Yesterday, the 25th of July 2008, Dr. Randy Pausch, the noted Computer Science professor at Carnegie Mellon University finally caved in at the prime age of 47, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Dr. Pausch was a founder of the famous Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University and worked on the “Alice” program, an animated educational system for high school and college students. He is survived by his wife and children Dylan, Logan, and Chloe.

I personally think Randy’s greatest gift he’s leaving behind (especially for those of us who only came to know him during his last days) is his “Last Lecture” talk (video embed below). Might be a perfect time to take to heart Randy’s admonition to relentlessly pursue your childhood dreams.

And while you’re at it, remember another advice from Randy: that those “brick walls” we encounter along the way are there for a reason, for us to prove that we really want that which we’re striving for.

Farewell, Randy, we’ll always miss you.

After the last marathon of interviews at Huawei Technologies (Ghana) I thought everything was settled. Well not quite, as it turned out later.

I was invited back to their office last Friday, the 18th of July, to meet the Managing Director. Which I did.

After a lengthy conversation, they’re still going to “get back to me”. The issue? They’re not convinced that I’m going to stay for long. And I understand their concern. Many people have been in and out — most from KNUST, the only technological university in Ghana. So why should I be trusted to stay on?

And for my case, two additional issues seem to raise more alarms in their thoughts: a) I’ve flipped jobs a bit since graduating in 2002, and b) they just can’t understand why I left a high-paying job in 2005 to engage in voluntary work. In their minds, there has to be something wrong else which I’m not telling them.

Well, while I cannot say I’ll stay with them forever (who can really say so to an employer and mean it?), I really don’t have any immediate plans for anything else: I just want to settle down. I’m not “shopping” around for jobs, and I’ve already decided to let go of my prior plans for grad school.

And I’m not the fresh college kid I was, back then.

So I’m still here waiting for them. Hopefully I wouldn’t have to wait for long.

Do you follow me on Twitter?

If you do, you’ll surely remember the great distress I went though last Sunday the 12th of July, when I was invaded by a large army of one mouse.

While my courage didn’t take me far in pursuing this enemy, I validated my smartness by devising some rather creative ways to outwit this enemy. Much credit also to the professionally certified mouse exterminator who came to lend a helping hand.

So in the spirit of sharing everything I’ve got, here is my fool-proof strategy to help you too kill the the most annoying mice in your life … whether it’s real rodents (like in my case) or some rodent-like homo sapiens sucking up energy from you.

1. Run. Shout. Immediately.

Didn’t you just see something moving around? If you’re thinking you saw something, then you probably did. Trust your guts. Take action NOW. Run. Shout for help.

But sadly, I didn’t trust my guts, and I didn’t take any action myself. I continued to watch my 1935 movie, A Night at the Opera, totally oblivious of the advancing army of one mouse.

Yet I was smart, you see, when my enemy struck. I quickly grabbed the most important possession in my life, my MacBook, and run out of the room. No, I ran out of the house. I bolted the iron gate and left the walled compound.

Just because of a mouse, you’re saying? My friend, you don’t know what you’re saying! Mind you, it was not just a mouse… it was a whole army of one mouse! And tell me, have you had the experience of being a coward before?

2. Call For Mouse A Exterminator

Yeah, that’s right. They don’t carry business cards, but they are there nonetheless. They are everywhere. There’s one probably sharing an apartment or room with you.

So call for help. Dial 666 from your cellphone. That’s the universally recognized contact number for Mouse Exterminators around the world. Works great no matter where you live… best when you don’t have cellphone coverage at all!

For my case, it turned out, I had a Certified Mouse Exterminator sharing apartment with me. Or maybe it’s the banality of heroism at work here (hint: there was a lady around too).

Who knows? And who cares? I got my army of one mouse defeated.

3. Don’t Live In A Bad Neighborhood

That is, if you can help it. This is really a preventive measure though.

You see, Ghana, and Accra in particular, is such a great place to live — for the lawless, that is. And I live in an area of Accra called Tesano. East Tesano, to be more precise. It’s supposed to be a residential area. That, in Ghana, simply means two things: a) rich people live here, and b) robbers pay frequent visits.

