In 1967, I was a young Flight Lieutenant (read Captain) in the Royal Canadian Air Force. I was on a job in Europe installing navigation aids and communications at the base in Lahr that we took over after Charlie DeGaul threw us out of France. One night I received a trans Atlantic telephone call to get my body back to Canada to sit some computer aptitude tests. One month later I was learning COBOL, three months later I was handed a project that three other teams had failed at (to automate the collection of maintenance data for our aircraft fleets), four months later I ran my first 'fleet' through the system, and two months later I handed the system over to the maintainers. I spent endless nights hounding the key punch staff making real time corrections to punch cards as they came from the teams. The computer (IBM 360) staff grew to hate me as I sat with them over the midnight hours correcting my JCL (Job Control Language) cards, and eventual making real time corrections to the overnight compiles. Regretfully in those days, Jolt was non-existent and my only wake up product was way too much coffee (I paid for that dearly in recent years). I got out of the computer business in 1970 to serve in The USAF Air Defence Command. In 1980 I bought myself a TI-99/4A and taught myself assembly language so I could program the 4k module that TI sold.
AS I grew more senior I got out of the hands on involvement but I was a strong and ardent support of OS/2 until it came to an end a few years ago.
Life was fun in those days if one had a constitution of iron and did not mind being looked at as if you were another planet.
Now I am looking forward to escaping the clutches of Windows and wrestling with Linux as I go through another learning process with a mind that is not a sharp as it once was.
Always remember...
Working with Linux is like wrestling with a worthy opponent. Working
with Windows is like picking on an annoyed child with a loaded handgun.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- - Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer rstevens@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx - - VitalStream, Inc. http://www.vitalstream.com - - - - A day for firm decisions!!! Well, then again, maybe not! - ----------------------------------------------------------------------
