SPARTA News April 2006

April 2006

SPARTA President’s Corner

by Brad Carson

Welcome to April in North Carolina where the weather warms up and everything turns yellow from all the pine pollen. Those of us that live in the Raleigh area have the added benefit that we are unable to wash our cars at home due to water restrictions. If we don't get enough rain it looks like it will be a rather dry summer. Life can be like that some times.

DHTS has finally managed to get the old PLI libraries out of the linklist. It has been a long time in coming, but we were able to change the linklist on March 30th. We had a few programs that didn't go through testing that needed recompiling, but there weren’t that many. These always showed up as either an S0C1 or S0C4-10 abends during initialization. Some of the ones that were tripped over hadn't been touched since OS/PLI Version 1.4 was installed, sometime in the late 70's or early 80's. Every time one of these programs showed up was when they would get an S806-04 trying to load some old runtime module (i.e. IBMBxxxx). During this process we found that there were some PROCs that still had the COBOL-II runtime libraries in them and they were updated to use LE.

We've also had a little bit of fun with power problems in the room where our tape robot lives. There were two outages in two days at the end of March. Our old UPS (which has some very tired batteries) surrendered during the second outage and the whole room went down hard. Once the generator kicked in everything had to be powered up and recovered. Our server folks had a lot of fun with this (especially the Notes people). DHTS ended up replacing every battery in that UPS before returning to commercial power.

Not much going on over at DDA right now. Had to handle the daylight savings time change on the 2nd. They are looking at replacing their FLEX box with a newer model as the contract come up and I've been helping them with size and configuration information.

This month our speaker will be Dan Cody, Vice President of Visara, to talk to us about Console Management. I look forward to seeing you all at LabCorp on the 25th.

P.S. Pizza, drinks, and dessert will be provided.


Time to pay your $20 annual dues!


Future Speakers
(subject to change)


Apr. 25 - Visara
May 23 - IOF from Triangle Systems

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 Ron Pimblett by phone as noted below.

2005-2006 SPARTA
Board of Directors

Brad Carson - President
Duke Health Technology Solutions 919-668-0545
2424 Ervin Road, Suite 9000
Durham, NC 27710

Ron Pimblett - Vice President
Dignus, LLC 919-676-0847
8354 Six Forks Road
Raleigh, NC 27615

Mike Lockey - Secretary
Guilford Co. Information Services 336-641-6235
201 N. Eugene St.
Greensboro, NC 27401

Tommy Thomas - Treasurer
LabCorp 336-436-4178
231 Maple Ave, Koury Ctr 3rd Fl. 919-361-7267
Burlington, NC 27215

Ed Webb - Communications Director
SAS Institute 919-531-4162
SAS Campus Drive
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 usually 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 Tommy Thomas. Tommy 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 e-Mailings

The SPARTA policy is to e-mail a monthly notice to our SPARTA-L Group. The newsletter is posted to the website about five (5) days before each meeting so you can prepare. The SPARTA-L Group is maintained by Mike Lockey at (336) 641-6235; if you have corrections or problems receiving your meeting notice, contact Mike.

February 2006 CBT Tape Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V471 (dated February 28, 2006) are available from www.cbttape.org.

If you need help obtaining one or more files, contact Brad Carson at Duke Health or Ed Webb at SAS (see Board of Director’s list for contact info).

Minutes of the March 28th, 2006 Meeting

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

•Nine (9) people were present; all nine (9) were members.

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

•The minutes of February 2006 meeting were accepted as published in the March 2006 newsletter.

•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer's report. As of February 28, 2006, the balance is $1048.11. Motion was made and approved to accept the Treasurer's Report as published in the March 2006 newsletter.

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 site is available. To access the SPARTA Web site, point your Web browser to this URL: http://www.spartanc.org. Please send any comments or suggestions about the Web site to Mike Lockey. Be sure to check the site every once in a while to see any new or changed information.

•Brad Carson reminded everyone to keep the conference room clean.


NEW BUSINESS

•Future Speakers and Topics:
(subject to change)

April 2006 Softbase
May 2006 IOF


If you have suggestions about speakers and topics, contact Ron Pimblett.

