the rasx() context

The kinté story so far:

• Maureen Amaka Azuike: Varsity Life
• E. A. Ameh: My Magic Country
• A.N. Akwanya: Lonely Hearts
• Akatu Ajonye: The President’s visit
• Gbola Adiamoh: The Lords
• David Aondona Angya: Broken Marriages

Recent W2-labor-camp events have inspired me to take careful notes for the TFS ‘game’—right about now, in spite of being described by management as one who writes “elegant” code, I’m feeling like a loser:

• The ‘secret’ of looking “good” in TFS is to have a high Work Item velocity—this means an impressive number of items open and close under your TFS credentials.
• Do not work under a ‘large’ Work Item (a veritable silo of several tasks). Break the Work Item into several smaller ones. Failing to do this can be turned against you by the blame seeking and gratuitously criticizing. Do not overlook your generosity when you add, say, a generic base class (or any other generic “helper” code) as preparation for completing a task—record such preparation as a TFS Work Item. You cannot trust management to remember such generosity—especially when they are cracking under pressure from their bosses.
• Do not mark any Work Item (like a Bug) as “Resolved,” “Closed”—or any state of finality/abandonment when this is actually not the case—especially when you are not the original author of the Work Item. Do not do this for any “good” reason (like trying to break a large item into several small ones) because this de facto falsification can be turned against you by the conscious/subconscious accusations of a well-meaning manager. Assign the task to someone else before you resort to this.
• The comments that you enter at Check-in should also be listed under the “Fix” tab for bugs. This is meant to communicate the amount of effort involved in fixing the Bug. In general, error on the side of writing too much for a Work Item.
• Talk to management offline every week about the quality of your performance as an often fictional character in TFS. This weekly frequency is based on agile development. Avoid being surprised by their comments.

news from kintespace.com

::: 2/26/2010

Contents:

• ::: Maureen Amaka Azuike: Varsity Life
• ::: Ezrah Aharone: Political Burglary in the Union
• ::: Johann Christoph Arnold: Fighting Childhood Obesity

::: Maureen Amaka Azuike: Varsity Life

::: ::: http://kintespace.com/p_azuike0.html

This, the sixth selection from Dr. Jerry Agada’s labor of love, 500 Nigerian Poets. This Aboki Publishers volume, shipping from 43 New Bridge (Otukpo) Road in Makurdi, Benue State, sings with diversity. It is a rich tapestry of creative vision.

Dr. Maureen Amaka Azuike is a senior lecturer in the Department of English, University of Jos. She is the author of the novel Campus Blues and the poetry collection Tides and Time.

::: Ezrah Aharone: Political Burglary in the Union

::: ::: http://kintespace.com/kp_aharone11.html

America was not only born with foreign debts from war-costs of its revolution, but it has bled annual debts in all but two years since its founding. Of the $3.8 trillion in Obama’s proposed 2011 federal budget, $738 billion is for defense and over $1 trillion will be borrowed from foreign creditors. Now with double-digit unemployment and a $12 trillion national debt, at least 45 cents of every US dollar is owed to governments like Kuwait and China.

::: Johann Christoph Arnold: Fighting Childhood Obesity

::: ::: http://kintespace.com/kp_johanna7.html

With more than a third of our children now overweight and many already diabetic, Americans of all political colors should commend the First Lady for her recently-announced campaign against childhood obesity. But taking on such an enormous problem is going to require a lot more than praise. And it will require more than heart-healthy choices, limited TV, and “opportunities for exercise”—buzzwords that public health experts have been tossing around for years with no apparent effect.

Don’t get it twisted: when I say that Steve Harvey is intellectually beneath me understand that I consider Son House (who is far, far older and way, way more “country” and “real” than Steve Harvey) my elder consultant. So when I take on the exercise of answering any questions related to Steve Harvey, understand that I do this with open, explicit contempt and well-placed, seasoned arrogance—without regard to how much money and fame this rube has accumulated. Steve Harvey is funny—but not that funny…

Q: What are your short-term goals?

This is just the kind of job-interview question that all competent women should be asking. My short term goals include restoring my depleted liquid cash savings (which was decimated while I was unemployed for over five months last year), building a Roth IRA next to my traditional IRA (which implies that I currently cannot afford to pay the taxes on converting the existing traditional IRA), contributing more funds to my daughter’s Fidelity 529 (which implies I have a daughter), securing conservatorship over my mother’s estate (which implies I’ve spent thousands in lawyer’s fees) and then there’s the “artsy” and “spiritual” short-term goals that a woman who listens to Steve Harvey probably does not care about.

Q: What are your long-term goals?

