###Prelude

I was working late *again* the other day, and I got hit by a very powerful life lesson:

####Sometimes, you need to *RESTART*

You need to step back and look at the problem from a different angle.
Sometimes, it just isn't really your fault at all.
Sometimes, there's nothing you can do about the problem, and that's okay.

Actually, before I get really deep and philosophical, I should tell the actual story, yeah?

###The Beginning

So, over the past few days, I've been working on the company's email newsletter. Let me first mention to everyone, that building email templates are a real pain in the backside.

Apparently, email clients are so backwards that they do not support anything made *after* the 19th century! I might be exaggerating a fair bit, but it certainly seems that way.

First off, you can't build any layouts without using tables. Tables! To give you a bit of context, I started web development about 2 years ago. *At that time*, using tables for layouts was already something only people out of touch with reality or maintaining legacy systems did.

Now, in the present day, I'm being told that I have to use tables for layouts?! Crazy!

Interesting as this little diversion is, it's not the main thrust of my story. Long story short, I "discover" Inky from Foundation. A framework that makes it a lot easier (and saner) to write email templates. So I start using that, and in a matter of minutes, I already coding up an awesome looking template. I show it to my boss and he has a *few* corrections to make (He's a serious stickler for design. The "I will notice if you use  two spaces instead  of one" type (bet you didn't notice all those extra spaces in the sentence, right? *He* would.)) and I note them down and decide to get them done when I get back from my outing. So, I shut down and pack up the Titan-II and proceed to explore the Lagos metropolis for a few hours.

Upon my triumphant return to the office, (I finally conquered my fear of the half completed pedestrian bridges on Lekki-Epe Expressway)  I turned on my computer to implement a few of the changes before going to bed. When she wakes up, (she's quite the heavy sleeper nowadays) I run ```$npm start``` to get my development server up and running and out of nowhere I seeing so many red lines. Now, remember I just started using this framework yesterday, I have almost no idea how to start debugging. I proceed to search on all the forums I can find for someone with a similar problem. I find many and begin plugging away at my keyboard, trying solutions I only half understand, hoping that one of them will work and save me the stress of starting again.

Nope, Nope and.... wait I think...Nope.

None of them work. So, I'm now trying to remember if the thing ever worked at all or if I imagined using the framework. In this moment of confusion, I remember these golden words I once read on StackOverflow:

*Sometimes, the easiest solution is to restart.*

I tried that and *voila*, like magic, my email templates were working again.

So, back to the beginning (or is it conclusion?):

###The Conclusion.

Just restart, bruv' (or sis'). Sometimes, the problem isn't anything you can fix by hitting the keyboard. Sometimes, those electrons just need to be reset.

This applies to life too. Sometimes, you just need to take a step back and reset the situation.

This is the journal of a Nigerian software developer. I am chronicling my journey, so that when I become the "Linus Torvald of Africa" writing my biography will be easier.

return "Up NEPA";

Sometimes, just RESTART

Today, I became a man. No, I didn't lose my virginity or battle a wild tiger, it was something even grander than that. Today, my servers crashed. Multiple times. But, to tell this story properly, I must start from the beginning.

### The Prelude

I've recently gotten a job as a web developer for a new age media outfit in Lagos. At first, I thought it was going to be a real easy gig, I mean, I was being offered money to maintain a regular old WordPress site, which I was sure I could do in my sleep. My prospective employer, over the phone is talking to me about how challenging it'll be and I'm like _“Pfft...oga relax, I got this.”_.

I arrive at my new workplace, and one after the other, all my expectations of mediocrity are shattered. 
First, they have an incredibly cool office. One of the nicest I've seen (and that, is saying something). They've got really cool portraits around the office and there's a lounge chair for me to lie on while debugging, just like home.

My boss is a Yale alumni. Worked as an executive for one of the big oil guys for a while too. Then, for my direct supervisor, I get this really smooth dude (don't tell him I called him that, he's a father already) who worked at IBM for 11 years and now consults for the government. My colleagues include people who've worked at big publications like Business Day, artists whose _“cover bottle”_ masterpieces I heard about while I was in secondary school, First Class alumni from a University I couldn't get into, amongst others.   
So, I'm just there feeling like a small fish in a big pond.

My first few days on the job turn out to be fun. I don't even have to do any generic WP “Edit some text here” stuff for a while, instead, I'm building APIs in Lumen and consuming them to build voting platforms for a comedy contest. I'm also creating a local file server and generally just enjoying _linuxing_ around the whole place.

Then, on one faithful day, I go to bed, content and looking forward to having another good day at the office only for me to wake up to disaster.

### The Immediate Past

My precious system is down. Over the past few weeks, myself and the website of my work place had really began to get cozy. I was getting to know her, she was sure she liked me and our initmacy was progressing at a good pace.

