You might want to click on the link below and download the PDF; it’s great stuff about career related decisions courtesy my bro.

Multiple Choices: Planning Your Career for the 21st Century

I just wanted to add that you and I active job seekers know what the market is like. Masters/PHD without job experience is bullshit. If I was hiring any such person would be on a long thing. I find it strange that people spend their money and time doing masters in Sociology etc when they don’t plan to do jack with it. Doing masters just for the sake of doing masters; and in the end holding down a shitty paying job. Paper qualifications are overrated. In most cases a degree or its equivalent is ok. Even sef if you’re into entertainment or self employed I’d say fuck the degree and do a course/certification in line with your career objectives. Down with distant learning culture in Naija, adults 25 years and above still being fed by their parents, over reliance on lazy ass Government jobs and minimum wage paying white collar gigs. I take my hats off to entrepreneurs; Lord knows we need more of them.

My advice would be when on IT make sure you actually make great effort with learning on the job skills. Pick up a trade, there’s no shame in making money and being an independent adult. Skill is everything, while waiting to write JAMB UME immerse yourself in learning stuff: programming, tailoring, baking, carpentry etc. Like Whiz Kid said don’t dull! If the jobs that fit your skill set can be thought to an OND holder in a month you’ll continue to be the bottom of the food chain. On the other hand concrete knowledge/skills gained never leaves you; it’s like fixed capital.

Note that I’m not absolving myself of any guilt, just venting. See the below quotes. Peace!

These days when people talk about scarcity of good jobs, I sometimes wonder, I think skilled graduates are much more scarce than good Jobs.

My company has been seeking to recruit a programmer in a certain language for like 4 months and even advertised in a national daily with no success! Despite the number of interested applicants we have.

I have also been seeking a candidate who has even a basic knowledge of PHP/MySql in Abuja for weeks without success and there are still jobless computer science students in this country!

Typical dulling (under employed) Naija civil servant

As bad decisions go, I have had a few myself, the worst of which, I reckon is leaving my decent job in Abuja and turning down two other better offers to travel to the UK for an expensive Masters degree, frittering away all I had worked for. Masters degree completed, no job in the UK, no job in Nigeria, where do I go from here? Lessons learnt!

Over 4 days in February 2010 in a series titled “Rules for writers” The Guardian newspaper in the UK invited a number of writers to share a few tips about their writing habits, rules and creeds. Inspired by that, Nigerian bloggers Alligator Legs and Akin Akintayo did an expose on their own blog writing rules. Acknowledging the brilliant concept and in the spirit of the moment I’ve decided to explicitly share my own blog writing rules over the past 7 years with you, my fellow human life form. If you want you can call this the sequel of my “How to Blog” post from 2005.

1) Be Original, Be Interesting
When I write I always try to be original with my blog posts being insightful and having substance. I never regurgitate content like gossip bloggers; I leave all that for the mass media being it’s their traditional role. My participation in current discourse must always be fresh, offering something new and interesting from my point of view. The mindset is always as if I were a stand up comedian trying to make a mark in the fast paced entertainment industry. I advise that if writers must bitch about their relationship troubles it should be from an interesting and funny angle not a bore as no one really gives a fuck about another’s lonely life nor the colour of their underwear.

2) Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
Closely related to my first point I am never petty. Like a paid newspaper columnist my quality must always have quantity. Bare bones blog post with a single link to a YouTube video or another site is not my style. Facebook and Twitter exist for such “miscellaneouses”.

3) Come Correct
When I write I try to be as clear and concise as possible. Punctuation is cherished and explanations made thorough. I write with the mindset that the average inquisitive Joe should be able to relate and take something out of my articles.

4) Be Easy
When I write I don’t fake or force stuff. I only write when I’m sufficiently inspired. I like it to come to me naturally; after all a blog is meant to complement not stress one. As such I am not obsessed with the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) blogging for money ideals. I equate them to students striving to be exam malpractice geniuses when they should instead strive to be academic gurus. The most ridiculous of such act I find to be the pro-SEO removal of date stamps; that goes against the chronology essence of diary keeping/blogging.

5) Be Objective
Closely related to Wikipedia’s neutral point of view stance, objectivity and fairness are some of my credos when writing. And when I make reference to the works of others I try as much as possible to pay them their props.

