AnElephantCant always be creative
He cannot always produce a rollicking rhyme
But he still likes to rock
Around sweet Anja’s clock
Because he is very aware of the passing of time
AnElephant once again launches a one pachyderm assault on what is sadly the last (for now) of this great weekly challenge hosted by his friend Al.
AnElephant sends Al his sincere thanks for the superb job he has done with this site in a very short time.
Please take a moment to check out this page to see some superb interpretations of the Japanese Haibun, a literary form which explores the relationship between the human experience and nature.
This week he chooses this wonderful image from Anja as his inspiration.
Copyright Anja Partin
Time
Once upon a time, when people could breathe without the aid of a cell or mobile phone attachment, and the real reason for the evolution of opposable thumbs, i.e. to text while walking or driving a motor vehicle, had not yet been discovered, your perhaps slightly cynical writer worked in software development.
He was a boy programmer back in the days when a single process machine filled a large room with a raised floor which hid many many cables of varying colour and thickness.
Early in his career he worked on a Payroll system.
Perversely, given the relative complexity and significant criticality of what were then weekly wages, paid cash in hand, this was invariably one of the first projects attempted by any company with a newly acquired computer.
A week or two before the new system was due to go ‘live’, he was part of a team involved in a ‘parallel run’, where the existing manual system and the new computerised version were both processed to ensure accuracy of output.
This is his tale.
He is sitting in a bar in the East End of Glasgow with the Project Leader, Big George Perry, and the Senior Programmer, ‘Red’ Andy Nisbett.
Back in the computer room an operator is feeding punched card input data for several thousand employees into a reader.
These hold timesheet information as well as a variety of changes to rates and conditions.
The process takes about six hours in total.
They are on standby, just in case.
Andy looks pensively at the others.
One thing about working in the building trade, he suggests in his soft Highland brogue, all you have to do at the end of the day is make sure your shovel is clean.
the miracle of technology
brings pause
to the human condition
we spend uncounted hours
waiting for the technology
that saves us so much time
Sound Bite Fiction 
If only people would put down their phones. Deep sigh. I remember when cell phones were almost as big as tissue boxes.
LikeLike
aloha AnElephanCant. acute observations in this write—the backbone of good haiku. you had me with the opening thought: breathing without the aid of a cell phone. bwahahahahahahahahaha. exactly. way fun. yeah, i remember those punched card days of data processing. ha. way fun to have met you and your words. aloha. r.
LikeLike
Excellent 😀 I like this one. Time well spent 😉
LikeLike
I like your take on time. I remember how the term ‘bug’ in the system started. In one of those large rooms with reels of tape… stopping the action, was a fly. Now everything is pristine clean. And we can’t hear ourselves think depending so much on ones and naughts.
I like the bit about the clean shovel. I try very hard when in line at the grocery store to not be angry or upset when the stores system is down. It isn’t the cashiers fault… Cheers, Jules
LikeLike
Dame un grano de mazal, i echame en las fundinas de la mar
LikeLike
Reblogged this on hocuspocus13.
LikeLike
AnElephantCant deny he is flattered
He is so happy his world blurs out of focus
So what is the cause
Of his joyous applause
It is this re-blog by his friend HocusPocus
LikeLike
The blurs of the old world
Brings the focus into the next world
Or as some may say “next path”
LikeLike