SPARTA News February 2003
February 2003
SPARTA Chapter President’s Corner
- by Brad Carson
Our January meeting brought us a visit from Mike Arnold from Dignus Software to talk to us about working with 64-bit objects in z/OS. Mike had Dave Rivers and Ron Pimblett from Dignus to help him out. Mike told us about what Dignus had to do to their products (Systems/C and Systems/C++) in order to support a 64-bit world on z/OS. We were informed of some of the surprises that they had tripped over (like no Load Address Grande instruction). Through their blood, sweat and tears, Dignus has the first 64-bit C and C++ compilers for z/OS (even IBM's C isn't ready yet). Good job to Mike for giving us a great presentation.
Since last month I've spent a lot of time learning how to webify 3270 transactions from CICS. With much trial and error, I've managed to make a BMS and non-BMS application available from the web. From what I've seen, someone should be able to come up with an autoinstall program for DOCTEMPLATEs in CICS. I've had great luck with program autoinstall (except for an old MSA application system), and terminal autoinstall has been in use for years. My biggest headache with using the 3270 web bridge is that it doesn't do MRO, so I've had to setup our testing regions to handle TCP connections.
Another big project we're working on is our conversion to OS/390 2.10 (the end of the road for our HDS processor). It has been fairly straight forward, but how I hate having to rework inherited usermods (especially ZAPs). Management wants us to have 2.10 in production by the end of March. I'll let you all know how that goes.
This month we will have a roundtable discussion. I look forward to seeing you all on the 25th at LabCorp RTP. Pizza, drinks, and dessert will be provided.
Remember: Dues for 2003 are payable at the February meeting!
Future Speakers
(subject to change)
Feb. 25 SPARTA Roundtable by members and guests
Mar. 25 SHARE 100 Conference Report by Duane Reaugh, Chris Blackshire, and Ed Webb
April 29 To Be Announced
We need ideas and volunteers for future speakers. Presentations don’t have to be fancy, just informative and interesting. Even a 5 or 10 minute talk can start an interesting interaction. Contact Duane Reaugh by phone or e-mail as noted below.
2002-2003 SPARTA
Board of Directors
Brad Carson - President
LabCorp 919-572-7504
1912 Alexander Drive
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
Duane Reaugh - Vice President
DTS Software 919-833-8426
2913 Wake Forest Road
Raleigh, NC 27609-7841
Mike Lockey - Secretary
Guilford Co. Information Services 336-412-6235
201 N. Eugene St. 336-227-2021 (Home)
Greensboro, NC 27401
Tommy Thomas - Treasurer
LabCorp 336-436-4178
231 Maple Ave, Koury Ctr 3rd Fl. 919-572-7507
Burlington, NC 27215
Ed Webb - Communications Director
SAS Institute 919-531-4162
SAS Campus Drive 919-362-0232 (Home)
Cary, NC 27513
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.
Jan. 2003 CBT Tape Online
The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V456 (dated January 12, 2003) are available from www.cbttape.org.
If you need a complete tape, contact Brad Carson at LabCorp or Ed Webb at SAS (see Board of Director’s list for contact info).
Minutes of the January 28th, 2003 Meeting
•Meeting was called to order at 7:00 PM by Brad Carson, the Chapter President.
•Twelve (12) people were present; ten (10) were members.
•Everyone in the room introduced themselves, told where they worked, and briefly described their job function.
•Minutes of the November 2002 meeting were accepted as published in the January 2003 newsletter.
•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer’s report. As of January 28, 2003, the balance is $828.95.
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.
•You can access the SPARTA Web site, just point your Web browser to this URL: www.netpath.net/~mlockey/sparta.html. Please send any comments or suggestions about the SPARTA website to Mike Lockey (mlockey@netpath.net). Be sure to check our website every once in a while to see any new or changed information.
•Brad reminded everyone to keep the conference room clean; wipe off the conference table and remove all trash when the meeting is over.
•Brad Carson has worked out the difficulties with the SPARTA LISTSERV and Yahoo will continue to host our LISTSERV.
•Duane Reaugh talked about a site that hosts web sites and registers domain names. It's named GoDaddy.com; Mike Lockey will research the cost of hosting the SPARTA website at GoDaddy.com.
NEW BUSINESS
•Future Speakers and Topics:
February 2003 - TBA
March 2003 - SHARE Conference Reports
Other ideas:
- New release of IOF - Triangle Systems
- CMG Conference - Jim Horne of Lowes
- TDMF - Ken Frump
- UNIX Services for OS/390
- IBM New Announcements
- CICS Web Bridge
If you have suggestions about speakers and topics, contact Duane Reaugh.
•Annual dues of $20 are to be paid now.
•A committee to nominate the 2003-2004 SPARTA Board of Directors needs to be formed. If you are interested in being on the nominating committee or being on the board, see Brad Carson.
•Food for the February 2003 meeting will be pizza, sodas, and dessert.
•The February SPARTA meeting will be held at LabCorp in RTP.
•Thanks to Brad Carson of LabCorp for hosting the January meeting.
•The business portion of the meeting ended at 7:50 p.m.
•Mike Arnold of Dignus Software talked about True 64-Bit Assembler, C and C++. Topics discussed were:
Dignus Software company overview
Cross Productivity
z/Architecture
z/OS Surprises
31-bit to 64-bit
Modal Instructions
Our Implementation
Code Examples
non-z/Architecture
z/Architecture
Why Use 64-bit?
