SPARTA News April 2009

April 2009

SPARTA President’s Corner

by Brad Carson

Welcome to April and another roller coaster ride with the weather. I hope it is clearing up some now. Last month SPARTA members Ed Webb and Duane Reaugh gave us their trip reports from SHARE in Austin. As always, it’s good to get the latest information from all the SHARE presentations. I’m still hoping for approval to attend the next SHARE in Denver. Keep those fingers and toes crossed on this with the current economy.

We had our second DR test using SRDF’d DASD this past week. Went a little bit better than the one we had in March. One big issue was that someone in the Windows group decided to use the reserved IP address for our DR system on their box. Lots of fun dealing with the duplicate IP addresses until we found out what happened. So we got around this by bringing up the DR system using the IP address for an LPAR we shut down during the tests. Next month we’ll have everything IP-wise straightened out and come up on the network as mvsdr.labcorp.com. We still have way too much manual editing and copying of various parmlib members before IPL’ing. I asking the team to try and streamline this process for a quicker RTO.

Over in z/VM land we have the RTP LPAR running properly now and are beginning the install of Red Hat for z. We are still waiting for some management decisions on some server consolidation issues (all political in this case). We are moving forward with those that have been identified so far but that are a small list. Hopefully I know more by the beginning of June.

This month Janet Sessarego of BMC Software will be giving us an update on MainView and the IBM z10. I look forward to seeing you all at LabCorp on the 28th.


Future Speakers
(subject to change)


Apr. 28 Mainview by BMC
May 19 (Special Date) Omegamon for Storage by IBM


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.

2008-2009 SPARTA
Board of Directors

Brad Carson - President
LabCorp 336-436-8294
3060 S. Church St.
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 31, 2009 Meeting

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

•The meeting was held at LabCorp in RTP, N.C.

•Twenty (20) people were present; sixteen (16) were members.

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

•The minutes of February 2009 meeting were accepted as published in the March 2009 newsletter.

•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer gave the Treasurer's Report. As of March 22, 2009, the balance is $1492.86; motion was made and approved to accept the Treasurer's Report as published in the March 2009 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 page is available. To access the SPARTA Web page, point your Web browser to this site: http://www.spartanc.org. Please send any comments or suggestions about the Web page to Mike Lockey. Be sure to check the Web page every once in a while to see any new or changed information.

•Future Speakers and Topics:
(subject to change)

March SHARE Conference Reports
April BMC Software - Mainview
May IBM - Omegamon for Storage

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

•The next SPARTA meeting will be April 28 at LabCorp in RTP.

•Food for the April meeting will be pizza.

•Brad reminded everyone to keep the conference room clean.

•Reminder to pay your 2009 SPARTA dues.

NEW BUSINESS

•Brad asked if the current SPARTA Board of Directors would be willing to serve next year; all said they would.
The SPARTA Board of Directors will be voted on at the April meeting; if you are interested in being on the SPARTA Board of Directors, let Brad Carson know.

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

•The business portion of the meeting ended at 8:05 p.m.

•Duane Reaugh from DTS Software and Ed Webb from SAS Institute talked about the recent SHARE conference.

Topics that Duane talked about covered:

Venue
Hot DFSMS APARS
z/OS 1.11
CD Contents
What's New

Topics that Ed talked about:

Agenda
Highlights
SHARE Organization Status
zLives
Odds and Ends
z/OS 1.10 Review
Migrating to z/OS 1.10
z/OS 1.11 Preview
Migrating to z/OS 1.11
From the Bit Bucket x'25'

•Meeting ended at 9:15 p.m.

Treasurer’s Report for April 2009

contributed by Tommy Thomas

The balance in the account is $1315.79 as of April 20, 2009.

Financial Report
3/01/2009 through 4/20/2009

Items of Interest

SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2009

contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire

Apr 28 - Pizza
May 19 - Chicken (May 26 = Memorial week)
June 30 - Subs
July 28 - BarBQ
Aug. 25 - Pizza
Sept. 29 - Chicken
Oct. 27 - Subs
Nov. 17 - BarBQ (Nov. 24 = Thanksgiving week)
Dec. 29 - No meeting. Happy Holidays!


Mainframe Automation Trumps Distributed Computing's Manpower Requirements

contributed by Ed Webb

“The cost of labor is far more significant than the cost of hardware when looking at new chargeback systems for IT departments. Departmental chargeback systems need to reflect the actual relative costs of running any application. For a department head to make an intelligent choice about the costs of computing capacity, the labor and hardware costs need to be presented in the context of comparative costs for running a particular application. We’ve been seduced, in some respects, by the low cost of servers and PC hardware, forgetting the relative costs of labor to keep applications running in the different computing environments. The total cost of labor is a far more significant issue than the hardware costs when assessing chargeback for a particular departmental application.”

