General Archives - Page 62 of 65

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

My CF8 wish list

The CF8 flour is in the mix and on its way to the oven. Now that we’ve been asked to dream big, so I will be stating my own wish list here.

Better charts. CF charts are clunky. Something sexy should make my blood boil, and my purse thicker from saving money on charts components
Man, we gotta reduce the flash form bloat
A custom preloader would be lovely. So also is attachable style sheets
Some days, CF and Flex should be husband and wife
More DB drivers
XML DB driver? It would be very cool if CF can natively manipulate XML like a DB
Dynamic DSN

And a lot more. If you have yours, you can state it here too.

Email and Success

A jobless man applied for the position of “office boy” at Microsoft. The HR manager interviewed him then watched him clean the floor as a test. “You are employed”, he said. “Give me your e-mail address and I’ll send you the application to fill in, as well as date when you may start”.

The man replied “But I don’t have a computer, neither an email.” “I’m sorry “, said the HR manager, “If you don’t have an email, that means you do not exist. And who doesn’t exist, cannot have the job.” The man left with no hope at all. He didn’t know what to do, with only $10 in his pocket. He then decided to go to the supermarket and buy a 10Kg tomato crate. He sold the tomatoes in a door-to-door round. In less than two hours, he succeeded to double his capital. He repeated the operation three times and returned home with $60. The man realized that he could survive this way, and started to go every day earlier, and return late. Thus, his money doubled or tripled every day. Shortly, he bought a cart, then a truck, then he had his own fleet of delivery vehicles.

5 years later, the man is one of the biggest food retailers in the US. He started to plan his family’s future and decided to have a life insurance. He called an insurance broker and chose a protection plan. When the conversation was concluded, the broker asked him his email. The man replied, “I don’t have an email “. The broker answered curiously, “You don’t have an email, and yet have succeeded to build an empire. Can you imagine what you could have been if you had an email ?!!!”

The man thought for a while and replied, “Yes , I’d be an office boy at Microsoft!”

Moral of the story….

Moral-1 – Internet /email is not the solution to your life.

Moral-2- If you don’t have internet / email, and work hard, you can be a millionaire.

Moral-3- If you received this message by email, you are probably already an office boy/girl and not any close to being a Billionaire.

So guys, am shutting down my blog and would be selling tomatoes!!!

New Lingo for an Old Priest

There was an old priest who got sick of all the people in his parish who kept confessing to adultery. One Sunday, in the pulpit, he said, “If I hear one more person confess to adultery, I’ll quit! “

Everyone liked him, so they came up with a code word. Someone who had committed adultery would say instead that they had “fallen.” This seemed to satisfy the old priest and things went well until the priest passed away at a ripe, old age.

A few days after the new priest arrived, he visited the mayor of the town and seemed very concerned.

“Mayor, you have to do something about the sidewalks in town. When people come into the confessional, they keep telling me they’ve fallen.”

The mayor started to laugh, realizing that no one had told the new priest about the code word. But, before he could explain, the priest shook an accusing finger at him and shouted, “I don’t know what you’re laughing about, because your wife has already fallen three times this week!”