Date approximate, as usual for the nineties, except when I have traces from software or forum. And software didn't help much, them floppies got lost, unreadable, few remained.
So, there. Dr Nevenov retired long ago, and a meeting (... 231 word...).
On the way back the transportation was sparse, but she caught a ride to Novi. She got off at the station, got into a cafe and called me to come pick her up. It was dark already, so at least 20:30. No problem, it's only 45km, I got into the trabant and stepped on the pedal. The banged up exhaust has found a new hole to pump the smoke into the cabin. Managed to get there somehow, perhaps there was some decent wind from the left.
She said she got a few suspicious looks in the cafe, a chick in her best years sitting alone, but nothing untoward happened.
On the way back, ouch, cabin full of smoke. Not just the gasoline, but oil as well - this is a two-cycle engine. We literally held our heads out through the windows until we finally got home.
During the summer, I managed to make a triper with majstor Piksi, and someone smuggled a new chimney from Hungary for us, and so it got replaced. This is usually fixed by welding, but one can weld metal, not pure rust.
Around that time it so happened that we (i.e. Avai) sold some machines to a firm which was once DBA's customer. No apps to go with them, but networking yes. Laza had regularly put the cabling in order, and it seems it was the classic coaxial, no need for a router for just three machines. Hardware came from CompuWiz, as did the network cards. Turned out the local IT boss was no other but Š. from DC-99, being yet another mathematician. So he stayed with me one whole afternoon, alone in that room where the machines were, to set up the network.
For networking with such boxes we previously used mostly the Lantastic, but gradually moved to windows network, which was easier to set up. Which was a grand fuckup in CD, where we left the default windows 95 network, or was it 98 already, where it went a bit easier. But that network totally crapped out when they hooked up the two machines from upstairs and the bursar, on top of the existing three. Somehow on sezam I found out it was up to the network protocol, because it was the NetBEUI, in which every machine advertises its presence a few times each second, so the other machines would know it's there. Which works fine with three machines, becomes a bit of a problem with four, and makes for a nice congestion with five or more, there's so much shouting over the cable that any regular traffic doesn't get a chance to pass. The cure for it was to make a bootable floppy, with just Dos from '98, and boot into just Dos, windowsesless. And someone there supplied the m$'s teesypee eyepee driver, which still wasn't a regular part of windowses, and then we broke through it when we found out how to do the same without a floppy. Started doing like that, and solved the CD.
In this firm, with just three machines, it just wouldn't. The eyepee addresses danced something mad, we couldn't force them to stay how we set them up. If we let them get established automatically, there'd be two identical ones, network fails. If we set them to fixed values, something somewhere changed them. Once we got them working, okay, let's backup this configuration, reboot and check. Check came out worse than before, completely unbelted.
Don't remember whether we solved this one at all. I told the guy from CompuWiz that if he ever shoves us another Realtek 5829 (or was it a RtLink? something on r), I'll carve him a slot in his back and plug it straight in. On the other hand, the same card worked nicely with each other, and with other network cards, even with old RPTI cards from eight years ago, in a dozen other places. To pull one's hairs.
On this day there's yet another list of workorders from Kosta, stuff we did for MXM, between first of july and now... which is a special kick from me - first they don't want to pay because they pretend not to know what's been done (but it's all based on workorders they signed off), they want it in print. Alright, you ordered that list, so assembling it is work you will pay, and this workorder says „extracted data from Kosta to document the work done for MXM after installing the new server until today“. That's four billable hours, do your silly mother.
Other curiosa on that list: „checked the other automations - agreed to test run additional orders to pick the invoices created in the meantime. in transportation several duplicate orders were found; half of them were renamed, other half was already deleted. on HTML invoice fixed the text in german. to agree upon a launch date for the gas station. transfer of data from the weigh station via modem. adjusted and tested modem transfers from weigh to cooperation and from cooperation to central; data packaging is okay but real transfer couldn't be done because of too much noise on the lines. adjusted the report in the transportation tracking app, caused by the change of method of calculating the taxes“.
For today it was „fixed an omission in transportation where it would fail to memorize the expenses“ (Brlja) and „opened the initial state (from 96 to 98!) for IksMe, switching to new accounting plan. Reconfigured the schema for automatic ledger of exit invoices. Interest, to be worked on (same as for CD). Aggregate entry, and in automation it doesn't work right (tried to make it do the 432 in opposite, still not good). To add automatic ledger of nivelation.“
23-V-2023 - 16-V-2026