Michael,What an interesting visit. Can you give me more information on your friend, why he lives this way, what he does, who are his neighbors, how he supports himself, etc., etc.?I had one visit to a village in Central America--a side trip in the middle of a cruise up the Pacific side. The small (comfortable) cruise ship anchored off of the mouth of a small river and we zodiaced ashore, then entered a small outboard-motor powered rowboat for a trip up the river to a village set up as a trading place where native people from several surrounding villages came, with their wares, to sell to the tourists.The people were very cordial to us and we were usually surrounded by little children. One feature of the trading village was a wooden dock for unloading the tourists from the rowboat. Cruise tourists are customarily of advanced age, so one of the natives was assigned the duty of helping us from the rowboat to the dock.One would expect a fairly hefty young man for the job, but no, the designated helper was a young female--18 yrs or so--dressed tastefully in a few beads. In case I have not sent you a photo of her, it is attached. One of my cousins said, as he was helped from the rowboat--"I think she took my ear temperature".LloydOn Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 5:48 PM, Michael (Frish) Frishberg <frishberg@gmail.com> wrote:
Lloyd, great story, thanks.Before I relate at little something, here's where I was (again, for the fourth time!) last week (just returned 2 hours ago!).If I've shared that before, enjoy it again!As far as JCL goes, I never worked with 360/370 machines, since I was a 'mini-computer' salesman.The Sys/32 and Sys/34 were my bread and butter.While they also had a simplified JCL, it wasn't like decks of cards by then (early 80's).However, it involved double slashes as the pre-fix to commands.
If you had real trouble debugging, the command that applied was //wrist (slash slash wrist)!Life is good, for a change, hope all is well with you and yours!Frish--On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 1:57 PM, Lloyd Hubbard <lloydhubb01@gmail.com> wrote:
Michael,
You and your Dad are the only friends that I thought would enjoy this.
Lloyd
Lloyd
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "DFWIBMers.org" <dax@rubicontechventures.com>
Date: Jul 25, 2014 9:16 AM
Subject: DFWIBMers.org: 360 JCL: More Profound Than You Ever Imagined!
To: <lloydhubb@mchsi.com>
Cc:
DFWIBMers.org: 360 JCL: More Profound Than You Ever Imagined!
360 JCL: More Profound Than You Ever Imagined!
Posted: 24 Jul 2014 03:37 PM PDT
This will be best appreciated if you remember your JCL commands. Among my experiences [from Ross Daily] is an IBM computer story which I know will amuse you and maybe will move you.
When I ran into one the early 360/50s in 1964 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, I was hooked. At graduation, I interviewed with IBM, but they wanted sales staff in white shirts and ties and I wanted to work in a sweatshirt at geek central in White Plains. As it turned out, I went on for an MBA at Queen's University in Canada, not far from my NY State home. I used the Queen's computing centre a lot and worked nights helping undergrads wrestle with FORTRAN, COBOL and JCL. When I graduated, the centre hired me. Purely as an aside, Queen's had in 1970 what we were told was the most heavily loaded 360/50 in Canada. It was something of an experiment. We ran OS, DOS and TOS, had 1mb internal, with an additional 1mb of slow core memory. We had a resident IBM systems analyst plus two of our own. Also, I just have to mention our two IBM 1403 chain printers. What a triumph of engineering! I'm impressed to this day.
Back to the story: I ended up managing the 50′s accounting system for the centre, distributing millions of imaginary dollars to schools and faculties, and maintaining accounts on every student's and professor's allotment.
"Please Mr. Daily! I know my account is empty, but I'm almost ready for my dissertation! Just one more run; it'll only take 45 minutes!" I was a merciful accountant: "OK, I'll slip you into the batch run at 3:30 a.m. tomorrow. Not a word to any one; NOT A WORD." I had a most enjoyable assistant named Jack. He was in his 30s and had a dry and eccentric sense of humour. We still ran programs from card decks at the time, even monsters like SPSS, StatPacSocSciences. If you remember your JCL, the student's pile of data cards was preceded by a card containing the JCL statement:
sysin dd *
sys: Hey 50
in: Input coming
dd: some poor sophomore's data deck is next
*: starting NOW
Jack entered the office one day and said "sysin, dd star" in the vocal lilt you would use to say, "sit down, Mr. Jones." I was charmed by this conversational use of a JCL statement. I have never forgotten it, and it has become more and more profound to me over the years.
