know a perfect woman?

No, I did not find answers. And, no, I do not have the answers. But wait, what I know, I’ll tell you.

There is no such thing as a perfect man/woman simply because whenever you describe your partner(s), and you are asked what do you like best/worst about him/her, you always have answers. if you like something best, is it not logical to logical to assume that you like something else less than the best? If the person has something you hate…

There is no perfect man/woman. A lesson i learnt a long time ago is “you find someone who is almost all you desire and make that person perfect for you! It all boils down to tolerance. What can you tolerate? What cant you tolerate?

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On/Off Topic Humour

One day The Lord came to Adam, and said, "I’ve got some good news and some bad news".
Adam said, "Well, give me the good news first."
The Lord explained, "I’ve got two new organs for you.  One is called a brain.  It will allow you to create new things, solve problems, and have intelligent conversations with Eve.  The other organ I have for you is called a penis.  It will give you great physical pleasure and allow you to reproduce your now intelligent life form and populate this planet.  Eve will be very happy that you now have this organ to give her children."
Adam, very excited, exclaimed, "These are indeed great gifts you have given to me.  What could possibly be bad news after such great tidings?"
The Lord looked upon Adam and said with great sorrow, "You will never be able to use these two gifts at the same time."

A man was walking along the beach in California and found a bottle.  He looked around and didn’t see anyone so he opened it.  A genie appeared and thanked the man for letting him out.
The genie said, "For your kindness I will grant you one wish, but only one."
The man thought for a minute and said, "I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii but have never been able to because I’m afraid of flying and ships make me claustrophobic and ill.  So I wish for a road to be built from here to Hawaii."
The genie thought for a few minutes and said, "No, I don’t think I can do that.  Just think of all the work involved with the pilings needed to hold up the highway and how deep they would have to be to reach the bottom of the ocean.  Think of all the concrete or asphalt that would be needed.  No, that is just too much to ask."
The man thought for a minute and then told the genie, "There is one other thing that I have always wanted.  I would like to be able to understand women.  What makes them laugh, what makes them cry, why they are so temperamental, and why are they so difficult to get along with – in other words, what makes them tick?"
The genie considered the request for a few minutes and said, "So, will two lanes be sufficient, or would you like four?"

When God made man, he made him out of string.
At the end, he had some left over, so he made a little thing.
When God made woman, he made her out of lace.
He found he did not have enough, so he left a little space.

Lets talk about sex again. I know I have discussed it before and I promised a part 2.

I said in my last post that the secret of great sex is listening, and yes, I still stand by that statement. To have and enjoy great sex, you need to listen. To your partner and to yourself. Yes, you read right. You have to listen to yourself.

No, I am not crazy. You are probably asking why you need to listen to yourself, don’t you know what you are experiencing. Yes you do. But does your partner know? Ahh, makes some sense now. You need to listen to yourself because whatever “information” you give is what your partner works with. Do no forget that to truly enjoy sex, you both have to enjoy it. You and your partner. While you make effort to ensure that your partner enjoys sex, your partner needs to reciprocate the favour and ensure that you also enjoy the sex.

You need to listen to yourself and ensure that your pass along the information that your partner needs to know to enable he/she act such that you enjoy the sex. You like something done in a way, let it be known. You don’t like the way something is done, let it be known. Whatever message you pass across is what your partner uses.

And please, not this kind of sexual feedback. Happy Sexing.

If you have any ideas on sex, comments please!

I love Firefox. It is a wonderful browser. Standards compliant and all, but it is such a memory hog. Visited flavors.me site and while setting up my profile, my system’s performance slowed downed tremendously. A quick peek at my task manager and …

?Interesting post from Coding Horror

I find it difficult to believe, but the reports keep pouring in via Twitter and email: many candidates who show up for programming job interviews can’t program. At all. Consider this recent email from Mike Lin:

The article Why Can’t Programmers… Program? changed the way I did interviews. I used to lead off by building rapport. That proved to be too time-consuming when, as you mentioned, the vast majority of candidates were simply non-technical. So I started leading off with technical questions. First progressing from easy to hard questions. Then I noticed I identified the rejects faster if I went the other way – hard questions first – so long as the hard questions were still in the “if you don’t know this then you can’t work here” category. Most of my interviews still took about twenty minutes, because tough questions take some time to answer and evaluate. But it was a big improvement over the rapport-building method; and it could be done over the phone.

After reading your article, I started doing code interviews over the phone, using web meetings. My interview times were down to about 15 minutes each to identify people who just can’t code— the vast majority.

