13-IV-1990.
With Brata in Sisak, brought one of those heavy tall tower boxes to be the server, and at least one more 286 to be the workstation.
The big box was a problem, the housing was weird. To install the cards (video, probably modem too, and network, our good old RPTI card) was near impossible, because the motherboard was almost 7mm closer to the backside than it should be. Then if we loosened the motherboard to attach the cards, it was now not lying properly, so the keyboard outlet was as much lower when we set the box upright. So we added two wine corks between the motherboard and the frame on the bottom side. Decided we have to have corks around at all time, even if the wine doesn't manage to stay.
Installed and adjusted whatever they wanted. Translated the invoicing into croatian so the "this invoice was created on a computer and is valid without stamp and signature" - invoice was now "račun" instead of "faktura" (with which I'd agree - we call so a bar tab, so why not when companies bill each other); computer "računalo" instead of "računar" - also correct IMO, -lo is the suffix for tools; valid - "punovrijedan" vs "punovažan" which is an affectation, difference for difference's sake, also "štambilj" instead of "pečat" for stamp. The lady there and I had loads of fun translating this, and at times I guessed the proper croatian before she did. Note the printer being set to NLQ, the best a dot-matrix could do. They'd do it by going over the same lines at least twice, with the head slightly off, so it would hit between the dots it printed the first time. What precision they couldn't muster with needle sizes, they managed with precise motors and positioning. Not too bad at all.
This sample still doesn't have the amount in words (i.e. doesn't call slovima... probably it was more important to have all that space for the remark than to wait for the routine to be translated. And the translation would be just one word, "hiljada" (a thousand) would have to become "tisuća". Okay, and "dvije" instead of "dve". All the other names for numbers are identical.
The other fine moment was when she described the data flow they had - there would be a preliminary order made by a salesman (they weren't persons back then) which would then be consolidated with other orders he made the same day/batch, which would then get run by stock for availability, then by invoicing to get a quote, then by stock again to take it off and to an invoice to print and send. All manually. Is there anything we can do about that? After some thinking I said "Well actually no, I don't see any technical way to have this copied manually for the sixth time".
Then I had some time when I wasn't really busy, so I went in to review Brata's payroll processing. He was doing it vertically, column by column, with n x m writes. Just for kicks, I rewrote it to go row by row, reducing it to n writes. It was actually better than m times faster.
She mentioned a local story about the streets being renamed. In Sisak there are four streets going down to the river, and they were traditionally called 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th. Then they were renamed in 1945 or later. Now they at least renamed one of them - but instead of Vladimir Bakarić st being renamed back to 1st, it's now Socijalističkog Saveza st. Just checked - they are renamed even worse now.
I think we stayed overnight. There was just about zero indication of the shit which will be launched six months later. Or more, see the picture, this could have been on 27th of february. Though, I kind of remember the weather being not bad at all, I'd err on the side of april.
And, just remembered the whole story connected to these tower 286s... somehow they are connected to this Sava Brandić guy who kept supplying them while we were waiting for our big import to come and Taho couldn't supply as many or as quick as we'd need them. Or was it that he was our ticket into some textile factory in Batajnica... whatever, he was the guy through whom we got into electrodistributions in mid-Serbia. First it was in Užice (probably still Titovo Užice at the time), where this Dabac guy was the chief of erc. The production and distribution were just freshly split by some law, so one of them was our customer and the other was not, and they'd be in the same building, just occupying different wings or floors. And of course they all knew each other. So once the non-customer payroll person comes to the customer one while the team was there. They want Brata to come over, there's some fuckup with the payroll app and Sava keeps promising he'd send someone but nobody comes... Ah drop it, who knows where you got the app from, what it was written in, and even if it was in fox, who knows where the guys keep things and what names they gave them... But je agreed to take a look. And it came all familiar, look at this look at that... "and now if there's a stavi.prg from 1987... right there. Where did you acquire our app?".
It turned out that Sava has sold our apps not only to the other part of the building, he sold them to several other pairs of production-distribution electric companies to the south of Užice, all the way to Prijepolje and Ivanjica. They all abruptly became our customers, no need to pay again what they paid to Sava, but they'd start paying monthly maintenance and be made equal to regular customers. There's no better than when someone does the marketing (and installation!) for you and the customers just fall into your lap...
There were expenses, though, rounds had to be made, each yugo went the south tour at least twice a season, even I went once to Užice. We appeared on their parking lot at 7:00 (!) and met Dabac right there as he was leaving his car. We entered the building with him, walked behind him down the hall, and some girl says to him "hey, that guy from komerc was looking for you", to which he replied without breaking stride, "and did he find me?". I have no idea what we did all day, specially I. Okay, Brata and Blaža would, there's always something to do in the payroll and the material accounting (because they never save their fixes to floppies to distribute them, malice would say), and Števa was there probably to drive the morning leg of the trip, then drink and chat up the girls there, and then just have fun or sleep on the way back. I know I drove halfway there and halfway back. We did dine somewhere, but I only remember it was uphill and the street was rather dark. But then in Užice there's almost no flat, it's only uphill and uphill (error intended). Nobody complained, they already got used to it.
Mentions: june 1991., Blagoje Vrbović (Blaža), Brata Avramov, erc, fox, payroll, slovima, Stevan Garaj (Števa), Tanasije Rijepić (Taho), yugo, in serbian