Old farts and new Linux

[Rick Stevens]

Betti Ann & Preston Smith wrote:
> In 1967, I was a young Flight Lieutenant (read Captain) in the Royal 
> Canadian Air Force.  I was on a job in Europe installing navigation aids 
> and communications at the base in Lahr that we took over after Charlie 
> DeGaul threw us out of France.  One night I received a trans Atlantic 
> telephone call to get my body back to Canada to sit some computer 
> aptitude tests.  One month later I was learning COBOL, three months 
> later I was handed a project that three other teams had failed at (to 
> automate the collection of maintenance data for our aircraft fleets), 
> four months later I ran my first 'fleet' through the system, and two 
> months later I handed the system over to the maintainers.  I spent 
> endless nights hounding the key punch staff making real time corrections 
> to punch cards as they came from the teams.  The computer (IBM 360) 
> staff grew to hate me as I sat with them over the midnight hours 
> correcting my JCL (Job Control Language) cards, and eventual making real 
> time corrections to the overnight compiles.  Regretfully in those days, 
> Jolt was non-existent and my only wake up product was way too much 
> coffee (I paid for that dearly in recent years).  I got out of the 
> computer business in 1970 to serve in The USAF Air Defence Command.  In 
> 1980 I bought myself a TI-99/4A and taught myself assembly language so I 
> could program the 4k module that TI sold.
> 
> AS I grew more senior I got out of the hands on involvement but I was a 
> strong and ardent support of OS/2 until it came to an end a few years ago.
> 
> Life was fun in those days if one had a constitution of iron and did not 
> mind being looked at as if you were another planet.
> 
> Now I am looking forward to escaping the clutches of Windows and 
> wrestling with Linux as I go through another learning process with a 
> mind that is not a sharp as it once was.

Always remember...

Working with Linux is like wrestling with a worthy opponent.  Working
with Windows is like picking on an annoyed child with a loaded handgun. 

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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
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-      A day for firm decisions!!!   Well, then again, maybe not!    -
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