A Tapestry of Tech & Triumphs
Quirky Career Highlights
My career, much like a well-ridden cycling route, is a blend of exhilarating highs, unexpected turns, and the occasional crash, each moment a story that no resume could ever fully capture. Below is a collection of highlights that weave together the technical, the absurd, and the unforgettable from decades of navigating the wild terrain of IT, networking, and life.
The Early Days | Coding & Chaos
- Started at Grey College, where my name sits proudly on the honours board, just below anti-apartheid hero Bram Fischer, a humbling legacy to follow.
- Learned to program on a ZX-81, pecking away at its membrane keyboard, sparking a lifelong love for code.
- Mastered COBOL on an IBM mainframe, wielding JCL and embedded SQL off DB2, crafting enterprise systems in an era when computers filled rooms.
- Received a R250,000 mainframe processing bill in 1991 for a branch line report—an expensive lesson in resource management.
- Installed OS/2 using 23 stiffy disks on IBM Model 70 & 80 PS/2s become succumbing to Windows 95 and WIndows NT using CDs.
- Coded programs in Turbo Pascal to transmit and receive via serial ports. The programs transferred word processing documents between DOS and CPM Braille computers which where known as Davids. It also included a TSR (Terminate & Stay Resident) that read the DOS screen over the David’s voice chip.
National Service
- Faked my medical test to get into the Navy as I didn’t want to miss out on the fun.
- Learned to leopard crawl under barbed wire with a FN FAL while a Browning machine gun was firing live rounds overhead.
- Experienced survival training by being dumped in the middle of Saldanha Bay with a life raft that was too small for the group, forcing half to hang off the side in the water.
Network Adventures | From Modems to Mayhem
- Connected to the Internet via a US Robotics Courier modem, later upgrading to the futuristic ISDN—my first steps into the digital frontier.
- Maximized memory in DOS to load Smart Madge Token-ring adapters, juggling Netbeui, IPX, and SNA protocols like a digital circus act.
- Brought a country to a standstill by closing the main airport, a network misconfiguration that taught me the power (and peril) of a single command.
- Spanned core switch trunks incorrectly, plunging an entire network into darkness—a humbling reminder to double-check configurations.
- Battled a 10Base2 terminator that overheated in the sun, increasing resistance and crashing the network—proof that even hardware has a bad day.
- Chased rogue DHCP servers, unraveling network mysteries that left me blue in the face until a dodgy ISP demarc install was uncovered.
- Tamed cable spaghetti in a data center, where torn paper labels tied with discarded telephone cable earned the title of “world’s messiest.”
Data Centre Disasters | Where Murphy’s Law Reigns
- Faced pigeon droppings corroding a network chassis in a car factory’s paint shop—nature’s way of reminding me who’s boss.
- Dealt with a desktop fan cooling telecom equipment that failed spectacularly, dumping gas in the data center on New Year’s Eve 1999.
- Got shocked resetting a router due to uncovered electrical plugs in a cabinet, a literal jolt to my troubleshooting routine.
- Pumped out a pond under a data center floor caused by an iced-up air conditioner, breaking an industrial vacuum cleaner in the process.
- Saved a network switch with an umbrella when a pipe leaked in the server room, improvisation at its finest.
- Survived a data centre fire, only for the fire department to drown the equipment, proving water can be as destructive as flames.
- Witnessed a generator battery explode after air conditioners overloaded the circuit during a power failure—I changed my shorts that day.
- Navigated a Peterbilt truck crashing into a data centre, shaking the building like an earthquake.
- Discovered a network switch covered in cooking fat, inconveniently placed above a canteen stove.
- Helped cold-boot an SAA mainframe after cabling contractors accidentally disconnected it while pulling CAT 5 under the floorboards.
Moments of Mischief & Misadventure
- Dialed into an Anglo-American board meeting after spotting a video conference unit’s number in a magazine photo, a cheeky test of connectivity.
- Installed a fake blue screen saver on a file server as a prank, only for the admin to panic and power it off.
