The Core Dump

The Core Dump is the personal blog of Nic Lindh, a Swedish-American pixel-pusher living in Phoenix, Arizona.

[By Nic Lindh on Wednesday, 27 September 2006]

All computers great and small

One of the greatest TV series ever is All Creatures Great & Small, the story of James Herriot’s veterinary adventures in the British countryside in the 1930s. It’s warm-hearted, funny, and touching, a reminder of a different age and lifestyle.

Even though All Creatures depicts the trials and tribulations of rural vets in the 1930s, something always seemed really familiar about the series. And then one day as James Herriot stood stripped to the waist in a freezing, drafty barn with his arm all the way up a pregnant cow’s insides to attempt to force the calf into birthing position†, it struck me: The veterinarians were the IT consultants of that era.

No, really. Bear with me. The similarities are striking.

Of course, rebuilding a server is much less emotionally draining than having to inform a struggling farmer that his stock has contracted foot-and-mouth disease and must be destroyed, throwing him and his family into bankruptcy… Plus, the working conditions tend to involve less cow dung.


†That actually seems to happen a lot in the series.

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