•The meeting was adjourned at 8:30 PM.
Treasurer’s Report for February 2003
contributed by Tommy Thomas
The balance in the account is $ 739.08 as of February 16, 2003.
Financial Report
3/01/2002 through 02/16/2003
INCOME
Opening Balance 693.15
Dues 490.00
Misc. 11.00
TOTAL INCOME $1194.15
EXPENSES
Food 302.25
Petty Cash 160.00
Bank Service Fees 21.00
P.O. Box 38.00
TOTAL EXPENSE $521.25
BANK BALANCE 672.90
PETTY CASH($160) 66.18
TOTAL CASH $739.08
Items of Interest
SHARE Proceedings from August 2002 Now Available
contributed by Ed Webb
San Francisco Proceedings of SHARE are now available Online. You can access the session presentations from SHARE in San Francisco at http://proceedings.share.org/sanfrancisco/
IBMLink Access Changes by April 2003
contributed by Ed Webb
“Important news for SoftwareXcel enterprise edition for zSeries, SoftwareXcel basic edition for zSeries, Resolve for zSeries, Alert for zSeries, and S/390 Supportline customers:
01/26/2003 - Migration to IBMLink 2000 by April 16, 2003. All of the IBMLink ServiceLink applications (SRD, ETR, SIS, ASAP, AST, PCR, and PSP), which provide electronic application capability for these Services Offerings, are now available on IBMLink 2000 at http://www.ibm.com/ibmlink/link2 .”
This new internet interface requires using your existing IBM ID (not your current IBMLink ID) or registering for a new IBM ID. If you already are registered for ShopzSeries, use the same ID; that is your IBM ID. Once you logon the first time with your IBM ID, you can Map Your IBMLink ID to the IBM ID. IBMLink 2000 does not depend on Frames and seems to work better than the existing IBMLink interface.
SPARTA Food Agenda for 2003
contributed by Chris Blackshire
Feb - Pizza
Mar - Chicken
Apr - Deli tray (something different for the sub rotation turn)
May onward - repeat BarBQ, Pizza, Chicken, sub rotation
Humor
You Know You’re Living in 2003, if...
contributed by Chris Blackshire
1. You have 5 passwords, but can only remember one.
2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.
3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of three.
4. You e-mail your buddy who works at the desk next to you.
5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends is that they don't have e-mail addresses.
6. When you go home after a long day at work, you still answer the phone in a business manner.
7. When you make phone calls from home, you accidentally insert a "9" to get an outside line.
8. You've sat at the same desk for four years and worked for three different companies.
9. Your company's welcome sign is attached with velcro.
10. Your resume is on a diskette in your pocket.
11. You can only write on 'sticky pads'.
12. Your biggest loss from a system! crash was when you lost all of your best jokes.
13. Your supervisor doesn't have the ability to do your job.
14. Contractors outnumber permanent staff and are more likely to get long-service awards.
15. Board members salaries are higher than all the Third World countries annual budgets combined.
16. Interviewees, despite not having relevant knowledge or experience, terminate the interview when told of the starting salary.
17. Free food left over from meetings is your staple diet.
18. Your supervisor gets a brand new state-of-the-art laptop with all the latest features, while you have time to go for lunch while yours boots up.
19. Being sick is defined as you can't walk or you're in the hospital.
20. There's no money in the budget for the five permanent staff your department desperately needs, but they can afford four full-time management consultants advising your boss's boss on strategy.
21. Your relatives and family describe your job as "works with computers".
AND THE CLINCHERS ARE....
22. You read this entire list, and kept nodding and smiling.
23. As you read this list, you think about forwarding it to your "friends".
When I Was A Kid
contributed by Chris Blackshire
When I was a kid adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning uphill both ways through year 'round blizzards carrying their younger siblings on their backs to their one-room schoolhouse where they maintained a straight A average despite their full-time after school job at the local textile mill where they worked for 35 cents an hour just to help keep their family from starving to death!
And I remember promising myself that when I grew up there was no way I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!
But....
Now that I've reached the ripe old age of twenty-nine, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today.
You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a Utopia!
And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don't know how good you've got it! I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. We wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves!
And there was no e-mail! We had to actually write somebody a letter with a pen! --and then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!
And there were no MP3s or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to go to the record store and shoplift it yourself! Or we had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd usually talk over the beginning and messed it all up!
You want to hear about hardship? You couldn't just download porn! You had to bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of "Hustler" at the 7-11!
Those were your options!
We didn't have fancy stuff like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal! And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the the phone rang, you had no idea who it was, could be your boss, your mom, a collections agent, you didn't know!!! You just had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!
And we didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like "Space Invaders" and "Asteroids" and the graphics sucked ! Your guy was a little square! You had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win, the game just kept getting harder and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!
When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating!All the seats were the same height! A tall guy sat in front of you, you were screwed!
And sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 20 channels and there was no on-screen menu! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! And there was no Cartoon Network! You
could only get cartoons on Saturday morning... ...D'ya hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK, you spoiled little kids!
That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy.
You're spoiled, I swear! You guys wouldn't lasted five minutes back in the 70's!!!
Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting
Tuesday, February 25, 2003
Location: LabCorp in the RTP
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.
Free Food: Pizza, Drinks, Dessert
Program:
Roundtable Discussion
Speakers:
You, the Members of SPARTA
SPARTA News
P.O. Box 13194
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-3194
First Class Postage
Phillips Software
