23:54 
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21:25
Just Another Tuesday.......
» My part of the world....... Yes blogger's block continues to bite, even though; I shall make an attempt to half ass it through this post.....
There are some words that men loathe to hear, the worst combination being; " were is this thing going?" This is of course in reference to the situation you have going with a lady and not the sci-fi themed roller coaster ride you thought you would take her on that she really isn't enjoying. You see I can't speak for all men but there is this wise saying; "men get with women thinking they shall never change, women get with men thinking they shall change."
You see most men love a certain status quo. If we get to have sex with you on Saturday nights after the club and also get some midweek head and all we have to do is call you once in a while and take you out for a meal and to the club; we are good with that. We are in no rush to spoil a good thing, of course you may get with the adventerous dude who may decide on asking if a friend could join in (male or female). But for the most part it's all good. On the other hand though, many women see this is a start and of course want to build towards more. When of course she sees the dude isn't going in this same direction is when problems start.
After lots of pondering, thinking, contemplating on her part; that is when you get the call. "We need to talk," when a woman tell you that, know one thing; you are not going to be the one talking. Best case scenario learn to put on an expression that makes it look like you are listening; also if you are smart make sure your tv is in the periphery and set it to subtitles. You can look pensive and catch up with news at the same time because it's going to be a long long talk.
What I have learnt is that men in general tend to compartmentalize. Out of sight out of mind for the most part, when the girl is away; most men don't sit around pondering the relationship for hours on end unless there is immense drama and anguish involve. Women on the other hand irregardless of the status tend to analyse, discuss and think about what is going on. So it is much to a man's shock when he is asked to "talk" and given a full status report of the relationship when he thought all that was going on was a bit of fun.
Of course some relationship guru will say, "that's why you need to communicate!" That when I counter and tell them, "understanding is internal and individual." Meaning people will hear what they want to hear.
Anyway I've realized I'm rambing for no good reason, I shall let you all figure out your relationships for yourselves; that's my own satirical take on matters. I have to get back to living out Dilbert's adventures in real life.
Oh by the way to Man U fans, sorry about the torrid weekend.......
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20:16 Checking in, and trying out Twitter
» Marian's Blog Wow. I hope everyone's well! So much is going on, folks. (I don't have to tell you that.) Plenty to write about and just as much to do. I can't believe how TINY Typepad's interface is becoming. I don't know...
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14:02
Tangawizilicious
» Kikuyumoja's realm 
What’s better than a Netbook and a bottle of Stoney Tangawizi?
2 Netbooks and a bottle of Tangawizi.
Life is good to me these days as I not only managed to buy these two netbooks 2nd hand for a very good price, but also because there are people like my good friend Harry who sent me this bottle of Stoney Tangawizi and a bag full of Biltong (which isn’t pictured here as I’d finished it within 24h…ahem… :-). Asante sana, Harry!
The Asus eee PC 1000HGo pictured on the right is an upgrade to the eee PC 901 on the left which comes with:
- a 10″ display instead of 8,9″
- the same (!) battery rated at 7.3V (some 1000H have a 7.4V battery)
- WLAN b/g instead of b/g/n
- UMTS 3G modem (hence the missing n-draft on the WLAN)
- a better keyboard (I’ve used aluminium foil underneath both keyboards to cushion the pressure point). keyboard is n#1 reason for this change.
- 1,45kg instead of 1,1kg (same 200gr power supply though)
- 160GB Seagate SATA HDD instead of the combined 4+8 = 12GB relatively slow (MLC) SSD on the 901
The rest is pretty much the same, even the pcb layout is quite similar. Only thing that bugs me about the 1000HGO is that it has a blue-ish screen. The settings for the WinXP Intel gfx driver do not provide too much flexibility and I guess it’s just a bad display. Other 1000H owner also reported this issue. The screen on the 901 ain’t blue and far from perfect, but it’s much better and crispier. There also IS a difference between the 8,9″ and 10″ screen size - the 10″ being easier to the eyes. That weight difference isn’t much of a problem to me because I carry it in my messenger bag anyways but it would be if you are a woman and need a small netbook to carry in your handbag.
So…in spite of the display issue, the 1000HGO is just so much better to handle. And with the internal 3G modem (SIM card holder is underneath the battery) it’s really just plug & play - either on WinXP or Linux. Now that’s really great!
I am currently using a dedicated 02/Fonic SIM card (which is 2,50€ for unlimited traffic /d) for when I am on the road and network coverage could be a bit better on that one. I am in direct optical line of sight to our local base station and have since been wondering why reception is only around 40%. So I opened it up and realized that it only has one antenna connected to it (which is in fact located above the display, next to the WLAN antenna).
