Cica tries to send a fax. From our side it was easy, because we simply ran a fax modem, and anything to send went straight from Word into some internal format (a peedyef, maybe, I didn't investigate) and was sent as an image. That part wasn't a source of problems, the shortage of phone lines was. Perhaps all of two or three customers had a separate fax line. Everybody else ran their phone cable through the fax, which was kept powered down until needed. If they need to send something, they just turn it on, dial the recipient's number, run the paper through it, done.
Receiving was a problem. Two fax machines are practically two modems with scanner and printer add-ons. They recognize each other by sending a beep first, then the data. Except on the recipient's side, as a rule, the fax is not on, so the secretary answers the call, fax has to be turned on first, so you first call to have her turn it on, and then cross your fingers and hope nobody answers the next call and the fax machine takes it.
Today she was out of luck, three or four attempts and it still didn't go through. Brlja jumped in, he speaks the language of end users and white birds. His luck is no better, he calls the third time and says „okay give me the beep so I can run it“. Then the sirens go on, and he goes „well that's some good beep...“.
The sirens we got used to since childhood, they are tested on first wednesday of each month, high at noon, for maybe half a minute. If anyone means to attack us, that's the best time, nobody moves a dick hearing them then.
One of these months Vanji decided to promote me into programmers' chief. Not to scrape my memories of that, found how I described it on UA as late as 23-VIII-2005.:
...from just programmer into chief of software. I went back to my old position after a few months. My extra duties as a chief were to write a weekly plan/schedule/time guesstimate, check how and when were things done, and at the end of the month suggest who'd get some extra money and who'd get a negative extra. My partner, being the CEO, would decide on my salary.
The downside of this was 1) the endless wrestling with the "when will X be done" question, and 2) knowledge that the salary was a lump sum I had to divide between the guys. If one was particularly good this month, should others be receiving less than usual because they were just normally good? And I also thought that my only source of authority should be my knowledge and skills, not the title of my job. And I accepted the old salary without regret.
And there was the insult in it as well. I was supposed to be done with my bossing duties in about two hours a week (which was true), and those two hours have got me a salary increase of 33%. Which meant that one hour of bossing is equivalent to 19 hours of programming, IOW bossing is paid 6.33 times better. That's an insult to programming, IMO, and I haven't forgiven my partner about that yet.
21-IX-2022 - 19-VIII-2025