6) The State of Mind is Liberal
Like the American declaration of Independence I believe in the ideal that all are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of their own source of happiness. When I write holding on to my point of view I try to do so with utmost respect for others and their right to hold on to theirs. If I must change their mindset I try to be civil about it and make sure the argument is keep healthy and intelligent.

7) Stick to the Roots
Never changing I’m 117% Nigerian, African Roots and all. And so my writings are centred towards the defence of the Igbo, Nigerian and African course.

8] Art is Life
Like the creators of The Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles cartoon showed by their naming convention (Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo, Donatello) I love the arts! As such I’ve made it a habit right from the inception of my blog to at least always include a picture in each of my blog posts.

9) Choice of “Language”
Like Jay Leno, David Letterman and Conan O’Brien I believe a sense of humour is the best medicine and try as much as possible to reflect that in my writing. Also like rappers and the poetic license I generously allow myself to let one rip foul-language wise once in a while. Yes, soul deep it’s part of my expression.

10) Married to my Hobbies
Finally like my blog’s tag line shows I’m married to my “hobbies”. So do essentially expect a healthy dose of football (soccer), Music (Hip hop) and geek (nerd) like references when you read me.

This post is a follow up to “Songs about Jane’s love for social engineering”.

So I was browsing the world wide web yesterday, a little bit of this a little bit of that as I always do when I discovered that two of my friends had had the “This is not my question” option removed from their Yahoo password helper feature while mine was still in place (Note though that both friends took action on their security questions after reading my last post).

My inner boys were subsequently not happy. Luckily though I discovered this link http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/acct/info/sqachange.html but ended up contacting Yahoo via this: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/edit/account_verification/acct-104.html . A little over 24 hours later Yahoo responded and I must say I’m now somewhat satisfied. The text in bold below did it for me.

On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 7:58 AM, Yahoo! Asia [asia -account-security@cc.yahoo-inc.com] wrote:
Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Asia.

We understand that you have updated your Security Questions and Answers
but you are still able to access your old Security Question.

This feature is in placed to allow a compromised account owner to regain
access to their account. The option to use your old Security Question
will only be available for a limited period of time.

We understand this can be a security risk for the account owner as well.
In order to prevent a potential hacker from accessing this option, you
will also need to change your zip code. We recommend you update the zip
code to something you will remember but is hard for someone else to
guess.

For additional information on ways to protect your information online,
please visit the Yahoo! Security Center at:

http://security.yahoo.com

Please let us know if this does not resolve your issue, or if we can be
of any further assistance.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Asia.

Regards,
Sally
Yahoo! Asia Customer Care

Original Message Follows:
————————-

1. What is your name and Yahoo! ID?
————————————
Name:

Yahoo! ID: trae****

2. What is your Account Information?
————————————–

Do you have access to the Alternate Email Address?: This box was
checked.

3. Your Security Question & Answer?
—————————————-

4. Which version of Yahoo! do you use?
—————————————
Location: Other – Not Listed

5. What are you writing about?
——————————-
Subject: Sign in & Registration – Other not listed

6. Enter additional information here:
————————————–
please my friends xxx@yahoo.com and xxxx@yahoo.com were able
to get rid of their “This is not my question” option in this
link (https://edit.yahoo.com/forgot). please i want to get rid of mine
too to prevent unauthorized access to anyone that might have the answers
to my old questions which were quite easy to guess. i would really
appreciate a response. thanks.

7. What is the email address where we can contact you?
——————————————————-

But funny enough the zip code (or post code) thing did surprise me, as for my own Yahoo account it’s not a requirement for password recovery/reset.

As an explanation for those who might be puzzled the zip code advice was given because the one I use is Nigerian while my content setting on Yahoo is Asia. I affecting it so because apparently a preferred content setting set to Yahoo Asia is the only way to get POP/IMAP access for free Yahoo Mail accounts. It’s only with POP/IMAP that I can manage my Yahoo emails inside of Gmail or manage with email clients like Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird. Gmail by the way offers all these and lots more FOR FREE!