I already ordered a cheap internal WLAN antenna which I am planing to connect to the AUX ULF connector next to the already existing MAIN connector (as pictured, unplugged). Am quite curious if this improves reception on 3G.
Being able to surf from just about anywhere (where there is no WIFI/WLAN but only 3G - like @ GTZ ecosan office in Eschborn) is just AWWWW……very very connvenient. Sure, you could use the 3G modem on your phone but this way it’s much easier. Only advantage of the phone is that you can place a phone next to a window and hook it up via Bluetooth. So if you are in areas with poor 3G / UMTS coverage and have a 3G-capable phone, just try it this way. The internal 3G modem is great but it isn’t reason enough to spend 100,- EUR (!) extra on a 1000HGO if instead you could also go for a 1000H. I got mine for the same price though, so I happily agreed on giving up support for the n-draft WLAN and get a 3G modem instead.
Oh, look - it’s a fingerprint inside the casing! :-)
The aluminium foil mod underneath the keyboard (here on the 901). Highly recommended, also because the CPU doesnt “transpire” through the keyboard but only dissipates the heat. I’d even recommend this mod to Toshiba owners.
The 901 btw “walked away” to another member of the extended family - a development that beautifully justifies the purchase of the 1000HGO. :-)
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13:27
KQ protests allocation of Embakasi airport
» Rants, Raves & Reviews KQ protests the corruption & ineptness of KAA (& muhoho-ho-ho) in the matter of the allocation of the Embakasi airport to OnejetOne.
I highlighted the corruption & ineptness of the KAA earlier.
Naikuni of KQ told NTV that the 'expansion' at the airport is 4 years behind schedule. KQ's aircraft are parked all over since JKIA's parking aprons are not ready for use.
Poor KQ. They have been trying to get KAA to expand JKIA since 2002 when they expected a huge jump in passenger numbers!
According to NTV, KQ spends almost KShs 100,000,000 a month at the Panari Hotel - the only hotel that by-passes the traffic prone Uhuru Highway - to accommodate passengers whose flights have been cancelled or delayed.
BTW... I have a gut feeling that muhoho-ho-ho (& family/cronies) either took a cash bribe or an ownership/profit stake from the developers of the hotel-retail complex being developed at JKIA. -
Sameer Africa goofs!
» Rants, Raves & Reviews I was flipping thru the 2008 Annual Report for Sameer Africa...
The notice on pg 6 says the AGM will be held on Friday 3rd April 2009 at 11am.
The proxy form says the AGM will be held on 2nd April 2009 at 11am.
They produce one Annual Report a year... they have one AGM... can't they get the date right?
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11:38
How Stella Failed To Get Her Groove Back…
» Kenyanentrepreneur.com Oh Stella. Dear, dear Stella. What were you thinking when you left Chicago to join the Nairobbery Stock Exchange? I know Chicago has one of the highest crime rates in America, but girl please — gangs in Chicago are not like gangs in Nairobi. In Chicago, they wear Fubu, they speak Ebonics and they listen [...]
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10:30
Broadband In Kenya: Small Businesses, Big Pipes
» Afromusing **free flow thoughts on Broadband in general and the advent of SEACOM cable in Kenya**
CC licensed photo by Leo Reynolds on Flickr
The 3 SAT3 countries of South Africa, Egypt and Senegal could be said to have fibre optic connections to the rest of the world or what others may call ‘true broadband’, the rest of the countries in Africa have to contend with VSAT connections or have their internet traffic routed through the above named SAT3 countries.
In the case of Kenya, fibre has been laid by companies such as Kenya Data Networks for communication within the country. The problem has been connecting Kenya to the rest of the world. That is where the bottleneck has been. The government of Kenya has been laying cable in many parts of the country, so is just a matter of time before high speed internet access is made available to urban areas and even smaller towns.
Do note the VSAT connections can have broadband-like speeds, so what we should look at is the connection costs and amount of bandwidth available.
For example, an E1 line (equivalent to the American T1) of 2 Mbps to ISPs costs 4000 USD in Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, 7000 USD in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, 32,000 USD in Cameroon, 25,000 USD in SA.In residential access Telkom Orange charges about 5990 Ksh (approx. 75 dollars) for home access line of 256 kpbs downloads and 128 kpbs uploads per month. Many people use the Huawei wireless modems E220, E160 particularly in Nairobi with the 3G connections, utilizing a pay-as-you-go plan. Kenyan readers, how much do you pay for your internet access? what kind of speed do you get? Do you have a preferred service provider?
