From memory. I originally dated the first entry as 1 May 1976, but this seems highly
unlikely, since 1 May was a public holiday. The date 17 May is correct: I have
independent documentation of that.
In 1976 I was working for a software company
in Essen on a couple of unusual projects:
an embedded application for cutting custom window frames, and an information system for
Bischof und Klein in Lengerich. The latter
system ran several different programs on a Dietz 621, a computer small even for its day:
only 48 kB, and without any mass storage. All the data was kept in core. The
project had been sold by the kind of salesperson that techies love, and I had had to jump
through many hoops to get it running. It was ultimately successful, and I still consider
the fact one of my all-time best achievements.
The salesperson, Ferry Lang, saw this differently. He had sold a 32 kB machine running
multi-user BASIC, but I had insisted in writing it in assembler. Never mind that the BASIC
interpreter took up 28 kB, crashed all the time, and lost all its data when it did. In the
course of the 3 years where I followed the progress of the application, it never once lost
data. When it was finally replaced by a real computer, the customer complained that the
replacement was much slower.
On the previous day I had been to Lengerich and done some testing—I forget what: the
application was long up and running. In the evening we had an overnight visit from Mechtild
and Jochen Wegmann. Mechtild was an old girlfriend of mine, and we had been up late the
previous night.
In the morning, we decided to have bacon and eggs for breakfast. While I was frying the
eggs, Ferry called up. Not a good time, and I asked Doris, my wife, to tell him to call
back later. She said “Sorry, he's on the toilet, can you call back later?”. That annoyed
me, and I called out „Ich bin nicht auf dem Klo, ich koche meine Eier“. Not good German: it
should have been „Ich bin nicht auf dem Klo, ich bin dabei, Spiegeleier zu braten“: “I'm not
on the toilet, I'm frying eggs”. What I actually said could be translated as “I'm not on
the toilet, I'm cooking my eggs”. But it could also be translated as “I'm not on the
toilet, I'm boiling my balls”.
Ferry heard this, and didn't call back.
At work, I got called in to speak to Anselm Tristram, the proprietor of IBAT, the software
company where I worked. Mr Jordans, a senior administrative person was there too, and maybe
Ferry Lang was as well. I had performed my duties very badly, and had not followed
instructions while designing either application. So they fired me. My protests that the
way I did it was the only possibility, and that in particular the Bischof und Klein application worked well,
didn't help.
On leaving the room, Mr Jordans took me aside and asked “What's this I heard about eggs?”.
In the course of the week we negotiated a deal: I would leave as soon as possible (normal
periods of notice would be several months), and they would give me a pay raise. I then
applied for a job with Karstadt, and
arranged a correspondingly higher salary.
I started work with Karstadt as a system
programmer for their two UNIVAC 494
machines.
