It’s a few years ago, and this systems programmer pilot fish is working for a large family-run truck rental company — a situation that comes with its own special IT problems.

“One of the owners was out drinking with a high school buddy, who happened to own a paint business,” says fish. “This buddy said all his business ran on one PC, and raved how easy it was.

“The owner decided our international distributed-process business could run on PCs too, and we could get rid of our large and expensive mainframe system.

“We tried to explain how it just couldn’t be done, but his buddy had him convinced.

“He hired a consultant crew of FoxPro programmers, who worked on it for about six months before even the owners had to admit that it just couldn’t be done.”

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