Dug in and Not Budging

For some reason a bit of junk mail history has popped into my mind. It's not very interesting except in that it illustrates how people can get out on a limb with an obviously bogus position and cling to it for dear life.

At a company I worked for in Virginia in the 1990's, a client had sent us a master file of records on magnetic tape. The records comprised a history of donors to political organizations and had been copied from a disk file elsewhere.

The record format included dates and amounts of the most recent ten donations, with a YYMMDD format for the date and a seven digit field for donations, cents implied. Perhaps the last 25 or 30 records on the tape consisted of (presumably) genuine names and addresses, but each date was 222222 and each amount was 2222222. In addition, there were twos in the fields for identifying the political organizations that received the money and in the two-digit codes associated with the donations.

We'd had the file a couple of days, had run a conversion on it and examined the results, corrected a few things after looking at the output, and run a second conversion, when the owner of the client company called for me.

Client: "How's the conversion going?"

World's Greatest Programmer: "The conversion is complete. It all looks pretty good except that we had to drop a few records at the end that contained garbage data."

Client: "WHAT? Those represent money. You can't drop any records."

WGP: "Well, once you get by the name and address on the input, the rest of each record is filled with twos."

Client: "That's money! You can't drop records! I can't believe you dropped those records!"

WGP, losing patience and counting to one: "Ohhhh, I'll bet you'll believe that before you'll believe that on the 22nd day of the 22nd month of 1922 each of those people made ten donations of $22,222.22."

Silence, followed by

Client: "Let me speak to Walter."

Walter was my boss and the owner of the company. I put the client on hold, walked over to Walter's office, and explained the situation. Walter picked up the phone and I hung around just long enough to learn that he was going to have exactly the same conversation with the client that I had just had. Well, with a little more tact on our end, perhaps.

We had our wicked way in the end, of course. Garbage is garbage and there's not much to be done with it. For you mainframe techies, the twos came from unused index records on the disk originally containing the file.

Once in a while it can be productive to get out on a limb about something, and sometimes it can be fun, even if the limb gets sawed off behind you. Stubbornness for the sake of sheer stubbornness is something else. I can't imagine what the client thought about the origin of donations made in the 22nd month of a year six decades before the existence of his company.

Early Rock and Roll

Many polls and surveys have been taken in attempts to determine the "first" rock and roll song. Fairly predictably, they have reached a number of different conclusions. One poll resulted in a song from the 1920's.

Safe to say, however, is that rock and roll took off with the 1955 success of "(We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets. They had released it a year or so earlier and it had gone nowhere. Then it was used as the theme song for a movie about an inner city school, "Blackboard Jungle," and whoosh! Over the years it has sold more than 25 million copies.

Rock and roll was on its way, and soon there were road shows - "concerts" today - made up of a few different artists and groups. Traveling by bus, they hit all the major cities. When I was 15, one arrived in Boston.

Mechanics Hall, razed several years later, was then a 75 year old building that might today be called a "convention center." It was host to conventions, shows, exhibitions, and gatherings of all kinds. It was, however, on its last
legs.

A friend, I no longer remember which one, learned that a rock and roll show was coming to Boston and Mechanics Hall. We lived about 18 miles north of Boston, and one Saturday afternoon five of us, all boys, took the train into Boston. We haggled with a cab driver, who agreed to take us from North Station to Mechanics Hall for a flat fee a little less than his meter would run, and sure enough he had to turn the meter off a couple of blocks from the hall.

On the card were Fats Domino, Bill Haley and His Comets, Chuck Berry, Shirley and Lee, and the G-Clefs. Tickets were $5.00 apiece. At a guess, most of you over 40 have heard of the first three, and possibly the fouth.

The G-Clefs were a local group (Roxbury, a suburb of Boston) ranging in age from one to five years older than the five of us, at that time enjoying the success of the first of their two top 40 hits, an upbeat number called "Ka-Ding Dong." (On the recording, Freddy Cannon played lead guitar.) The song ultimately reached #24 on the pop charts.

(If this link goes bad - it would probably be from the video being removed from YouTube - please post a comment about that. The comment will trigger an email to me and I'll replace the video.)