I wrote that article in 2007, and I am stunned, but not entirely surprised, to hear that three years later “the vast majority” of so-called programmers who apply for a programming job interview are unable to write the smallest of programs. To be clear, hard is a relative term — we’re not talking about complicated, Google-style graduate computer science interview problems. This is extremely simple stuff we’re asking candidates to do. And they can’t. It’s the equivalent of attempting to hire a truck driver and finding out that 90 percent of the job applicants can’t find the gas pedal or the gear shift.

I agree, it’s insane. But it happens every day, and is (apparently) an epidemic hiring problem in our industry.

You have to get to the simple technical interview questions immediately to screen out the legions of non-programming programmers. Screening over the telephone is a wise choice, as I’ve noted before. But screening over the internet is even better, and arguably more natural for code.

I still wasn’t super-happy with having to start up the web meeting and making these guys share their desktops with me. I searched for other suitable tools for doing short “pen-and-paper” style coding interviews over the web, but I couldn’t find any. So I did what any self-respecting programmer would do. I wrote one.

Man, was it worth it! I schedule my initial technical screenings with job applicants in 15-minute blocks. I’m usually done in 5-10 minutes, sadly. I schedule an actual interview with them if they can at least write simple a 10-line program. That doesn’t happen often, but at least I don’t have to waste a whole lot of time anymore.

Mike adds a disclaimer that his homegrown coding interview tool isn’t meant to show off his coding prowess. He needed a tool, so he wrote one — and thoughtfully shared it with us. There might well be others out there; what online tools do you use to screen programmers?

Three years later, I’m still wondering: why do people who can’t write a simple program even entertain the idea they can get jobs as working programmers? Clearly, some of them must be succeeding. Which means our industry-wide interviewing standards for programmers are woefully inadequate, and that’s a disgrace. It’s degrading to every working programmer.

At least bad programmers can be educated; non-programming programmers are not only hopeless but also cheapen the careers of everyone around them. They must be eradicated, starting with simple technical programming tests that should be a part of every programmer interview

Cover via Amazon

(Culled from http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hmu/2009/10/when-a-colleagues-mistakes-aff.html)

In an attempt to function in this increasingly complex world, organizations are becoming increasingly complex themselves. They are built on collaborative partnerships, dotted lines and matrixes, all of which mean more and more of your work depends on the work of someone else. When a colleague is making mistakes, this interconnectedness can feel like a major pitfall.

Yet a job where you don’t interact with others is nearly impossible to find, not to mention somewhat boring. So, you need to figure out how to make relationships work. Every management expert would agree that positive working relationships are essential to getting things done. So what do you do when a colleague is not doing her part and it’s affecting your work? Fortunately, handling your colleague’s mistakes in a productive way cannot only help remove barriers but may also help your colleague, and you, gain new skills.

What the Experts Say
The type of mistakes you might be affected by vary greatly. A colleague may miss deadlines, not produce the work required, make errors in calculations or even provide you with misinformation. These may all be innocent mistakes fuelled by lack of knowledge, experience, or awareness, but without more information you can’t be sure and won’t be able to act.

Diagnose the Issue
The first step in addressing your colleague’s behavior is to understand what’s really going on. Try to determine if the problem is short-term, such as a personal issue at home, a particularly heavy workload, or a health problem — or long-term, such as a lack of skill or a poor cultural fit with the organization. As Allan Cohen, the Edward A. Madden Distinguished Professor of Global Leadership at Babson College and author of Influence without Authority points out, "What you don’t know is if the person is getting the right support from others, if a non-work issue has cropped up, or if perhaps the person doesn’t understand the issue like you do." This diagnosis can be done by looking for corroborating evidence from other colleagues and checking that your understanding of the issue aligns with theirs. Deborah Ancona, Seley Distinguished Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and author of X-Teams: How to Build Teams that Lead, Innovate, and Succeed, warns that it’s important to "be careful because you don’t want to make anyone else see the problem if they haven’t already."

Approach Your Colleague Directly
The best approach is to go to the source — speak with your colleague directly. This conversation should take place in an informal, private setting and you should always follow good feedback rules. Don’t accuse or blame your colleague. Use concrete examples to explain what you are seeing and its impact on you.

Richard Hackman, the Edgar Pierce Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at Harvard Business School and author of Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances says, "We tend to attribute what’s going wrong to an individual and specifically to something dispositional about them." This is dangerous because you are then attacking a person — not their behavior. Most importantly, to establish a common ground with your colleague, discuss the issue in context of mutual goals. "You want to ask ‘What can we do to achieve our goals?’ not ‘You screwed up again,’" Hackman says.

Don’t assume you know exactly why the colleague is making mistakes. As Hackman points out, "You need to be open to learning that you’re wrong about the situation." Use an inquiry mode and ask questions like "What’s going on?" and "Am I misreading or misunderstanding the situation?" In fact, you may discover that your colleague wasn’t aware of the mistakes or how her actions appeared to others.

