Songs about Jane, rants about love and marriage. Sort of a time induced sequel to my “Let’s talk about girls, kids and favourite teams” post of May 2006. Social engineering, a recent love interest of mine after pondering the recent Amos Adamu and the slightly older Sarah Palin email hack. So here goes

8] So I’m at the stage of life where my mates are starting to tie the knots one by one or bullshit aside working seriously towards that. And in a couple of cases where both parties work in the same office a party has resigned for the other in order not to fall foul of HR laws. Worse still that party remained jobless after the ceremonies with the income of the union now tied to one source. My opinion: big mistake. Could be really pretty risky especially as in many regards money is the fuel which sustains love. This is backed by test number 12 from “Love, Sex, and Lasting Relationships” by Chip Ingram (adapted from “marriage for moderns” by Henry Bowman". Available for download here).

A couple that is genuinely in love and not infatuated do not feel an almost irresistible drive towards haste. Infatuated couples tend to feel an urge towards getting married. Postponement is intolerable to them and they interpret it as deprivation rather than preparation.

When it comes to marriage I’m pro long courtship. I believe it should be about genuinely time tested and trusted best friends wanting to commit together. All other reasons for commitment are not really healthy. Especially in a society like Nigeria where government social support is nonexistent and insurance is bullocks, it’s best to play into the hand of someone that’ll stand by you if shit should ever hit the fan. Stall the wedding date till the other party can fix up another source of income; what will be will be.

9] After reading an article online about a wedding called off due to astronomical student debts owed by the bride, I’ve come to ever more realize that marriage in reality is like a business deal which makes the best sense if it’s mutual benefiting. No one goes into business with the aim of making looses. Everyone wants to enhance his or her portfolio, which in many regards is expressed in monetary terms. One party coming through packing debts or obligations which become overbearing with time should be a big no no. Both parties should endeavour to review their financial positions and possible outlook before doing the do.

10] Coming down home we as Nigerians would be better off if we learnt to treat marriage like we treat our homes; the Inside clean and the outside dirty is the best balance. Nigerians are selfish like that, we go to great deals to pimp up our homes but don’t care much about our collective surroundings. Likewise if we (hint...ladies) cared more about keeping our relationships alive and less about showing off with big weddings and bragging about our marital status we could actually be better off.

11] As above in tune with keeping your marriage as comfortable as possible keep the conceptions down, in line with your income to maintain an above average standard of living. A family holiday every year should not be a pipe dream or something you just watch in movies. The creator put man on earth to conquer and explore not to spend a life time living from hand to mouth.

12] Finally on a parting note I think I’m now seriously pro natural hair and would go to any lengths to support and convince my girl (girl in this case means one of my own race) to carry such. Nappy headz rule!

Social engineering is when an attacker/hacker uses human interaction (manipulation via social skills) to obtain or compromise information about a person, an organization or its computer systems. As earlier mentioned I got researching on this after actively pondering the Amos Adamu and Sarah Palin incidents. In the end I was able to successfully hack two email addresses and got pass the first question of many a friend's Yahoo! Mail Forgot Password feature. This article will bring you up to speed on the technique I used to take advantage of Yahoo’s decision to cut customer service costs associated with attending to password recovery queries. Yes people yet another reason to choose Gmail over Yahoo.

Update!: Please see this post for a follow up on the Yahoo password recovery process as regards to social engineering.