Funeral of Lajči in Bečej. I took the trabant and when we (she, Oma, Arpi) wanted to take a right turn on the magistrala, someone parked in the right lane so I had to wait for the left lane to clear, which took a while. I stepped on the horn, but unfortunately it's on the turn signal (pull bacwards to flash the headlights, forward to honk) so I broke the lever.
Next week I found that one of the kids' markers, bright neon green one, completely dry and empty of the felt insert, fits exactly on the stump of the lever. It stayed so until the end.
This spring there were two other funny events around the trabant. Once I had to go somewhere, around noon, and Cica also had to go downtown, so I took her along. I guess she had to go to the bank; usually the reason for secretaries to go downtown was to sdk, but we had a modem connection with them, so that one was off. I had parked beyond the place where driveway turns to the gate, and next to the tall flowerbed, so I just reversed into the gate, shoved it into the first, stepped on gas and... was a tad less gentle with the clutch. The front tires squealed. Cica was astonished, „wow I'd never believe...“. „Every car can do that, it's just a matter how crazy one gets with the pedals“.
The flowerbed was a bit away from the gate, so I could safely park there without being in anyone's way. Still, one day, when I was in director's office, I hear someone from Cica's room asking whose trabant is it down there. I went there and started orating, before even fully opening the door, „there's no way that I'm double park or blocking anyone's way, I took good care of that, so what now, what's the problem?“. „No no no I just wanted to ask about trabant, does it have“. „It has none“. „I meant to ask does it have“. „It has none“. „...does it have a pump...“. „It has none“. „...for fuel?“. „Like I said, it has none - fuel flows by gravity, there's no water as it's air cooled, and no oil pump as it's a two cycle engine. I've heard a dozen questions of that sort, and 'it has none' was the correct answer to each“.
That modem connection... that was insane. Obviously written in cobol or perhaps in peael one, and looked like something still on version 1.0, as long as it worked, it was a real nightmare to handle. The standards have changed, including those for online communications, nobody nowadays used a teletype or a stupid one-line terminal (which I never saw anywhere, anyways), well fuckit we had screens designed twelve years ago on a VT-100, which were nicely visible through a modem connection, why now to memorize two-character commands. As if programmed by vojska and instructions written by an ensign*... Luckily, I had to use it just about once or twice, with Cica looking over my shoulder and learning tricks, and then she got into the gist of it, learned those five or eight commands, and it went smoothly henceforth. The regular operation consisted of three phone calls - one to arrange a payment, one for the modem connection by both (okay that's four, one pays and one waits to check it out), one to check with the recipient that it reached them. And the money did land immediately. Compare that with how they operated in Hungary, where I've seen huge wads of forints, because the payment would go through the banks in mere ten (work!) days.
On 20th we did the first version of some add-on to synchronize data from outside units with the central HQ, transported via modem or floppy. First they needed it at MXM, but as soon as may the Svemiks needed it too. The former didn't get any glory for it, because they more used the lack of sync as an excuse for this or that, than they really needed it. And it was easier to complain than to remember to pass a floppy, even though there were at least three times a day when someone would go between the places. So... it worked but eventually wasn't used.
No glory in the other case either, for technical reasons. They had computers in at least four outside units, at the weigh stations by the silos, where the cereals were stored - either what they bought, or what the peasants paid the drying and storage for. Data entry, reading the scales, it all worked properly, it just needed to get in sync with what the central had. So I wrote a really robust routine, supported by GenerAll, to maintain an owner field in each table, the owner being the location where the record was made. Nobody had the rights to change records of others, except the admin at HQ. Each record would be passed to everyone else, it made no omissions, no duplicates. Screwed up in theory, worked perfectly.
Except the transport. Could do modem, could floppy. Both methods were automated, the app knew which file goes where, the data would be downloaded ot copied into predefined directories when received, in others when packaged to send, and it only took someone to insert a floppy or to make sure the phone line is not in use.
But ah, snafu. The phone lines were dismal, couldn't even properly talk to the nearest silo, less than a kilometer away, and modems didn't even recognize it. Then the other three villages (all with the same initial, we drove to a wrong one at least twice) were much worse. So, floppies it is. Which worked, in the two places where the weigh stations were newly built and all clean, and while it was new and clean. Because this is the silos, there's wheat, various fibrous particles in the air, including the fines, which eventually upholster the magnetic ead.
So it goes. You write something ingenious and robust, and then don't have the infrastructure for it.
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* not a sublieutenant; here it's the bannerman, which is the highest sub-oficer rank, so someone with just high (military) school, no academy, probably semiliterate and approaching retirement.
27-II-2017 - 25-II-2026