Offer Help and Support
If a short-term issue is causing the mistakes, such as a difficult time at home or an illness in the family, you should offer to help. You may even consider covering for the person as a way to build a positive relationship. As Ancona says, "This world is all about connections and not only do you not want to jeopardize the relationship, but you want to build it." Covering may mean picking up extra work, spending time double checking her work or offering to explain to other colleagues what is going on. Covering doesn’t mean that you should lie on behalf of your colleague, nor does it mean a permanent shift in job responsibilities. You should only cover when you have an explicit agreement that the situation is temporary until circumstances change.

If you find that the source of the mistakes is a longer term issue, such as a lack of skill, you can offer to help brainstorm solutions. Perhaps your colleague can find a course that will help her build up her skills, or go to her manager to ask for assistance.

It is rarely a good idea to let your colleague continue to make mistakes. Cohen says, "In very competitive organizations, the temptation is to let people die on their own swords. But in those environments, it’s even more appreciated when you don’t let them die." By being generous now, you are incurring the obligation of your colleague to help you in the future. This reciprocity is often what strong professional relationships are built on.

Protect Yourself
It’s possible that you’ll discover your colleague is intentionally making mistakes to undermine you or take credit for your work. "These political situations are far messier to deal with," Ancona says. Fortunately they are far rarer as well. Cohen says that he has only met a handful of people throughout his career that are "true snakes." He advises, "It should be your last assumption that the colleague is making mistakes deliberately."

Ancona offers, "You can try to confront the person directly, hoping that may make him or her back down." If that doesn’t work you can use the following tactics:

• Make your work visible. Avoid bragging. Use the active voice instead of the passive voice. For example, try saying "I prepared these analyses that show where we should be investing resources" rather than "These analyses show where we should be investing resources."
• Offer to lead a presentation when joint work is being shared. People often think of the person in the front of the room as the leader, or at least one of the more active participants in a project.
• Take credit where credit is due. This doesn’t mean you brag. Instead, showcase your involvement or let your manager know exactly what part of the project is the result of your efforts.

In these political situations, don’t resort to badmouthing your colleague. Negative comments often reflect as badly on you as they do on the person you are speaking about.

When the Issue Continues…
Despite all your efforts and care in handling the situation, it is possible that the mistakes will continue. This isn’t only an inconvenience, it could hinder your career. The experts suggest you take a few approaches to preserving your reputation. If possible, avoid working with that person in the future. If that’s not possible you can employ some of the same tactics listed above if the person were undermining you. Also, you should consider approaching your manager. Explain what you’ve done to date and ask for her advice. Be clear you are not asking her to intervene.

The experts agree that things would need to be very serious, e.g. the project you’re working on is headed for failure, before you approach your colleague’s manager. There is a major risk that you could alienate your colleague and permanently damage the relationship (see Allan Cohen’s experience in Case Study #2 below). In many organizational cultures, talking to a person’s manager can be coded as not being "a team player."

Principles to Remember
Do:

• Keep in mind that relationships matter
• Be direct and honest with your colleague about how the mistakes are affecting you
• Offer help if the colleague is struggling with a short-term issue such as a heavy workload or a personal issue

Don’t:

• Badmouth your colleague to anyone in the organization
• Assume your colleague is aware of the mistakes
• Go to your colleague’s manager without first talking to your colleague and your manager

Case Study #1: Stopping Mistakes Before They Happen
For Drew Chatto, a software engineer who worked at VeriSign, close collaboration wasn’t just part of his job, it was his job. While he wrote code on his own, it was always reviewed by others and then put together with his colleagues’ work to form a complete product. Eddie, one of Drew’s colleagues, was a less experienced — although not less talented — engineer. Because Eddie was relatively new to VeriSign he wasn’t familiar with the specifics of how the company wrote code. Instead of asking questions, he made assumptions and often finished code quickly. During code review, Drew regularly found mistakes with Eddie’s work and had to ask him to rewrite it. Eddie never argued but he continued to make similar mistakes. Tired of having the same conversation over and over, Drew offered to help Eddie think through his code assignments before he began writing. These conversations gave Eddie the opportunity to ask how specific things were done at VeriSign, instead of making the decisions on his own. As Drew said, "I couldn’t expect him to know the right questions." Eddie was open to the suggestion; he knew Drew had more experience, and he was likely tired of having to redo his work. Drew’s approach helped Eddie avoid mistakes before they happened. While those preliminary conversations took more of Drew’s time, they saved him time in the code review process and built a stronger, less contentious relationship, with Eddie.
Case Study #2: The Risk of Escalation
Allan Cohen is a professor and dean at Babson College, and one of our experts from above. In a former role at a major university, his good friend and colleague Carl served as the Associate Dean of Allan’s department. Allan was proposing a new program that required Carl’s approval. Despite Carl’s background in accounting, he kept making accounting errors when attributing costs to the new program. Worried about him, Allan stopped by his boss’s office one afternoon to explain what was going on. His boss was the Dean of the School and as such, was also Carl’s boss. In the middle of the conversation, there was a knock at the door and Carl walked in. Carl’s office was directly next door and he explained that he had heard the entire conversation because of a chip in the concrete wall between the two offices. Allan explained, "We never mentioned the incident again but it took me well over a year to repair the relationship." Allan regrets not going to Carl directly first. "If I had, I could’ve saved the relationship and maybe even helped him."

