SPARTA News April 2007

April 2007

SPARTA President’s Corner

by Brad Carson

April is here, and for those of us still running z/OS 1.4, we are now on an unsupported release of our favorite OS. What an Easter egg that was! I hope everyone had a good Easter holiday (I sure did). I believe that everyone enjoyed the presentation last month from Duane and Ed. I wish I could have gone to SHARE in Tampa. I am trying to make it to San Diego, so we'll see how it goes.

We have managed to get all but our production LPAR migrated to z/OS 1.7 without too many potholes in the road. We are planning on migrating our production LPAR during our May outage. In the meantime we have a whole month to test everything (and more) on our QAAD LPAR. Our biggest issue so far has been the migration to SA for z/OS 3.1. The old automation policy was so messed up that we threw it out and started again. It's nice to be able to remove old problems inflicted by others on you that way. Let's see how we look next month in production.

I believe that we have found our DB2 systems programmer. Due to an error by our Human Resources, my group was juggling two onsite interviews at the same time. Quite an act to see! I hope to have this gentlemen onsite by the beginning of the month.

Over at DDA, we are holding our breath about the future of the FLEX system. With the IBM/PSI lawsuit everything is tied up and IBM is stating that we should know what they are planning soon. I'm beginning work on upgrading to z/OS 1.8 for them and I'm not sure how much planning I should be doing at this point. Don't you just love lawyer speak? Oh well, wait and listen.

This month our presentation will be from Edward Addison of IBM on CICS Threadsafe Applications. I look forward to seeing you on the 24th at LabCorp.


Future Speakers
(subject to change)


Apr. 24 - CICS Threadsafe Applications by IBM
May 22 - TBA

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.

2006-2007 SPARTA
Board of Directors

Brad Carson - President
LabCorp 336-436-8294

Burlington, NC 27215

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 LabCorp or Ed Webb at SAS (see Board of Director’s list for contact info).

Minutes of the March 27th, 2007 Meeting

•Meeting was called to order at 7:04 PM by Brad Carson, the Chapter President.

•Eleven (11) people were present; eleven (11) were members.

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

•The minutes of February 2007 meeting were accepted as published in the March 2007 newsletter.

•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer's report. As of March 18, 2007, the balance is $1573.07. Motion was made and approved to accept the Treasurer's Report as published in the March 2007 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 2007 CICS Transaction Server 3.2 by Jeff Hansel
May 2007 Relativity or Websphere Development or SOA or BMC Mainview
June 2007 Tivoli or SA or Sun's Larger Server tape systems

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

•The April 24th SPARTA meeting will be held at our usual LabCorp conference room.

•Food for the April meeting will be BarBQ, brunswick stew, slaw, lima beans, drinks, and dessert.

•Brad reminded everyone to pay their annual dues ($20 annually).

•2007 elections for the 2007-8 SPARTA Board of Directors are next month (April).

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

•Please remember to invite others to the meeting.

•The business portion of the meeting ended at 7:50 p.m.

•Speaker 1 Topic: Share Tampa - Duane Reaugh
•Speaker 2 Topic: Share Tampa - Ed Webb

Some of the topics that Duane discussed were:
- z/OS DFSMS 1.8
- DFSMS APARS
- Flex Status
- Tape Encryption
- Predictive Recall (New Product)

Some of the topics that Ed discussed were:
- SHARE Highlights
- SHARE Organization Status (about 2,000 attendees) (San Diego next - Aug. 12-17)
- z Lives!
- Odds and Ends
- Migrating to z/OS 1.8
- JES2 Migration to z/OS 1.7
- z/OS Health Checker - Examples at
ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/zos/integtst/
- z/OS 1.7 New Sequential Data Sets (DSNTYPE=LARGE for greater than 64K tracks)
- z/OS 1.9 Preview
- Bit Buckets and Other Sessions (ISPF Trends and Directions)

•The meeting was adjourned at 9:30 p.m.

Treasurer’s Report for April 2007

contributed by Tommy Thomas

The balance in the account is $ 1565.24 as of April 15, 2007.

Financial Report
3/01/2007 through 4/15/2007

Items of Interest

SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2007

contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire

Apr 24 - BarBQ
May 22 - Pizza
June 26 - Chicken
July 31 - Subs
Aug. 28 - BarBQ
Sept. 25 - Pizza
Oct. 30 - Chicken
Nov. 27- Subs


IBM ends 31-bit z/OS mainframe support but PSI keeps it alive

contributed by Ed Webb

IBM stopped supporting 31-bit z/OS on the mainframe on the first of this month. For Ron Avery, the operating systems manager in Polk County, Iowa, it was like a cruel April Fools' joke.

Avery had an IBM mainframe 7060, which dates back to 1999 and is one of the S/390 Multiprise 3000 models that is still popular among smaller mainframe customers today. It was running z/OS v1.4, which along with v1.5 is one of the 31-bit OSes IBM no longer supports. With v1.6 and above, z/OS requires a 64-bit zSeries or System z mainframe starting with the z800.