How a poor boy like me ended up in a rich folks’ neighborhood is another story I hope to tell someday. Suffice it to say now that I was visited by thieves everyday for the first week that I was here. After all, a new rich guy had moved into the neighborhood.

Isn’t it ironic that “poor neighborhoods” in Accra are safer than “rich neighborhoods”? But I digress. On to the mouse story now.

Next to our house (and I mean next, as in … just a wall separating us) is a large undeveloped piece of land. Half of this land is farmed all year round, and the other half is full of weeds. So we have all kinds of unwelcome guests jumping over to our end: rodents, ants of all colors and sizes, armies of caterpillars, etc.

The only guests we’ve not received in our home are those from the reptile family.

Now for the records, I have nothing against urban gardening. But when it has to be at such a great nuisance to others? And imagine all the smoke that engulfs the entire neighborhood when this heartless urban farmer “slashes and burns” to plant new crops!

So that’s it. If you follow these three simple, ground-breaking strategies, I’ve no doubt in my mind that you can deal with any mice in your life, whether rodents or human mice.

I have a confession to make: I’ve never written about this here or elsewhere before — but I have a deeply-rooted fascination about motor homes (also called mobile homes, recreational vehicles, etc).

And I’m convinced I’m going to live in one of these someday, that’s I’ve been incessantly shedding away all but absolutely needed “stuff” and living a really lean life (another confession, eh?). It’s just a matter of time.

For now I nurture my passion by frequenting various RV forums, blogs, newsletters. Thanks to the Internet, I can easily find and interact with like-minded people from all over the world. This doesn’t come so easily for me in the brick-and-mortar world.

Today someone passed along these massive beasts from UNICAT: The UNICAT Expedition Vehicles, passionately nicknamed “land yachts”.

Designed, engineered and built to take you practically anywhere you want to go: from the heat of the Sahara to through the cold of the North Pole, even through up to 4ft of water… God have mercy!

Fitted with redundant GPS units … so you’ll never get lost on the desert!

On board “escape” vehicle:

Now just look at the interior: real and rare luxury on the road!

I want one of these. Pricing depends on the particular model and fittings, so you want to buy one for me, just let me know… so we can take out all those stuff that I wouldn’t need

More photos of these recreational / expedition vehicles from UNICAT’s website.

Now this “entry level vehicle”, with all the fittings will take you back US$600,000, and US$800 to completely fill the tank (at current gas prices). Hmmm. Here’s the Mahalo Daily video:

Hello folks… here’s the latest in this little life of mine:

I’ve finally decided, after three years of being out of formal employment, to return to a full-time working life. And in all likelihood, I’ll be joining Huawei Technologies pretty soon.

I spent the better part of last Tuesday (08/2008) at Huawei’s office here in Ghana going through a series of tests and interviews (5 in all!), and in the end I’m glad to say I’ll be working with these folks in building Ghana’s telecommunications infrastructure.

More about the interview itself in a later post.

Huawei Technologies is a Chinese company specializes in research and development (R&D), production and marketing of communications equipments, and providing customized network solutions for telecommunications carriers around the world.

Starting from a humble beginning in 1988 by Ren Zhengfei as a distributor of imported PBX products, the company has grown rapidly into a global operation providing next generation telecommunications networks. Huawei is the largest networking and telecommunications equipment supplier in China and in many emerging markets, and also has a strong presence North America and Europe.

I’m joining Huawei as a Radio Network Planning & Operations Engineer . in Ghana and potentially other operators in the sub-region. I’ll be doing a “physical” (fitness test) next week, and then begin working shortly afterwards.

Thank you all for your encouragement and support during these past two years that I’ve been on “voluntary unemployment”. Being out of work formal work sure had its perks… but like anything else in my life, it had to change for something new to take its place.

MediaMax, the online storage company that just recently relaunched as The LinkUp (and which I recently bashed for screwing free users during the transition) is finally throwing in towel and closing up for good.

While I’ve STILL not gotten over losing my data, I’m in no way rejoicing over their demise. Being an entrepreneur myself (at least I like to make-believe so), I’m all too familiar with the ups and downs that go into running a business.

