ch_client = "manojt"; ch_width = 300; ch_height = 250; ch_type = "mpu"; ch_sid = "Chitika Default"; ch_alternate_ad_url = "http://www.theunrealuniverse.com/ads/ads1.php?size=300x250&kwds="; ch_color_site_link = "#164675"; ch_color_title = "#164675"; ch_color_border = "#B0C9EB"; ch_color_text = "#333333"; ch_color_bg = "#FFFFFF"; There was this one time that I was at a client site doing some programming work. I noticed that one of the system operators was removing and then re-inserting a cartridge from the AS/400′s tape drive. He would walk back to the main console and type something. Shaking his head he would go through the entire process again. After a few more minutes, I heard him mutter what sounded like a mixture of a curse and thank you. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I asked him what happened. Apparently, he was trying to initialize the tape in preparation for a backup. Whenever he typed the INZTAP command on the … Read entire article »

ch_client = "manojt"; ch_width = 300; ch_height = 250; ch_type = "mpu"; ch_sid = "Chitika Default"; ch_alternate_ad_url = "http://www.theunrealuniverse.com/ads/ads1.php?size=300x250&kwds="; ch_color_site_link = "#164675"; ch_color_title = "#164675"; ch_color_border = "#B0C9EB"; ch_color_text = "#333333"; ch_color_bg = "#FFFFFF"; Have you ever worked on two programs at the same time? You are coding this current requirement when a user comes up to you from behind and blurts out, “Can you fix this? We just need an additional column on the report. My boss needed it yesterday.” Sound familiar? Knowing that it won’t take you an hour to do the modification, you agree. Now, the thing here is, you are using a dumb terminal. Since you don’t want to exit your current task and mess up all the library list settings and stuff, you decide to use the dumb terminal next to it. You open the code up … Read entire article »

Since this is my first article, I decided to look back at my career. Starting out in 1996 with a small IT company, I was a fresh graduate and like other graduates, I had no idea what an AS/400 (which is what they called the iSeries back then) was. Naturally, I was pretty excited. When I say this big refrigerator in the middle of the room, I said to myself, “Cool! I get to program using a mainframe!” The other trainees and I were told later that day however, that it was a midrange. “Huh? A mid-what?” Since our exposure in college was focused on PC’s and DOS (Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was that long ago), we only had a rough idea of what other platforms were. Heck, we thought mainframes belonged … Read entire article »