Revisited: Is this a CFMAIL bug?

Now am back this morning. Even though I could not breathe freely, I was still curious to know what could have gone wrong. Who am I to say a solid program like CF7 has a bug (a roach or something more creepy)?To know if CF was actually generating those emails, I changed the SMTP server IP address to something wrong so that I could catch the mails in the underlivered mail folder (<cfroot>/MailUndelivr/) and ran the code again. Also did a dump of the email addresses the email should go to.

What I saw made me stop. CFMAIL generated email only for the first record in the dumped query. Because that was the only mail I saw in the undelivered folder.

I googled my problem to discover that other guys out there are having the same problem. For now, I will stick to CFLOOP/CFMAIL combination while MM sort things out.

Is this a CFMAIL bug?

I just finished deploying a newsletter software showcasing some fancy CFFORM do da functions to the Library department. However, along the line, someone (up there) felt the user profile of the of the sender ID for the newsletter should be changed. We did the change on AD and since then, the mails have stopped coming in. Funnily, mails destined for subscribers outside my organization went fine, and if an internal email got copied, it got there. The mail only zaps into thin space when the TO address in internal. I troubleshot the servers, the firewalls, even messed the chat server up along the line (wanted people to share my grief, duh!).

I got fed up and left the stuff for a while (since Monday, I have been having nightmares of the honchos coming for my head). The CFMAIL is fed by a query to generate the content and the email addresses. Sometimes this evening, I removed the query and wrapped the CFMAIL within a CFLOOP (it does the same thing, just that CFMAIL with query directly is sexier) and it worked well…

I still don’t know if this is a known quirk or I’m getting something wrong.

Not the best time to take a jump

Dear Husband:

I’m writing you this letter to tell you that I’m leaving you for good. I’ve been a good woman to you for seven years and I have nothing to show for it. These last two weeks have been hell. Your boss called to tell me that you had quit your job today and that was the last straw.

Last week, you came home and didn’t notice that I had gotten my hair and nails done, cooked your favorite meal and even wore a brand new negligee. You came home and ate in two minutes, and went straight to sleep after watching the game. You don’t tell me you love me anymore, you don’t touch me or anything. Either you’re cheating or you don’t love me anymore. Whatever the case is, I’m gone.

P.S. If you’re trying to find me, don’t. Your BROTHER and I are moving away to West Virginia together! Have a great life!

Your EX-Wife


Dear Ex-Wife

Nothing has made my day more than receiving your letter. It’s true that you and I have been married for seven years, although a good woman is a far cry from what you’ve been. I watch sports so much to try to drown out your constant nagging. Too bad that doesn’t work.

I did notice when you cut off all of your hair last week, the first thing that came to mind was “You look just like a man!” My mother raised me not to say anything if you can’t say anything nice. When you cooked my favorite meal, you must have gotten me confused with MY BROTHER, because I stopped eating pork seven years ago.

I went to sleep on you when you had on that new negligee because the price tag was still on it. I prayed that it was a coincidence that my brother had just borrowed fifty dollars from me that morning and your negligee was $49.99. After all of this, I still loved you and felt that we could work it out. So, when I discovered that I had hit the lotto for ten million dollars, I quit my job and bought us two tickets to Jamaica. But when I got home you were gone. Everything happens for a reason I guess. I hope you have the fulfilling life you always wanted. My lawyer said with your letter that you wrote, you won’t get a dime from me.

So, take care.

P.S. I don’t know if I ever told you this but Carl, my brother was born Carla. I hope that’s not a problem.

Signed Rich As H*ll and Free!

Should non-dev organizations develop applications?

For those of us who work in the IT department of organizations, and who have some programming skills, we face a recurrent issue of build versus buy.

Sometimes, a dude in finance wants some fancy Excel macro, for a report NOW! Where I work, everything is needed NOW or worse still, yesterday. (Back to the Fancy dude/Excel macro) Should I search MS marketplace and buy a suitable macro or bump my head on macro writing to develop something for the annoying gnat. The above scenario is simple enough.