Songs about Jane, rants about love and marriage. Sort of a time induced sequel to my “Let’s talk about girls, kids and favourite teams” post of May 2006. Social engineering, a recent love interest of mine after pondering the recent Amos Adamu and the slightly older Sarah Palin email hack. So here goes

8] So I’m at the stage of life where my mates are starting to tie the knots one by one or bullshit aside working seriously towards that. And in a couple of cases where both parties work in the same office a party has resigned for the other in order not to fall foul of HR laws. Worse still that party remained jobless after the ceremonies with the income of the union now tied to one source. My opinion: big mistake. Could be really pretty risky especially as in many regards money is the fuel which sustains love. This is backed by test number 12 from “Love, Sex, and Lasting Relationships” by Chip Ingram (adapted from “marriage for moderns” by Henry Bowman”. Available for download here).

A couple that is genuinely in love and not infatuated do not feel an almost irresistible drive towards haste. Infatuated couples tend to feel an urge towards getting married. Postponement is intolerable to them and they interpret it as deprivation rather than preparation.

When it comes to marriage I’m pro long courtship. I believe it should be about genuinely time tested and trusted best friends wanting to commit together. All other reasons for commitment are not really healthy. Especially in a society like Nigeria where government social support is nonexistent and insurance is bullocks, it’s best to play into the hand of someone that’ll stand by you if shit should ever hit the fan. Stall the wedding date till the other party can fix up another source of income; what will be will be.

9] After reading an article online about a wedding called off due to astronomical student debts owed by the bride, I’ve come to ever more realize that marriage in reality is like a business deal which makes the best sense if it’s mutual benefiting. No one goes into business with the aim of making looses. Everyone wants to enhance his or her portfolio, which in many regards is expressed in monetary terms. One party coming through packing debts or obligations which become overbearing with time should be a big no no. Both parties should endeavour to review their financial positions and possible outlook before doing the do.

10] Coming down home we as Nigerians would be better off if we learnt to treat marriage like we treat our homes; the Inside clean and the outside dirty is the best balance. Nigerians are selfish like that, we go to great deals to pimp up our homes but don’t care much about our collective surroundings. Likewise if we (hint…ladies) cared more about keeping our relationships alive and less about showing off with big weddings and bragging about our marital status we could actually be better off.

11] As above in tune with keeping your marriage as comfortable as possible keep the conceptions down, in line with your income to maintain an above average standard of living. A family holiday every year should not be a pipe dream or something you just watch in movies. The creator put man on earth to conquer and explore not to spend a life time living from hand to mouth.

12] Finally on a parting note I think I’m now seriously pro natural hair and would go to any lengths to support and convince my girl (girl in this case means one of my own race) to carry such. Nappy headz rule!

Social engineering is when an attacker/hacker uses human interaction (manipulation via social skills) to obtain or compromise information about a person, an organization or its computer systems. As earlier mentioned I got researching on this after actively pondering the Amos Adamu and Sarah Palin incidents. In the end I was able to successfully hack two email addresses and got pass the first question of many a friend’s Yahoo! Mail Forgot Password feature. This article will bring you up to speed on the technique I used to take advantage of Yahoo’s decision to cut customer service costs associated with attending to password recovery queries. Yes people yet another reason to choose Gmail over Yahoo.

Update!: Please see this post for a follow up on the Yahoo password recovery process as regards to social engineering.

Written for the new gig…

Can you relate with this?

“The tellers and customer service ladies of Bank EW are just plain rude; imagine going to withdraw your own money and being told to wait for hours or to come back tomorrow because the servers are down; I don’t remember them telling me that when I came to open the account!”

“My sister I cried to my creator from the bottom of my heart today. I was made to feel subhuman just because I went to one office to submit my CV”.

“I can only blame myself for taking my own two feet into that place. The reply I got was so cold and unhelpful just for the simplest of enquiries. It was a total waste of time and energy.”

“Why do these ISPs keep employing clueless and dumb people? Can you imagine the guy at the help desk telling me “I was not trained to activate this plan on a phone. I can only activate on PC. Please go and bring your laptop”. Source.

“My people I don’t even know why we waste our time on this the Police is your friend mantra in Nigeria. Do you know that I always have to make sure the money in my pocket is enough before going to the Police station to report a genuine issue? It’s like those guys work on a pay as you go basis.”

If you can relate with all these read on, if not please quit reading.

