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All my life's a circle, sunrise and sundown The moon rolls through the night-time till the daybreak comes around All my life's a circle and I can't tell you why The seasons spinning round again, the years keep rolling by
It seems like I've been here before, and I well remember when
I've found you a thousand times, I guess you've done the same |
Remember the old Harry Chapin song "All my life's a circle"? The years had kept rolling by, and suddenly, in late 1985, after twenty years in a dozen other countries, I found myself back in Canberra where I had taken my first few tentative steps as a migrant just off the ship from Europe.
My return to Canberra had been as totally unplanned and unexpected as all my previous moves, with plenty of bends and no straight lines and even a few dead ends, but this time when I was back where I'd been before, I at least spoke the Queen's English (albeit still with a slight Teutonic accent) and had enough professional qualifications and experience to immediately start writing computer software in the PICK language for a large mailorder business for the next twelve months.
Personal computers were slowly making their presence felt, and I began to specialise in PC-based computerised accounting systems, selling and installing off-the-shelf ATTACHÉ, SYBIZ, NewViews, and other packages, and also writing custom-built solutions in TAS, under my registered business name Canberra Computer Accounting Systems.
I was indeed Canberra's only Accounting Software Specialist until accounting firms
realised that there was a buck to be made by setting up their own PC consultancies
It was strictly a one-man business, just me and a telephone answering service. Those invisible girls at the answering service did a wonderful job for me as their ever-changing voices made my clients think they were dealing with a large computer software house. Only a few knew that I was working out of the spare bedroom in my house (later TWO spare bedrooms, with the wall knocked out between them).
Those were the days when an IBM computer with just 20MB of harddisk space retailed for around $8,000, when a monochrome monitor (you had a choice of green or amber display) cost some $700, and individual accounting software modules such as General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, or Inventory Control sold for close to a thousand dollars - EACH! Dot-matrix printers (remember dot-matrix printers?) sold for almost a thousand dollars and connecting several computers with the help of LANtastic or NOVELL took hours and hours, if not days, and meant several thousands of dollars in profit!
More years kept rolling by, and there was still very little competition as my combined expertise in accounting software, computer hardware, and networking plus a degree in accountancy wasn't matched by anybody. It took several more years before accounting firms realised there was a buck to be made by setting up their own PC consultancies.
Of course, all good things must come to an end: hardware and software prices kept dropping. Who was going to stump up hundreds of dollars for installation and training after having bought a small-business accounting package such as 'Mind Your Own Business' for less than a hundred dollars?
The clear-cut beginning of the end came with WINDOWS! Computers were no longer a mystery with low-level formatting, interleaves, BIOS, interrupts, system and config.sys and autoexec.bat files. Accounting software became more "user-friendly" with pre-configured charts of accounts and financial reports. It was just a case of "switch on and go".
Suddenly everybody was a computer expert and Canberra Computer Accounting Systems was no more! I went round one more time when I rescued a university college from certain bankruptcy - click here - after which I decided to go into retirement. Life had finally come full circle!
What had once been at the forefront of my life is now stuck to the back of my workshop door at "Riverbend" in Nelligen: Canberra Computer Accounting Systems' car door signage with which I had driven my nile-blue Toyota Camry through Canberra's streets for more than ten years.
"All my life's a circle, sunrise and sundown; the moon rolls through the night-time till the daybreak comes around; All my life's a circle I can't tell you why; Seasons spinning round again, the years keep rolling by."
