I recently customized a Family Budget template for a client. It has all major expense categories and tracks monthly expense against budget. It, also, has a year trend chart showing Expense month by month. Below is a snapshot -


There is one cool trick I included in this Family Budget Excel dashboard.
It has a lot of formulas and I didn't want the client unintentionally deleting those formula cells. I wanted him to be able to edit only the cells that required his entry/update.

I have finally launched my newest online creation, www.NigerianElite.com
It's a top notch forum for the Nigerian elite to rub minds and lounge. It will focus on forum discussions that create value, pure and professional value.

 It's going to be really BIG and the first set of people to register will reap huge rewards - get medals and become moderators and partners as it grows. I have got so many things in the pipe, it's gonna explode soon.

 Are you a blogger, a media personnel or a biz guy; you can add your details in the comment box below and I will promote you and your services for free on the forum. Just make sure you register on the forum.

As you know, I am a Microsoft Excel Guru and Consultant. Recently, I took my consultancy biz a global notch up. I signed up as a contractor on www.guru.com www.elance.com and www.odesk.com
I now get project offers from clients all over the world. Time is my only constraint.
Need an Excel Guru? Drop a comment and you might be lucky that I'm not yet booked out.

I finally got Oracle 11g installed on Oracle Linux Server, it was no easy task. I had to edit so many kernel or system settings files.

To run Oracle, I had to set $ORACLE_UNQNAME to orcl each time I login to the Linux. And the command to start up the dbconsole, aarghh, it was a pain to type out - /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1/bin/emctl start dbconsole
I'm yet to forget it.

Well, I decided to fix this once and for all. And all I did was to edit the ~/.bash_profile, added the following lines -
export ORACLE_UNQNAME=orcl
export PATH=$PATH:/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1/bin

So now I no longer need to set the ORACLE_UNQNAME=orcl anymore as it is been done for me. And the long path to emctl command has been added permanently to the system PATH. All I now do is type
emctl start dbconsole
and voila, I'm done.

This week while installing Oracle 11g on Oracle Linux Server, I needed to automatically start some programs when the user logins in.

Here is why. Oracle Linux boots, by default, into a command line terminal or console. But to use the Oracle 11g Database Control application, you'll need to start the GUI X window. The command to do that is $ startx
The other issue is, the GUI launches into a blank desktop, no applications center or start menu bar. To start any program you'll have to right click, launch the Terminal and start you program via the command line.
For me this is no issue, but the intended end user of this Oracle 11g aren't that Linux savvy. I wanted them to just start the system and the X window would start automatically once they login and the dbconsole would be started too and finally Firefox would launch and open http://localhost:1158/em automatically.

Well, it was easy to accomplish. All I did was to edit the ~/.bash_profile file. I added the following lines -
startx
emctl start dbconsole
firefox http://localhost:1158/em

And voila, that did it.

I'm a Microsoft Excel guru and consultant based in Nigeria.
  • Do you need an Excel Expert to automate your analyses, charts and reports, so you can focus on growing revenue and making better business decisions?
  • Do you need an Excel Expert to build a custom Excel dashboard to track your business key performance metrics?
  • Do you need an Excel Expert to build Excel based applications that are easy to use and can interact with third party data sources like your CRM or Access Database?
  • Do you need an Excel Expert to help your team focus on their core duties by building Excel based data entry tool that does automatic analysis and reporting?
  • Do you need an Excel Expert to train your team on getting the best out of Excel and increasing their productivity?
  • Do you need an Excel Expert to design and build performance monitoring and business analysis Excel solutions that will show you what you're doing right, what you're doing wrong and what you need to focus on?
  • Do you need an Excel Expert to fix an old Excel Macro or make an entirely new, better and more robust one?
  • Do you need an Excel Expert to improve and automate your KPI & Scorecard dashboards.
  • Do you need an Excel Expert to build a work shift solution for your company? A very flexible and intelligent one that makes sure all your employees get a timeslot that suits them and can help you identify backup staff when one suddenly calls sick.
  • Do you need an Excel Expert to automate your inventory system? So you'll never be confused about what's in stock and what's not in stock, and quantities.
  • Do you need an Excel Expert to build you a stocks analysis spreadsheet or a portfolio monitoring spreadsheet?
  • Do you need an Excel Expert to build an Income Expense tracker for your business?
  • Do you need an Excel Expert to build a scalable business data analysis tool for your company?
You are in luck! Look no further.

I have been doing these for multinationals in Nigeria, and a couple of foreign based companies that outsource to Asia and Africa. And occasionally, for individual clients.

I also offer tailored Excel training for professionals, business analysts, MIS analysts and financial analysts.

