job nostalgia / pink cat

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

snazzzybird wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/28858 :

<< Twenty-one years later I'm still using hex, but the technology has
made it more of a rare occasion. I read dumps online using software
that will take you to the failing instruction, variables, where the
regs are pointing, and anything else you can think of. When I do need
a hex calculator, I just use the one in "Accessories" on the computer.
Everything's removed, everything's onscreen. I look back to my days
working in pencil on the green-and-white striped pages of the dump,
and it seems so primitive -- and yet I kind of miss it. I don't miss
the punched cards, though! >>

Up until just about one year ago, I could have said much the same
thing -- altho' I was always lousy at reading dumps and never actually
learned Assembler -- there were just a couple of pgms written in
Assembler in my dear old MMS system, one named MRPBATCH and a pair for
analysing ABC codes based on value and usage -- when they had
problems, I had to decrypt some parts of them, but when it was too
much for me, I had to ask my friend Barry or my co-worker Regina for
help just reading what the damn thing did ... 

But we have been converting MMS (Material Management System -
mainframe COBOL CICS DL/I) and VMS (Vehicle Management System -
mainframe COBOL IMS DB/DC) and MMAS (Manpower
something-something-something, it got the vehicle mechanics paid,
mainframe) and all the little stand-alone systems (Series/1, AS/400,
Foxpro, MS Access, MS Excel, handwritten) to One Integrated
Maintenance and Material Management System (M3). And Material
Management has completed moving over.

Requirements on the RFP included that M3 must run in Oracle on
RISC6000 server using AIX with Windows PCs as client, because my
enterprise is determined to Get Rid Of The Mainframe. Moving to an
integrated and modern and RDBMS was not a bad idea (altho' we could
have kept the mainframe as an Oracle server under someIX), but *doing*
it has been *years* of hell. 

I wonder whether it would be as bad if we hadn't chosen a bidder who
deliberately bid less than it could possibly cost to be the lowest
bidder and therefore has long since run out of money and demanded more
and more, and promised to meet a schedule which everyone except our
top management believed to be impossible and therefore devotes much
energy to blaming all real and imaginary delays on us. The money comes
from top management but the blame goes on lowly folks like me.

Dina (hey, do you like Adam->Adina because he chose your name?) wrote
in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/28864 :

<< http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cornwall/4215890.stm

"A west Devon couple are baffled by how their nine-year-old white cat
turned pink after a weekend stroll." >>

Tim stirfrys in the wok, chopped up veggies, nuts, and chicken with
curry spices. He procrastinates about cleaning the wok afterwards.
Long ago we had a piebald (tabby and white) cat named Obi, and one
time Obi curled up in the used wok (because cats curl up in round
things the right size, as seen in http://catsinsinks.com ). He got all
that curried cooking oil in his fur, and he wouldn't lick it off
because he didn't like the curry. All his white parts were neon orange
(and he left stains wherever he went). I had to give him a bath. After
which, his white fur was a pastel peach.