Colleagues we’re in that shoe now with our present job, we can either prevent people from further experiencing and saying the same or we can tow the status quo. Let’s do away with the “everyone wants to fix humanity; no one wants to fix themselves syndrome. It begins with you, change begins with us.

Just like relationships crumble if one party doesn’t offer to say I’m sorry, or a traffic jam gridlock persist if one driver doesn’t say “I’ll be patient, you may go first”. Things can only be better off if we decide and start to make an effort.

Like the hotel bell boy let’s learn to work like our only form of remuneration was based on tips arising from the level of satisfaction our customers get from our service. Let’s learn to treat our customers like we would treat our mothers

Let the below thoughts and often made statements be things of the past

a) Nkemakonam Ezidinma Ifejika opined on Facebook that for Nigerians anywhere in the world, customer service is a gene extracted at birth. That is to say Nigerians are incapable of being consistently polite and helpful. They are the kings and queens of mood swings.

b) In Nigeria there’s no place for merit. We can’t queue or be patient. Everyone wants to cut corners and get served before others. It’s like a “my family comes first” credo. And that’s why poverty persists because those in top positions don’t allow for the wealth to flow down to the bottom, hence everyone wants to be at the top and so corruption is birthed. We were brought up this way and so bring up our kids in like fashion too. A vicious cycle.

c) There’s a deep rooted rat race or jungle mentality in Nigeria that impedes development and breeds nepotism and tribalism. Like Mark Shuttleworth said: “Tribalism is when one group of people start to think people from another group are “wrong by default”. It’s the great-granddaddy of racism and sexism.

d) Nigerians are only bothered about the self, there’s no sense of concern for maintenance of public/company property. That’s why the civil service is in shambles. That’s also why the white man is brought in to instil discipline; we then fight to go abroad to enjoy the perks of a disciplined society we have denied ourselves.

In line with the above and bringing the matter back home mycustomer advocates the following

1) And end to the “applications are not working please call back” sing along. Especially when we don’t even bother to get them working in the first place, have no idea of their workarounds or can’t even be bothered to remember our passwords. Food for thought: Do you know that telling a customer that the applications are not working please call back is akin to telling a pensioner who invested a lot of energy and money to go back home and come tomorrow because the bank for some flimsy reason or another cannot pay today.

2) It’s good to pick 200 calls a day but it’s even better to pick 150 and deal with them decisively. We’re lucky to have a strong brand and a consequent low elasticity of demand but we should bear in mind that ultimately customer service goes a long way in determining customer retention and business profitability.

3) Stop leaving your mails unread. You stand to keep yourself ignorant (no product knowledge) when you do so consequently manifesting in frequently putting your customers on hold and running around the call center asking questions. You also leave the knowledgeable customer shaking his head on the opposite side lamenting your cluelessness.

4) An end to the “I’ll end call on you”, “I’ll block your line” incidents. Let’s learn to manage our irritations and show compassion to the slow to comprehend and confused. You become a better person, the bigger man when you learn to tolerate customers venting their anger on you yet reply politely to empathise and educate. It shows there’s substance in your character; consequently you’ll see that people will want to look you up for a repeat dealing.

I now hope that upon everyone reading this, this other incidence that some of us regularly experience will decrease: “customers asking for a way to get back to us directly as they are afraid of speaking to others because they have no confidence their queries will be resolved on a random call back.

“Like the hotel bell boy let’s learn to work like our only form of remuneration was based on tips arising from the level of satisfaction our customers get from our service. Let’s learn to treat our customers like we would treat our mothers”

My email life as it now is; multitasking from a single point. Cool!

Right now I’m grinning from ear to ear, feeling like a girl with small bust who just came out of augmentation surgery . My life’s much more organized now, specifically email wise. As a follow up to my previous post I just upgraded, got with the IMAP movement, figured out Thunderbird and migrated fully from Yahoo Mail to Gmail.

Prior to this and after my previous post the situation I found myself in was similar to this:

How can I import old emails into Thunderbird? I am trying to import emails from ALL of my folders and subfolders into Thunderbird, however, it’s not working at all. The only mail that is imported is from my “Inbox” all other mail is stuck on my old e-mail service. It is just one e-mail account. There is the main folder, which is the INBOX where all incoming e-mail goes. Then there are a series of sub-folders. For instance, anytime I send an e-mail a copy of it is in my “Sent” folder. Also, if I get e-mails that are specifically work related or school related sometimes I send them to sub folders that I created (i.e., “School”, etc) So these folders encompass everything from the default folders of “Sent” “Draft” “Outbox” etc. and ones that I’ve created which are like “saved” and “school”. When I set up Thunderbird it only imported mail from the “Inbox” not any of the other folders. This is a school email address (that is, .edu). When it expires I don’t want to lose all of my email memories. You know, it’s kind of important.

