And the ultimate humiliation is to realise I have been suckered again.
There is this bird that makes a sound exactly like my telephone. And it perches somewhere in the garden and does its thing. I have never seen it, which is probably just as well, because the quiet of the neighbourhood would be shattered by the sound of gunfire and the pristine lawn would be littered with bird feathers.
This countrified life can be hell.
I am not quite adjusted to my new upmarket environment. I have a real garage with real lights that work and a door that opens and shuts and doesn't need poles and pieces of wood and string to hold it shut.
Even the bugs and spiders seem to walk about in orderly groups. But I still nuke 'em with bug spray.
My first week in my new abode has been devoted to recreating infrastructure. A telephone is installed. A minor miracle in itself as those who live in Africa will readily understand. I don't have any furniture besides a bed yet, so I have taken over the kitchen for the computer room. The builtin cupboards are ideal for stiffy racks and the counter top is just right for spreading out all my gear.
So. Another year is almost done. The Y2k thing has moved a little but not much. There are still those out there who haven't started their inventory. The last Year 2000 ready subsystems are being rolled out.
So here we go. The next three months will be crucial. If the Late Starters and the Unconvinced don't take action now, they will miss the deadline.
One thing did please me this last week though, Microsoft sneaked the Win 3.1 and Win 95 Filemanager patches into ftp.microsoft.com. Bill may still be in denial but at least his Elves are doing their homework.
My Landlord, Alf, was cleaning out recently and gave me a whole stack of Dr Dobbs as well as the latest Dobbs CD. In my new bookless world this is a real treat. Michael Swain must be congratulated on keeping his erudite journal Y2k article free. At least it gives welcome intellectual relief not to have to read about the beastly thing, and one can wallow in TechnoWoffle.
But I came a across a sad piece of news that I had missed. Gary Kildall, founder of Digital Research and father of CP/M died in 1994, aged 52. A nasty jolt of mortality as I turned 52 this year. All this reminded me of the so-called "early" days when Bill was a snotty nosed kid writing Applesoft Basic and CP/M was King.
The pioneers die unsung and the exploiters rule the Earth. My cynicism is showing. But hopefully Gary's work will live on, as I see Caldera has picked up DR DOS and published the source. I vaguely remember Alf wombling on about OPEN DOS, I must look into it.
But now when I read technical journals I come to the conclusion that the computer industry has lost itself in a world of technobabble and really does not know where it is going (or what it is doing). Hardware is jumping ahead but software seems to be slithering into a Babel of confusion and indirection. I cannot see mass conversions of Unix tools into Win32 form as a great leap forward. Lamb dressed as Mutton.
Oh well, market forces will prevail.
Talking of books, I made a pilgrimage to my local shrine, a vast digital emporium called Incredible Connection. Geek Heaven. I could spend hours just browsing the Books and CDs, let alone drooling over all the little Geek toys.
And there I discovered "Year 2000 Solutions for Dummies" (K.C.Bourne, IDG Books, ISBN 0-7645-0241-7)
Sure, I could quibble and nitpick, there are all sorts of errors and little funnies, but I will not. In general, despite being written in a huge hurry, the book meets the basic requirements, and gives the overall story. And not unreasonable advice. It scores two pumpkins out of five on the Cinderella scale.
I seem to remember in the dim past of 1986 that I recommended that people make sure their insurance policies were paid out before 1999. I now have reason to believe that my opinion was correct but for no reason at all connected with Y2k.
I suppose that one cannot expect too much from an industry that is based on the presumption that you are already dead and are not going to give them any arguments. I have recently frittered away two months attempting to get two of my policies paid out.
In the course of endless negotiation I discover that the last 4 years of premiums have been "misdirected" and not applied to the policies. Note that this is a debit order generated by the Insurance company itself which debits my bank account. Now they are unable to pay out because they say the policies are paid up and I have no proof of having a bank account.
Of course it is all my fault, their computers could not possibly be in error. At this point I begin to froth at the mouth.
I am now convinced that computers should not be used for anything to do with large corporations or money. Roll on Y2k, I hope you put these Bozos out of business. They will never see my money again.
The bald fact is that we are just not very good at software. The more we sling together the higher the entropic rate of failure.
The fact that NT 5 contains 25 million lines of code does not fill me with joy. Maybe I should write a book called "Revenge of the Kaylocs". B>)
Essentially we have empowered inefficient and lazy human beings to be inefficient and lazy at hypersonic speed.
We have a found a convenient digital whipping boy to cover our own inadequacies. At last we have something to blame.
As I sit here writing this on the night before Christmas, I have R20 in my pocket. (At current exchange rates about $4). Not even enough to buy pizza. I have money but cannot get at it. It is locked away in somebody else's computer.
My bank has frozen my account because the credits that I have told them are coming have not materialised. Same with the Credit Card. All because a poorly programmed insurance company computer gave a lazy clerk an excuse to do nothing. All that has to happen is for a human being to authorise the insurance company computer to speak to the bank computer. But because there is a glitch, nobody will do anything.
The Managers of course are all on holiday. At last, after almost pounding the table with my shoe, an Admin assistant tempororarily in charge, got the ball rolling and assures me that I will get a payment in my account next Tuesday. If computers are so fast how come I have to wait another week?
I do not blame the machines. I blame the Designers and Managers of the system. No foresight. No Vision. We surround our systems with manual procedures and crud. If real events deviate from standard procedure we are lost. We might as well say The Titanic should not have sunk.
Now this is a real world scenario that is happening now, today, in a "normal" environment. Introduce a system stress such as Y2k into the equation and you have potential for disaster.
Now the Average Joe thinks Y2k is all some sort of scam. And until he experiences what I am experiencing now he will not believe. But that will be a little late.
I have eaten the last of the crispbread and rusks. I have water and coffee so I shall not dehydrate. I am going to my cousins for Christmas dinner tomorrow night so I shall not starve. There is enough petrol in the car to get to my cousins place and back. I have electricity and telephone by the kind efforts of my landlord. But I am not a Happy Camper.
People in general, and I include some otherwise rational systems people and managers (there are some good ones) in this definition, just do not believe that there is an inherent infrastructural problem in our society brought on by an excessive dependence on computers.
Oh we have fallback plans they cry. Well where is my fallback plan? The Insurance company is like a brick wall. We don't have to fallback, is their attitude. Go away and don't bother us with your petty problems. When I suggested that their system had design flaws, a professional opinion by the way, I got very blank looks.
Now at least I know my own planning is bad. I should have had spare cash hidden in my mattress or in my shoe. I foolishly believed that the system would work for me.
There is no point in ranting on about this. The only one suffering the inconvenience of it all is me. Nobody gives a damn.
I can hear you now. Oh he's back on his soapbox. Well I assure you that when YOUR infrastructure temporarily aborts you will also scream loud and long.
I long for Christmas Past and happy times, The Ghost of Christmas Present is an extremely unpleasant fellow, and I have no wish at all to meet the Ghost of Christmas Future. Bah Humbug.
A Merry Christmas and Prosperous New Year to you all.