GeorgeAppiah.com |||||

Hello you wonderful folks. A 419 scammer is using my identity for his scam operations to dupe unsuspecting people. This unscrupulous son-of-a-bitch is sending out scam emails in which he identifies himself as:

• George Appiah, a Ghanaian diplomat with millions of US$ stuck somewhere (huh!)
• who’s website is GeorgeAppiah.com
• with US telephone numbers 224-333-1700 and 646-862-3498

Sure, all that info are mine (except the diplomat thing and the millions, of course ) but no, I’m not a fraudster. Someone is simply using my identity for his 419 scam operations. And funny enough, I have personally received one of these email proposals from this “George Appiah”. A few folks have also forwarded to me emails they’ve received with same identity and similar millions of dollars proposals. And today yesterday I had a call from a gentleman in the United States — who has also got such a message.

How do I handle this? I don’t know. If you have any suggestions, kindly contact me. But please note that I am a Ghanaian living in Ghana so the Department of Homeland Stupidity Security (or whatever they call it) and all those US consumer protection institutions ares outside my reach.

In the meantime if you receive any such email, first know that this is definitely NOT from me, even if the sender’s address seem to be coming from my domain georgeappiah.com. Email headers can easily be faked. And then kindly forward a copy to me.

Thank you.

Why the silence since I announced my 30-day exercise plan four days ago? I promised to do daily updates but I’ve not had the chance to post even a single update yet!

Since last Thursday, my Internet connection has been all but dead. My ISP seem to have some major DNS issues across their entire network. I’ve also not had power most of this time. And my long time “apartment mate” Cyril packed to strike out on his own last Sunday… so I had to help him with the packing and all that.

I’ll do a batch post of my progress on the exercise plan shortly.

You must have also seen some new changes here on this website, especially the new top menu links — and it shouldn’t be too difficult to guess where my life is heading now. A comment on that is also coming shortly.

I’ve gotten to a stage in life where I cannot afford but take care of my health and my life, and seriously at that. There’s so much to do, and there’s so much fun to be had — and I can’t afford to leave so soon.

Starting from today, 17th of January, and for the next 29 days, I am committing myself to 20-minutes of daily exercise. But this is not a test to find out if exercising is right for me or not. The benefits of regular exercise are well documented, and I personally start to experience some of these benefits after just 3 days of regular exercise.

So why not a life-time exercise plan? Why 30 days? I’ve been here before. So many times in the past I’ve set out with grand exercise plans — all of which, like New Year Resolutions, fall off after just a few days. That’s why this time round I’m setting for myself a very modest goal: 20 minutes daily exercise for just 30 days. And then wait and see what happens.

So what will be my regular exercise? Nothing fancy. There’s no gym nearby… so I’ll simply be doing 20 minutes of running every morning.

And throughout these 30 days I am going to share my progress here. So if you’ve not done so already, subscribe to my RSS feed, or follow me on Twitter to receive notification of all updates.

Imagine you’re at the biggest consumer electronics show in the world to demo the next fancy gadget from your company. In the previous night you tested and retested and retested some more… just to be sure everything works ok.

And then just when you start your demo, the TV/LCD screen goes dark. Grrrr. After fidgeting around with buttons, somehow the screen comes back! But you’re not really sure what just happened. You continue your demo…. and moments later, the screen goes off again. And on and off and on and off, with almost rehearsed consistency.

Well, that’s exactly what the kids at Gizmodo, the popular gadget blog, did during the recently ended CES (Consumer Electronics Show). Armed with the TV-B-Gone kit from The Maker Store, these guys just went crazy and kept turning off one screen after another… even during presentations and demos.

And their reason? Just for the fun of it!. Watch a video from their website here.

Below is the TV-B-Gone kit they used. This is a high-power, open source kit version of the popular TV-B-Gone invented by Mitch Altman. If you want to play with this yourself, you can buy the unassembled kit for less than 30 bucks from The Maker Store, and assemble it yourself.

From the very beginning we knew our little baby was NOT going to be a household name. Rather we wanted her to be the unknown giant upon whose shoulders many Smart Ghanaians would stand and lead our nation and the rest of the continent towards a safe, just, and prosperous future. And while things have been moving quite uneasily slow for us, we’re moving forward nonetheless.

A major initiative currently underway is a center to be run in conjunction with the Institute of Mathematical sciences, an institution founded and headed by our very own Prof. Allottey.

Yesterday, accompanied by my two partners in crime - Christopher Bennett and Remy Edmundson - I went to inspect the status of work on a facility at McCarthy Hill, Accra, which is likely going to be our new home. This facility currently houses the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and is being expanded to temporarily accommodate the yet-to-be-launched Allottey Andam University College.

We couldn’t have access to indoor facilities, but here are some photos we took from the compound. Enjoy.

Just looking spying around…

On top of the world ….

… with Christopher Bennett

Another shot with Christopher Bennett up the roof

Christopher Bennett and Remy Edmundson

Starting the journey back to ground zero…

Almost down now…

This beast will give us Internet access… for the time being

Man… George Appiah loves to squat!

It’s been a good day… we’re ready to return home now!

I just installed Picasa on a machine. But I’m in a hurry… I just want to add a few quick touches to just one photo. Don’t want to scan the the computer. Not now. But I can’t find the “Scan Nothing” or “Skip This” radio button. Where is this hidden?

What can chicken and rice get you? Not much. Well, that’s what I’d say, as I don’t take in meat, and don’t really like rice. But apparently others — very prominent people in our society — will do just about anything for a plate of chicken and rice.

Yesterday I had a great conversation with one expatriate (who came to Ghana as a cook, and is now the General Manager of a major hotel chain) who has found the almost magical power of chicken and egg to get whatever he want from Ghanaians.

• For chicken and rice, this man says he can buy a minister (not the religious type, but I guess those will be even cheaper to buy — say, for banku and wele? )
• For chicken and rice, he can buy a judge of our courts
• For chicken and rice, he could even kill a person and run away with it (how? because he can keep a medical doctor away from his patients — with just chicken and rice!)
• And… for chicken and rice, he can get any Ghanaian girl to open her legs (but I must add that my expat friend says he’s not done this before — and my thinking is that he has found no need to use this chicken and rice bait at all, as these girls, willingly come in a drove!)

We spoke at length about many other issues, and this man’s openness and deep insights on these other issues (especially those involving technology, which I was very much aware of already) left me no reason to doubt his chicken and rice story at all.

Hello Ghana! In our quest for daily survival and economic significance we seem to have left something behind: our daily prayer for God to make us cherish fearless honesty. Or is it that God is not answering our prayer?

And looking at the high-profile people this man claims to have been able to buy with nothing but a plate of chicken and rice, I’m left wondering what’s happening further down their ranks.

Help us, oh God, please do!

I’ve got no furnished house,
No diamond ring,
Just a lonely broken heart,
Full of love,
An’ I can’t even give it away.

Man or statute? I was going through some directories on my computer, and came across this photo of this statute young man, in full gear for last year’s 50th Anniversary celebration of Ghana’s Independence. Even from the photo you could mistake him for a statute!

And apparently everyone else knows this man, except me! I’m told he often stands at major junctions in the city — causing heavy traffic jams, as drivers slow down to catch a glimpse of him.