By and large, broadband access is very expensive. There are also other projects like TEAMS and EASSY (Quasi-Govt. consortium: Telkom Kenya/Orange is a member, as is Safaricom and Econet) that plan to connect parts of Africa to the rest of the world by Fibre optic Cable. So far SEACOM has arrived first and the prospect of having more competition could result in the cost coming down. Though that may indeed take time. For now, companies herald the arrival of SEACOM’s fibre optic line because it would mean an increase in productivity for businesses that depend on the internet. For example, there is a young businessman in Nairobi with an IT outsourcing company, with his relatively decent connection, he still has to wait for more than 5 minutes to download a 26MB file. In a few months with the SEACOM cable reaching Nairobi, the same download could take less than a minute and he can move on to other tasks. He has employees who often have to upload files via ftp to servers in the US. With the faster speeds it will make their jobs that much easier. He is not even too concerned about the cost right now, the overarching benefit is well…broadband.
CC licensed photo by Wesley Fryer on flickr
There are other factors such as open access, latency, and reliability, but talking about that would be tantamount to counting chicks before they hatch no?
As always, feel free to chime in with your thoughts in the comments or via twitter if you prefer to be pithy.
PS: To keep up with the African Telecommunications Union conference, Becky Wanjiku is live blogging from Port Louis, Mauritius.
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10:28
Kenya's Next Top Model
» Kenya Imagine The question that emerged in my mind after watching the initial episodes of the show and observing the feedback was what it meant to be a 'model' Kenyan. Is it fair that we entrust one person to represent the entire community of Kenyans when they find themselves in the international limelight? As Kenyans, are we mandated to act as 'good' ambassadors for our country at all times? If so, by what standards?
Why do we care about Sandra Nyanchoka? Why should we anyway? Is she just following her dream?
What do you think?
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6:48
Safaricom Robbery: Shape Up or Shape Out!
» KA-INVESTOR I almost missed this mail from a reader who is so annoyed by Safaricom's service that he had to say something about it. Many of us may have fallen victim to this injustice but never noticed or blamed someone else. No wonder they make billions as their competitors make more losses.Dear Editor
I am writing this on Wednesday March 11, 2009 at 11:30pm. I am worried because I have had a very strange occurrence which I have never imagined can be happening in this era of IT. In the course of the day I loaded my safaricom number with Kshs. 400 only. I made various calls to my friends, relatives and enemies. I used the same to browse the web for my mails and other information I wanted from the web, which I believe helped me keep in touch with my environment.
However towards the time at which I am writing this mail, I made a call which lasted 3 minutes and 49 seconds, which according to my tariff (Ongea) should have cost me Ksh. 30.54.
However due to abnormal reduction of my credit balance I was forced to call customer care. The first time I called, I was told that there is call log update time lag of 10 minutes. I did wait for the proscribed 10 minutes and called again. This time I was lucky because the log was now complete and I was given a complete audit of how my meager 400 bob was spent.
Believe it or not the aforementioned call of 3:49 long cost me Kshs. 70.62. I am just wondering whether this is a thing that regularly happens at Safaricom. Is this the main contributor towards the billions they are going to post at the end of the year?
As a hustler trying to make ends meet in this economic near melt down era, I have lost confidence in this service provider. The Customer care service executive I talked to promised me that she has forwarded my complain (She never told me to who) and that I shall get my refund within 48 hours. I told her that I hope I shall receive what is justly due to me.
I am perplexed because it took them only 3 minutes and 49 seconds to get Kshs 40.08 from me which was not due to them. Why should it take them a whole 48 hours to refund me the same? How many unsuspecting Kenyans are undergoing this kind of robbery without noticing while imagining that its their wayward sons, daughters, spouses and siblings misusing their handsets?
I do feel that Safaricom should come clear and inform the public of what they are doing to ensure that the public gets quality service at an affordable price. So far they are the most expensive even though I have remained loyal to them.
This incident has been a loud wakeup call and safaricom should be sure that should they not a visible move towards thinking of me (Clients) before the billions and silverware they will bag, then one day not so much in the future they might find themselves in the Panpaper Webuye paper Mills Ltd Situation. It would be a shame on all of us and an example of greedy executives not caring about their clients and investors.
Thank you.