Ka-Ding Dong

At the beginning of the show the MC mentioned the age of the building and asked that our enthusiasm be limited to clapping and cheering lest we bring the roof and walls down on our heads.

I no longer recall the order in which the artists performed. We thought they were all great, and I recall being much taken with Shirley of Shirley and Lee. But the G-Clefs stole the show, of course.

Not only did they have the advantage of being a home town group, but they were the *first* artists from the Boston area to have a rock and roll hit. When they left the stage everyone wanted an encore. We cheered and clapped and whistled to no avail. Then we remembered the MC's warning and began stamping our feet, roof and walls be damned. The MC came out in a panic and claimed that the G-Clefs had left the building. We'll never know whether that was true, but we calmed down and eventually made it home alive.

Groggy

In the mid-1970's four of us - three from Blue Cross/Blue Shield in Boston and one EDSF employee who serviced our account - spent three months in Dallas working on a joint proposal to the state of Massachusetts regarding the processing of Medicaid claims.

It was fairly intense and became moreso as our deadline approached, but it was made easier by the first class facilities provided by EDS for the team.

The additional EDS employees provided were more than competent and were both professional and friendly.

The Boston four became fast friends. We stayed at a hotel on the North Central Expressway, met for breakfast before going to work, met for dinner after work, and occasionally went out for a drink or two together. Once in a while one or two people would fly back to Boston for a weekend, work shedule permitting. We rented a car for the entire three months, and whoever was staying in Dallas would drive the travelers to the airport on Friday nights and pick them up on their return Sunday evenings.

It was hard work, often involving long hours, but one of the more enjoyable long term work efforts I've experienced. In spite of that, nerves frayed and tension mounted as the deadline approached.

• We were becoming punch drunk, and with a week or so to go two of the project team got a little too intense. One of the Boston Blues people and one of the Dallas EDS employees were working on a section of the proposal together, and in a large room with perhaps six or eight other people present their voices began to rise as they disagreed over whether a sentence segment should end in a colon or a semi-colon.
  
  I was the leader of the Boston contingent, and I contemplated telling them to flip a coin, rewrite the sentence, or duke it out elsewhere, but for some reason reached for the dictionary instead. I swear, this was not planned but just came tumbling out of my mouth.
  
  I cleared my throat loudly, loudly enough in fact to cause everyone in the room to stop whatever they were doing and look at me. Turning to "semi-colon" in the dictionary, I read the definition - used to distinguish between items in a list, yada yada yada. A whispered exchange took place between the two disputants: "See?" "Wait."
  
  Beginning to turn the pages in my search for "colon," I said "Whereas . . . ." turning, turning, stalling, "a colon . . . ," turning, turning, got it! "is a part of the large intestine."
  
  Everyone in the room cracked up and I wondered whether some EDS exec would open the door to see what the ruckus was (none did.) The tension was broken and there was no more debate on the issue. To this day I don't know how they settled it.
  
  
• At the very end of the process two Blue vice-presidents and the Boston EDSF account manager flew down to Dallas to review and sign the proposals and to fly back to Boston with us. I believe we were all on a packed L-1011. We were slightly scattered but all seated within perhaps twenty feet of each other. The four of us who had spent the duration in Dallas were pretty much out of it.
  
  There is ("was" - I just checked and the final race was run on September 18, 2009) in Revere, Massachusetts a dog track named Wonderland. The mechanical "rabbit" used to lead the racing dogs was named "Swifty."
  
  As we were ready to land at Boston's Logan International Airport, I glanced out the window and saw Revere and Wonderland, and my mouth took off again.
  
  "Uhh, ladies and gentlemen, we have made a terrible mistake. Somehow we have landed at Wonderland instead of Logan. I knew something was wrong when I heard the announcement from the control tower: "There goes Swifty!"
  
  At this point my colleagues were turning around to verify that I was the "pilot" making the announcement, and a couple of them were collapsing in laughter.
  
  I suppose you not only had to be there but you had to be in on the culmination of an exhausting effort. Certainly several *other* passengers were looking at me as if I were a two-headed duck.
  
  "The good news is that we are an overwhelming favorite to win this race. The bad news is that we will only pay two ten."
  
