What has this to do with Y2k you ask? Well not a lot. But I wrote to my buddies about my doings in getting resettled, and they found the results mildly amusing, and suggested that I do "Country Features" from time to time when ennui and general digust of things Y2kish overwhelm me.
This is a direct quote if you think I'm lying. (Name withheld to protect the guilty).
"It sounds as if you have taken telecommuting to its obvious extreme, and you now live on a remote farming commune with a 64k line into your bedroom. This is the stuff of books and high-paying articles. Why not send your letter as written to me into one of the rags and promise an irreverent, Robert X. Cringely type article once a week, with insights into how the hens are laying and Oracle's failure to be Y2K compliant side-by-side. There have to be more of us rural computing types out there who would find this interesting".
(64k line - I wish. I still dial Johannesburg - the costs are crippling)
So don't blame me, blame them.
So Here goes.
If you hate it, you can always delete it. But it can only be an improvement on some of the irrelevant crud that floats about the Y2k Lists.
As my good pal Trevor wrote:
>Don't underestimate the value of real manure over the >verbal variety. To which I replied:
"As I stood in the pouring rain yesterday, scraping caked chicken shit off my boots, I pondered on the relative merits and demerits of the philosophically rich agricultural lifestyle. All I can say is, it's hell on a Townie".
My room is compact but well adapted to my needs. My reference books and stiffy trays are stacked against the walls. My bed, a chest of drawers and computer table fit snugly.
Depending on the Grahamstown weather, (four weathers a day here) I might then go back for a snooze if it is cold or do some Y2k testing if not.
The Y2k testing has been going well. I have found weird bugs in dBase. In the last two weeks I have tested OS/2 and NT 4.00. Am now working on Clipper and Oracle 7.2.
I suppose I should be ashamed that I have not found a way to make money in a $600 billion industry. But there is some talk of a Y2k Software Factory starting up here, and I will be involved in that.
I am talking with a crowd in PE called MIS Outsourcing and spent a week learning Programming on BAAN. They seem happy with my skill set and are now out doing some marketing. But in the Eastern Cape wheels turn slowly.
When the mob has gone off to school etc, I pad around and cook the dogs' rice ready for evening feeding.
Around noon I stagger down to the pigpen with The Swill and feed my three Muddy Friends.
This trip is usually accompanied by Rufus the five-month old Ridgeback Puppy. As he is as high as my waist, puppy hardly seems the right term.
His mother is a pedigreed Ridgeback that Nicolette breeds from (and sells the offspring for astonomical prices). Rufus however has no ridge and is therefore not saleable. But even at this age he is a splendid watchdog. I suspect that his mother had an affair with some elephant that was passing through. He is huge, and has still not grown into his paws.
Around one, my clientele arrive. Nicolette runs an after school day-care thing so we get overrun by hordes of active infants every day. The Modern Child requires at least eight hours of computer games to stimulate the little grey cells. Needless to say yours truly is the general fixer, installer and arbiter of armed disputes. One should get Danger Pay.
Around four, I stagger down the hen house with buckets of Epol Laying Mix. Fighting my way through fifty hungry hens, ducks and what have you I fling the food into the feeding troughs. At the back of the hen house is a series of wooden boxes. These boxes have eyes in them. Bravely resisting all pecking, I thrust my hand into the boxes of eyes and haul out the eggs.
Then it is time for feeding The Pack. Apart from Rufus and Tessie his mother we have Uncle Spice (a sort of corgi lookalike) and NikNak (Indescribable. Four legs with hair). Sweetie-Pie, being delicate and highly pedigreed has to have her dish arranged artistically.
And all hell breaks loose if El Gato does not get its Fish. No dog food acceptable. This cat is of course the original Black Demon that Robert bought for R2 to replace Jacqui's kitten that got munched by the dogs. It must be sixteen years old if it's a day. And it remembers me. It would sleep on my head if I let it.
The whole disaster quietens down around eight and the grownups get to feed. And so off to another session of Y2k correspondence and thankfully, to bed. Sleep is of course another story (until Sweetie-Pie and The Cat eventually sort themselves out).