Politics.NET

Before I got married and had kids, I was one of those guys that came to work early, left a little later than 8 hours, never called in sick and rarely took vacation or missed work for any reason. Why? Because I hardly got sick and work was way too much fun to need a break. And of course, it was beyond my realm of imagination to lie about being sick just to get out of work. And even when I had the flu, why sit around moping at home when you could get paid at work (yeah I know I could have taken sick days). So while I didn't exactly disdain people who were routinely out for kid-related reasons, I didn't think they were super reliable. At least not like me. Oh no, I was a rock. Want someone to work Saturday morning, sure thing! Want someone to track down a production problem at 5pm? Am your man. So now that I have kids and in the 5 months since they were born , I can honestly say I have missed more days of work than in all my 11 years of working professionally put together. If the ...

Look Mr President, would you please stop showing your inexperience? You have advisers that are allegedly experienced Washington insiders, please listen to their advise. Ok? It's not appropriate to give a visiting head of state a box set of DVDs. No matter how great those DVDs are, they simply don't have the gravitas of a presidential gift. That's #1. #2: Please never ever give or even contemplate giving the Queen of England a CD set. Just don't! #3: I know you want to be a man of the people, but please tell your first lady that getting out of Air Force One in shorts is simply not acceptable. It might have been a long trip but please please change into something befitting a first lady before stepping out of the palatial plane #4: Don't insert yourself into local politics. It's beneath you and it's a zero sum game. Just like a parent should never take sides when siblings fight, stay out of local political in-fighting #5: Don't waste your time and political...

Before the season, I wrote that the Redskins are fools for not addressing their o-line issues this offseason. Well, here's the proof . Sure their schedule is soft for the next few weeks (Lions, Bucs, Panthers and Chiefs) but wouldn't they have been better served signing a true o-line player instead of investing in Mike I-ate-too-much Williams?

Occassaionally I run into websites that were created solely to take a general purpose idea and put a Nigerian spin on it. For example: Facebook for Nigerians, NaijaFeed (an aggregation of anything related to Nigeria on the web); Sturvs.com (a Nigerian social bookmarking website) etc etc I admit I am not the most hardcore Nigerian person but can these sites really survive long term (i.e. past 6 months)? Is there really a marketable demand for Nigerian news that can't be found on Google News? Who would take the trouble to register on FacebookForNigerians when all of us are on the real facebook? NaijaFeed is ok but Nigerians that really care about Nigerian news know the websites of all the Nigerian newspaper. Besides, all the American-born Nigerian kids don't care that much about the fatherland. The ones that care were born and are stuck in Nigeria. Once they come here, I doubt they'll go to NaijaFeed to get news of the place they just left. So apart from old-time Nigerians an...

It's very easy to take good health for granted. When your siblings (by birth and marriage) have a combined total of 7 healthy children it's very easy for you to forget all the health risks (to the mother and babies) associated with pregnancy. I like to say it's like buying a lottery ticket for a drawing that doesn't take place for 9 months! We are so lucky that these babies have no health issues (fingers crossed). They were so tiny when they came out, being early twins and all. It's amazing that at their size (4lbs) everything was fully developed and working. Nothing beats seeing your 3-month old daughter literally jump up for joy upon seeing you for the 101st time in the same day. It's amazing how a 3-month boy can be so in tune with music. Play any sort of music and Toni will start dancing. Doesn't matter the song...just play it and he'll dance. Perhaps all babies do these things and mine aren't special. But still, it's cool to watch them both ...

Technical certifications, especially in the IT field, are totally worthless. Why? All a technical certification prove is that you were able to buy a couple of exam prep books, cram them in a week or two and take an exam. My monkey (if I had one) could do that. I can't tell you how many times I have interviewed certification-carrying candidates for open positions at my company only to find them severely lacking in thorough understanding of computer science. I don't care that you have an MSCD or MCP or whatever it's called these days if you don't know foundational concepts in computer science and database design. For example, I don't want someone who just knows that you store things in a hashtable using keys. I need you to know why a hashtable is better than an array in some cases. I need you to know when an interface is better than an abstract class; when to use recursion; the different kinds of joins and when to use each one; I need you to understand how crucial sou...

Why would someone that's against the so-called public option on the grounds that govt can't do anything right be proud of having gone to Virginia Tech or another public university? Why would the very same person feel secure knowing the men and women of the [insert juridiction here] police department are on the watch? Last time I checked, the federal govt was in charge of immigration (bad job), airport security (ok job), emergency response (ok job) and military defense (good job). I don't know which health care system we'll end up but I know a few things: our current system is broken, ineffective and shameful. If we want to claim "best country in the world" status, we should be ashamed of a system where people are forced to marry Canadians for healthare. We ought to be ashamed of a system where every body (except for the very rich) is just one major health issue away from bankruptcy if we don't cover the uninsured in a structured way, we'll cover them i...