Taught what wrought not

Taught what wrought not

Pertaining to the things that I ought,
Even in the presence of much thought,
The pressures of battles I have fought,
Making me feel quite overwrought.

The creeping fear of losing the plot,
Avoiding things done falling to rot,
Using my wits and wiles is all I got,
To ensure nothing at all goes to pot.

Finding the stream in which to be caught,
To make for a rather better case and lot,
Even if for the work success can’t be bought,
We still strive beyond what we sought.

Trying to forget Remo Secondary School at 75

Skipping around schools

Much as I would have liked to remember, it is also forgettable, and that is why I find myself writing about it two days after the event. I attended three primary schools in Kaduna and Jos, in the north of Nigeria in the early 1970s.

The first primary school, the Army Children’s School in Kaduna I barely remember apart from the fact that the headmistress was Indian, and she would walk through assembly in the morning checking our nails then striking our knuckles with the edge of a ruler if they hadn’t been cut. What a child can do about their nails when it is a parent’s responsibility, I don’t know, but that is how we all learnt to bite our nails.

The uneventful year was soon eclipsed by our move to Jos where I attended the Corona School, Shamrock House, Bukuru, and I do have many memories of my being there having jumped a class straight to class 3 through to class 5. We returned to Kaduna for my last year in primary school at the Sacred Heart Primary School where I was away for 4 months in early 1976 attending common entrance examinations for secondary school admission in the south-west of Nigeria.

Never forget the injustice

Remo Secondary School (RSS), Sagamu won my pupillage in September 1976, in it’s 30^th founder’s year. My 5 years in this school, though eventful and interesting remains somewhat forgettable, for I maintain the minimal ties with the place and the institution apart from memories tragic, sad, and unsettling besides the fact that my set in the last year of the Class of 1981 were unjustly punished collectively for what a few miscreants did because the Parents Teachers Association was too lazy to conduct a proper investigation of the issue.

Beyond that, life in the school whilst having thrills left me with hardly any enduring friendships, I have met a few of my class and school mates, even have social media connections with them, but I have shunned all old student association meetings or involvements, this is a part of my history that will be recorded but not necessarily cherished to any extent.

For the little matter

Yet, because dates hold some sort of significance to me, the 4^th of February 2021 was the 75^th Founders’ Anniversary of RSS as the 1^st co-educational secondary school in West Africa, or so it is reputed. We had the school motto of 'For God and Fatherland', the former stands strong, the latter is constantly under review.

That I have visited the grounds a few times in my dreams as it then means for all my misgivings it did have a significant impact on me, I had the nickname of Pastor for most of my time there. Anyway, I am just journaling a piece of my past, there are more stories to tell, in the 40^th year of my exiting that place.

Do not lose your head, ever

I will deal when I can

Hounded, I was by officialdom with threats that gained much punitive traction that it became somewhat distressing. On these matters, you are advised not to ignore the issue but deal with it immediately. I have learnt that there are matters you cannot begin to negotiate if you have nothing to lay on the table as an incentive or to persuade them to see things from your end.

However, it is important to find someone to confide in on the issue because they might well have the insight and know-how where you are completely blindsided by the turmoil of your situation, unable to see straight or the way out for your good. The opportunity came to share my side of the story and it was listened to without judgement. Much as there was an urgency to address it, my confidante took on the weight and left me with a firm and calm assurance that it will all be dealt with.

The calm after the storm

This morning, we had a result. What a considerable relief, the threats were like an unconscionable land grab in the quest to weaken the resolve. That I stood firm until a good opportunity came is not one of scheming but a decision to be unmoved. It reminds me of when I was undergoing cancer treatment and some creditors were turning the screws. My retort was simple, I am trying to save my life and until that is done, you can sling it except if what you really want to do is kill me.

In the main, most got the message gave me the leeway and the grace to get well and begin to recover. Eventually, we got things sorted out and it was a lot better than jumping out of my 7th-floor apartment window out of despair. It is all settled, the world is a strange and sometimes difficult place, that is enough to know before allowing my life to be any more complicated than it is.

Be still I say to my heart and my mind, it will come right, Akin. Too many times, that has been the truth in my life. Worry will solve nothing, nothing at all.

The CoVID-19 mutations are not the problem

South Africa is doing well

I have just about had it with all this talk about the South African variant or mutation of the Coronavirus, especially in the UK where it seems to be driving the conversation with hysterical and histrionic abandon.

The virus was the same everywhere until its apparently unchecked spread led to mutations and that is what we have seen with variants in the UK, from Mexico, from Brazil, unfortunately for first a region in South Africa before it really caught on.

I was in South Africa for five weeks, on holiday and also to be with my partner who I had not seen for 11 months because of this global pandemic. We were under stringent restrictions with extensive CoVID-19 protocols that are literally absent in the UK.

The things they did

We had to wear masks in public, on entry to any premises we had our temperature taken, we sanitised our hands, social distancing was the rule with CoVID marshals in public places. There was a night curfew, an alcohol ban, beaches were closed, but the public parks were open, we could visit museums and travel a bit.