•The April 25th 2006 SPARTA meeting will be held at LabCorp in RTP.

•Food for the April meeting will be pizza, drinks and dessert

•It is time to pay your annual dues. Annual dues are $20 and should be given to Tommy Thomas.

•Brad Carson stated that there is no need for a Nominations Committee because the current Board of Directors decided to run for re-election this year. However, if you’re are interested in a position on the SPARTA of Directors, see Brad Carson.

•Thanks to Tommy Thomas of LabCorp for hosting the meeting.

•The business portion of the meeting ended at 8:00 p.m.

•Duane Reaugh and Ed Webb presented SHARE Seattle Conference Highlights.

Duane Reaugh presented first and began with comments about long term SHARE attendees balancing between management responsibilities and session attendance. Duane then shared some humor from funnysign.com. SHARE sessions covered were:

z/OS DFSMS 1.8 (session #3000)
New Op Codes (session #8162)
Great Technical Presentations

Duane provided a handout of his slides.

Ed Webb presented next and covered the following topics:
Highlights of SHARE Seattle
SHARE Organizational Status
Migrating to z/OS 1.7
z/OS 1.7 Health Checker
SMP/E 3.4 Internet Service Retrieval
z/OS 1.7 New Sequential Data Sets
z/OS 1.8 Preview
Bit Bucket
Best Practices for Catalog and VSAM
Migrating from HFS to zFS

Ed provided handouts of his slides, Jerry Ng's "z/OS Service and APARs", and Ed's own notes of conference sessions.

•The meeting ended at 9:20 p.m.

Treasurer’s Report for April 2006

contributed by Tommy Thomas

The balance in the account is $ 1591.58 as of April 11, 2006.

Financial Report
3/01/2006 through 04/11/2006

Items of Interest

SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2006

contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire

Apr. 25 - Pizza
May 23 - Chicken
June - Subs
July - BarBQ
Aug. - Pizza
Sept. - Chicken
Oct. - Subs
Nov. - BarBQ


SCMG Meets in Raleigh on April 28

contributed by Ed Webb

The Spring meeting of Southern Computer Measurement Group, Raleigh Chapter is scheduled for Friday, April 28th. 

The full agenda and registration information is online at http://regions.cmg.org/regions/scmg/spring_06/raleigh/meeting_04_28_06.htm

Early registration is just $20 for a whole day of education and professional networking and INCLUDES BREAKFAST and LUNCH!

Mark your calendars and REGISTER NOW!


Recent Redbooks and Drafts of Interest

contributed by Ed Webb

Redbooks

OSA-Express Implementation Guide
Revised: April 10, 2006 ISBN: 0738492795 318 pages Explore the book online at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg245948.html

ABCs of z/OS System Programming Volume 9
Published: April 7, 2006 ISBN: 0738497258 746 pages Explore the book online at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg246989.html

Drafts

IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler for z/OS Best Practices
Revised: April, 14, 2006 More details are available at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/abstracts/sg247156.html

Java Stand-alone Applications on z/OS, Volume I
Revised: April, 13, 2006 More details are available at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/abstracts/sg247177.html


Humor


Easter Rabbit Jokes

contributed by Ron Pimblett

What do you get when you pour hot water down a rabbit hole?
A Hot Cross bunny.

What did the bunny say when he only had thistles to eat?
Thistle have to do!

How do you post a bunny?
Hare mail.

What is the difference between a crazy bunny and a counterfeit banknote?
One is bad money and the other is a mad bunny!

Why are people always tired in April?
Because they've just finished a March.

What do you call ten rabbits marching backwards?
A receding hareline.

What's the difference between the Easter Bunny and a lumberjack?
One chews and hops, the other hews and chops.

Well they are pretty bad but hey, sometimes it's hard to pull a rabbit out of a hat.


Good Advice

contributed by Chris Blackshire

Good story - We need to laugh more....

The first day of school our professor introduced himself and challenged us to get to know someone we didn't already know. I stood up to look around when a gentle hand touched my shoulder.

