SPARTA News January 2001 Page #

January 2001

SPARTA Chapter President’s Corner

- by Chris Blackshire

Welcome to the beginning of another new year. Did you make any new year resolutions? My professional resolution is to get some training in a new direction so I become a more valuable employee. My personal resolution is to increase contacts with my family and friends. This contact will include email and personal visits.

We as a SPARTA team need to make resolutions for 2001, such as the following:

Chapter Officers: Run for office in April. Get more involved in SPARTA. This is a hint that I will not be running for President this year. Clinton and I are going out of office.

Increase Membership: Tell other systems programmers about us and invite them to a meeting. Invite them to join SPARTA.

Newsletter Articles: Resolve to send an article each month to Ed Webb. 500 words or so would be a nice length to describe some software or hardware that you just installed. Or tell about a class that you just attended. Then just email the article to Ed. We also accept humor. In our business, we need all the laughs we can get.

Meeting Topics: Call John Bryant or email him on some topic that you want to learn about or volunteer to make a presentation in your area of expertise. Or practice a presentation on us that you need to give at work.

Survivor: Put the 2001 version of Survivor on your TV watching list.

Bring your 2001 annual SPARTA dues ($20) to the January meeting.

See you Tuesday January 30th, 2001 at LabCorp. The speaker and food will be provided by Tom Schwartz and STK. Come to the meeting and support STK.


Future Speakers
(subject to change)

Jan. 30 New STK Virtual Tape product by Peter Boundy of STK
Feb. 27 TBA


We need ideas and volunteers for future speakers. Please consider giving a presentation at a future meeting. Presentations don’t have to be fancy, just informative and interesting. Even a 5 or 10 minute talk can start an interesting interaction. Contact John Bryant at the phone number or e-mail address below.

2000-2001 SPARTA
Board of Directors

Chris Blackshire - President
Perot Systems 919-992-4602
P.O. Box 13010
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 Chris.Blackshire@nortelnetworks.com

John Bryant - Vice President
Glaxo Wellcome Inc. 919-483-9548
M/S D111; 5 Moore Drive
RTP, NC 27709 JEB33378@GLAXOWELLCOME.COM

Mike Lockey - Secretary
Guilford Co. Information Services 336-412-6235
201 N. Eugene St. 336-227-2021 (Home)
Greensboro, NC 27401 MLOCKEY@netpath.net

Duane Reaugh - Treasurer
DTS Software 919-833-8426
2913 Wake Forest Road
Raleigh, NC 27609-7841 Duane@DTSsoftware.com

Ed Webb - Communications Director
SAS Institute 919-531-4162
SAS Campus Drive 919-362-0232 (Home)
Cary, NC 27513 EDWISTUO@aol.com

Meetings

Meetings are scheduled for the last Tuesday evening of each month (except no meeting in December), with optional dinner at 6:15 p.m. and the meeting beginning at 7:00 p.m.

These monthly meetings are held at LabCorp’s Center for Molecular Biology and Pathology (CMBP) near the Research Triangle Park (see last page). Take I-40 to Miami Boulevard and go north. Turn right onto Alexander Drive. Go about a mile or so. Then turn right into LabCorp complex and turn Left to the CMBP Building. In the lobby, sign in as a visitor to see Brad Carson. Brad will escort you to the conference room.

Call for Articles

If you have any ideas for speakers, presentations, newsletter articles, or are interested in taking part in a presentation, PLEASE contact one of the Board of Directors with your suggestions.

Newsletter Mailings

The SPARTA chapter policy is to mail a copy of the monthly chapter newsletter to each SPARTA member, NaSPA national, each advertiser, persons who have requested a copy, and to other chapters who send us a copy of their newsletter. The newsletter is mailed about the 20th of each month so you can prepare for the meeting. The mailing list is maintained by Mike Lockey at (336) 412-6235; if you have corrections or problems receiving your newsletter, call Mike.

Latest CBT Tape Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V437 (dated Jan. 9, 2001) are available from www.cbttape.org.

If you need a complete tape, contact Brad at LabCorp (Brad_Carson@labcorp.com or 336-436-4065) or Ed Webb (see Director’s list for contact info).

Minutes of the November 28, 2000 Meeting

•Meeting was called to order at 7:00 PM by Chris Blackshire, the Chapter President.

•Fifteen (15) people were present; twelve (12) were members.

•Everyone in the room introduced themselves, told where they worked, and briefly described their job functions.

•The minutes of October 2000 meeting were accepted as published in the November 2000 newsletter.

•Duane Reaugh, the SPARTA treasurer, reported the latest balance is $300.72.

