An Experience to Remember

First try this out, click here, check out the search results from Google and tell me! Is that accurate or what! Hurray Google I guess.

So, last night my tooth finally gave in and startd aching like crazy. It was still pretty bad this morning when I was writing this, and having had several not-very-good experiences with my teeth… I decided to visit a dentist. Thank God our company medical cover takes care of dental problems. But sadly I had misplaced my card so I had to go to go for an adventure of getting passport-sized photo and then dashing to our heatlth care provider to have my card replaced. And thank God for working systems and procedures! I had my card done in about 10 minutes and then on to the dentists office in town where I barely made it on time (It was actually awesome that I managed to get an appointment the same morning I called)! Then I ha to wait a while as the doctor attended to a few others (while I watched Mr. Bean at the reception – funny man, Atkinson eh!).

So after about 40 minutes I took the hot seat with my aching tooth (why do thos mechanical seats have to make you feel like you are not in control!) Anyways, the doctor got to work, injection first… yes I had one. Then we waited a while so that the anaesthesia could take effect.

He decided to do a root canal!!! The horror…! But he was a good doctor as he kept talking to me i guess to get my mind off of what I was anticipating.

Then… the drilling… of course I was a bit tense then I relaxed cos the injection had taken effect, but sadly not very well… al of a sudden I was feeling pain as he drilled. So he suggested that he would do a temporary solution cos of the pain, but interestingly he continued to work as he was talking and I was silently taking the pain as every once in a while I felt the sharp metalic edge of the drill touch some sensitive part of my tooth!!! After some maybe 30 agonizing minutes he wound up. I and my now not aching tooth but a bit shaken from the pain sat up…

Then he said the unthinkable.. ‘You might experience some pain for a day or two…’ and as if that were not enough… ‘If it stays longer just come back…’, and I am thinking ‘WHAT!?’, na bado… ‘I would give it two weeks.’ I was distraught, then he assured me that he did not expect any problems and he prescribed some pain meds which the pharmacict told me were so strong I was to take only one per day and only after eating.

Lessons learnt:

Please, please, please take care of your teeth, trust me, you don’t need to have a root canal to learn that!

Second… hmmm, I never knew I had such a high affinity for pain!

Filed under: adventure

Learnability, Stickability, Valour

Work has been pretty interesting for the past two days. Primarily cos I had a chance to some things which were pretty new to me! The biggest perhaps being, learning to use SQL Server Reporting Services for SQL Server 2005. I learnt it within two days and deployed some pretty complex reports. In fact, there is one report which I had done in Crystal Reports that had TERRIBLE performance (its a heck of a complex report!!!), I mean searching through it and printing it were just extremely time consuming and just utterly frustrating to the users. In fact, it was this very problem that drove me to SSRS in a bid to handle the situation. The long and the short of it is that the report that was so complex and that had initially taken me more than 3 days to do on a familiar reporting engine took only a few hours to do and deploy which. And not only is it rapid-fast in comparison but also the users really loved the new interface and it’s ease of accessibility via a simple browser. I did notice however that the report does not render properly on firefox, but comes out well on IE, there is some ActiveX component that was needed on the browser to enable printing, and there is something about date formatting (i needed to have filtering on the report by dates), the issue is that the date format in the BI Development Studio is natively American (m/d/y), this gave me a bit of trouble cos i did not realize it, but apparently once you deploy it IE takes the set date formatting on the PC’s regional settings…. I think I should do a tutorial on the Tech section. Now, that I have leveraged SRSS in reporting I am going to try it out to do some other interesting reports I have to do. I love challenge so this is not just about work any more, its about leveraging the power of a new technology learnt to the solution of some interesting and challenging information manipulation problems (Mmmmuhahahahaha)!!!

I am also currently learning some other stuff on my own and I have a promising opportunity to make some cash, in fact, two different opportunities… and I really need the money for my school fees and to pay off some land I bought recently, yes land! In African culture and especially where I come from land is pretty important! And I am thankful to be able to obtain a parcel. (Damn, at this rate,… !)

