Die Adelaider Zeiten

Die Adelaider Zeiten
(The Adelaide Times)
Edition 8 – Monday 24th December 2007
http://brian-vogt.customer.netspace.net.au/DAZ08/index.htm
Written and edited by "der umherziehende Reporter"
Continuing in the tradition of Die Rüsselsheimer Zeiten (35 editions in 19 months, 1998-2000),
this is my summary of the past 52 weeks in Adelaide.

I'm about to spend Christmas Day (and the following 2 days) with Dad and my brother Wayne at Kapunda, 70 km from here. (Kapunda is where I was born and went to school). Wayne has already come from his current home in Launceston, Tasmania. Dad and I picked him up from Adelaide Airport last Wednesday. He'll return to Tasmania this coming Friday.

On the weekend of 21-24 October my father and I attended the centenary celebrations of Kapunda High School. Several hundred people were there, including a teacher I hadn't seen since 1968. Fellow students and a lot of other people I knew in the 1960s. The oldest former scholar, Eli Hambour (a real estate agent), is almost 102 years old. Until the middle of this year, he still drove his car to work. Also a man aged well into his 80s met one of his teachers! It was a very memorable and enjoyable time for everybody, with events on Friday afternoon, Saturday evening and all Sunday afternoon.

At the age of 84, my father is still an active motorcyclist. On the weekend of 5-7 October we both rode our bikes to the BMW Motorcycle Rally at Spear Creek, a rural holiday resort near Port Augusta (300 km north of Adelaide). It's at this type of gathering that I get to meet several of the people with whom I rode in the late 1970s.

Those of you with good memories might recall from last Christmas that I was about to enquire about studying Windows networking at Thebarton Senior College. That's exactly what happened in early February. I asked the teacher whether that subject is part of a course. Indeed it is in the curriculum of Information Technology Certificate 3 – so I enrolled in the whole course. You might be wondering (rightly) why I didn't need to study for Certificates 1 and 2 first. I attended two sessions for "Recognition of Prior Learning" (RPL) to demonstrate that I already had the prerequisite knowledge. I haven't worked with data bases before, so I also needed to enrol in the Databases subject of Certificate 1. Here are the subjects – all 2 terms (1/2 year) except Databases which is only 1 term :

Databases – basic concepts (including reporting) using Microsoft Office Access.
Networking Essentials – learning the basics of setting up a Local Area Network with Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Professional client systems. Includes setting up and monitoring printers, as well as data backup procedures.
Install and Configure Software – using any Windows CD-ROM (from 98SE to Vista) on a PC. We also tried a few free versions of Linux, which were interesting. Learning the main hardware components of a PC system, and downloading drivers for them.
Working With Clients – ethics, generally dealing with other people, writing documentation, and some practical work experience (see below for details).
Programming – basic mathematics, programming design (both of which I have a university education and decades of experience), as well as using Microsoft Visual Basic (which was new to me) for its graphical user interface and Access database interface.

All of this amounted to a "full-time study" workload, and things went reasonably well until the end of March. The story continues later.

Keeping an eye on things –
By the end of 2006, my previous eyesight trouble had started to return. It steadily worsened from there, until the pain became so bad that I hassled my endodontist, Jack Linn. I believed it was all caused by a tooth problem. Jack was good about it, and on 27th March he agreed to take some new X-ray photos of the tooth he'd worked on 4 months earlier. Digital photography is much safer, using about 1/6 of the X-ray exposure compared to film photography – and it goes straight onto the PC screen. This showed that the suspect tooth was in very good condition, but Jack noticed that my eyes were extremely red and should be checked immediately.
Early the following morning I got my ophthalmic surgeon, Dr. David Worthley, to look at my eyes. It took him about 15 seconds to determine the problem – oxygen starvation of the eyes, caused by a combination of dry eyes and wearing contact lenses.

As you can see from this photo, eyes grow new blood vessels through the whites in a desperate search for a source of oxygen. The other effect is that the cornea surfaces die and go a bit rough, so it's like looking through a completely fogged windscreen. Spectacles were of no use to me at all, but contact lenses gave me a nice smooth surface through which to see. Of course, that led to further destruction. Dr. Worthley instructed me that I could never wear contact lenses again, and that I must allow my eyes to heal. What he didn't tell me until 3-4 months later was that he had never seen such severe damage from this cause, and he wasn't sure whether it would heal or not – but he did say that I had come close to losing my sight permanently. I've been consulting Dr. Worthley for spectacle and contact lens prescriptions since 1978, so he's very experienced.
Unable to drive my car, I relied on my old friend Les Knowling (another customer of Dr. Worthley) to take me to him several times during the following weeks, and I walked a lot in places that I knew well. I couldn't attend the college, but Windows Narrator (a simulated voice feature in Windows XP) helped me with e-mail at home. After 4 weeks I could see clear signs of improvement; Dr. Worthley estimated my sight as 25% in the left eye, 50% in the right. I practiced throwing a tennis ball against my garage wall from a distance of 3 metres, catching the rebound 18 or 19 times out of 20, using only the left or right eye. With stereo vision, I was able to catch everything. After 6 weeks I had enough sight in my right eye to return to the college.

