Janis Kracht of 1:261/38 and former Z1 has Died
From
Vincent Coen@2:250/1 to
All on Mon Oct 28 17:36:33 2024
Hello Every one!
I am sorry to report that Janis has died on 21st October aged around 72, and she was the instigator of the Filegate back in the 90's along with the help of the USB Robotics boss who help provide USB modems to the Filegate Hubs in the USA and UK but others around the world starting with 14k4 modems (yes no typing
error) that was upgraded from time to time to 38k and at least for me up to ISDN speeds of 38K x2 (for two channel operations).
[I took over the role of UK Filegate Hub after the existing node shut down around 2000 or so]
Ward Dossche has posted an article in FNEWTF44 about his recollections of here and I am posting it here for you all.
Janis Kracht - June 14 1991 - October 21st 2024
Ward Dossche - 2:292/854
I got the message of Janis' passing from Lauren, her daughter, and
that is one of these moments when the world stops ... for a few
seconds anyway and you become innundated with sentiment.
Janis, assisted by hubby Ron, was actively present in the Fidonet
nodelist from June 14th 1991 till the day of her passing October
21st 2024 .. 30 years to the day when I entered the nodelist as
2:2/0 ... They say that lightning does not strike twice ... At
least I hope it doesn't. She was the 2nd longest ever serving ZC.
Janis had been a guiding light for years to many people, super
friendly and helpful as described by some, the ultimate bitch as
described by others.
I had the good fortune of meeting her. There was a trip from
Belgium to Connecticut for a wedding and it took me virtually past
her front door. So we decided to meet ... at a pizza place on the
way to the wedding. She came down with hubby Ron doing the driving.
It was immediately obvious how well Ron took care of her, lifting
her out of the car, assisting her getting on stairs ... Janis
suffered from multiple sclerosis but she never let that detract her
from doing things.
Actually, I was a bit cautious for this meeting but seeing how
these two interacted made it easy. She immediately wanted to delve
into Fido-business, these were the days still of PSTN-only and
there was ample opportunity for massive fights ... Probably the
notion of "Keyboard Warrior" was invented in Fidonet.
We talked about a lot of things, mostly non-Fido, that got her a bit
nervous because she was all into the politics at that time. The
proprietor of the pizza-plaza obviously needed our seats for other
customers ... so we concluded that meeting (after all, I still
needed to get to a wedding) and said our good-bye's. Photos were
taken and distributed, I probably lost them in a crash ... Don't
know if anyone kept copies somewhere.
Later we got a couple of times head to head as no action was ever
taken about the verbal abuse of the one whose name we're not
supposed to mention. Invoking the ZCC to overrule rulings (something
which was never done before and never happened afterwards). There
was the period of suspicious undertakings where she was the
"ZC whisperer"; the so-called conversations with the illustrious
and evasive ZC6 Bin Li filled multiple screens full of doubt. The
man obviously did not understand English, was incompetent at running
a node and just did as he was told. And Janis called-in her markers.
Let it be understood that the atmosphere with Janis in general was
good, nomatter how you interpret the above paragraph. When her
system backfired and messed-up her ZONE1-segment I could just call
her voice as she had 6 hours, because of the time-difference to fix
whatever needed fixing. And when my own system suffered a major
crash, she was instrumental for it to surface again. There was
no animosity, just help.
We never discussed it but you could notice that over the years
her agility for maintaining her system was lagging. There was
"something" but she did not volunteer any information and I had
no right to query her for it.
When she decided to call it quits for her ZC-status in 2018, it
did not come as a surprise. She and I remained in touch; love her
or hate her but she was a monument in Fidonet.
Lately we talked about a possible renewal visit as I always wanted
to see the Woodstock site at least once, and it isn't all that far
from Slaterville. Janis could go on about that how she and her
sister had secured tickets to the festival, her sister could go
but she couldn't as she was deemed too young at that time by her
father... Ahhh, those memories.
Despite our differences 20 years ago or so, the years have softened
our views of each other and the end product was a special
friendship that few would have thought possible.
I will miss Janis, maybe no one believes it, but the relationships
between Fido people are of a unique character that you don't find
in other computer realms. It's truly a community. We have fought
so often that you know the other. And then suddenly she is gone.
Eventually it happens to all of us, and yet it remains sad.
I felt like the last chapter in Janis' life story had not yet
been written.
Let me conclude the way she concluded her last email to me ...
"Love Yah".
Ward Dossche
IC - Fidonet
--- ends ---
Her system is still running at filegate.net and I am posting here her baby CV as taken from the system under the banner pdnlady :
Ron and I have been married for about 35 years (we still can't remember our anniversary). We're two old hippies - children of the 60's (smile). Yes, Ron went to the Woodstock Festival (the original one on Max Yasgur's farm which was
really close to where he lived)... my father wouldn't let me go...(laugh)... We
met after Ron had finished school at Johns Hopkins University and I was still in our local community college.. acting was my life until true love struck us both. I'd never even thought about computers then. Ron bought me a computer sometime in the early 80's and I taught myself to program.. then I taught him... Then he did this "leap" kind of thing with his programming skills.. ;-)
We are self-taught C/C++ programmers and we successfully ran our own company, "Invisible Light Software", for about 5 years. Life is mean though, and
eventu