OLD BUSINESS

•Articles are needed for this newsletter. If you would like to write an article for this newsletter, please contact Ed Webb. Keep in mind that you don’t really need to write the article, it can be an article that you read that you would like to share with the membership.

•The SPARTA Web page is now available. To access the SPARTA Web page, point your Web browser to this site: www.netpath.net/~mlockey/sparta.html. Please send any comments or suggestions about the Web page to Mike Lockey (mlockey@netpath.net). Be sure to check the Web page every once in a while to see any new or changed information.

NEW BUSINESS

•Future Speakers and Topics:

January 2001 - TBA
Other ideas:
- TDMF - Ken Frump
- WLM Goal Mode - Jim Horne
- Service Update Facility - Ed Webb
- UNIX Services for OS/390
- IBM New Announcements
- CICS Web Bridge

If you have suggestions about speakers and topics, contact John Bryant.

•The January 30th meeting will be at LabCorp in the RTP.

•Food for the January 2001 meeting will be pizza and sodas.

•Thanks to Brad Carson of LabCorp for hosting the November meeting.

•Duane Reaugh made a motion that SPARTA provide corporate sponsorships. A corporate sponsorship would cost $200 per year; the company would receive 5 memberships and the company logo would be displayed on the SPARTA web page and newsletter. Motion was discussed, seconded and approved.

•NaSPA now has a Chapter Coordinator and is starting chapters. Mike Lockey will contact NaSPA for more information.

•The business portion of the meeting ended at 7:25 PM.

•John Bryant of Glaxo Wellcome talked about the OS/390 Expo 2000 that he recently attended. Topics that John discussed were:

z/OS: The Operating System for the Future of Your Business
IBM zSeries 900 Overview
IBM zSeries Network Connectivity
Workload License Charges and IBM Manager
Monitoring, Tuning and Configuration Overview
Pricing Structures
SMPPTS spill data sets
Tuning OS/390 UNIX
A Cookbook Approach
Understanding and Tuning the HFS
OS/390 V2 Sysprog Goody Bag
OS/390 Performance “HOT” Topics

John passed out handouts for the above topics; he also has handouts of topics not discussed at the SPARTA meeting. Contact John for copies of the handouts.

•The meeting was adjourned at 8:45 PM.

Treasurer’s Report for November 2000

contributed by Duane Reaugh

The reported balance in the account is $300.72.


Humor

YOU KNOW YOU’RE FROM NORTH CAROLINA IF:

contributed by Chris Blackshire

1. You’ve never met any celebrities.

2. Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor on the highway.

3. “Vacation” means going to the family reunion.

4. You’ve seen all the biggest bands ten years after they were popular.

5. You measure distance in minutes.

6. You know several people who have hit a deer.

7. Your school classes were canceled because of cold.

8. Your school classes were canceled because of heat.

9. You’ve ridden the school bus for an hour each way.

10. You’ve ever had to switch from “heat” to “A/C” in the same day.

11. You think ethanol makes your truck “run a lot better.”

12. You know what’s knee-high by the Fourth of July.... know the bass start biting when the corn is knee high.

13. Stores don’t have bags; they have sacks.

14. You see people wear bib overalls at funerals.

15. You see a car running in the parking lot at the store with no one in it no matter what time of the year.

16. You use “fix” as an adverb. Example: I am fixing to go to the store.

17. All the festivals across the state are named after a fruit, vegetable, grain, or animal..... hmm shad festival, dogwood festival, collard festival....

18. You install security lights on your house and garage and leave both unlocked.

19. You think of the major four food groups as beef, pork, beer, and Jell-O salad with marshmallows.

20. You carry jumper cables in your car.

21. You know what “cow tipping” and “snipe hunting” is.

22. You only own 3 spices: salt, pepper, and ketchup.

23. You think everyone from a bigger city has an accent.

24. You think sexy lingerie is a tee shirt and boxer shorts.

25. The local paper covers national and international headlines on one page but requires 6 pages for sports.

26. You think that deer season is a national holiday.

27. You know which leaves make good toilet paper.

29. You find 90 degrees Fahrenheit “a little warm.”

30. You know all 4 seasons: Almost Summer, Summer, Still Summer, and Christmas.

31. You know if another North Carolinian is from southern, middle or northern North Carolina as soon as they open their mouth.

32. There is a Dairy Queen in every town with a population of 1000 of more.

33. You actually get these jokes and forward them to all your friends from NC.


Inexperienced Chili Taster

contributed by John Bryant

Hold on Tight.....this one had me laughing out loud uncontrollably!