Sometimes, we are faced with under-performing legacy application. Legacy because that is what annoying program that is expensive to replace are called. Should we write helper application, modules, etc.? Is it right, em, to rewrite some part of the code to optimize it if the original vendors are too rich and complacent to do it?

From experience, I, with my colleagues, developed an application to do some function of the legacy app running our organization. Now, this app of ours is so large with a billion and ten modules performing all manners of functions: from generating statements to serving coffee with croissant. As you can expect from such attempts, the idea is good, but the app is far from perfect albeit better uptime and performance than our legacy app.

So every day, we get a zillion requests to develop this and that. When we send reminders that we ain’t programmers or developers, the honchos bark at us. But man, when we ask to go for trainings, developer conferences and buy books and materials, all of a sudden, the organization ceases to develop applications. What a life!

For me, I think organizations can develop little widgets here and there but should not dabble into app development unless it is ready to commit resources to it. Workers turned emergency developers usually write horrible codes with documentation and continuity equal to zero. The security implications of organization that rely on such home brewed apps is not too hard to imagine.

Guns ét al

An old Italian Mafia Don is dying, and he called his grandson to his bed.

“Grandson, I wan you to lissin to me. I wan you to take my chrome plated 38 revolver so you will always remember me.”

“But grandpa, I really don’t like guns, … how about leaving me your Rolex watch instead.”

“You lissin to me. Some day you gonna be runnin da bussiness, you gonna have a beautiful wife, lotta money, lotta lolitas,a big home and maybe a coupla of bambinis. Someday you gonna come home and maybe find ya wife in bed with another man. Whadda ya gonna do then? Pointa da watch and say, … TIME UP?”

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At a Christmas party in Melbourne last year the staff decided to pull a joke on their boss who had a habit of playing serious practical jokes on everyone else.

When he went to the toilet, they went through his wallet and found his Lotto ticket. Then, they wrote down his numbers and called over the waitress to set up a little prank. She came back half an hour later and asked if anyone wanted to know the night’s Lotto numbers, and then proceeded to read them out loud before setting the numbers on the  table.

The boss looked at the numbers, then casually pulled out his wallet and compared them. He became really silent, put his wallet back in his jacket and sat down again breathing really rapidly, and looking totally blown away. After a couple of minutes he pulled out his wallet and Lotto ticket again,and checked the numbers, very very carefully.

Then, he sculled his drink, stood up on his chair and shouted out to the whole room: “I just want to let you all know something. I’ve been having an affair with my secretary for months. I don’t like any of you, and I have hated  working for this company. You can all go to Hell, ‘cos I’ve just won a shit-load of money, and I’m leaving!”

End of job.

End of marriage.

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One  mallam bought eggs, on reaching the house he broke one  and found there was no yolk no ditto subsequent ones. He then shouted “kai dis chickens don dey use condom!”.

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NATIONAL EXPORT

In line with the Federal Government’s renewed drive to encourage exports, a group of experts have come up with suggestions on how to improve the image of our local products by making their names attractive and in line with International Standards on exports. Feel free to offer suggestions.

  • Kuli kuli – Peanut bars
  • Donkuwa/Robo Alata – Hot Charcolit nuts
  • Kilichi – Beef Crackers
  • Dundun – Yamarita
  • Fried Potato – Potarita
  • Pako/Atu (Chewing stick) – Dental Stickos
  • Boli – Barbecue Plantain
  • Roasted corn – Corn Aflame
  • Eko/Agidi – Corn Jellos
  • Abacha – Cass Flakes
  • Moin moin – Bean pie
  • Isi ewu – Goat-hedo lickins’ (remember ur fingers)
  • Garri – Grain o’ fibres
  • Bokoto/ Nkwobi – Hoof salad
  • Ogi/Akamu – Corn Caramel
  • Kpof kpof – Energy Buns
  • Chin chin – Dough Rocks
  • Zobo – Juice Rosa Afrik
  • Kunnu – Grain Alive
  • Burundi – Cocno Jaw-Breakers
  • Bread and Akara – Bean cake Burger
  • Ofada rice – Unpolished Rice for Vegetarian
  • Adalu – Lentils & Grain Salad