"We're a fairly small mainframe environment," Avery said. "We had no impetus for 64 bit."
But they did have an impetus. They had to upgrade because its mainframe runs the county's mission-critical tax accounting application.

Here’s the rest of the article at SearchDataCenter.com.


Red Hat Pulls Latest Enterprise Linux for z Series

contributed by Ron Pimblett

The ISOs were pulled from RedHat Network due to a bug that RH and IBM found with the kernel in the install media. We've identified a patch which solves the problem, and it's undergoing QA now. We'll be posting new ISO images soon, and we'll also be notifying folks who've already downloaded the original ISOs. Here's a snippet of the forthcoming announcement:

--- Red Hat and IBM identified a data corruption issue within Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 that affects IBM System Z customers. We will issue an advisory through Red Hat Network in the coming weeks, but wanted to make you aware of the issue and answer any questions you might have.

Fixing this issue is a priority for Red Hat and IBM. We have already successfully tested a patch to remedy the issue that is currently with our Quality Assurance team. We will make this available to you as soon as it has been fully tested.


Petrochemicals are Key

contributed by Chris Blackshire

"Big deal. If gas prices get high, I'll just drive less. Why should I give a damn?"

Because petrochemicals are key components to much more than just the gas in your car. As geologist Dale Allen Pfeiffer points out in his article entitled, "<http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html> Eating Fossil Fuels," <http://lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Archives2007/FTWEatingOil.html> approximately 10 calories of fossil fuels are required to produce every 1 calorie of food eaten in the US.

The size of this ratio stems from the fact that every step of modern food production is fossil fuel and petrochemical powered: <http://www.energybulletin.net/5045.html>

1. Pesticides are made from oil;

2. Commercial fertilizers are made from ammonia, which is made from natural gas, which will peak about 10 years <http://www.hubbertpeak.com/gas/> after oil peaks;

3. With the exception of a few experimental prototypes <http://www.renewables.com/Permaculture/ElectricTractor.htm>, all farming implements such as tractors and trailers are constructed and powered using oil;

4. Food storage systems such as refrigerators are manufactured in oil-powered plants, distributed across oil-powered transportation networks and usually run on electricity, which most often comes from natural gas or coal;

5. In the US, the average piece of food is transported almost 1,500 miles before it gets to your plate. <http://www.washingtonfreepress.org/15/Farm.html> In Canada, the average piece of food is transported 5,000 <http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fe20050421a1.htm> miles from where it is produced to where it is consumed.

In short, people gobble oil like two-legged SUVs. <http://www.countercurrents.org/po-church0700405.htm>

It's not just transportation and agriculture that are entirely dependent on abundant, cheap oil. Modern medicine <http://mysite.verizon.net/vze495hz/id19.html> , water distribution, <http://www.iags.org/n0813043.htm> and national defense <http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1008-23.htm> are each entirely powered by oil and petroleum derived chemicals.

In addition to transportation, food, water, and modern medicine, mass quantities of oil are required for all <http://www.energybulletin.net/2620.html> plastics, all computers and all high-tech devices.

Some specific examples may help illustrate the degree to which our technological base is dependent on fossil fuels:

1. The construction of an average car consumes the energy equivalent of approximately 20 barrels of oil <http://lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Research.html>, which equates to 840 gallons, of oil. Ultimately, the construction of a car will consume an amount of fossil fuels equivalent to twice the car's final weight. <http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/322.html>

2. The production of one gram of microchips consumes 630 grams of fossil fuels. According to the American Chemical Society, the construction of single 32 megabyte DRAM chip requires 3.5 pounds of fossil fuels <http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-11/acs-ttp110502.php> in addition to 70.5 pounds of water.

3. The construction of the average desktop computer consumes ten times its weight in fossil fuels. <http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=10007&Cr=computer&Cr1=>

4. The Environmental Literacy Council <http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/322.html> tells us that due to the "purity and sophistication of materials (needed for) a microchip, the energy used in producing nine or ten computers is enough to produce an automobile."

When considering the role of oil in the production of modern technology, remember that most alternative systems of energy - including solar panels/solar-nanotechnology, windmills, hydrogen fuel cells, biodiesel production facilities, nuclear power plants, etc. - rely on sophisticated technology.

In fact, all electrical devices make use of silver, copper, and/or platinum, each of which is discovered, extracted, transported, and fashioned using oil-powered machinery. For instance, in his book, The Lean Years: Politics of Scarcity, author Richard J. Barnet writes:

To produce a ton of copper requires 112 million BTU's or the equivalent of 17.8 barrels of oil. The energy cost component of aluminum is twenty times higher.

Nuclear energy requires uranium, which is also discovered, extracted, and transported using oil-powered machinery.

Most of the feedstock (soybeans, corn) for biofuels such as biodiesel and ethanol are grown using the high-tech, oil-powered industrial methods of agriculture described above. <http://lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/#anchor_66>

In short, the so called "alternatives" to oil are actually "derivatives" of oil. Without an abundant and reliable supply of oil, we have no way of scaling these alternatives to the degree necessary to power the modern world.


