Old farts and new Linux
Rick Stevens
rstevens at vitalstream.com
Mon May 3 23:27:14 UTC 2004
Betti Ann & Preston Smith wrote:
> 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 at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc. http://www.vitalstream.com -
- -
- A day for firm decisions!!! Well, then again, maybe not! -
----------------------------------------------------------------------
More information about the fedora-list
mailing list