They brought it under some control that they could ease these restrictions and begin to chart a path to recovery. Sadly, I do not see either the resolution, will, or competence of our government in the UK to reach a point where this virus will be controlled.

South Africa had checks as we came to passport control, our tests were checked, vitals observed and where anyone did not meet the requirements for entry, they were to be whisked off to quarantine hotels for 10 days at their own expense.

To leave South Africa, I had to take a PCR test that needed to be negative, I could not board a plane without it and had to don a mask through the flight. My details and particulars were checked as I traversed Paris, yet, when I arrived in the UK, there was nothing in place, I walked through immigration without any hinderance and was only contacted over 24 hours after my arrival and then 4 days later to consider a CoVID-19 test, just in case I had returned with the South African strain.

We need better hands

This should have been checked at my entry into the UK, but here we are with well over 100,000 deaths because of the lackadaisical and moribund policies of this inept government. The variants and the mutations are not the problem, it is the ability to handle it and manage it whilst carrying the people along with convincing and competent governance that will bring this under control.

Let’s just say it as it is, the South Africans have been competent and efficient that in the midst of a pandemic, they opened for tourist and managed the situation, despite the variation or mutation, life is getting better.

The vaccines will work only to the extent that we remain vigilant, it will not be a talisman to wipe away the errors in managing this pandemic, we hope in time, the principals in this matter will be held accountable and responsible.

Digging for news from much dirt

It really is not news

What passes for news nowadays when I scroll down my newsfeed more than grieves me, there are titbits of information, knowledge and ideas shared but in the main, it is about forgettable event and people seeking notoriety, controversy, conspiracy, and gossip.

Just the headlines alone are off-putting, affairs of inconsequential people laid bare and publicised for no particular benefit, but it appears to sell. I see some that talk about the decline rather than the rise of people in their looks, their worth, or their fortunes. More sinister is the opinion mine of suggestion and supposition with no basis in truth to create feuds and turmoil in the lives of others.

A place for the nasty

If you deign to read any of it, the copy is just the beginning, scroll down to the comments and they are vicious, nasty, and horrible. I have come to accept that there are misery vampires out there who seek lives to suck the joy and happiness out of.

In other ways, it is just projection. What people say about things is probably more a reflection of themselves than of the issue they are commenting on. I still believe in the view of if I have nothing good to say, I will say nothing. However, if there is a contrary opinion is needed, it should be delivered in the nicest way possible, without malice, spite, or prejudice.

Putting my filters to work

Maybe, what I need to do to work on better filtering the kind of news I get, though there isn’t much I can do if random links are delivered as part of the advertising and marketing streams that even the somewhat salubrious sites need to exist.

In other ways, I think, about the following things:

• Is it newsworthy?
• Why is this important?
• Who? And that is many more questions, some you do not voice.
• What is the intention for this piece?
• What is telling or teaching me?
• What is the information shared and how does it help me?
• Is there anything here that can help make me a better person?
• Is this about the human experience of the marketing of misery?
• What good can come from reading this and then sharing it?
• Maybe I have an opinion on it, how can I express it well?
• Are these people just overexposed and in seeking notoriety?
• What is the example here worthy of my attention?
• Can I learn anything useful from reading this?
• Is this factual, truthful, an expose, or just opinion masquerading as such without the expert underpinnings to make such assertions or commentary? These pandemic times make that is a serious question to ask when we consume anything that purports to be news.

The list is neither complete nor exhaustive, but one should avoid clickbait, fantastic headlines that have no bearing on the story. Then one last thing, apparently informational pieces that cannot be placed on one page, requiring you to click through multiple pages weeding through stupid and uninteresting advertisements exploiting your apparent curiosity. I’ll be honest, I do not waste my time on that anymore.

Thought Picnic: Time in motion

The mystery of time

Time is a continuum of sometimes unfathomable multi-dimensional ramifications. Time in its passing and what it archives into the annals of memory, time in its present and the moments we are given to cherish, time in its congruence demanding correctness for our modernity not to descend into chaos, and time in its coming; the future we cannot predict further than a second from hence that we plan for, sometimes anticipate and use expectation and hope to arrive at.

It comes to mind that from the past, 11 years ago, I lost a dear friend, Dick van Galen Last, the passage of time does not make the sense of loss less felt. Beyond the acceptance that he is gone, there are recollections of friendship and things we did together.

Sometimes I wonder if we could indeed turn back time if there is anything we would have done so differently for other outcomes. It is wishful but best left as is, an alternate universe can be anything, the same, worse or better, sticking to what you know is not so much the absence of adventure but a calculated risk erring on the side of safety.

The time is now

In the present, you are occupied with thoughts stretching into the recesses of time in all directions, you might catch yourself daydreaming. Realities cascading on themselves in the mind that you are left in awe at the capacity of the mind to imagine and project.

Out of this are issues of life and maybe death, you never know, but each breath is a blessing of the living and the joy of living. Then you think of the current pandemic that takes essential breath away, there is much suffering to escape from, and this is the time to be free from it.

