First Impressions

Came across a clip of Ernst on the internet that aired on Seattle television recently, it was about the Microsoft MVP summit that recently went down in Redmond this year. After much anticipation, at 7 minutes and 28 seconds I caught Mister Kuschke deliver a couple of insightful words.

Ernst is like a superstar in the software industry and has a massive fan base on the net space; I was told by his girlfriend Lauren that when they arrived in Seattle he was apparently greeted by a fan club!

On meeting Ernst, with a modest and friendly approach, you would never tell that he’s a Mensan and one of South Africa’s longest running Microsoft MVPs.

I’m not usually one to get angry; as a matter of fact most people don’t believe that I’m capable of getting angry. But on the odd occasion that I do, I can be a bit of a hard ass, and rather unreasonable. The circumstances in which Ernst was introduced to me were under these conditions.

Now in my defense I believe my reason for being angry was justified. Besides having a number of prior incidents with the purchasing of my flat and in particular my parking bay, which I won’t go into detail right now… I had just landed from a tiring business trip and was already in a bit of an irritable mood as I found that my brother’s car battery had died. This meant that he couldn’t pick me up from the airport, which meant that I had to pay a taxi and rush home only to rush back out to pick him up from somewhere as well.

As I approached my car to give him a lift, I found that the security in my complex had clamped the wheel of my car…in my own parking. At first I was quite calm and approached the security desk to find out why my car had been clamped. Apparently it was because I had parked in the wrong bay, which is fair enough if it were the case. But after I went to my files to fetch the documents and show mister security guard that the parking indeed did belong to me. He still claimed that he could not unclamp my vehicle, unless I paid him a R400 release fee. At this point I snapped and began a barrage of scathing words.

Enter Ernst. Ernst’s car had also been clamped and as he got to security, to find out why. He recalls me shouting at the security guard and saying stuff like “I don’t want to hear your excuses! Just sort this s&%^ out or I’ll have you fired!” Not the most pleasant of first impressions.

On top of that, for some reason when he introduced himself to me; I heard “Harris”, (although his name is pronounced like the Afrikaans word “Ernstig”, so “Harris” is probably more phonetically correct than “Urnst” which many people call him) and I proceeded to call him this for close to a month…until one day I found out from someone else, that his name was actually “Ernst”. To be honest I have no idea how we actually became friends, but the fact that we are; kind of gives you an indication of what an awesome laid back person he is.