Gonna get the IT guys

Today evening I wont go home after I leave the office. No, I will hide in the stairs and wait for one of the IT guys to come along and then shove him down the stairs. When he gets to the landing I will jump after him and hit him with my laptop bag. Atakipata. Here is how I have been driven to murder:

The IT guys have blocked yahoo. Not just messenger but even yahoo mail. According the error message displayed when I try to access the page, Yahoo transmits viruses.

They install XP on my pc and then go ahead to set some weird security settings in IE that prevent me from loading even internal sites. To make it worse they have configured the system to prevent me from changing the security settings. Every time I go to a page with Active X or Java Applets I have to keep clicking on warning messages. And not only is the setting in IE but they have also set up a personal firewall with similar settings so even using Firefox doesnt help.

The have set up my machine to lock (start the screen saver) after five minutes off inactivity and locked the settings to prevent me from changing them. To add insult on to injury they have a draconian password policy that forces me to have a password at least 8 characters long and must contain special characters. They also force me to change passwords every 2 months. I have run out of passwords so I will become one of those dumb guys who call help desk on Monday saying that they have forgotten their passwords.


They have a proxy server that refuses to refresh pages. So for example, I will look at the blog today and see that 0.5 has a new post, I come back tommorrow to comment on his post but for some strange reason the new post is not there, the proxy server insists on displaying content that is 3 days old. I refresh it brings the same old stuff. Its really irritating when this happens and the fact that this 'roll back' behavior is not predictable makes it even worse.

The net is really slow, its even slower than the cyber cafe cafe near my digs which doubles up as a chips shop come photocopy and telephone bureau. I am sure one of the IT guys is stepping on a cable and slowing down the connection.

I have had it and so I will get them one by one. Today in the stairs, tommorrow in the basement parking. Ili iwe funzo kwa wengine kama hao

I'm still around

Sam's still around...

Yaaawwwwn!

I intended to post this yesterday, but where is the inspiration?

Strap in. Its going to be a long and senseless one.

Last night was Wednesday festival. In attendance was Kamikaze, Td and myself. We drunk long and hard, oblivious to the fact the following morning is Thursday. Td reports to work at one, so it did not make a difference anyway. We would rally troops to leave the table and Td would entice us to have a last one. Never one to leave a beer that has already arrived at the table (soldier's honour), I imbibed till the lights were turned on (and they turned off in my head).
From that moment on everything is a blur.

My body obliterated the rest of the world until.....9.00 AM today morning. I woke up confused and run around my digz in circles not sure whether to go the shower, wear clothes or run straight out. Time for evasive measures. I shoot off an SMS that vaguely tells my boss that I am in a small personal jam and will be a bit late.
Next is to beat this tired body into a shape that is presentable in an office.
My breath. It can peel off dried paint. Maskirovka! I pop in half a foul smelling onion into my mouth and then I brush my teeth. I do a quick shower, which is more like stepping into the water and then stepping out. I pity the poor buggers who shared the ride with me. Into that deadly mouth mix, I added that bitter orbit chewing gum.
My eyes are cherry red. I look like a junkie showing withdrawal symptoms.I hear there is a certain cosmetic liquid used by the ladies to make their eyes white and sparkle like wine. I need just about an entire bottle of that eye drop stuff.

I forgot my sweater. It is nasty cold outside. Drizzling. Perfect weather for taking a certain nagging woman I know out for a walk (not my girlfriend. I dont have those).
My girlfriend. I have got a lot of problems with that perspective. The thought of kinda owning a walking, talking human being is disturbing. Or worse, being owned. Cause it is owning, in a way, though not like the way you would say about your television set. That is why there are territorial wars over women. And men.
Did Troy ever happen? I sometimes confuse fables with reality.