I turned around to find a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at me with a smile that lit up her entire being.

She said, "Hi handsome. My name is Rose.

I'm eighty-seven years old. Can I give you a hug?"

I laughed and enthusiastically responded, "Of course you may!" and she gave me a giant squeeze.

"Why are you in college at such a young, innocent age?" I asked.

She jokingly replied, "I'm here to meet a rich husband, get married, and have a couple of kids..."

"No seriously," I asked. I was curious what may have motivated her to be taking on this challenge at her age.

"I always dreamed of having a college education and now I'm getting one!" she told me.

After class we walked to the student union building and shared a chocolate milkshake.

We became instant friends. Every day for the next three months we would leave class together and talk nonstop. I was always mesmerized listening to this "time machine" as she shared her wisdom and experience with me.

Over the course of the year, Rose became a campus icon and she easily made friends wherever she went.

She loved to dress up and she reveled in the attention bestowed upon her from the other students. She was living it up.

At! the end of the semester we invited Rose to speak at our football banquet.

I'll never forget what she taught us. She was introduced and stepped up to the podium. As she began to deliver her prepared speech, she dropped her three by five cards on the floor.

Frustrated and a little embarrassed she leaned into the microphone and simply said, "I'm sorry I'm so jittery. I gave up beer for Lent and this whiskey is killing me! I'll never get my speech back in order so let me just tell you what I know."

(this cracked me up!)

As we laughed she cleared her throat and began, "We do not stop playing because we are old; we grow old because we stop playing.

There are only four secrets to staying young, being happy, and achieving success. You have to laugh and find humor every day. You've got to have a dream. When you lose your dreams, you die.

We have so many people walking around who are dead and don't even know it!

There is a huge difference between growing older and growing up.

If you are nineteen years old and lie in bed for one full year and don't do one productive thing, you will turn twenty years old. If I am eighty-seven years old and stay in bed for a year and never do anything I will turn eighty-eight.

Anybody can grow older. That doesn't take any talent or ability. The idea is to grow up by always finding opportunity in change. Have no regrets.

The elderly usually don't have regrets for what we did, but rather for things we did not do. The only people who fear death are those with regrets."

She concluded her speech by courageously singing "The Rose."

She challenged each of us to study the lyrics and live them out in our daily lives.

At the year's end Rose finished the college degree she had begun all those years ago.

One week after graduation Rose died peacefully in her sleep.

Over two thousand college students attended her funeral in tribute to the wonderful woman who taught by example that it's never too late to be all you can possibly be.

When you finish reading this, please send this peaceful word of advice to your friends and family, they'll really enjoy it!

These words have been passed along in loving memory of ROSE.

REMEMBER, GROWING OLDER IS MANDATORY. GROWING UP IS OPTIONAL.

We make a Living by what we get, We make a Life by what we give.


West Texas Cowboy-Bob

contributed by Chris Blackshire

A West Texas cowboy was herding his cows in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"

The cowboy looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored.

He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says the cowboy. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then the cowboy says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?" The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

“You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government", says the cowboy.

"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required." answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows........

Now give me back my dog."


Corporate Mergers

contributed by Chris Blackshire

1. Hale Business Systems, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Fuller Brush, and W.R.Grace Co. will merge and become: Hale, Mary, Fuller, Grace.

2. Polygram Records, Warner Bros., and Zesta Crackers join forces and become: Poly, Warner Cracker.

3. 3M will merge with Goodyear and become: MMMGood.

4. Zippo Lighters, Audi Motors, Dofasco, and Dakota Mining will merge and become: ZipAudiDoDa.

5. FedEx is expected to join its major competitor, UPS, and become: FedUP.

6. Fairchild Electronics and Honeywell Computers will become: Fairwell Honeychild.

7. Knotts Berry Farm and the National Organization of Women will become: Knott NOW!

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

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 Tommy Thomas. Tommy will escort you to the conference room.

Free Food: Pizza, Drinks, Dessert

Program:

Console Management

Speaker:

Dan Cody of Visara

SPARTA News
P.O. Box 13194
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-3194



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