Thus Spaketh Idd Salim

Bye 2010. Thanks for everything.

I will keep this short and simple. Some people, as always, will get annoyed. Some people will feel that IddSalim is attacking them (the blog, not the person). Some people will say, ‘Go Salim! Tell dem! Say what we would love to say but are too scared to say’.

2010 has been a testing year. I made a few friends and enemies (due to misunderstanding) and met some brilliant and inspiring people. I will dedicate this post to the people and organizations that have shaped my Life in 2010.

1 – Safaricom

After I blogged about ‘Hacking Mpesa for Fun and Profit’ I attracted bad blood from Mpesa Department and a barrage of nice and not-so-nice emails and reactions from Safaricom and Vodafone. The blog was about how to Export the Mpesa SSL client certificates from IE to Mozilla and Opera.

An Innocent article that should have earned me some Bonga Points. But NOOOO!! Ohh No! This was seen as a direct ATTACK to Mpesa and Vodafone over-reacted. Our Mpesa PayBill contract was revoked out of fear that I know so much about Mpesa and could hack it. (My God!).

There were questions that were raised that I wish to answer, before end of 2010. Q: (How did Salim gain access to Safaricom Lan. How did he do a vulnerability Assessment on Mpesa. Why does he hate .NET apps that much?) A: (I do not have any priviledged access to Saf. Just the kawaida bambanet access. What I discovered about Mpesa is as open to any hacker worth his salt as it was to me. As an act of Good faith, I can share all I know and my Security Analysis of the Mpesa System. The information I had/have is for the pre-november-update Mpesa system. If All the issues have been fixed now, then there is nothing to fear.).

2 – Google

After my Interview with Google, I was enlightened. I was humbled. I was taught to never ignore even the most minute details in IT. Finally, I understand true inheritance and polymorphism. I finally understand and can write my own optimization and logic algorithms. Finally, I was forced to learn Python. Real learning. From Scratch. To Understand the language. Not just to know how to solve problem X. Thank you Google for the challenge. Talk to you soon.

3 – Buju, Too, Vera and Shazie

It finally got to my code cranium. All code without scrilla makes Salim an un-focused coder. That is All I will say.

4 – Partnerships and Relationships

Biggest lessons fall in this category. There are people who will stick with you no matter what. There are those that will RUN away at the first sight of trouble. There are those who are there to USE you to gratify their egos. There are those who are there to PROFIT from your efforts. There are those who will STEAL from you, without a moment’s hesitation. There are those who will KEEP AWAY from you as soon as they start ‘doing well’.There are those that will smile at you then stab you wearing the proverbial VELVET glove.

I have met all these people.

5 – This blog

One year old now and I have met, befriended and equally and annoyed more people than the last 8 years of my life. I had to pull down extremist blog posts (#mashogaHatuwapendi) and some posts got me into trouble due to misunderstandings #SafaricomGotmeWrong. But all that is water under the Athi Bridge.

We will do alot of business together next year. Cant wait to forge long-lasting data relationships once 2011 starts.

Wazi.

Back to code.

My 5 year old daughter, Nuria, came to my coderoom, on the morning of Jan 1, as I was debugging the jQuery bits of the Hot96 Fm Website that Mbugua decided I should do personally. She said, ‘Happy New Year Daddy!’…. Hmmn, I look at her suggestive smile deciphered the stenography on it.

I remembered, ‘Ohh, it is Baby Shazma’s 1st Birthday!!’.  Shazma has now made 1 year and even though she has Flu, it has not stopped her from walking with support and saying ‘Baba’, ‘Mama’, ‘Java’ and ocassionally, ‘Gog’ when the Dogs outside Bark. Nuria wanted a big cake bought ‘for the baby’.

So I asked myself, ‘Salim. New year. Same stuff?’. Nooot! And I came up with a few resolutions. The resolutions are nothing as drastic as ‘I will start using IE’ or ‘I will code in VB’. They are now as sacrilegious as ‘I will start Support Man Urinals’ or ‘I will Insult a server by Installing Windows on it.’. No! They are well calculated steps and decisions based on advice and lectures from well-wishers that I am sure will make me a better Coder, Daddy, Gunner, Haxor, Business man and person.

• Do What PO told me. Stop Selling technology. Sell Solutions. Adapt the ‘you tell me what you want and i will build it’ approach. Ditch the ‘We have these solution that you might need’ approach.
• Do What PO told me 2. Wake up every morning hungry for more! Don’t celebrate Jana’s success today. That is the past. Break new grounds every day. Day! Not Week.
• Do What PO told me 3. Stop learning! I already know enough to develop any web/desktop/mobile solution. learning and meeting investors kills my time. Focus on the solutions and fine-tune them. Make them user friendly.
• Do What PO told me 4. Stop working from home! Kids, TV, Pool, Neighbours. Too much distractions. Until my Kitisuru home is complete, I will go work from office everyday. wake up daily at 4am and sleep not ater than 12am.

• Do What Daniels told me 1. Business Acumen. I am good in technical stuff, but I sometimes leave clients more confused when I throw some terms like MiTMA or NMAP in an explanation. I need to find a business writer for alot of my paperwork.

• Do What Rashid told me 1. Salat! I missed alot of prayers last year and even my Fasting was flawed. I need to become more religious this time round. Allah’s blessings come to those who seek them.
• Take my pool professional. Will actively participate on all pool tournaments in East Africa. Will enable me travel more and also meet new people on a social setup.
• Do what Jude/Rashid Told me. Get married. make everything official.
• Do what Kelly Told me. My hacking skills are good and natural. We need to setup an organization to legally and ethically offer serious security consultancy to willing banks, corporates, ISPs and individuals.

That’s  all folks.