Further Reading
When Your Colleague Is a Saboteur
The Danger of Silencing Conflict at Work
The Promise: The Basic Building Block of Accountability

I came across this interesting project yesterday and have been playing with it ever since.

Played around with some other names.

Enoch Adeboye

Fidel Castro

Nigeria

I have been to the site fusiongreen_dot_com a number of times. Actually downloaded some tunes, but I have to say that the site has one of the most unappealing looks ever designed. Though it looks better than a lot of public nigerian sites.

Update: I had planned posting this a long while back. But I held back, I had to contact the company and I did, but I did not get a good enough feedback. So, the blogger in me could not resist posting this.

I have been to the site a number of times, with just one aim. To download music free. Using a simple hack, I get access to some of the latest Nigerian tunes when released in albums.

It works like this. On the fusiongreen website (http://www.fusiongreen.com/music.php), they have links that enable you stream music to preview a track you want to buy. Its a flash button, so no right-clicking. Looking at the page source, I noticed that the buttons call a function that pass a numeric parameter to a page which streams the music. For a track with number 2991, the parameter 2991 is passed to the play.php page (e.g http://fusiongreen.com/i=2991&t=music). Using firefox and the download manager plugin, DownThemAll, I just create a batch link of a number of tracks and set it to download. To download a whole album, I could use the batch URL http://fusiongreen.com/i=[2900:2915]&t=music.

Also, you could save each file one at a time. Take a look at their site, they have quite an extensive collection.

Update 2: Did I mention that FusionGreen started as a free download system before switching to the paid model?

I can not deny that I love banking with Guaranty Trust Bank. They do their best to make me happy. Even, commissioning Asa to sing their theme song, and its a lovely song.

You can get the song from here.

Wouldn’t you rather take my hand and let me lead. Wont you rather trust me?

Guaranteed to take the lead. Guaranteed to be the best in all that I do.

Cool. Relaxing. Asa, damn girl, you are good. 

A Nation’s Identity Crisis
By Reuben Abati
You may not have noticed it: Nigeria is suffering from an identity crisis imposed on it in part by an emergent generation of irreverent and creative young Nigerians who are revising old norms and patterns. And for me nothing demonstrates this more frontally than the gradual change of the name of the country. When Flora Shaw, Lord Lugard’s consort came up with the name, Nigeria in 1914, she meant to define the new country by the strategic importance of the Niger River. And indeed, River Niger used to be as important to this country as the Nile was/is to Egypt. We grew up as school children imagining stories about how Lugard in one special romantic moment, asked his mistress to have the honour of naming a new country in Africa. Something like: “Hello, sweetheart, what name would you rather give the new country that I am creating?”
“Let me give it a thought? , Awright, how about Ni-ge-ria darling?”
“That would do. That would do. How thoughtful, my fair lady? You are forever so dependable”

And the name stuck and it has become our history and identity. But these days, the name Nigeria is gradually being replaced by so many variants, that I am afraid a new set of Nigerians may in the immediate future not even know the correct spelling of the name of their country. For these Nigerians whose lives revolve mostly around the internet and the blogosphere, the name Nigeria has been thrown out of the window. Our dear country is now “naija” or “nija”. What happened to the “-eria” that Ms Shaw must have thoughtfully included? The new referents for Nigeria are now creeping into writings, conversations, and internet discourse. I am beaten flat by the increasing re-writing of the country’s name not only as naija or nija, but consider this: “9ja”. Or this other name for Nigeria: “gidi”. There is even a television programme that is titled “Nigerzie”. In addiiton, Etisalat, a telecom company has since adopted a marketing platform that is titled: “0809ja.” Such mainstreaming of these new labels is alarming.
Read the rest of this entry »

I was reading an article about the Bayelsa Biometrics project on Sun News Online, a project I am part of. My intention was to copy the article for our website, when I saw the Glo advert. For some funny reason, I clicked on the advert (something I am strangely wondering why I did it), to visit gloworld.com.

I left the page to get busy on some other things and came back to meet a Plesk Landing Page.

Glo, or rather, Glo Webmasters. Wake up.