Etikettarkiv: tale

VAXen don’t belong some places

The author of this piece is Jack Harvey, harvey(at)eisner.decus.org, and it was originally published under the title ”The Immortal Murderer” on January 18th, 1989 on DECUServe, the DECUS member bulletin board.

I have decided to preserve this piece for coming computer generations. Have fun. The date at the end of the story that is mentioned is also known as ”the black Monday” when the financial markets came crashing down. Hold that thought while you read through this piece.

/Anders


vax_11-780_intero
VAX 11/780 Intero

VAXen, my children, just don’t belong some places. In my business, I am frequently called by small sites and startups having VAX problems. So when a friend of mine in an Extremely Large Financial Institution (ELFI) called me one day to ask for help, I was intrigued because this outfit is a really major VAX user – they have several large herds of VAXen – and plenty of sharp VAXherds to take care of them.

So I went to see what sort of an ELFI mess they had gotten into. It seems they had shoved a small 750 with two RA60’s running a single application, PC style, into a data center with two IBM 3090’s and just about all the rest of the disk drives in the world. The computer room was so big it had three street addresses. The operators had only IBM experience and, to quote my friend, they were having ”a little trouble adjusting to the VAX”, were a bit hostile towards it and probably needed some help with system management. Hmmm, Hostility… Sigh.

Well, I thought it was pretty ridiculous for an outfit with all that VAX muscle elsewhere to isolate a dinky old 750 in their Big Blue Country, and said so bluntly. But my friend patiently explained that although small, it was an ”extremely sensitive and confidential application.” It seems that the 750 had originally been properly clustered with the rest of a herd and in the care of one of their best VAXherds. But the trouble started when the Chief User went to visit his computer and its VAXherd.

Fortsätt läsa VAXen don’t belong some places

Gigants

The Giants
Taken in the Faroe Islands. Nikon D70s, Nikkor 18-70/3.5-5.6G ED-IF, Adobe Lightroom

The gigants came from the sea, for a full man-age they walked across the ocean floor under the waters but now they reached the shores of the Faroe Islands. Their goal to move the islands from the coast of Scotland closer to Iceland and this mission is one only Gigants can do.

It was a terrible work that started, and the people on the Islands fled inland with their sheep and goats, having secured their boats, terrified to fall into the north atlantic ocean while the gigants were shaking their homes.

So busy by the incredible work was the Gigants, that they did not notice that the break of dawn was approaching them. When the sun raise above the horizon sendin its golden rays down the Gigants was caught by surprise and turned to stone where they stood.

Still you can see many of them around the coast lines of the Faroe Islands and in the fog coming in from the sea you may yet see some of them still putting their back into it, trying to shift the Islands ever so slightly.