Yours faithfully
E. O. Otipa
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5:59
Zipper heads
» AfriGadget While visiting a rural community in the dry bushlands of Elementata I met some Turkana women who were absolutely captivating
Turkana mama
Turkana woman
Turkana girl
Dancing Turkana woman
Did you notice the creative head dresses? Zippers may have been invented in USA but nobody would have imagined they’d be used for head dresses. I was so awed by the outfits that I forgot to ask where they got all those zippers from - I can’t get rid of the image of all the village men wondering about with gaping flies.
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Kenyaimagine Launches Facebook Fan Page
» Kenya Imagine Exciting news from the desk of the editors at kenyaImagine!
We would like to increase our interaction with our facebook users. We had a facebook group, but it was difficult to remind readers to come back and contribute once they had joined the group. With the new fan page you can keep in touch with any changes, and new discussion through your newsfeed.
We will use the page to highlight recently published articles; to recruit new writers; to find out what you would like to hear from us and to generally interact with all our fans.
If you like what you see at kenyaimagine.com, or if you'd like to get to know about us, please take a minute to become a fan on our facebook page! And let your friends know!
cheers!See you there :)
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5:37
Kutwa Tuesday: Toxic Brokers
» bankelele Toxic Brokers The US has toxic banks, Kenya has toxic stockbrokers
Discount stockbrokers was yesterday placed under statutory management. It has been technically insolvent since new managers were appointed six months ago, and given the cost and extent of their operations it’s unlikely to ever turn round.
Bob Mathews was also re-admitted at a stockbroker after injecting in new capital, but once labeled at a toxic broker no amount of rescue cash is enough to salvage an institution. Nyaga stockbrokers got a lifeline infusion of Kshs. 100 million rescue loan, which was largely paid to other brokers, but it was not enough and the firm went under too. smart investors should read the signs of a collapsing company
Capital Gains market turnaround
The Nairobi stock exchange had its best week in a long time, with a mini run led by Equity Bank up 31%, CMC up 25%, Kengen 22%, EA Cables 20%, National Bank 16%, EA Breweries 15% and Diamond Trust 12%. With no significant financial results, or economic & political news out last week, the rise remains a mystery; Was it in reaction to US markets having their best week, or realization that there was a new finance minister in charge or investors realizing that they had missed on the infrastructure bond (and the next one was not as lucrative), or was it stockbrokers making a last stand?
Insurance Losses
Pan Africa Life a relatively large company with assets of Kshs. 6 billion ($75 million) returned a pre-tax loss for 2008 of Kshs. 175 million down from a profit of 51 million in 2007, which they attribute to the unrealized loses in capital markets. If a large insurance company is in this state, what about the smaller other Kenyan insurance companies? Already standard assurance has gone under and it was not the main company in public transport sector (matatu’s) whos' claims are being blamed for its collapse.
Opportunities & Events
TED Global applications have opened for the 2009 TED Global 2009 conference. Deadline is April 3 for fellowship applications
Tujuane Mixer will be held on March 20. More details at Tujuane site and here’s a re-cap of the last mixer I attended. The event will be facilitated by Nyokabi Njuguna, Founder - Entrepreneurship and Leadership Foundation, and with a special appearance by R&B vocalist and Guitarist Harry Kimani.
Nairobi Wine Festival Get stylish and drunk is how Rafiki Kenya describes the event on Friday and Saturday (20/21 March) -
Zain in Kenya
» bankelele Vuka Verdict:
Zain introduced the Vuka revolutionary flat rate call package of 8 shilling per ($0.10) minute to call all other networks in October 2008. After an initial surge in customers. What do the numbers bear out?
Rough dialing
- Zain gained a million customers 3.08 million (up from 2.1 million)
- Zain lost revenue $162 million (~13 billion) down from $194 million
- Zain lost big money: Net loss was $90 million in 2008 compared to a loss of $21 million in 2006. the ~Kshs. 7.2 billion is perhaps the largest corporate loss in Kenya for a single year
Zain outlook
- The 2009 numbers should be much better as marketing costs of Zain’s Vuka were quite heavy for the last quarter of 2008 and by which time customer numbers were still growing. But with just 5% of the entire Zain group customers, Kenya may be an expensive group to manage in what they consider to be a competitive market with low revenues [Average revenue per user/ARPU was $6 (down from $7)]. Zain claims 18% market share to Safaricom’s 77% and 5% for Orange
- Zain owned 80% of the Kenyan operation, up from 70% in 2007
- If Zain can state the population of Kenya is 38.5 million (up from 37.5 in 2007), is there need for an expensive Government census which will take place later this year?
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