Old farts and new Linux

[Betti Ann & Preston Smith]

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.


Preston

At 06:10 PM 5/3/04, you wrote:
>On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 04:43:51PM -0300, Betti Ann & Preston Smith wrote:
>....
> >
> > In your context, I must be a ROF (Real Old Fart) - I am 63 and first
> > worked with computers in the late 60 when the IBM 360's and 370's were in
> > vogue.
>
>IIRC, The 360 boxes were interesting.  Open source for the OS (but
>copyright) and open specifications for hardware.  While not GPL... the
>openness made a lot of things possible.
>
>I never got to touch a 360.  The U of A opted for a CDC 6400.  During
>the transition all programs were run double once on the old IBM and
>also on the new CDC.  The CDC was so much faster and the nights work
>was done by 10 PM.  Some of us got to program on the console while the
>IBM ran all night and into the morning.  Now that was a work station.

---
Betti Ann & Preston Smith, Head of St Margaret's Bay, NS, 
prsmith at ns.sympatico.ca
1962 MGA 1600 MK II, 1980 MGB Limited Edition
2002 Damon Challenger 335 Motor Home on 2001 Ford V-10 20,500 lb chassis