Worried was I and so I reached out to more knowledgeable people. Oluniyi David Ajao responded with this advice:

Try using IMAP as your “server type” instead of POP. IMAP should download all your folders exactly as they appear on your webmail. Best wishes.

Yes, just like Yahoo Mail can be tweaked to work with POP it can also be tweaked to work with IMAP. Gmail explains the difference between IMAP and POP thus:

Unlike POP, IMAP offers two-way communication between your web Gmail and your email client(s). This means when you log in to Gmail using a web browser, actions you perform on email clients and mobile devices (ex: putting mail in a ‘work’ folder) will instantly and automatically appear in Gmail (ex: it will already have a ‘work’ label on that email the next time you sign in).

And so I got working. I met with success, setbacks and ultimately perfection. It took a tip from the master Bijan Soleymani himself to set me straight and towards the finishing line though.

Here’s how I did it. I first of all installed his modified Thunderbird 3 for Windows XP, found here.

Then I used this to set up:

Incoming server: imap.mail.yahoo.com (IMAP port 143)
Outgoing server: smtp.mail.yahoo.com (SMTP SSL port 465)
Username: Yahoo username@yahoo.com
Password: same as yahoo webmail

Of course remembering to select IMAP when setting up the account (add mail account).

I then set about making the Yahoo Mail to Gmail switch. This article should guide you. It did for me though copying stopped working after a while. What I did was to break every thing down into small pieces and copy batch by batch via creating new folders and then consolidating them all into one once they were into Gmail.

Voila I’m good! I now have all my Yahoo Mails (6 years thick) into Gmail, and with Gmail’s Mail Fetcher I can operate my Yahoo account plus my other two email accounts all from my single Gmail account! Gmail is brilliantly yakpayaski!

Update: After reading this and before implementing anything it’s highly recommended that you also read: IMAP, Thunderbird, Yahoo Mail and Gmail

If this post sounds like gibberish to you don’t be alarm, people have different interest and we’re probably not operating on the same frequency. Some others though could read this and be like “kini big deal?” But anyway considering the problems the issues I’m about to discuss posed for me and factoring in the time spent researching and looking for a solution I think it’s wise I put this down to help all those going forward that might be saddled with this same issue.

Props here will be going to Gmail, Mozilla Thunderbird, Google Search and the host of geeks, nerds, software developers, bloggers and helpful people online who bless the internet with useful tips here and there on ICT focused websites. While proper disrespect will accordingly be going to Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo! Mail for their shortcomings. Ok let’s go there…

It so happened recently that in one of my usual day to day sniffings around the World Wide Web I decided to finally try Gmail in-depth and as faith would have it I saw the light this time around. It was fun discovering all the cool things Gmail could do which Yahoo! Mail couldn’t. Of particular interest to me was Gmail’s Mail Fetcher feature and in exploring it is when I got reintroduced to the world of Post Office Protocol (POP). I was smitten so much by Gmail and this particular feature that I decided to consolidate all my emails into one account, the biggest task of which would be integrating my over six year old Yahoo account. Google Search always being my friend unlike the Nigerian Police and there always being so much information online from geeks and nerds alike I discovered that there was actually a way to get POP access for free Yahoo Mail accounts. And that is simply by changing your preferred content setting to Yahoo! Asia (Note: this might not work for some newly created accounts).

In the end after several tweakings and trials I decided against accessing my Yahoo Mail via Gmail and instead turned my focus to re-establishing my use of email clients which I last utilized at my former job. Microsoft Outlook being what I was used to I decided to set it up on my system. Set up was easy and automated (here’s the manual setup instructions) but little did I know that one of its default setting was that it does not leave a copy of messages on the server! Man I was screwed! On seeing my inbox depleted I felt empty as if a major part of me had been ripped out. Luckily though it had only downloaded 72 messages from my inbox before I discovered and rectified. But still the big issue now was getting those mails back to my inbox. All hope seemed lost as via research it appeared the only hope was manually resending the affected mails to myself vis-à-vis the labourious and risky option of resetting my system date and time while doing so (to get them back in their proper positions). And so I embraced Google Search some more and when it seemed like all hope was lost I finally found meaning in the phrase “Mozilla Thunderbird”.

