Something lighter……my effort to assist Eskom today!

Sometimes you simply know life is perfect! These are normally brief moments amongst the chaos we refer to as life, that is. I’ve just had one of them! My 17 year old has a web site that he has built up over the past 2 years. He has designed, created, programmed and dreamt up every little piece of code himself. It works and it works well.

So moments ago he is showing me how the RSS feed thingymabob works when my eye catches a tiny signature at the bottom of the blog on the site……..”7593 bytes were disturbed during the sending of this message” Is it just me or is this REALLY funny?

I have visions of these tiny little bits (call them elves if you want to) with faces like black thunderous cloud, puffing themselves up, indignantly starting to throw various snippets of letters around. One has the “o” of the “d” the other has the “l” of the “a” , a third has the “n” of the “m” and the most reluctant has the “l” of the “n” . The result is that at least 4 “bits” with all their might, indignation and foot stomping can only make the word DAMN if they find their 4 counterparts hidden somewhere in the recesses of our computers.

Now imagine 7593 X 8 (as I have just been informed that there are 8 bits to a byte) of these little beings, yelling, stomping, cursing, falling over and scrambling to get all these letters, snippets and data into the correct packets or parcels at lightning speed, enabling us ……to write and email very, VERY serious stuff!

What’s more, they do it in the dark!! Maybe this is the reason they are so grumpy and mightily disturbed by the onerous task of their employment. Maybe this is why they go on strike so often and leave my computer hanging? So if we look at these 7593 X 8 bits which make up 7593 bytes, ALL of whom are mightily disturbed, it stands to reason that the words HECTIC and FRENETIC could describe their working environment.

Right now a huge amount of South Africans need to work in the dark as well, with only BITS of the information available (the rest being held hostage by the BYTES and ESKOM) Much effort and energy is thus expended simply to get one little thing done. I however, will at least see the next few outages in a different light…………….why?

I don’t have to wear tiny green pants with white bobby socks likes the bits do.
I don’t have to search for my lost bits all the time.
I don’t have to operate in the DARK, ALL the time.
I get moments of relief from my work where I don’t have to rush off to fill the next parcel.
My work environment is neither HECTIC nor FRENETIC, maybe CRAZY yes.
I have a 17 year old to make me laugh and remind me why I actually live – and NO it is not to watch TV, work or cook on an electrical device, it is simply to laugh, relax and enjoy the gifts I have been granted......

PS ! Capetonians treating intersections with powerless robots as 4 way stops is NOT one of them! Can you KZN people please send the news THIS way?