Moone and Timolin

Moone and Timolin are villages close to each other in the south of Co.Kildare. My cycle ride this afternoon took me past a signpost that announced I was within a few km of these villages and this brought back memories of purchasing my first PC, as mention of either village always does.

My track, 38.2 miles, 12.45mph average

My route was "go anywhere you like but keep away from Dunlavin". Which you will see from my track that I did very successfully. It's not that there is anything particularly wrong with Dunlavin, just that all roads in this area appear to lead there and it is thus a struggle to keep away.

So - my first PC. This was shortly after my decision to start an electronics design consultancy, Microlite. Having used a multi-user computer in my work for the BBC I at least knew that I needed one but not much else. I left the BBC in 1981 and in the next 7 years before Microlite I was totally out of touch with the world of electronics. During those years I did other things like learning to live in a community, building work, picking potatoes, a painting and decorating business, teaching people to drive, I even helped to cook a meal for a restaurant. And during those years I was oblivious to the birth of the PC.

The decision before me was the lower cost Amstrad PCW which used the CP/M operating system, or the IBM PC. Thankfully I chose the latter. I can't remember how one did market research back then before the dawn of the internet, but somehow I found this outfit in Moone. I must have seen an advert somewhere because I can still sort of picture the front of this XT desktop. And I longed for an excuse to go to Moone to see it for myself and possibly purchase. Back then one couldn't just jump in a car on a whim - money was short and getting permission was the order of the day. How things have changed since then! In the event I ended up buying a PC-AT (286 processor) from a company in Dublin. I remember asking them what colour it was, which bemused the salesperson somewhat - "computer colour of course".

I chose a Hercules graphics card and monochrome monitor in colour orange, though virtually all of my work was text based. Later, when I purchased my first PCB-CAD software, I got a CGA monitor which boasted a resolution 320×200 in 4 colors. How things have changed since then!

Lost confidence

Nauru, the island where children have given up on life. Where children as young as 10 are self-harming and committing suicide. These people have lost their confidence - how can this be allowed to continue in our world today?

Whilst we were away visiting folk in the UK a visiting preacher here talked about confidence.

Confidence... The good book says "Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised." I picture a young person full of ambition working their way to the top of their profession. But it also says that we should "put no confidence in the flesh" so maybe my picture is all wrong!

Growing older... in one sense I am still me, I don't feel any different. But my senses and memory are not so astute and I get tired more easily. And above all I am in jeopardy of loosing my confidence. Confidence in being a good husband, a good father (though mercifully my children can now look after themselves, maybe soon they'll be looking after me, God bless them), confidence in being a supposed Christian leader, a teacher, even in being an electronics design engineer and programmer. And sometimes I just feel like giving up. But I know I mustn't. And compared with these children on Nauru, or the Kenyan kids my daughter is teaching, or indeed 90% of the world's population, I have it made living here. How dare I have such negative thoughts? And yet I do: because there is some truth in the lack of my abilities which, I suppose, I must come to terms with.

I now (sometimes) use a hearing aid, I wear glasses for reading and, more recently, for driving, I manage short term memory loss by having only certain places where I leave important things: when I can't  remember where I last put my wallet I only have to look in those certain places. All very well until my routine is disturbed and I leave it some other place!

I have already decided to gradually retire my electronics design business - there is plenty of more mundane and less stressful work to fill my time here. But some of the other areas are not so easy to deal with!

Yesterday I made a life changing decision

Electronics?  I love this video's portrayal of the evil of electronics!

Almost 30 years ago I started my Microlite business, this was after a number of years of being totally out of electronics doing stuff like building and driving instruction during which time Bill Gates invented the PC, unknown to me. So I decided to launch out self-employed as an electronics design house: a one-stop-shop from client's vague concept to the reality of pilot production. The name suggesting a shedding of light on micro-electronics with hints of low-cost and providence.

Yesterday I decided to begin to wind down and retire Microlite, specifically to extricate myself from the stress of long drawn-out, complex, firmware-intensive projects, and clients unwilling or unable to pay in a timely fashion. I will continue to support existing clients but be very selective about any new work I take on, and aim to reduce the business to a part-time occupation.

Today I am faced with taunts of "failure", "you gave in to pressure", "you are letting people down" - thoughts of Churchill's never give in, never, never, never, in nothing, great or small, large or petty. But even he follows this with an "except" category into which I fit. I am in fact taking hold of my destiny. I believe it was God's idea to start Microlite and I believe that this is the time for it to end or at least change course. In case you are asking "why?  here are some of the ingredients:

• An increasing gut-feeling that Microlite is past its sell-by date;
• Precipitated by the particular project I was limbering up to which has proved to be more complex than I had bargained for;
• A recent chance remark made by someone here that I might retire from electronics one day;
• Ongoing stress caused by unmanageable clients vis-à-vis their unattainable expectations and unwillingness or inability to pay in a timely fashion;
• The ever-increasing complexity of electronics systems often surpassing what a one-man-team can manage;
• The ever-decreasing scale of electronics component so that my ultimate resolution of my PCB CAD can no longer cope, but to upgrade would be expensive plus a steep learning curve;
• My junior assistant programmer having recently left, on whom I was relying on more and more for software and firmware solutions;
• Increased needs here for my involvement in building maintenance due to other folk being otherwise deployed;
• Our finances being no longer so dependent upon Microlite income now another community business has taken off;
• Recent bad experiences with certain projects taking much longer than expected or clients not being fully satisfied.

Maybe I'll post again when the dust settles and it becomes clearer what all this really means.