My long-term goals include my children—and my children’s children—having a holistic state of affairs vastly superior to mine. This implies that my children will not have any guilt-ridden obligation to contribute any financial or “spiritual” resources to my “estate”—for those of us who actually study black people in the Americas, my goal here is quite revolutionary—a 180 turn away from what is actually going on in the “real” world…

What the previous paragraph implies is that I can no longer afford to absorb another adult’s bullshit into “my world” because it’s considered (by my measurements) filled up with the loving-but-misguided ventures of my past. This means that I should make the effort to become intimate with a competent, healthy woman—this is easier said than done because most competent North American women—especially Black North American women would consider me a drag on their vehicle of progress.

By the way, I know many of you will find even more contempt for me when I write this but… a woman who is on any psychoactive drugs (like antidepressants) are not exactly “healthy” to me—and yes, I understand the expectation of a “modern,” properly-assimilated, competent woman not be on antidepressants is kind of like asking that she be a virgin. So I deserve to be kicked to the curb with my “unrealistic,” old-fashioned, barbarian expectations…

Q: What are your views on relationships?

Relationships are experiences of expanding consciousness—not artifacts of oppression and lack of self-knowledge. What makes me “weird” is that I regard relationships as safe havens away from the consciousness “mainstream” society—this means that I’m involved with a woman who has an inner life rich and powerful enough to sustain itself “outside” of the mainstream. I’m asking for a woman that has overcome a significant amount of oppression—again, I can understand that this expectation is unreasonable—especially when I expect such a metaphysically attractive woman to be attracted to me.

Q: What do you think about me?

When I am attracted to you, I think about you all of the time. When I meet a woman as attractive as you, I immediately regard you as a communal extension of my consciousness. I will immediately begin to exhibit behaviors that attempt to reinforce the bond between us. The bond between us is primarily metaphysical so this means that I’m not talking like a psychopathic rapist. What I am saying in essential terms is that when I make the effort to communicate with you, I expect that you will answer me. This is the call and response. By the way, I am mature enough to understand the following cartoon concepts:

• You are not to be an exact copy of me. You are not a sex robot programmed with my interests.
• When you are unable to answer me it is not because you could have answered me but “chose” not to—this is largely not the case by my careful measurements.
• When you are in such a soul-mate-like exchange with another person, I honestly leave you to that exchange without any malice. Any doubt in my sincerity makes me even happier to leave you to “your world” of apparent completeness.

In the context of female oppression, it is actually very difficult for most of the women (I have had access to) to seriously accept that someone (outside the pathetic realm of pornography) is actually interested in them as a thinker or a “spiritual” person. On the other hand, many women have flown high above me who fully accept their engaging and rich intellectual/spiritual self—but most of us have to pay a fee to attend their quasi-religious seminar or buy their work hanging in a gallery. Fly on baby girl…

Q: What do you feel about me?

In terms of human development, feelings come before thinking. So what you are asking here includes the question, ‘Would you have played with me when we were children?’ A yes answer to this question should tell quite a bit how I feel about you. But this implies that you have some understanding of my childhood—especially my childhood relationship with my mother.

When I was younger, I assumed that most of the women (I have had access to) would be very pleased with the quality of the relationship between me and my mother. My mother was not my servant. My mother is held by me as a complete character with much perfection and many faults—this childhood-based need for completeness is actually found more non-comforting—even threatening—to most of the women (I have had access to). Many of my sisters are deeply concerned about “exposure”—and this begins with the hair on their head. Most women without regard to skin color play with an unverified concept of themselves that stands in for who they ‘really’ are—I’m very sure males do this too but this is not my concern (which makes me apolitical and non-obsequious). The main goal of a player is to play around with this unverified concept as well. The main goal of a pimp is to make money off of that play.

I’m not a player. This sounds very, very arrogant (and, on the surface, stupid) I know but I’ll write it down anyway: the first “thing” a woman gets when she gets with me is her self—you don’t like yourself then you will not like me. Statistically speaking—especially in the Black “community”—it is “better” to be a player—for the illusion of human contact (and some of you sisters have very, very sexy illusion—too bad for me but I need to save my money).

For a more Steve-Harvey, pop-cultural view of this situation, I recommend the 2008 documentary film Single.

Great advice at work from my friendly neighborhood software architect, led me to use Bing Cashback last holiday season, during my purchase of a new monitor (a Samsung Touch Of Color T240HD 24-Inch LCD HDTV Monitor). After going through Tiger Direct, this is what my screen looked like:

After still liking my purchase after 90 days (thus keeping the monitor), this is what my screen looked like:

Now some flippant remarks:

• I made the silly (but funny) mistake of searching for products with Bing on my Ubuntu Linux desktop. You get the best discounts searching on Windows.
• Having a PayPal account helps to get the cash back (no cuts are taken by PayPal on your payment).
• The T240HD has some of the functionality of an old KVM as you can use the video inputs for several sources and use the remote control to switch among the sources.
• My co-worker software architect also schooled me on HD TV antennas, which this Samsung can easily use—me watching PBS again?