- Laughed through a change management meeting when my foot got stuck in a dustbin, earning roars of laughter from colleagues.
- Starred as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in a Rocky Horror skit where Tequila was involved at a team-building event, bold, if not entirely coherent.
- Forced to drink a Flaming Lamborghini at a Novell Netware event for wearing a Microsoft Certified Pig t-shirt as a dual-certified pioneer in South Africa.
- Played an April Fool’s joke that went viral two weeks later, making national news headlines.
Media Moments & Public Presence
- Appeared on Springbok Radio to discuss my Andabatae PC program, designed for blind operators—a proud moment of impact.
- Featured on Irish TV post a Boks game at Lansdowne Road, sharing my rugby-fueled insights.
- Spoke on Radio 702 about crashing into a camouflaged bollard at Rosebank Shopping Centre—a tale of automotive embarrassment.
- Leopard-crawled across an office floor during the “Battle of Luthuli House” when AK47s started firing—survival instincts in overdrive.
- Appeared on Gupta TV with Gerry Randseli during the height of state capture, talking about broadband and witnessed a memorable wardrobe failure.
- Wore a black cowboy hat dressed as Kid Colt on Derick Watt’s show.
- The investigative journalist known as Roald Bartholomew did a few notable articles in the Zuma years & then turned his hand to poetry.
Innovations & Achievements
- Invented the Morning to Midnight data bundles, later adopted by Vodacom as Night Owl—a game-changer for South African connectivity.
- Holds a patent for a power monitoring device, a testament to my knack for solving real-world problems.
- Became the King of Netware SFT III, stabilizing clusters by tuning Madge FDDI adapters—a title earned through persistence.
- Persuaded a high school headmaster to buy an Apple IIe, sparking programming journeys, including one that led to Cisco’s licensing scheme.
- Created the best SD-WAN blog in the world, sharing expertise as a leader of the technology in South Africa.
- Owns the world’s largest collection of bowiea volubilis, a quirky botanical passion that rivals my tech achievements.
- The Head of the Nuclear Regulator in the States commented positively about my article on engineering resilience!
Near Misses & Life Lessons
- Encountered a rat the size of a dog in airport tunnels while testing cables, nearly screaming for my mom.
- Saw my life flash before my eyes when a network engineer unplugged the last live path, causing a total blackout.
- Survived a building’s scaffolding collapse, proving network engineering can be a hazardous occupation.
- Deleted the /var directory on a server, a mistake that taught me the value of backups the hard way.
- Broke my leg in 27 places during a rugby maul collapse, a painful reminder of my physical limits as a partially blind athlete.
- Cut my feet on glass in a tidal pool while in the Navy, only to be threatened with a charge for damaging government property.
Personal Triumphs & Quirky Tales
- Completed the Argus Cycle Tour over 10 times, starting with my trusty university bike, blending my love for cycling with endurance.
- Learned to drive on a Massey-Ferguson tractor, followed by my first car, a VW Beetle—a humble start to my journey.
- Flew in a Boeing 707 to a Novell conference at Elephant Hills and survived Zambezi rapids on my backside after falling out of a raft.
- Stood in the cockpit of a Boeing 747 SP at 45,000 feet, back when such access was allowed.
- Skated on an iced-over pond in front of Cabletron’s New Hampshire office, blissfully unaware of their mirrored-glass audience.
- Flew multiple times on KLM First Class to the Netherlands which was paid for by Multichoice and witnessed two old geezers have a pillow fight in the front of the Boeing 747.
- I met my future wife doing the Full Monty to Hot Chocolate’s You Sexy Thing at the South African Computer Show.
Hacking
- Helped of hacking nerds with sleuth work to track down servers that exposed the operations of one of the biggest bitcoin scams in history.
These moments, from coding on a ZX-81 to dodging bullets and battling data center disasters, paint a picture of a career that’s as much about resilience and humor as it is about technical prowess. They’re the stories I’ll tell in my memoirs, far richer than any bullet point on a resume.