Going on leave without money is a costly mistake. I was just sitting around the house, remote control in hand. Click. Oprah. Click. Tyra. Click. Martha Stewart. Click. CCTV. Click. Cafe Caprial's. Click. How Clean Is Your Home?
All of them screaming for my attention. Garbage. Kenyan TV is full of shti. China, in a silly attempt to install itself as a cultural icon, must have given KBC miles upon miles of film reel full of crap. You see rolling landscapes of water logged rice fields, rooftops and disturbing wood carvings.
Bang. MTV Base now. Dry and tone deaf French rap artistes are waving hand, feet and metallic teeth infront of the camera. They are saying something, and though the only French words I know are 'bonjour' and 'bon appetit', this is quite something else. It sounds like someone hacking away at a murshy lump of cheese.
I flip back to Martha Stewart. The entire studio audience is pregnant and I am not kidding. Jennifer Garner (that did not just roll off the top of my head in case you are wondering), the
star of Alias, is also very pregnant and showing the rest of the admiring women how to make some inedible, exotic dish. I sympathise with her husband, having to endure that stuff and coo coo "Oh honey, this is absolutely delicious". Poor bastard.
I mute them and amuse myself watching their mouths move. I try to read a book.
It is evening. Something called Nip/Tuck is showing. It looks kind of interesting. I resist the attempt to get hooked. KTN have this habit of taking a program off the network just when its getting interesting and never bringing it back. Like NCIS. NTV too. JAG? Numb3rs? Las Vegas? The list is endless.
News. I make an effort to skip news. I like the detachment of printed news rather than politicians playing at eloquence.
KTN (them again) have made the news hour into a commercial venture. It is long and boring and they have a penchant for bringing really horrid stories. Like the one where some guys who live near Coast roast rats for dinner.
zzzzzzzzzzzz......
Oh, Joe Millionaire. Garbage. Flip to NTV. Temptation Island. What the ucfk is this? All these bogus reality shows? Take your girl/man to some distant island that lies smack in the middle of some uncharted waters. Mix with other hare-brained men and women. Purpose? See if he or she is meant for you.
The rich indeed have queer pastimes. One edition of Survivor showed some urban ladies from New York trying to stand the unforgiving sun of Samburu, wearing skin sarongs and sleeping in tents. Wuuuuuuuu....! That is supposed to create some sense of danger. Danger is exciting!! Viewers? See? See? She is courting untamed lions. The lion suspects she is an idiot and walks away unimpressed. Why don't these fellows try walking through Grogan road unaccompanied at 9.00 PM on any given day and have a real adventure?

Our Kinangop is a very interesting place. If I remember correctly, some lady MP called Wanjiru came chanting from the hills, walked into parliament holding aloft a bottle full of dark liquid. The liquid, she claimed, was a cure for AIDS. That was in 1997. Now a strange cult is saying that the world is ending on September 12. They have built nuclear bomb shelters from mud. Bush should send his military scientists. They can make a study of brainwashing.

Perhaps there is free lunch after all. Remember the guy I had mentioned in passing in an earlier post? The one who had made his girlfriend pregnant and wanted to skip? Yes. Him.
He has more than managed the feat. Recently, he brought his new girlfriend around. She is a deadly cute about 29-to-30-maximum- 33 woman. Here is the clincher. She bought us drinks till we got sodden drunk. Then she got bored with our company and wanted to get some, so she starts nudging the guy. The guy stands up, retrieves car keys from his shirt pocket and proclaims dramatically:
I have to drive her home.
Yes you guessed right. She is rich and the car is hers.
I am speechless with disbelief. The phrase 'Lucky bastard' springs to mind.

Oh, I forgot to mention. The guy has landed an international job and is leaving the country in 20 days. As for the pregnant lady, I really sympathise with her. Justice seems to have left town. Perhaps it has gone to breed a proper punishment for the inconsiderate lad which it will mete out with much more ferocity later. Time will tell.