Open source and Mozilla, the Firefox people rock! The solution was to be found on Mozilla Thunderbird (an alternative email client) via its “Mail Redirect” Add-on. I simply followed this tutorial but with the additional tweak of doing so with the current versions of Mozilla Thunderbird and its “Mail Redirect” Add-on. (After installation I first of all synced it with the downloaded messages on Microsoft Outlook, then I set up/added my mail account followed by the actual redirecting). And everything was back to normal! The only difference spotted being the Return-Path and Resent-From values in the full email header. This though is largely insignificant. And consequently I lived happily ever after.

the summary

Effective information management is a bit like multi tasking and getting it right

Anyone that really knows me in person should be aware that I like to be on top of things information wise. Like the seeker I take great pride in getting relevant info and go to great lengths to organize that info for effective use (I think I got this quality from my dad). And feeling particularly generous or scholarly today I want to bless you with my “Seven habits of highly effective information managers”; hereby referred to as HEIMs. On a Zain level I’m in a frenzy like one of my previous bank big boss, who was twice flown in from Lagos to lecture us in training school, and on both occasions ended up basing his talk (both talks independent of the other) on Stephen R Covey’s “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”. So let’s get started on capacity building information management wise.

1) HEIMs abhor illiteracy in all its forms because to really appreciate the importance of information management one has to be technologically aware, pragmatic and open minded. HEIMs would probably work in intelligence if they were in the army. For the young ones in secondary school my advice would be not to limit oneself to only reading the Bible, religious books and self help books but to explore the world of contemporary Nigerian fiction. Personally my favourite reads are informative/write ups/novels which come with a heavy dose of humour.

2) We would all the more be HEIMs in Nigeria if we probably had a good database management system in place. All my analysis leads me to the conclusion that if we fixed that we would be on the road to resolving a lot of our national problems. From census and population planning, to voter registration, to crime detection/prevention, to fiscal control and bank loan supervision, to academic records availability and so on and so forth. That’s why it behooves on us to take the issue of record keeping and maintenance seriously in our daily dealings. There are little things in life as sweet as being updated about the past in a jiffy and thus being privileged to make inform choices in the present that will affect your future positively.

3) HEIMs excel in phone bookkeeping and are forever grateful for the miracle that is telecommunication. They understand the beauty of talking the talk and getting thoughts across at the touch of a button. So characteristically they are always reachable by phone, text and call generously as the need arises, excel at colleting contacts of useful people and those they just must deal with on the daily, have a good contact backup culture, have more than one line considering the peculiar unstableness of our telecoms networks, and understanding the importance of networking strive for phone number retention. Some extra tips: for ease of backups you might want to jot down your numbers daily as you collect them and exploit the PC suite and sync function of your phone. Also aim for hand sets with unlimited contact storage. To get ahead 200 SIM memory plus 200 phone memory handsets are not the way to go. Additionally learn to save names in full or with descriptive suffixes for ease of recall.

4) HEIMs understanding the reality that is information overload, trash programming and junk content are constantly trying to stay geeky/nerdy yet work and leisure balanced. By analyzing and sieving what is available before brain consumption they stay on the natural high. Personally I try not to over indulge myself and stay away from things that don’t add anything substantive to my IQ. This means I’m constantly battling procrastination in favour of studying and computer programming. And when it comes to news feed, favouring blogs with original content as against gossip blogs and news recyclers.

5) HEIMs being aware of the power of the world wide web/computers practice the complete use of it as a means to an end. Here’s what you’ll find them doing. They streamline their email addresses as much as possible and harness the powers of Gmail and email clients. You’d be hard press to find them on the loosing end of domain drops because of unread/unreceived renewal reminders. They are on top of password management (at my former job FinnOne, a banking suite software failed partly because of the issue of password forgetfulness). And they embrace the idea of website and company portals as information nests. A case in point: it’s dumb…almost criminal for INEC not to publish the list of qualified candidates/test invitees on its website during it recent recruitment exercise. Also as seen in many companies the issue of sending out important memos/policy updates only via email without repository on the company’s portal for easy long term reference is akin to dishing out instructions and the receivers inundating it from one ear and letting it slip out through the other.

