Lost and Found

My previous post was a lament of having been shut out of my loaded yahoo account. I'm glad that the rescue came in a way I couldn't believe.

I have had this hotmail account that I usually ceased to use for emails on account of 2 MB storage being too little. (They have improved the situation a bit now, they give 25 MB).

Recently I was introduced to a cool IM client called meebo.com, where one never needed to install any program for any of the popular IM such as yahoo, msn, aol and icq. I found this quite practical, therefore signed up, pulled my buddies from some IMs including msn. Out of curiosity I tried to sign into my hotmail account. It had been put in mothballs, therefore was re-activated.

Yesterday in desperation I looked into the newly-revived hotmail account, and, dang me if there wasn't a yahoo message sitting in the inbox, carrying a spare password! So that had been my alternate account.

Few lessons from this experience
ONE: don't dump an email address you've had for ages. It may save your noseskin sometime. It did mine.
TWO: registration time question should be answered truthfully, otherwise after year if the answer given was bogus, you ain't going to be resupplied a lost password.
THREE: If you own groups (yahoogroups, googlegroups etc) appoint one or more members to be moderators. It will not be doing justice to Internet communications if group cannot commence with activities just because only one person was holding the keys to run things
FOUR: Review your profiles every now and then: When it's February 29 (once every 4 years) or on your birthday, or, even better, during the long christmas public holidays (once per year). Some routine can also be built into yahoo calendar or google calendar to pop up reminder maybe after every six months.

If you find this post handy, publicise it. No rights reserved.

In a Yahoo! fix

I don't know how it happened, but I'm stuck. My yahoo mail login refuses to acknowledge my login password, claiming it's invalid. I've had the account for as long as 8 years, all without a hassle.

When I try to go for password recovery, the bot nicely leads me through stages: birth date, security word etc. Then there is a choice to make between two alternatives - EITHER receive a new temporary password in alternate email address OR to answer a question as once answered long ago during subscription.

Now here comes a problem: when I choose to receive a new temp password on alternate email I receive none in a number of email addresses that I'm keeping. In the course of 8 years I've also disposed (or lost) a number of email addresses, (lycos.com, hotpop.com, libero.it, hotmail.com, avu.org etc etc) it's likely the alternate email belong ot one of those.

When it comes to answer to simple question "what was your first school?" the true and only answer I give is not accepted. Reason is most likely that I didn't answer truth during subscription.

I'm still trying although I'll miss a wealth of information saved in that account if I never get to recover it. And, er, I have been using that as my yahoo id in all services including geocities, groups and IM. I am an owner/moderator in a number of y!groups. I guess I just have to get it back.

I've obtained another yahoo login from mothballs in a scenario thatI suspect has something to do with loss of my popular login. Years after attempting to create a simple makundi(at)yahoo.com account (unsuccessfully), I received email message from alternate email address requesting me to verify it. I did with several unsuccessful attempts of passwords, sending request for lost pwd recovery of makundi y! ID. This morning, pronto, my most obvious (call it obsolete) password sprung makundi ID without much ado.

Websurfers who crawl this blog, post ideas...

Tanzania Phase Four Government Ten Months on

Our rather new phase 4 Government is some 10 months old now. Since coming to power, there has been a major upheaval of institutions for security and internal affairs. Crime rate which shot staggeringly high at the entry of the phase 4 was dealt with and one could say it's been put under control.

However, the country has experienced one of the worst electrical power crises with outages for hours everyday.

On Sunday 15 oct 06, there was a first major cabinet reshuffle (but without any new appointment), whereby 10 ministers and 8 deputy ministers were moved to different ministries. Methinks this is warning flare to the old guys: deliver or vacate. The ministers who had to be moved around include that of Industries, Trade and Markets (and his Deputy), Minister for Energy and Minerals, Minister for Water, Minister for Natural resources, to name a few.

I'm keen to see what comes out of this move for our country which is still one of the poorest in the world.
--
Q. What's this phase four thing?
A. First- president Julius Nyerere 1964-1990, Second- President Ali Hassan Mwinyi, 1985-1995; Third- President Benjamin Mkapa, 1995-2005; Fourth, President Jakaya Kiwete, 2005-now.

Squatter businesses

During new year day this year, I'd taken some photos at the popular Dar shopping complex referred to as "international" due to proximity of the International School of Tanganyika Upper School. I posted some on this blog (see archive).

The place was intact, business brisk, until 30 September 2006. That was the lapse of 6-month grace period given by Prime Minister for squatter traders to pull down their shacks and relocate in designated alternative trading places.

Now, these "Internatioal" businesses were not mere shacks. They included hardware shops, beauty saloons, green grocers and, especially, bars. Ruffly 500 persons were employed by these businesses, and about that number were "parasites" such as cabbies, shoeshine johnnies, fishmongers and the whole lot of man and women who trekked with various mechandise from ripe fruits to cellphone charger to imitation jewelry to Makonde artcraft.

No-one expected such a thing would ever come to be carried out. Nevertheless when the day came there was nothing like running battles on the streets, instead individuals were busy removing and relocating their valuables and taking apart the buildings.

In the space of 48 hours, about 50 different businesses ceased to exist. Engaging average of 3 persons, that was flushing some 150 breadearners to the street: that is without counting the parasites whose businesses went down under as well.

It was also, needless to say very much to the inconvenience of thousands who live and work in the Msasani Peninsula area. I felt sooo sad about the episode, I was sure there could have been an amicable arrangement--indeed such a proposal was contained in my paper presented in the National Science and Technology Conference held in Dar es Salaam just months before (I'll make links to my papers available here sometime soon). The inspiration for me to write on such a subject was my experience in China whereby in the busy shopping districts there were smallholder providers of services such as catering, but support systems for maintained sanitation and cleanliness such as drain and potable water supply had been installed in those places by the city (it was in Beijing in December 2004).

I am still optimistic something ought to be done. Anyone visiting this place who has some ideas, please punch your comments in...

Dori and Zach Wedding - some photos

http://doriandzach.weddings.com 

Some photos of the event of Sept 22 have been placed on the photo albums link of the wedding website. Here are some of them.