Flashing is a bad habit. Persistent flashing is harassment. The same goes for the 'Please call me'. It shows that the flasher is not a serious person. The occasional flash can be ignored. There are those people who flash you, then immediately launch into meaningless, endless chatter. Then they wonder why people ignore their flashes. People who have important things to say buy airtime and say them. You can speak like those characters on La Femme Nikita who were never on the phone for more than 5 seconds but could communicate tons. Or just send an SMS.

I do not back up my phone numbers anywhere .....and for a good reason. I figure if I lose my phone, I will collect one or two of my buddies phones and I will have all the contacts back in. Well, almost.
The main reason is that I like to spare myself a lot of grief. On occasion you meet a lovely lady. You take her number after a nice evening of drinks and music. The following day you ping her.
Silence.
Ping number two. Silence. If on the third call I am ignored, gut instinct takes over and I delete the number. I usually regret it after some reflection, especially if the chic is hot. But the important thing is that I cannot retrieve the number. This saves me the whole charade of asking myself "Would she have answered on the fourth time?". With time she slips away from my
mind.
Then there are chics who give you dead numbers. Just a sad, robotic voice telling you the call cannot be completed when you call. I take SERIOUS offence at such treatment. Why not just come out and say "I prefer not to give you my number"? Or "my number is private"?

Why I should buy more milk more often

On Friday evening, I went to a super market to get some milk. I will have to get my mum to share with me the model she uses to make sure that the house is always adequately stocked with groceries. For some strange reason I am always running out of some essential stuff, like jana I start cooking just to realise I had run out of onions. Anyway, on my way out of the store I ran into one Onsando. A guy I have not seen since October 1997. Enyewe its a small world. We hooked up on sato night and it was interesting to see that two guys who have lived in different environments can share so many similar ideas.

I know I am a reasonable person because there are so many reasonable people who think just like me.

In costume

How do you handle those mornings when you go to work feeling half dead, half a sleep, half drank and with a hang over kickin in because you were out way past your bed time the previous night? How do you sit in the office with the constant chatter of your colleagues making the head ache worse while trying to keep your mouth closed and breathing light so that the person on the other side of the room does not smell the alcohol in you? By the way how is it that on such morning it doesnt matter how hard you brush your teeth and tongue, how many times you rinse your mouth or how heavy a breakfirst you eat, the stink never goes away. Pengine, the stench is uko in the small intestines. How do you talk to your boss knowing you will see his mouth move but not understand the words coming out of it.

On such days I borrow from Mohammed Ali's concept of 'being in costume' which he describes in his autobiography. Ali's most famous bout was the rumble in the jungle. George Foreman, Ali's opponent, was nearly 10 years younger, was known for being ferocious, and packing the heaviest of punches. Ali had been stripped of his boxing licence and the world heavy weight champion belt around 8 years before coz he refused to get conscripted into the army which meant that in addition to being in his mid thirties he had not been involved in professional bouts for a few years. But Ali had one advantage experience. Apparently George Foreman had not fought more than 6 rounds by then since none of his previous opponents could take his heavy blows. Ali's strategy was to push Foreman past the seven round and then taking him out. The major problem with this strategy was how to deal with the Foreman's blows. Ali knew that no matter how fast he moved and shielded himself a few would get through his defences. And when one of them hits home, he will get disoriented drop his defences and then Foreman would make mince him out of him.

Which is where the costume comes in. Ali had been hit many times in his career and from experience he had learnt how to live in the hazy, drunken, seeing double world that a fighter gets into when he is hammered nicely. This world was his second home, and he knew that when he got there he would have to do things a bit differently infact become a different person. So he had a special costume for this world, a costume that allowed him to keep dancing like a butterfly and sting like a bee while in dream land.

Inspired by Ali's costume I'v also gon out and got me a special costume for the morning following some serious mid week drinking. This costume has served me well over the years, I manage to get to work without causing an accident, stand infront of a class and have reasonable stuff coming out of my mouth, attend the most boring meeting without dozing off, have coherent conversations e.t.c

I hope my costume will serve me well today coz enyewe ni kubaya.