Having missed 4 weeks of study (plus 2 weeks of holidays in the middle), I wasn't easily able to understand what was being taught at the college. The senior I.T. teacher advised me not to attempt to catch up in all subjects – just concentrate on 1 or 2. By the end of the course in mid-year, I managed to complete only "Working With Clients" – so I enrolled in the other subjects again for the 2nd half of the year.

For 5 weeks starting at the beginning of July (during the college vacation) I worked at Mitsubishi Motors – this time caring for their large IBM computer system while Sam Arnold went on a 4-week Mediterranean ship cruise with his family. There were no great objectives this year – just be prepared to fix any problems quickly, as this computer system is used by Mitsubishi car dealers for all of their vehicle sales in Australia. No problems occurred during this time, but they can't afford to leave it for 4 weeks without local support. Nevertheless, I was able to solve one of Sam's persistent little problems in Data Management.

I returned to the college in early August, having missed the first 2 weeks due to work – not a problem, as I was repeating the course. With one subject already passed, this is still a difficult workload, and most students are unable to complete everything. I did, with one exception – I submitted an incomplete assignment for the Programming subject last week. Two foreign students who have trouble using the English language were expelled from the college in November for copying (plagiarising) another student's assignment. They were so stupid that they didn't even change any of the words to disguise it. Other students told me that those guys had previously been warned for doing the same thing. Some people never learn.

The college arranged a Work Experience placement for me. From mid-October to mid-December I've been spending a bit of time at St. Joseph's (Catholic) Primary School in the suburb of Kingswood, helping with the management of their PC network. This is supervised volunteer work, mostly for me to learn how the real world works, but the client also gets a bit of work done. I would like to continue as a volunteer there during the early part of 2008, but the Principal has been too busy to speak with me during the past 2 weeks. My aim is to become known as somebody who can do this type of work well, which will (hopefully) lead to paid employment later.

Tennis – I'm still playing for the Denman Tennis Club. The 2006-2007 summer season finished with me having severe eyesight trouble – once again, my team lost the Preliminary Final. By Grand Final day, I was unable to see anyway, having received Dr. Worthley's diagnosis a few days earlier. Nevertheless, I attended our end-of-season party, needing other members to guide me around.
This season (2007-2008) I'm playing in the doubles-only competition. We play mixed doubles instead of singles (in addition to the usual men's and women's doubles). I thought this would be easier, but it's not. Being at the bottom of our Division 3 team, I'm often playing against strong opposition so I lose a lot more than I win.

I continue to be an active member of of Prospect Road Uniting Church. Although I don't have any formal duties at the moment, I usually operate the PowerPoint presentation during Sunday morning worship services. (The minister prepares screens for all of the hymns, liturgy, illustrations for his sermons, etc.). During the worst part of my eyesight difficulties, having a laptop PC screen close in front of me was the only way I could follow what was happening.
The minister hopes to acquire some cheap PCs with Windows XP for children and youth. I'm looking forward to setting up a PC network, so I hope he can make it happen.

My involvement with the Gideons continues. In May I was re-elected for a 3rd term as Chaplain of my local group. Away from the meeting room, I placed Bibles in the rooms of several Hotels/Motels in North Adelaide and along Main North Road. Unfortunately, study commitments prevented me from distributing testaments to Year 8 students in schools – but that will be different in 2008.
Gideons who speak at schools and in churches need to pass practical tests for speaking quality every 5 years. For example, information content must be very good, and going overtime is an instant failure. My accreditation as a speaker has expired (for both types), but I'm hoping to do the tests in the next couple of months.

I continue to be an active member of the Hillman Car Club, and at the Annual General Meeting in August, I was re-elected to the position of Social Events Officer. This position isn't responsible for organising everything – just co-ordinating the people who volunteer to organise specific events. However, I also did my bit by organising a run in November and the "Christmas Lunch/Meeting" at the Meadows Hotel (including the 50 km drive there) in early December.
During 2007 the club held several events to celebrate 100 years of the Hillman brand. I was able to participate in our "Feature Marque" displays at All British Day in February and the Bay to Birdwood Classic run in September. My eyesight problem prevented me from attending our special display at the Adelaide Motor Show at the end of March.

Last Friday I had my eyes tested by the optometrist at the OPSM spectacle shop in Adelaide. He said that my peripheral (side) vision is still slightly affected by what remains of those extra blood vessels, but it's not bad. My central vision is clear, just needing the usual focus correction. I'm getting "multi-focal" spectacles for office work, but the optometrist said that my old specs are still good for distant vision like driving and tennis.

Haben Sie frohe Weihnachten und ein glückliches neues Jahr !
(Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year !)

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