On 1st I wrote the first version of an app packer, some thing that was supposed to generate a list of files to archive, what with tables, metadata, .prg and other fox files. Tried to do it the way m$ generated its own packers, replacing the first character of the extension with an underscore, but then in 1991. that failed, when we started using memo fields, which went in files of the same name but different last character of the extension (.dbf, .dbt both become ._db, and also .scx, .sct, .frx, .frt).
Some scientific symposium was held in Dubrovnik, and the colleague from petefi was to hold a lecture there, and his assistant, who else but Lidija, asked us to bring a computer on which to run his presentation. They have an elsydee screen, which you put on a grafoskop (overhead projector), it plugs into the graphic just like any other monitor (now whether there was a thief plug so it piggybacked on the monitor, or did it go instead of the monitor - then cards didn't have two outlets). Well well, look at that... Okay, Vanji and I got ready, he also arranged some contact in Budva, some tourist agency, which could be a customer.
Then still quite new, the yugo ate the road solidly, until near Sarajevo it started showing signs it may need gas soon. But, all of a sudden, there's a shortage everywhere, there's no gas in Bosnia and Herzegovina. On each gas station there's either a long queue or just a cardboard with "NEMA" (got none). We drove past Jablanica... and on... and when it looked like we'll be stranded somewhere on the road, we spot the smaller power plant, some distance before Mostar. The map says it's Salakovac, but that's the name of the road, and of the plant it says nothing. We got down, explained the situation to the guys, and they said there's all the gas you want in Croatia, just 100km from here. So okay, we need perhaps two liters, which we tried to suck out of some guy's four, same model as kafeni just brighter color. Its intake hose has a few nasty curves, so driving the hose through it to submerge its tip was no easy job. I took a turn too, and forever remembered the taste of gasoline. We managed somehow, and found the place to fill it up, around Metković.
Only in the following years we came to understand how this sudden shortage, so strangely localized, was only a demonstration exercise of what awaited us, and the art of hosing he gas from a tank will be in demand and appreciated.
We made it to Dubrovnik on time, just on time to have dinner and take a room. The Palace hotel, on a slope, has the reception in level with the access road and its parking, and it looks like just a simple ground floor building. But then behind it it stretches at least six floors down the slope, all the way to the beach, and all the rooms have a view of the sea. And the lift seems to slide down the slope, though it's masked somehow so you don't feel the slant. In the written materials there was a nice typo, it said "Hotel Dubrovnik Place" instead of "Palace", confused me well.
We took the computer from the car, just not to keep it in plain sight, plugged it in in the room, and fuck, the elsydee screen doesn't work. Probably needs a seegyay card, or perhaps eegyay, and we have a hercules. We explained the problem to Lidija and she said there's a little company nearby, ProEng, friends of hers, she'll arrange for us to borrow a box from them. Okay...
In the morning we take off and draw a whole tangle of trace over Dubrovnik, I didn't know there are so many small streets outside of the fortress. But we found the place... The guys looked strangely at us, but on Lidija's word, okay, deal. The office is tiny and sweet, they have a couple of room in the building of a nursery, and the yard is full of all kinds of mediterranean plants, the fragrance alone is enough to make you high. Could just sit all day and do nothing. I guess the guy and the girl were immune.
I mount the box in the lecture hall, insert the colleague professor's diskette and it starts, and I see it on the monitor, but not on the elsydee, not in overhead projection. Fuck! He's already coming, starts the lecture, asks me how's it going, will he have it, I do the pulling my hairs act, no it won't... I get mad and start slamming the onoff switch on the elsydee and guess what, the fifth time the image appears, crisp as can be. Aaaaarhgghhh! Then just as he said "and now, since the hi tech is not working, we'll switch to the good old chalk" I just hand him the keyboard and say "but it works". "Oh, look there... so, what can we do, back to plan A...".
Because we got no manual with the gadget. Had I not cunted out and started slamming the switch, I'd still be convinced it was an onoff switch, and would never understand that it's an eight position cycling switch, position zero being off, and the rest being various resolutions. The fifth one was what I needed, eegyay probably.
This is where our part ended. The whole trip was about this hour of tech support to provide the overhead projection for the professor's lecture. In the afternoon we returned the box, thanked them profusely, had lungs full of the mediterranean garden, then returned to the hotel. The rest of the day I mostly sat, thinking how a hotel works, what's the physical data flow... even started drawing some bits in a text file (all lost, and even if I may have saved that on a floppy, it must be one of those which I can't read, and the machine was sold next week).
The next day we fared well the symposium and went to Budva. Found that agency there that Vanji arranged to meet, and they laid out their problem; the logistics of transporting groups of tourists around, where they often have too many buses in one place and too few in another. Also, not to load two groups together if they unload in hotels at some distance, there's the problem with partial unloading of luggage, one group waiting for unload twice, everyone pissed off. An interesting problem, which occupied me for half an hour at least. We then walked down Budva a bit, bought a crate of mandarins (one of us did), hit the road.
Ate cold lamb chops by a monastery somewhere in the canyon of Morača, in a gorge that's so narrow, the terrace where we ate was upstream from the monastery, the tavern itself downstream. The waiter had to walk a lot. Tried to find the place on the map, but no, whatever I find doesn't match what I remember.
When we passed Užice it was already dark. Somewhere in, I'd say, Ovčarsko-Kablarska gorge we sat to have a coffee. The waiter came to ask how we liked the coffee (and probably to gauge our accents, two bearded guys, maybe we did look a tad strange). Vanji answered in customary deadpan: "kudos, you have excellent water here, and it's obvious that the majstor wasn't stingy with material". Cut me throat if the guy understood that this meant "the coffy is fucking watered down". I asked how many kilometers to Belgrade, and from that information roughly calculated... "we're home at midnight".
When I caught the gate handle at home, my watch was showing 23:59:48. They'll expell me from the guild for this.