Features I would like to see in Excel

Why cant I sort columns. If it is possible to sort rows then it should not be so difficult to sort by columns.

Have you noticed that if you copy a cell and you do something else before you paste it, say insert a row, you have to go back and copy the same cell again. Kwani what does Excel do to the clip board. You should be able to copy a cell and go to hell and back and paste without any issues.

In Office 2003 (not sure if the same applies to XP) help searches the web first. Now what kind of silly default setting is that when most of what a guy needs is in the local. Dont know how to change the setting so when I need help I pull out the network cable and then remember that I was downloading something.

Custom filter of Auto filter should have at least five search criteria.

I dont think that this is too much to ask of a product that has been around for more than 10 years.

Flash!

I am in training, where I am sitting next to this very funny lady. 9 times out of 10 the damn training is very boring. So today we were just having a conversation, eyes level, when she shifted forward. My peripheral vision immediately picked an aberration; There was a flash of cholocate brown where there should have only been black.

My eyes, of their own accord sought out the peculiar sight, and a fraction too late registered that it is very ill manners to even look. My brain instructs my eyes to look else where immediately. My head faces forward in a knee-jerk reaction.
All this happens in the space of less than a second.
Unfortunately, the lady follows my eye path, notices her undone blouse button and gets fidgety. From that point on I can't wait for the training to end because I am extremely embarrassed. She is probably thinking I am one twisted punk.

You can't help that first time. The brain must first confirm: Aawwwwww NO! That THERE is A BREAST! (or a thigh, depending on circumstance). Then the manners kick in (if you have got any). The manners will tell your brain to map off that field of vision.
35deg west, 66deg elevation vertical is a NO GO ZONE.

Of course there are those ladies who set out to deliberately torture men. And I am not talking about the ladies of easy virtue who stroll up and down K-Street; I mean professional women, in the office, who check in with skirts whose hemlines seem to be in a rush to meet the necklines of the blouses. Said skirt will on occassion have a long slit running up the fabric in a convenient position.

In a meeting where the lady is in attendance for instance, you will have a real battle on your hands. Your eye ligaments will tear out it tries to juggle the demands of two merciless masters. Your sense of decorum and pure un-adulterated arousement. Woe unto you if she is senior to you because you don't want to be caught looking (at least not if she does not fancy you). Most men bite their tongues, stick a staple into their nails, or wear blank, determined faces; They are trying to call up a tragic incident that they have witnessed to try and suppress the clash of hormones.

N rated Fashion TV

The first time I came across a pub showing Fashion TV the only reasonable explanation I could come up with was that the bar man was an aspriring designer. Besides while the pub had superb decor and wonderful lighting it was very empty for a Wednesday evening which implied that they had more problems than their poor choice of programming and when I got my bill discovered what the reason was. On Sato I was in another pub that had some screens on Fashion Tv. One of the screens just happened to be behind the counter and just infront of me. On offer were models strutting a cat walk with those transparent tops that I cant imagine anybody ever buys, bikini's e.t.c but what made me want to blog about Fashion Tv was some models on a cat walk with topless bikinis. Honestly, how hard can it be to design a topless bikini and what is the main idea behind having such shows? Do you need the same kind of license one would need to operate a strip club to run such a show? And as far as I can remember Fashion Tv did not have one of those nice logos that indicate a programs rating.

Now that I am already talking about fashion, I might just as well add a related tit bit. I have basically been using the same barber for the last like ten years. A visit to the barber basically involves me getting to his shop at around 6 on a Sunday evening, sitting on the barber's chair, talking about football as he cuts my hair with no questions like How do you want me to cut it? Do you want me to use spirit? Is that short enough? The guy is so good that when I broke my leg he called me up to ask why I had not passed by his shop in over a month and then offered to give me a hair cut from home. It is so damn irritating to go to a new barber, you have to spend lots of time explaining how you want your hair cut and the guy I went to see had even more issues he was really rough, at some stage he was chatting with a guy on the other side of the street while shaving him resulting in me getting spittle on my head, at some stage he wanted to talk on the phone while still cutting my hair. The worst part is that this guy was recommended to me by a jamaa who warned me that while the guy is crap all the other barbers are worse.