6) HEIMs are by nature effective. In line with this they wholly embrace the use of a diary in their day to day planning. Not being cyborgs people grapple with the issue of forgetfulness but HEIMs keep on top of their schedule and plan accordingly with diary entries and reminders. Be them electronically on phone/computers or in hand in books. A follow up trait of effectiveness is getting things done without having to be prodded and doing so as if the direct gain was for oneself. In other words HEIMs treat with dispatch issues which require their attention. And in doing so they keep it scientific, scientific in the sense that their workings are carried out in a way that on analysis a third party can easily understand what has transpired thus and take relevant follow up action.

7) Lastly but also very importantly HEIMs don’t have an attitude problem. With globalization should come the common sense that nobody’s indispensable and that we all need each other sooner or later and as such we should treat each other with courtesy and respect. On a Majek Fashek-2face Idibia tip, little little patience and cordialness in our conduct now can have big positive implications later. Tolerance, politeness, a thank you here, excuse me or sorry there can in some way get you that information when the need arises that’ll help you break fronts.

The world Cup South Africa 2010 being now 40 days away, the true Super Eagles fan should have these three World cup songs on his/her playlist:

1) Power of Naija. Guinness commissioned World Cup song performed by Omawumi, 2face Idibia and Cobhams
2) Waving flag (Nigerian Version). Coca-Cola commissioned K’naan’s World Cup song performed by Banky W & M.I.
3) Goalaaaso (Inside The Net). Paj featuring Tolumide. From Paj of “Ghana go hear wien (2006)” and “skatta dem (Ghana go hear wien part II 2008)” fame.

What is peace of mind? Peace of mind is what you experience within in a system where there’s accountability. It’s a situation where the supplier strives to satisfy and the customer gets to clear his/her head of all worries in association with the particular service provider. It’s excellent customer service and to ensure it great quick feed back is key.

At my former job we once had a customer walk into the bank and try to create a scene in the banking hall. The issue: he was a debit card holder from another bank and while attempting to withdraw money on our branch’s ATM he was debited but cash was not dispensed. The Issue happened over a month ago and after repeated complaints at his bank in frustration he decided to come over here to see how he could get his money back. Ideally such issues are resolved thus:

-Customer complains at his bank giving ATM officer there all necessary details of the incident
-ATM officer of his bank logs complaint into Interswitch website.
-Interswitch forwards complaint to “erring bank”
-Head Office of other bank liaises with branch (branch ATM officer) responsible for particular ATM
-issue is investigated and if other bank’s claim legitimate entries are reversed and feedback given to Interswitch
-Interswitch in association with customer’s bank makes sure customer is credited (pay back) accordingly

After some questioning it appeared ATM officer of customer’s bank had yet to log in complaint or did so erroneously as though our ATM officer observed the error he hadn’t prior being petitioned about it. Customer in lamenting the situation brought the “do you know who I am” angle, and in response a good number of my colleagues went cold towards him and thought the man was making a mountain out of a mole house (paltry 15 thousand Naira), especially for someone of his calibre. This is where the peace of mind angle comes into play. My money is my money, be it six hundred naira or sixty thousand Naira and I have every right to be extremely cross by its perceived theft. The right way to handle the situation was to empathise with customer (no matter the extent of your own perceived personal problems), explain to him the process flow for resolution and to truly show you understood his plight and to prevent him from continually running from post to post offer to speak on phone to ATM officer of his bank explaining to him your findings.

More often than not we’ve complained about treatment meted out to us by perceived aloof bodies, but on occasions when the tables were flipped we did the same to others. The inspiration to write this arose out of the recent experiences I had with my website in regards to its Registrar and its hosting.

