Category: General

Read about Adedeji’s take on technology, payments, financial inclusion, career, and credit.

Old geeks die hard

So here I’m, sitting and swearing at my desk trying to solve a server side graphing problem. How did I end up here?

You see, I should have transitioned from geek to management but the devil inside some computer just wouldn’t leave my tail alone. I have got that long thing trapped in a server door. Lord have mercy.

Anyway, what’s make some hair gray is that Adobe, in its tiny non-existent wisdom, made a mess of charting in CF11. I bet I’m the last person (OK, including some random dude in my office) left on earth who still do sh*t in Coldfusion. So I spent the whole day trolling the web like a serial killer, looking for some random piece of whatever to solve this problem.

Meanwhile I already preached the parable of the bulldog to my unfortunate colleagues yesterday. A bulldog, as long as it isn’t in Calabar, never gives up. So how dare I give up on this today? Truth is, I think I made up that parable. I can’t even remember if a bulldog doesn’t run away at the slightest sound of trouble.

Which bull dog wants a stone on the head?

I need a hefty lunch.

Hacking your way into the company of gods

Lucy was a thoroughly shitty movie. It was so bad I was physically restrained at the cinemas from crawling into the screen and giving everyone an uppercut; not even Scarlett Johansson could distract me.

Ok, that wasn’t possible but my-my, I wish I could.

The deeper narrative wasn’t lost on me, though – humanity has forever daydreamed about making itself better, go above the laws of physics, and just become a nuisance to the neighbors. Maybe that’s why we invented religion. That’s another story entirely.

Let’s be frank; we have tried – we have flown five times faster than the speed of a crying baby’s wail, gone to the moon and back, we have smartphones, and oh, Nigeria even dealt with Ebola! But we are still unsatisfied. We want to be gods!

Meanwhile, I sat here at my desk wondering how my dull day would end and then bumped into an interesting article at The Verge. Not the usual place the normal guys crawl, but that’s my joint.

It’s estimated that about 100,000 unlucky souls today are plumbed with electrical impulses to fight pain and depression (you could have Bovi come around to make you forget your sorry life for half the price of the surgery). However, what if we go beyond making a sad man laugh and decide to augment our mental abilities? What if a consistent set of interfaces and protocols come into play that would allow us to tweak memory, maturity, reactions, or maybe someone would be able to reverse intelligence and give some of the dull people I know a bit of smart for a try?

It is scary to think about the significance of this. At first, I was an advocate of enhancing our body with bionic parts – smart eyes that can read the news and all that sh*t and ears that could discern gist from a mile off. This is bigger; this is godliness at the photonic level!

By the way, woe betides you if your brain crashes, freezes of gets Dosed by Chinese hackers.

There is a time when I wanted tech advancement just for the sake of it, but for the first time, I’m scared out of my pink boxers and afraid of what humans could do to humanity. Let me be out of here before Putin gets this done.

Time for the long drive home; where are my car keys? Damn, I need a brain implant.

Nothing Good Lasts Forever

When I moved to the Android world the first thing I kicked off was the inglorious Samsung keyboard for Swiftkey. It felt so good.

Like everything that looks too good to be true it didn’t allow me to enjoy it too long. It started dragging my phone badly with typed messages taking seconds to appear. Sometimes as long as 5 seconds.
 
I haven’t been known for patience so I promptly kicked its butt out for something more in use but less popular. Google Keyboard.
So far its working like charm but let’s see how long that lasts before I hit the divorce courts.
 
 

Enough said

I recently bumped into this article which got me thinking: http://qz.com/254477/its-time-to-accept-this-fact-a-really-great-marriage-is-rare/

I know quite a lot of people would eagerly love to use me for target practice but then taking the risk, I could just ask – is marriage an evolutionary con that’s gonna bottom out some day?

For all we know, I could be very wrong. After all, I have been wrong about so many things.

MTN and Etisalat vs Me

I ported from MTN to Etisalat about a month ago. That isn’t news.

I’m naturally a loyal person – I could have broken a few hearts but it’s nothing personal just business. After all I have been using same drycleaner all my professional life and the thought of dumping them, even when I moved to the other side of town, is painful.

But MTN had it coming – the data service doesn’t work well. Voice is trashy; and then they started stealing my money. It got so bad they could have done better if they robbed me at gunpoint in daylight or nighttime depending on what’s convenient, not for me, but for them.

So on a bright Saturday afternoon, my daughter playing the dutiful sidekick, we marched down to Etisalat and got the freaking phone ported.

It felt good.
Only for a while.

You see, Etisalat works but they are darn expensive. How I managed to go through double what I used to pay monthly at MTN (less the robbery) still baffles me. Also the data varnishes so fast I turned my phone bottom up to see if it’s leaking data. At least that should have formed a puddle, somewhere.

I don’t know what I’m going to do, an evil thought is forming though. I could get a dual SIM phone and use an Etisalat for the data and MTN for the voice but the thought of porting back isn’t pleasant. You see, I have some little imps working in my office who are going to jeer on toadstools if I dare port back to MTN. I’m sure those guys are getting paid to make my life miserable. That’s an aside.