Notes from an inexperienced chili taster named Frank, who was visiting Texas from the East Coast:

Recently I was honored to be selected as an outstanding Famous celebrity in Texas, to be a judge at a chili cook-off, because no one else wanted to do it. The original person called in sick at the last moment and I happened to be standing there at the judge’s table asking directions to the beer wagon when the call came. I was assured by the other two judges (Native Texans) that the chili wouldn’t be all that spicy and besides they told me I could have free beer during the tasting, so I accepted.

Here are the scorecards from the event:

Chili # 1:
Mike’s Maniac Mobster Monster Chili

Judge #1:
A little too heavy on tomato. Amusing kick.

Judge #2:
Nice, smooth tomato flavor. Very mild.

Frank:
Holy sh*t, what the hell is this stuff? You could remove dried paint from your driveway with it. Took me two beers to put the flames out. Hope that’s the worst one. These Texans are crazy.


Chili #2:
Arthur’s Afterburner Chili

Judge #1:
Smoky, with a hint of pork.
Slight Jalapeno tang.

Judge #2:
Exciting B-B-Q flavor, needs more peppers to be taken seriously.

Frank:
Keep this out of reach of children! I’m not sure what I am supposed to taste besides pain. I had to wave off two people who wanted to give me the Heimlich maneuver. They had to walkie-talkie in 3 extra beers when they saw the look on my face.


Chili #3:
Fred’s Famous Burn Down the Barn Chili

Judge #1:
Excellent firehouse chili! Great kick. Needs more beans.

Judge #2:
A bean-less chili, a bit salty, good use of red peppers.

Frank:
Call the EPA, I’ve located a uranium spill. My nose feels like I have been snorting Drano. Everyone knows the routine by now. Barmaid pounded me on the back so hard that now my backbone is in the front part of my chest. All these beers are getting me smashed.


Chili #4:
Bubba’s Black Magic

Judge #1:
Black bean chili with almost no spice. Disappointing.

Judge #2:
Hint of lime in the black beans. Good side dish for fish or other mild foods, not much of a chili.

Frank:
I felt something scraping across my tongue, however, I was unable to taste anything . . . Sally, the bar maid, was standing behind me with fresh beer refills. That woman is starting to look as HOT as this nuclear-waste I’m eating.


Chili #5:
Linda’s Legal Lip Remover

Judge #1:
Meaty, strong chili. Cayenne peppers freshly ground, adding considerable kick. Very impressive.

Judge #2:
Chili using shredded beef; could use more tomato. Must admit the cayenne peppers make a strong statement.

Frank:
My ears are ringing and I can no longer focus my eyes. I farted and four people behind me needed paramedics. Linda, the contestant, seemed offended when I told her that her chili had given me brain damage. Sally saved my tongue from bleeding by pouring beer directly on it from a pitcher. The other judges have asked me to stop screaming.


Chili #6:
Vera’s Very Vegetarian Variety

Judge #1:
Thin yet bold vegetarian variety chili. Good balance of spice and peppers.

Judge #2:
The best yet. Aggressive use of peppers, onions, and garlic. Superb.

Frank:
My intestines are now a straight pipe filled with gaseous, sulfuric flames. No one seems inclined to stand behind me. I had to wipe my ass with a snow cone!


Chili #7:
Susan’s Screaming Sensation Chili

Judge #1:
A mediocre chili with too much reliance on canned peppers.

Judge #2:
Ho Hum. Tastes as if the chef literally threw in a can of chili peppers at the last moment. I should note that I am worried about Judge Number 3 {Frank}. He appears to be in a bit of distress as he is cursing uncontrollably.

Frank:
You could put a grenade in my mouth, pull the pin, and I wouldn’t feel a damn thing. I’ve lost the sight in one eye, and the world sounds like it is made of rushing water. My shirt is covered with chili which slid unnoticed out of my mouth. My pants are full of lava-like liquid to match my damn shirt. At least during the autopsy they’ll know what killed me. I’ve decided to stop breathing, it’s too painful. Screw it, I’m not getting any oxygen anyway. If I need air, I’ll just suck it in through the four inch hole in my stomach.


Chili #8:
Helen’s Mount Saint Chili

Judge #1:
A perfect ending, this is a nice blend chili, good for all occasions, not too bold . . . just spicy enough to declare its existence.

Judge #2:
This final entry is a good, balanced chili, neither mild nor hot. Sorry to see that most of it was lost when Judge #3 {Frank} passed out, fell and pulled the chili pot on top of himself. I am not sure if he’s going to make it. Poor Yank.

Frank:
{Editor’s note: Judge #3 was unable to report.}