I’ll be forever grateful to Chippla Vandu for taking care of my site’s registrar bills for the first 5 years and Kayode Muyibi for doing same hosting wise. The favour was truly invaluable. But alas we at times sadly fumble in an otherwise smooth long run. To use some economics jargons (hopefully correctly) Kayode went beyond his elasticity and the economics of scale proved counter productive. This is where Nigerian entrepreneurs (a good number of Nigerian web businesses are solely run, or handled by 2-5 hands) must beware, try and expand within your capacity so that you don’t get overwhelmed in providing support to your clients. Else it would be a case of abandoning your solid bowl in place of a porously leaking bucket in your attempt to fill your water drum stationed in your kitchen. The issue of Oluniyi David Ajao (owner of web4africa.net) versus Naira.Kbps (first register of nairabytes.com) is another sore case. It’s truly shameful the way the issue deteriorated. Even if it was against Web4Africa’s policy to refund hosting payment the moral thing to do was to push the domain name ownership to Naira.Kbps, as against the case now where the site’s registration having expired has been acquired by a domain parking shark.

So in conclusion for your peace of mind I strongly recommend Netfirms and Hostgator to Nigerians resident at home when it comes to the business of Domain name registration and hosting respectively. Slightly expensive they might be for some people; the truly informed and knowledgeable know that no price is too expensive to pay for peace of mind. And that it’s better to be a king in the jungle (run your own shit, have full ownership/control) then to be a dog in the city. Props to Sound Sultan.

Domain name registration on Netfirms is presently one of the cheapest on ground. You can easily pay with your Nigerian bank issued VisaCard or MasterCard. But be sure to have a scanned copy of your ID and your card available for confirmation purposes. And you can easily search online for coupons to reduce you bills. Props to Sawyerr Ken for the plenty tips.

Hostgator is undoubtedly one of the most reliably Domain host in existence. Their customer service is second to none. Tickets are replied typically in less than an hour and you can even chat live with a support staff 24-7! Site content transfers can also be done free of charge for new customers, who also get the advantage of price coupon discounts on their first signup. Like on Netfirms payments can easily be made with your Nigerian bank issued VisaCard or MasterCard (this time preferable issued in your own name). And be also sure to have a scanned copy of your ID and your card available for confirmation purposes. In extreme cases and sadly due to the wide spread fame of our 19 boys Nigerian customers have been known to be asked to send in pictures of them holding their ID cards. Cost might be pricey but peace of mind is guaranteed! In this case props to Udegbunam Chukwudi Emmanuel for the plenty tips.

True peace of mind is people helping people

I joined Facebook some two weeks back because of all the hype about it and I didn’t want to appear odd; but now I can truthfully say with all due respect to the site’s founders, staff and members that I don’t find Facebook useful anymore.

I’ve realized that I spend a lot of time on Facebook getting nothing constructive done, in other words I accomplish nothing by being on Facebook save for feeding my hunger for junk info. That is browsing profiles, finding out who knows who, reading people’s lifestyle updates, trying out applications and observing people try to outdo each other with pictures in a bid to look cool or hot. I’ve now come around to my senses to realize that all these are things I can really live without knowing/doing.

Another reason why I don’t find Facebook useful is their collection of too much data than is necessary; scaring the pants out of those who want to be incognito online. Their real name policy for account holders is the starting point of many people’s privacy concerns.

Yet another reason: I had sworn off social networking sites after Blackplanet.com. During my late teens in 2002 Blackplanet was where I cut my teeth as an internet citizen and got to know how the system works before aggressively familiarizing myself with other corners of the internet (wasting a lot of time and money in the process). That is to say I’ve been there and done that and so I can’t afford to go backward by getting addicted to another Social Networking Site with all its vices when ideally I should be progressing.

One more reason: I’m now of the conviction that if one wants to be cool (that’s a large part of what Facebook is about) it’s better done in more profound means by putting more effort into writing in one’s blog, selling products and brand advertising on one’s website, hosting one’s recordings on one’s music site etc (whatever catches your fancy) than by uploading pictures and making ego statements on Facebook.

To round things up I’ve now resolved to stay clear of Facebook. Instant Messaging (Yahoo Messenger), blogs, forums and email are better alternatives to me for social networking. I’d now rather sleep, read, study, listen to music or watch a film than do anything Facebook related. Don’t get me wrong though Facebook will no doubt still make a lot of people’s day but for me I’ve outgrown it. I don’t find Facebook useful so I’ve deactivated my account. I’m looking forward to completely deleting it soon. Cheers.