Humor

They Walk Among Us

contributed by Chris Blackshire

I walked into a Blimpie's with a buy-one-get-one-free coupon for a sandwich. I handed it to the girl and she looked over at a little chalkboard that said, "Buy one-get one free". "They're already buy-one-get-one-free", she said, "so I guess they're both free." She handed me my free sandwiches and I walked out the door.
They walk among us and many work retail.

One day I was walking down the beach with some friends when one of them shouted, "Look at that dead bird!" Someone looked up at the sky and said, "Where?"
They Walk Among Us!

While looking at a house, my brother asked the real estate agent which direction was north because, he explained, he didn't want the sun waking him up every morning. She asked, "Does the sun rise in the north?" When my brother explained that the sun rises in the east, and has for sometime, she shook her head and said, "Oh, I don't keep up with that stuff."
They Walk Among Us!

I used to work in technical support for a 24/7 call center. One day I got a call from an individual who asked what hours the call center was open. I told him, "The number you dialed is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week." "He responded, "Is that Eastern or Pacific time?" Wanting to end the call quickly, I said, "Uh, Pacific."
They Walk Among Us!

My sister has a lifesaving tool in her car designed to cut through a seat belt if she gets trapped. She keeps it in the trunk.
They Walk Among Us!

My friends and I were on a beer run and noticed that the cases were discounted 10%. Since it was a big party, we bought 2 cases. The cashier multiplied 2 times 10% and gave us a 20% discount.
They Walk Among Us!

I couldn't find my luggage at the airport baggage area, so I went to the lost luggage office and told the woman there that my bags showed up. She smiled and told me not to worry because she was a trained professional and I was in good hands. "Now," she asked me, "has your plane arrived yet?"
They Walk Among Us!

While working at a pizza parlor I observed a man ordering a small pizza to go. He appeared to be alone and the cook asked him if he would like it cut into 4 pieces or 6. He thought about it for some time before responding. "Just cut it into 4 pieces; I don't think I'm hungry enough to eat 6 pieces."
Yep, They Walk Among Us!

They walk among us, AND they reproduce! AND SOME OF THEM actually VOTE!


The Tomato Company

contributed by Chris Blackshire

An unemployed man is desperate to support his family of a wife and three kids. He applies for a janitor's job at a large firm and easily passes an aptitude test.

The human resources manager tells him, "You will be hired at minimum wage of $5.35 an hour. Let me have your e-mail address so that we can get you in the loop. Our system will automatically e-mail you all the forms and advise you when to start and where to report on your first day."

Taken back, the man protests that he is poor and has neither a computer nor an e-mail address.

To this the manager replies, "You must understand that to a company like ours that means that you virtually do not exist. Without an e-mail address you can hardly expect to be employed by a high-tech firm. Good day."

Stunned, the man leaves Not knowing where to turn and having $10 in his wallet, he walks past a farmers' market and sees a stand selling 25 lb. Crates of beautiful red tomatoes. He buys a crate , carries it to a busy corner and displays the tomatoes. In less than 2 hours he sells all the tomatoes and makes 100% profit. Repeating the process several times more that day, he ends up with almost $100 and arrives home that night with several bags of groceries for his family.

During the night he decides to repeat the tomato business the next day. By the end of the week he is getting up early every day and working into the night. He multiplies his profits quickly.

Early in the second week he acquires a cart to transport several boxes of tomatoes at a time, but before a month is up he sells the cart to buy a broken-down pickup truck.

At the end of a year he owns three old trucks. His two sons have left their neighborhood gangs to help him with the tomato business, his wife is buying the tomatoes, and his daughter is taking night courses at the community college so she can keep books for him.

By the end of the second year he has a dozen very nice used trucks and employs fifteen previously unemployed people, all selling tomatoes. He continues to work hard.

Time passes and at the end of the fifth year

He owns a fleet of nice trucks and a warehouse that his wife supervises, plus two tomato farms that the boys manage. The tomato company's payroll has put hundreds of homeless and jobless people to work. His daughter reports that the business grossed over one million dollars.

Planning for the future, he decides to buy some life insurance.

Consulting with an insurance adviser, he picks an insurance plan to fit his new circumstances. Then the adviser asks him for his e-mail address in order to send the final documents electronically.

When the man replies that he doesn't have time to mess with a computer and has no e-mail address, the insurance man is stunned, "What, you don't have e-mail? No computer? No Internet? Just think where you would be today if you'd had all of that five years ago!"

"Ha!" snorts the man . "If I'd had e-mail five years ago I would be sweeping floors at Microsoft and making $5.35 an hour."

Which brings us to the moral of the story:

Since you got this story by e-mail, you're probably closer to being a janitor than a millionaire.

Sadly, I received it also.

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, April 24, 2007
7 p.m.

Location: LabCorp in the RTP

Free Food: BarBQ, Drink, Dessert

Program:

CICS Threadsafe Applications

Speaker:

Edward Addison of IBM (RTP)

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



First Class Postage