Read more from this Mainframe Executive article at http://www.mainframe-exec.com/articles/?p=116


How to Reduce Mainframe Expenses....

contributed by Ed Webb

“The idea of reducing IT costs during turbulent economic times isn’t new. However, some cost reductions involve risk and can limit an organization’s ability to develop, or even maintain, competitive advantages.
Mainframe organizations can view this challenge under a different lens. Savings can be realized through several solutions that won’t jeopardize your ability to deliver the business’ strategic applications.”

Read the rest of this Mainframe Executive article at http://www.mainframe-exec.com/articles/?p=112


Handbook For Life

contributed by Chris Blackshire

Health:

1. Drink plenty of water.
2. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a beggar.
3. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.
4. Live with the 3 E's -- Energy, Enthusiasm, and Empathy.
5. Make time to pray.
6. Play more games.
7. Read more books than you did in 2008.
8. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day.
9. Sleep for 7 hours.
10. Take a 10-30 minutes walk daily. And while you walk, smile.

Personality:

11. Don't compare your life to others'. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
12. Don't have negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment.
13. Don't over do. Keep your limits.
14. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
15. Don't waste your precious energy on gossip.
16. Dream more while you are awake.
17. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
18. Forget issues of the past. Don't remind your partner with his/her mistakes of the past. That will ruin your present happiness.
19. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Don't hate others.
20. Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present.
21. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
22. Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.
23. Smile and laugh more.
24. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

Society:

25. Call your family often.
26. Each day give something good to others.
27. Forgive everyone for everything..
28. Spend time w/ people over the age of 70 & under the age of 6
29. Try to make at least three people smile each day.
30. What other people think of you is none of your business.
31. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch.

Life:

32. Do the right thing!
33. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful, or joyful.
34. GOD heals everything.
35. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
36. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
37. The best is yet to come.
38. When you awake alive in the morning, thank GOD for it.
39. Your Inner most is always happy. So, be happy.

Last but not the least:

40. Please Forward this to everyone you care about


Humor


A Quiz For People Who Know Everything

contributed by Chris Blackshire

This is a quiz for people who know everything! (most find out in a hurry that they don't). These are not trick questions. They are straight questions with straight answers.

1. Name the one sport in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the contest ends.

2. What famous North American landmark is constantly moving backward?

3. Of all vegetables, only two can live to produce on their own for several growing seasons. All other vegetables must be replanted every year. What are the only two perennial vegetables?

4. What fruit has its seeds on the outside?

5. In many liquor stores, you can buy pear brandy, with a real pear inside the bottle. The pear is whole and ripe, and the bottle is genuine; it hasn't been cut in any way. How did the pear get inside the bottle?

6. Only three words in standard English begin with the letters ' dw' and they are all common words. Name two of them.

7. There are 14 punctuation marks in English grammar. Can you name at least half of them?

8. Name the only vegetable or fruit that is never sold frozen, canned, processed, cooked, or in any other form except fresh.

9. Name 6 or more things that you can wear on your feet beginning with the letter 'S.'


Answers To Quiz:

1. Boxing

2. Niagara Falls
(The rim is worn down about two and a half feet each year because of the millions of gallons of water that rush over it every minute.)

3. Asparagus and rhubarb.

4. Strawberry.

5. The pear grew inside the bottle.
(The bottles are placed over pear buds when they are small, and are wired in place on the tree. The bottle is left in place for the entire growing season. When the pears are ripe, they are snipped off at the stems.)

6. dwarf, dwell and dwindle.

7. Period, comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, apostrophe, question mark, exclamation point, quotation marks, brackets, parenthesis, braces, and ellipses.

8. Lettuce.

9. Shoes, socks, sandals, sneakers, slippers, skis, skates, snowshoes, stockings, stilts.


New Employee Placement

by Chris Blackshire

How to Properly Place NEW EMPLOYEES

1. Put 400 bricks in a closed room.

2. Put your new hires in the room and close the door.

3. Leave them alone and come back after 6 hours.

4. Then analyze the situation:

a. If they are counting the bricks, put them in the Accounting Department.
b. If they are recounting them, put them in Auditing.

c. If they have messed up the whole place with the bricks, put them in Engineering.

d. If they are arranging the bricks in some strange order, put them in Planning.

e. If they are throwing the bricks at each other, put them in Operations.

f. If they are sleeping, put them in Security.

g. If they have broken the bricks into pieces, put them in Information Technology

h. If they are sitting idle, put them in Human Resources.

i. If they say they have tried different combinations, they are looking for more, yet not a brick has been moved, put them in Sales.

j. If they have already left for the day, put them in Marketing.

k. If they are staring out of the window, put them in Strategic Planning.

l. If they are talking to each other, and not a single brick has been moved, congratulate them and put them in Top Management.

m. Finally, if they have surrounded themselves with bricks in such a way that they can neither be seen nor heard from, put them in Congress.

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Date: Tuesday, April 28, 2009
7 p.m.

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, Drink, Dessert

Program:

Mainview Manages Mainframe Ecosystem

Speaker:

Janet Sessarego, Director R&D BMC Mainview

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



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