I was driven out of work by severe back pain at 60. Since then, I've been free to study particle physics and cosmology for my own interest. The concepts involved cannot help but redefine one's understanding of our reality. Carl Sagan is right. All of the elements excepting hydrogen are made in stars, which explode, etc., and become us. So, a few years ago, it occurred to me that regardless of one's religious beliefs, regardless of the unknowable facts of the matter, we do know that, when we die, we leave here and go 'somewhere else.' All our atoms will ultimately go back to the universe whence they came. I sent all of this with the punch line to Jack a couple of years ago, but his mind has drifted away.
So, this is just for you, JCL folks. It seems to me now, that, as I draw my last breath, I should whisper:
–Universe
–input coming
–my data deck, everything I am
–starting NOW
sysin, dd *
AND, now that I've learned "text speak," my tombstone will read:
WTF?
WTVR
LOL!
SYSIN, DD *
I hope this has meant something to you; we are the only ones who can truly understand.
So long, awesome geeks!
Ross Daily
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Saying we're going to do a better than the species-cide we're currently committing is interesting.
Actually doing anything is highly unlikely.
Why wait to 2020?
It isn't the species large enough to see that I'm worried about, here's a scenario:
it's the bacteria that fixes some nutrient to the food chain, and we don't even know about it, or what we did to destroy it...
Even this site, so committed to sustainability, has, as a goal, the sustainable use of biodiversity.
Think about just one instance: Fisheries and what could/should be the human cull?
Before we had big boats and nylon nets/lines our total consumption of seafood was minimal.
So, how can any human consumption be justified, since we're the invader specie, not the cod/whales/salmon/tuna/sardines/anchovies/shrimp we're scouring out of their ecosystems.
We're an invader specie in every ecosystem we are in, basically.
Without a huge throttle down of fecundity, that is, people having zero to no more than Zero children, the earth will continue to lose species at 1000 times the background rate, we'll continue to poison the atmosphere with CO2, and, increasingly, methane from long frozen sources.
Our modus operandi - From the beginning:
Spoil Our Nest and Move On.
Well, we're spoiling our nest (into near earth orbit, with enough trash to make sending astronauts there is too risky!) but there is no where to move on to.
Don't Have Children.
That's the best way to save the species.
Please forgive my swearing.
A coy phrase used when someone who has used a swear-word attempts to pass it off as French. The coyness comes from the fact the both the speaker and listener are of course both well aware the swear-word is indeed English.
This usage is mid 20th century English in origin. A version of it is found in Michael Harrison's All Trees were Green, 1936:
"A bloody sight better (pardon the French!) than most."
The precise phrase comes just a few years later in S.P.E. Tract IV., 1940:
"Excuse my French! (forgive me my strong language)."
The source of the phrase is earlier and derives from a literal usage of the exclamation. In the 19th century, when English people used French expressions in conversation they often apologised for it - presumably because many of their listeners (then as now) wouldn't be familiar with the language. An example of this was given in The Lady's Magazine, 1830:
Bless me, how fat you are grown! - absolutely as round as a ball: - you will soon be as enbon-point (excuse my French) as your poor dear father, the major.
'En bon point' is French for 'plump; well-nourished'. It might seem odd to us now that the speaker, having been rather rude about her compatriot's appearance, felt obliged to apologise for doing so in French, but not for the rudeness itself.
!
The current industrialized and corporate-led system is doomed to fail. We need a radical overhaul of food and farming if we want to feed a growing world population without destroying the planet.
—Meat Atlas (love the name!) Frish