Correcting for the time

For correctness, I remember an essential piece of information that would have been quite pertinent that I ignored. When I was trying to fix my network yesterday, my NETGEAR Nighthawk X6 R8000 router was stuck in the past, it was not synchronising with the current time, I was reading my birthday the 21^st of December 2020 on its clock. The stock firmware just could not communicate with any time source.

Blog - Technical: A whole weekend networking

Whilst the router appeared to work with this underlying discrepancy on the older hub, on the new hub it might have presented an issue as it was synchronised with a correct and external time source indicating over a month ahead of my router.

Time and time again

There are many systems that will fail to communicate or operate if time is not synchronised and there are slim tolerances for time differences especially when it comes to the Global Positioning System (GPS) which uses satellites. Authentication systems also rely upon synchronised time, the absence of which might suggest a cyberattack, an unauthorised intrusion or a security breach.

Installing the 3^rd-party firmware on my router immediately allowed it to synchronise with a European time source and it might have been the fundamental issue all along, but we had a fully working solution at the end of the day. The future is ahead, each second creeping relentlessly into a place that at once becomes the present and then the past. Further ahead we build for a place to be different, beautiful, and happy, hopefully with someone who makes it all memorable and matter.

Technical: A whole weekend networking

On it since Friday

It is like the dogged determination of a hungry dog that just found a juicy bone, I could not relent until I had found a solution to my unfortunate network problem. I have been with Virgin Media for over 6 years until I was quite persuaded to review the quality of the service and how much I was paying for it, especially that of the package I was offered, I was only using the broadband and not the telephony or television bundle.

After getting a third off my subscription, I was sent a new cable modem, the Virgin Media Super Hub 3 to replace my Virgin Media Super Hub 2AC, it was supposed to be a plug-n-play activity which I left until after work on Friday, it was anything but.

Blog - For the food, I can forget

It should work, I thought

Connecting it up in the basic configuration that I had with the one I was replacing with the wireless configuration switched off, that was the beginning of my problems, my wired connections that came through a switch to just 19 other devices on my network could not reach the Internet. What was baffling was to use a basic analogy, I had arrived at the gate, been seen by security and all I needed was to be waved through, but I was held back.

The Super Hub 3 listed all my devices on its administration page, but it was not letting them onto the Internet, it being the gatekeeper. Could it be a compatibility problem? Quite doubtful as all my kit had only had their firmware updated.

No Internet no help

My NETGEAR Nighthawk X6 R8000 router on its administration page was saying there was no Internet connection, yet, my Amazon Fire Stick 4K was getting on the Internet having obtained by WiFi an IP Address, it was making no sense as my laptops obtaining IP Addresses from the same router could not get online.

There was nothing wrong with my setup, the only variable that had changed was the Super Hub 3. So, I called Virgin Media and they were as helpful as a blacksmith giving a brain surgeon instructions for performing a radical frontal lobotomy. Much as I was convinced that the problem was with the Super Hub 3, I switched it to modem mode with no success.

Reverting to router mode and the wireless service enabled, some devices did connect but it was unstable, my laptops getting nowhere. I then reconnected the old Super Hub 2AC but as the service had been bound to the new hub, I was having no luck.

Firm on the wares

Along the way, I found that the switch TP-Link TL-SG108E was behind on its firmware, so I updated it, though the latest was 3 years old. Still, no progress and Virgin Media from their myopic perspective even after over an hour of communication with a lady considerably more knowledgeable about networks were satisfied if I could connect one device and it went online, the problem was mine. They even wanted me to pay an additional fee for support on a service they changed only 4 days ago. I was exasperated.

Internet searches crept along with snippets and no clear solutions, I needed to piece together these elements with the hope that I might get some headway. Then I realised the stock firmware on my NETGEAR router did not expose all the elements I need to troubleshoot that No Internet screen comprehensively. Now, I was on to a crazy path that could brick my router. I found flashed the router firmware with the latest version of FreshTomato firmware for my model, it first looked dead, but a factory reset gave it a FreshTomato persona and I was ready to play.

It all clicked together

I was given too many levers than I knew to manage, even my knowledge of networks was challenged, but I found enough to manipulate things better. I put the SuperHub 3 back into modem mode disabling the wireless functionality by default attached it to the NETGEAR router where the router now acted like the SuperHub 3.

Things were beginning to make some sense even if things did not seem to work as required. Then a final tweak, the gateway address which used to be the address of the SuperHub in router mode now had to become the address of the FreshTomato configured NETGEAR router and suddenly, all my devices appeared in the list of managed devices by NETGEAR and they were waved through the gate, the SuperHub 3 and onto the Internet. That is the short version of how I deduced the solution.

The WiFi SSIDs had changed, so all my devices were reregistered as well as my wireless printer and I guess we can all go to bed happy. Much as it was a bit inconvenient tethering my work laptop and another to my mobile phone for the day, I guess some things have to be done to get other things fixed.