You can reach me on 234-808-938-2423 or mail me at michael(at)olafusimichael.com
Also, feel free to contact me via the comment box below.
I recently tried installing Oracle 11g on Windows 8, well, it wasn't worth the trial. The installer launched successfully, after warning me that my system didn't meet the requirements, and progressed to the actual installation stage, then disappeared. At first, I thought I had clicked on something wrong, so I restarted the installer and woosh! it happened again.
I googled the issue and to my surprise there is extremely little information online about installing Oracle 11g on Windows 8. Not even a fix or a workaround, all I got was - Oracle doesn't support Windows 8 and vice versa. The workaround I ended up using is installing Oracle Virtualbox, installing Oracle Linux Server 6.4 on the Virtualbox machine and finally, installing Oracle 11g, the Linux version.
But if you have Windows XP or Windows 7, then I'll recommend you install that in the Virtualbox or better, dual boot it with your Windows 8. It took me 3 hectic days to get Oracle 11g configured on the Oracle Linux. Online help for fixing issues with Oracle on Linux is extremely confusing.
Anyway, I got it to work and created the Virtual Appliance image of the Virtual box machine to make a clone on other Windows 8 system, so I won't have to do the hectic job from scratch again.
If you are having similar issues with your Oracle installation, feel free to contact me.
Recently, my boss has been having issues with his Windows 7 OS and decided to change to Linux. So as a pilot test, he installed Ubuntu 12.10 on his work PC and plans to install it on his laptop too.

 Well, his PC has a D-link wireless card dwa 525 with RaLink chipset 5360 and to my surprise Ubuntu 12.10 doesn't have its driver preloaded. But Ubuntu 13.04 has. So in this post I will show you how I fixed the issue with special help from chili555 on this Ubuntu Forum Thread

 I couldn't access the internet from the PC, so I had to download the driver from another PC connected to the internet.
This post is a copy of the default passwords and usernames for popular network devices like router, switch, PBX and so on.

I broke them to three parts. This is part 2, here is part 1 and part 3.

You can the complete list at http://www.phenoelit.org/dpl/dpl.html

This post is a copy of the default passwords and usernames for popular network devices like router, switch, PBX and so on.

I broke them to three parts. This is part 3, here is part 1 and part 2.

You can the complete list at http://www.phenoelit.org/dpl/dpl.html
This post is a copy of the default passwords and usernames for popular network devices like router, switch, PBX and so on.

I broke them to three parts. This is part 1, here is part 2 and part 3.

You can the complete list at http://www.phenoelit.org/dpl/dpl.html
In this post, I'm putting up my final year project.
And trust me it was one of a kind. In fact, my Supervisor, up until it actually worked, kept asking me if it would work.

As a teaser, here is the Chapter 1. Be ready to be blown away! And did I mention that I still have an open offer in Cotonou? Well, a company was impressed by my final year project and offered to make a business model out of it.



I'm moving all my intellectual properties online.

And today, I am sharing with the world my Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES) Report.

Who knows, it might be of help to someone.

It's quite a lengthy doc, you know, it's a technical report.

So I will just share the Table of Contents and List of Figures, and the full doc too



Excel Chart

 Hi there, in this post I will show you how to make the Excel chart above, one with two axes (primary and secondary axes) and two different chart types.

 So let's start!

Ever wondered how the GSM service providers - MTN, Airtel, Glo and Etisalat - really stack up against one another?

 Let's start with the obvious, what NCC publishes (as of March 2013)-

 MTN has 51 million subscribers
Globacom has 24 million subscribers
Airtel has 24 million subscribers
Etisalat has 15 million subscribers

 About half of the GSM subscribers in Nigeria use MTN! And if you look through the trend for the past 8 months, contrary to what most of us believe, MTN has being growing impressively (and way better than Globacom).
In fact, going by the Dec 2012 and Mar 2013 data, MTN has been snatching customers from all the other three!

I got a mail from GTB detailing all the possible online channels of transacting with your GTBank account.
The list is very impressive, GTB is really forward thinking and innovative.

I have pasted the mail (verbatim) below -

Thank you for banking with us.

Further to the Central Bank of Nigeria's directive on cashless economy, GTBank has made several electronic banking solutions available to support your personal and business transactions which include:

Having worked on a BSC before, I can tell you the learning curve is very steep. And getting help can be a daunting task.

In this post, I will share with you the MML commands I had to read through while learning configuration of Nokia Siemens Networks BSC. You can always get much needed specific help from veterans at Telecom Funda Forum

Caveman Computing

In my quest of finding secondary income streams, I once got a biz opportunity to do Computer and Internet training. So, I had to make a class manual, and one class at a time so as to make the class more dynamic and effective.

Well, another biz venture clicked and I couldn't carry on with this. But in this post I will be sharing the Class 1 manual. I didn't go past this Class 1 manual as the class didn't hold and I had no reason to make a Class 2 manual.

1.0 Introduction

 A computer is a general purpose machine engineered to perform complicated tasks at an incredible speed.