And I always have so much respect for the people who decide to take this route, even if, like me, they fail so many times on the way. My heart to the founders, and wish them good luck in the next venture.

Here’s a copy of the closure mail they passed along to all users on the 10th of July:

MediaMax / The Linkup is closing

We regret to inform you that we will be closing The Linkup service on Friday, August 8 at 5:00 pm PDT.

Please login to your account and download any files that you wish to keep before Friday, August 8 at 5:00 pm PDT.

The Linkup is no longer accepting any uploads or new accounts, and no further charges will be made to your credit card. After August 8, your account will not be accessible, all your personal information will be deleted (username, billing information, history, etc), and your files will be deleted.

It was not possible to satisfactorily complete the move of files from MediaMax to The Linkup as we had expected, and as a result cannot offer a service that meets your expectations and our business requirements. This is a very disappointing outcome for us, and we know it has been a frustrating experience for many of our customers. We are very sorry that we have not been able to continue our service as we had envisioned.

Sincerely,
The Linkup Team

I’ve been battling with a Spin Of Death problem on my MacBook anytime I start Firefox 3, and today, as a last resort, I completely removed Firefox including my user profile.

Problem was, I didn’t remember any of my passwords stored in Password Manager. And when I tried resetting my password on one website running WordPress 2.5.1, I was greeted with a friendly “Invalid Activation Key” message whenever I clicked on the confirmation mail.

No matter how many times I tried, I always had the “invalid activation key” problem.

Digging around the WordPress support forums, I discovered this is a known bug in WordPress 2.5.1, and has already been fixed in Ticket #6842.

If you’ve also encountered this “invalid key” problem while trying to reset your WordPress 2.5.1 password, here is how to (hopefully) fix it:

First, Apply The Patch

Head over to Ryan McCue’s Blog, grab his patched files (zipped file containing two files: wp-login.php and wp-includes/pluggable.php), and upload them to your WordPress installation directory, overwriting the existing files.

Alternatively… and this is only for the really adventurous… you can upgrade to WordPress 2.6 Beta 2 to enjoy all those cool new feature. Sure, this is beta and it’s not ready yet, but I’ve been running both the first and second betas with no issues at all. Yet.

Hopefully you should be able to generate a password after applying the patch. But if you still get the “invalid key” message…

Clear The Activation Key From “wp-users” Table

For some users, just applying the above ptch will fix this problem. But for others (myself included), this patch appears not to help at all.

But this patch actually works… except it appears that if the “wp_users” table already contains an activation key, it is not cleared before a new one is generated after installing the patch; thus, the patch appears to not work.

This seems to be the case even after upgrading to WordPress 2.6 Beta 2.

So what you gonna’ do? After installing the patch, you need to manually dig into the WordPress database and remove any activation key from the wp_users table and try the password reset again. You can do this by using your database management tool such as phpMyAdmin.

This worked for me, and I hope it works for you too. As always, just let me know if you need help with this… I’d be grad to help you.

After Google’s DoubleClick acquisition and the recent announcement of the Google Affiliate Network program, it was generally expected that there would be some major shakeup in search giant’s cashcow AdWords/AdSense duet.

Well, the first (with possible more to come) is here already. Today AdSense publishers received a “mandatory” mail from Google, announcing the retirement of their AdSense Referrals program.

For those not familiar with Google’s advertising programs for publishers, the AdSense Referrals Program allows website publishers to earn money by referring users to advertisers’ products and services.

But unlike the traditional AdSense Pay Per Click program which pays for each single (valid) click, with Referrals publishers earn only when visitors they refer perform some specific action pre-determined by the advertiser… such as making a purchase, completing a form to receive more information, entering a sweepstakes, etc.

Below is a copy of the mail. Time to hunt and remove all those adds

Hello,

Thank you for participating in the AdSense Referrals program. We’re writing to let you know that we will be retiring the AdSense Referrals program during the last week of August. We appreciate your patience during this transition and here are some alternative options to consider:

• Google Affiliate Network: As part of the integration of DoubleClick, the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network will now operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting users located in the United States. Similar to the AdSense Referrals program, the Google Affiliate Network enables publishers to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. For further details, please visit: www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork.
• AdSense for content ads: If you have less than three AdSense for content ad units on a page, you may wish to replace the referral ad units with standard AFC ad units.