I wake up to a flurry of messages on the work group chat, and I'm wondering what these people are doing awake at such an ungodly hour (for God's sake, it's 6:30AM!). I read through the messages, trying to find the cause of the fuss. I scroll past messages like _“It seems to be down”_ and _“I haven't been able to access it”_, sure that our rival sites must be having problems again. I then see a screenshot with an _“Error in Database Connection”_, with the URL unmistakably showing my website. I nearly burst into tears. Questions like _“But how?!”_ and _“Why na?!”_ flashing through my mind. With very little time to lose, I spring into action, not even bothering to take a bath or dress properly, I head straight for the office in my SpongeBob shorts (What? He's an inspiration, never gives up, no matter what!) ignoring the disbelieving looks I'm getting from everyone.

As soon as I arrive at the office, I boot up my trusty Titan-II and immediately SSH into the remote server, upon doing this, I discover something grave: _We've run out of Disk Space_. _“How could this have happened?”_, I wondered. I sprang into action immediately, and thanks, of course to some of the brilliant people on Stack Overflow, I found this snippet to help me find the files that took up the most space on our server. Using my trusty ```$ rm -F```, I deleted the offending files and restarted the server.

Hooray! The site was back up. I strutted back home (I don't live too far away from work) with all the swagger and confidence of a man who had just decluttered his hard drive. I arrived home and began explaining to my roommate just how smart I was to have fixed the problem so quickly. I was not even halfway done with listing out my numerous accomplishments till date (as a precursor to telling him the specifics of today) when my phone begins to buzz again.

It's from the work group chat, I'm sure they want to congratulate me on a job well done. I open the messages and it's just the opposite,the _“Load More News”_ feature isn't working. With a growing apprehension in my belly, I dismiss the complaint, thinking his browser might have the content _cached_. Three seconds after deceiving myself, my phone rings — it's my boss (the IBM one, so I can't pull the “it's caching” scam like I would with anyone else) and he says _“the site is down is down”_ and I begin to trudge again to the office, wondering what could have happened.

I get there and try to use *bash*'s autocomplete feature and I get a "no more space on device" and I'm confused. I eventually find out that our error log has swelled to 11 GB! 

Eleven! At this point, I'm almost panicking. Have we been hacked? I delete the log again and try to access the WP Dashboard and find that it's got a 302 — Too Many Redirects. Aha! Now we're getting somewhere! I inspect the logs, which I have to delete again, and find that there's a problem with the SSL we installed yesterday.

Actually, at this point, I'm a little confused because *I* didn't install any SSL, so, what happened?

Turns out I went to bed a little too early, so they started doing it without me.

 At this point, my supervisor has arrived at the office and at least now it's not only me trying to figure out how quickly a 40GB HDD can be filled up by text files of less than a kilobyte each.

So, we call the consultant who's helping us out with some other stuff and we begin piecing together bits and pieces of the solution.

Over the next 10 hours, (using my incredible flair for *bash*ing) we continously debugged, implemented, thought we were done, breathed a sigh of relief, discovered that we weren't done, had anxiety again, rinse and repeat.

In the end, it was a day of plenty (plenty) of highs and lows, excitement and code but, thankfully, it's finally over and I can return to working on my file server (which is driving me nuts with a permissions problem, by the way).


My First Ever Crash

I think "Firsts" are always significant.

We always remember them and they go on to define the events and activities that follow. 

For example, I don't remember the 857th line of code I wrote but I'll always remember the first! 

It was an unbound call to a  type 2(value accepting, non returning) polymorphic...perhaps I should use a more normal example?

Well, I bet you can't remember your 12th kiss (if you've even got that many), but I'm sure you can remember your first.

Most likely sloppy and awkward and unmemorable, but you remember it because "Firsts" are powerful.

So, our "firsts" must be powerful, impressive, statement making... or well, so I heard anyway (This is mostly Robert Greene's influence. 48 Laws of Power, 'nuff said).

So, here's my first entry into my journal.

It's about NEPA(or PHCN or BEDC or even ECN sef, depending on who you ask).

To a freelance programmer like me, or even any other small scale business guy, NEPA is the ultimate arbiter. Supremely powerful and you can't ever "do them anything".

There are so many times I've had what is probably the best idea ever and I'm all pumped to dive into code and implement it, but, just as I reach for my power button to turn on my computer, "Pow!" They've "taken light". Again.

That's the ultimate morale killer. Nothing zaps my enthusiasm like that sound of electricity leaving my life and taking with it my hopes and dreams.

Anyway, I pull myself together and valiant turn on my laptop whose battery lasts for 3 hours normally, thinking, "no how, no how, they'll bring it before my battery dies", especially since I managed to squeeze out another 30 minutes from my battery by reducing my screen brightness and CPU usage.

They'll eventually bring the light 13 hours later, at which point my battery will have died along with my enthusiasm.


Just another day in the life of this Nigerian Programmer.

return "Up NEPA";

Sometimes, just RESTART

My First Ever Crash

Up NEPA!