There some things that a jamaa should remain constant in a guys life, a church, home pub and barber. You just dont walk into a shop and let a guy near you with a blade because the door reads barber.

Fire drills

Just finished a fire drill. This is the second in one month. Enyewe this guys like them and incidentally both of them have been on Friday morning. I guess somebody did some kind of study that showed the risk of fire to be highest on Friday morning. When the alarms went off everybody was confused and guys started inquiring from each other what is going on. As if the guy next to you would have more info? After we saw our bosses making there way to the fire exits we all followed suite. This took like 2 minutes since guys had to complete the paragraph they were typing or phone call they were on, pack up their posessions, get their coats on and pick up their purses and some people even picked up files. One guy really jazzed me, he was making a cup of tea when the alarm went off, he calmly finished making his tea, and took it down the steps really slow to make sure that he didn't spill any of it.

But it was a nice day for a fire drill, the sun is out and the sky clear not a bad day to hang out in the parking lot instead of sitting at my desk that happens to be on a corner and so never get any sunlight. Sometimes I envy guys who work outdoors they get to enjoy nice weather.

5-f man

When I was in High school I got my hands on a Shabba Ranks X-tra naked tape on half term and listened to it over and over again. One of the songs on it was 5-f man. I can remember the f's stood for something like Find them, Fool them, F**K em, Forget em but these are only four f's which makes me wonder which the fifth was, if the f's I have are correct at all, or maybe Shabba Ranks just could not count. I cant stop wondering about this does anybody remember the lyrics of the song.

I have trawled the web for them with no success.

If you like it grab it!

I like pubs. I prefer pubs to clubs. There is this pub I have gone to twice and may keep going back to. They play a lot of old school hip hop yaani Snoop's Doggy style, Dre's aftermath, Tupac, BIG and Jay Z. The place is small, dark and so smokie that I cannot go in with a jacket coz it ends up stinking)it has real character. The loo's are unisex (there was a pub on Baricho rd that tried this but I guess it flopped coz they have since closed) and there is not urinal, you can imagine my amazement when I after standing out of a cubicle cleared marked gents for a while the door opened and a chik and jamaa came out. There was also a group of four or five guys smokin week outside the loos.

The place gets really packed, so packed that after midnit all chiks starts dancing on tables and bouncers do not even blink. Someone mentioned that people have been known to dance on speakers too. I have been waiting for one of those chiks to take their top off but it is yet to happen.

So on Sato, I was making my way out thru the mass of people when just before I got to the door a chik to my left who was also going out grabbed a guy's ass. The guy was to my right and was coming in. She didn't grab it in a courteous and appreciative way the jamaa would, no she grabbed it with all her might, it was like she was trying to a take a chunk out. The guy turned and from the grimace on his face I could tell he was in pain. By this time I had burst out laughing and the chik had turned and was making a speedy get away. They guy looked at me I pointed at the chik and also rushed out. I will stay away from the place for a while just incase the guy imagined that I grabbed his ass.

By the way, I posted some photos last week that are no longer there. I suspect foul play. Administrators mna jinsi tatu za kujitetea ...

I am first!

I am bemused - unfailingly, to find that many bloggers are always thrilled to be the first to leave a comment. Usually something in the line of "I am first" Or "number one!"...Then the real comment follows after that.

Invariably, someone who had the misfortune of not making number one adds a mini-rant just immediately below, about the unfortunate circumstance that he or she finds himself / herself in after missing the coveted #1 berth. Reminds me of days past (I was about 3 feet tall) when we would get embroiled in senseless piss contests; For instance - my dad can beat your dad!

It would be more sensible to just......No I will rephrase that.....It would irritate me less if people just went ahead to say what they want and get on with it.

But its a free world isn't it?