I just finished watching the Lord of the Ring trilogy, yet again. What can I say, it’s an awesome story, an epic of courage, determination… And last night I watched ’300′ about the Spartans, I love epics, I think I will re-watch it. It was really awesome, except for the fact that some scenes did not sit well with me, especially at the beginning. There is something about me, when I watch movies, I don’t just get entertained, I sort of put myself in it and somehow experience it, that’s one reason why I am so picky about the movies I watch. 300 was cool not just cos of the awesome war scenes but because of some values I saw in it, courage, determination, teamwork, solidarity, loyalty, freedom, valor… love, the total belief in something much bigger than the self, something you would give your life for and that you live for, the loss of which is a more painful thought than death!  (maybe I just read too much into things), and I asked myself, how much more having faith in what is real, true and not only lasts this lifetime but beyond! Sparta, in all it’s glory fell, eventually, but there is a principle that will never fall, how much more that which will never fall!!! (OK, sorry if I sounded speechy, just consider it my two cents!!!)

There’s a time a good mentor of mine (an more of a father-figure to me) asked me what my life metaphor is… the answer I gave was this, ‘it’s a war’. Some see it as a race, others as an adventure, others as maybe just fun and passing by!

Filed under: adventure, research, technology, tool, work

The long version

Hi there. Do you guys remember me telling you about wearing a skirt? Well, here is the whole story.

This past saturday a bunch of friends n i went for an excursion to the fourteen falls. We were well above 20 of ud all fitting somehow in an 18 seater mini-bus! And squeezed we did and squeezed we were! So we met at church and left nairobi around 9 a.m. along the way we had to pick up a few other people adding to the agony in terms of sitting arrangement!

The trip was pretty nice, I told jokes (which people laughed at!) and guys generally had fun on the ride (in between muscle cramps and the like due to the dire sitting arrangement). We got to the fourteen falls around 1 pm and people got right down to eating. By the way, the falls are located in the Thika region. You can read this other adventure which I had in Thika last year!

Anyways, before eating a number of us were playing football on the really soggy ground on the picnic spot we spotted next to the river. The falls are quite a site, I mean tons of streamming water falling over rocks n stuff and the rapids which formed immediately after leading to calmer waters a little further down, where there was the bank where we set up camp.

Back to the main story. You see, its been a while since I played football and you guys know I am a little playful so I kinda got carried away (need I add, naturally?) Anyways, I was chasing after the ball with this pal of mine and all of a sudden we found ourselves on like REALLY soggy, wet, muddy ground and i stupidly tried to stop which only lsent me sliding, and skidding on the ground and I ended up landing FLAT ON MY BUTT! And it is not a joke!!! I was utterly shocked, confused, dis-oriented (do you kinda get the picture???) My pal had managed to stabilize himself so all that happened to him was some mud splashed over his clad.

So here I was sitting on th ground and guys all around are laughing their guts out. To add insult to the injury the mud was stinking and consequently so was I. After coming to (and a number of photos taken by my very amused pals), I was advised to wash my trouser in the river and someone lent me a kanga/kikoi to wrap around my waist!

I went off to a hidden location to remove my trouser and shock on me! While pulling down my pants, some girls are walking in my direction, I quickly wrap the kanga around my waist, the girls (who i guess were also visiting the site) turned around and went back, probably wondering what madness had gotten into this guy!

So I got my pants washed and hang them to dry on the bushes around! Luckily it was a very sunny day. I had to spend the rest of the day in my kikoi!!!! Waaaaaaaaa! But it was cool! I had fun! And it was a moment to remember! My pants dried later and if anyone saw me they would not have guessed what had happened, they were actually cleaner than they were before the ah, ‘fatal insident’

So now you know the story, and since I am such a nice fella I will actually post the (discriminating) photos here.

One Warrior!

Filed under: adventure, friends, fun, kenya, thika