If you currently use referral ads, either to promote Google products or offerings from AdWords advertisers, AdSense Referrals code will no longer display ads beginning the last week of August. We encourage you to take the following steps before the product is retired:

• Remove the referral code from your site(s): Please take a moment to remove all referral code from your sites before the last week of August, so you can continue to effectively monetize your
  ad space.
• Run and save all referrals reports on your desktop: Create and save all reports related to the referrals program on your desktop, so you continue to have access to your valuable campaign information

Why is this happening?
We’re constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which drive the best monetization results for our publishers. Sometimes, this requires retiring existing features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most effective in the long term. For this reason, we will be retiring the AdSense Referrals program. If you have any additional questions, please visit our Help Center:
http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=14882

Sincerely.

The Google AdSense Team

When my sister was returning to her books and husband (in that order ) in the United States after coming down home to pass a kid down the factory line (don’t tell her I said that!), she left a PC here with lots of her personal data on it.

After promising and procrastinating for well over a year, I decided, today, to upload her stuff to an online storage account for her — so she could download them to her computer (I know she’s not the “hang all your panties online” sort of person.)

So I went over to Mediamax (which I must confess, I’ve not used for quite some time), pulled out my account details from Gmail … and see what I found (all emphasis mine):

So I clicked over to The Linkup, and of course, I couldn’t log in. The password retrieval tool even told me my email address is not in their system.

Sure, my account was a free account. And there maybe a clause buried somewhere in their TOS that says that all free users who don’t log into their account after x number of days would be kicked out (which like you, I never bothered to read).

Who knows? That’s why I really want to give them the benefit of my doubt — and just make believe that the issue with my account may be a random one… some bug or something that occurred during the transition.

But with statements like what’s above, I’m left with no choice but to conclude that they kicked out all free users during the transition from Mediamax to The Screwup Linkup.

Have I contacted them? Nope. And I’m not going to. I really didn’t have anything I couldn’t afford to lose in there. So no back-and-forth communication is worth my while. And oh, I do multiple backups with different online services.

I’m still waiting for GDrive to arrive, if it ever will. For now I’ve created a new Mozy account that I’m using to backup the girl’s data so she can grab them.

Have you ever tried to delete a folder containing many files from your web hosting account using an FTP client? It seems to take forever, right? Here’s how you could make it faster.

But first, why is it so slow — even though you have this super duper broadband Internet connection?

Sure, faster Internet connection never hurts, but the main issue here is the number of files you’re deleting. Your FTP software sends the necessary command that tells your FTP server to delete a file — for EACH of the files, and then wait for acknowledgment that the file has been deleted (or not), before moving on to the next file.

Granted, all this hand-shaking takes place in the split of a second. But if you’re deleting a folder containing 100, 500, or even 1000 or more files, those seconds quickly add up!

So how can you make it faster?

These days nearly all web hosting companies have some sort of web-based control panel (eg cPanel, Plesk, Helm, DirectAdmin, etc) for their clients to manage their account online. If your hosting account comes with cPanel, here is how to quickly delete a folder, no matter how many files may be contained in it, using cPanel’s File Manager:

First, login to your cPanel and click on File Manager. This should open a new browser window, so if you click on it and nothing happens, be sure to check your pop-up blocker.

From File Manager, you will see a number of files and directories (folders) listed. To open a particular folder, click on the ICON to the left of the folder (not the folder’s name!).

After navigating to the particular folder you want to delete, click on the Folder’s name. This will present a set of options to the upper-right corner of your screen, one of which is the option to delete the folder.

One cool thing about cPanel is … just like with your desktop computer, deleting a file / folder does not immediately erase it from your system. Rather it keeps it in a Trash can, from where you can restore it, in case you change your mind later.

If you have a different control panel other than cPanel, the process may not be that different. Read your control panel’s manual for the specific instructions.

And if you’ve got a question about managing your hosting account, don’t hesitate to contact me: I’m always here to help. Leave a comment below, shoot me an e-mail, call, text, IM or leave a voicemail, or or head over to the Chat Room for a live discussion.