  That was about 35 years ago, and I imagine today you'd be at least a temporary guest of airport security if you tried something like that.

Wow!

That didn't take long.

Amazon has removed the page for "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure."

God's in his Heaven, and if it is not quite true that "All's right with the world" it is at least true that one less thing is wrong with the world.

Amazon and Pedophilia

My father once told me that I was "the biggest crusader since Eisenhower," and I guess there's some truth to that. The number of issues which have led me to crusade is small, but I have conducted the crusades wholeheartedly.

On occasion this has led to bigger and better things and on occasion my punishment has been severe and enduring, but we are who we are and if examination seems to show that change would be for the worse then I guess we're stuck with ourselves.

Most of you - not that there are hordes of you - have not known that among my various endeavors I sell books and other items on Amazon.

My first crusade since 1991 has arrived, and the message is this: boycott Amazon.com.

Why? Amazon is hosting the sale of a Kindle book, "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure," about which the author writes:

This is my attempt to make pedophile situations safer for those juveniles that find themselves involved in them, by establishing certian (sic) rules for these adults to follow. I hope to achieve this by appealing to the better nature of pedosexuals, with hope that their doing so will result in less hatred and perhaps liter (sic) sentences should they ever be caught.

Of all possible crimes, child molestation must be one of the lowest, and a site that assists in the propagation of "rules" for pedophilia and lobbying for lighter sentences for convicted pedophiles is not a site for me.

I have this evening contacted Amazon with the following written message:

On your site I am seller mostly-oldstuff. I am writing to inform you that I have changed my status to "on vacation" while I await your action regarding the Kindle book "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure."

My intention is to wait for some short period of time, certainly less than a month, and if I find that you are still making this book available then you and I will be quits. This applies to both selling and buying.

No response is required. If you feel compelled to respond then please do not insult me with "freedom of speech" claims. That concept is what allows the author to publish and sell his material but does not require any of us to sell or buy it.

Cordially,

To my readers I would say only the trite but appropriate "Let your conscience be your guide." Amazon has many competitors.

Solomon Burke, R.I.P.

Solomon Burke died yesterday at the age of 70. Or 72. Or 74. He was not always forthcoming about his age. But for perhaps fifty years he was a gospel, soul, and R&B singer.

I first heard his voice in 1966 in Vietnam. It was habit in my outfit to leave (vinyl) albums in the Day Room for anyone to listen to, and one black soldier had left a Solomon Burke LP there. The only song I now remember from that album was a kick ass version of "Down in the Valley," sung much differently than it was sung in grammar school in the 1950's.



It has been mentioned elsewhere on this blog that my friend Jeff and I would head over to the local watering hole on Friday afternoons to warm it up for our friends who would appear after work. During one of these happy occasions, "Down in the Valley" popped into my mind, but I could not for the life of me remember Solomon Burke's name.

I asked Jeff if he'd heard a rock version of "Down in the Valley," but he had not. I set about describing the artist to him - black, tall, heavy set - and solicited his help in identifying him.

Well, we worked on that off and on for a couple of hours with no luck. At one point I said "I think his name begins with an "F." Jeff made several guesses, but . . . .

The crowd descended and we gave up for the time being. Late that night, as we were set to depart for our homes, Jeff pulled me aside and said, "I gotta know Monday. You gotta come up with this name."

"No problem, Jeff. I'll think of it."

Bright and early on Monday morning, Jeff popped into my office.

Jeff: "Well, did you think of it? I worried about it all weekend."

Donnie: "Jeff, if I tell you, I don't want to hear anything about it."

A brief pause.

Jeff: "OK, Donnie, I won't say nuthin'."

Donnie: "Solomon Burke."

After a long, hard look at me, Jeff departed. But an hour so later he stuck his head in the door and said "Donnie, Solomon Burke called. He said to tell you there's no fucking "F" in his name."

The Immaturity of Programming for the Internet

Although we are a couple of decades into the age of the internet, some lessons still have not been learned by some programmers and their management. Some sites, even multi-million and multi-billion dollar sites, occasionally confront disaster when releasing a new version of something that has been working well.

Mainframe processors went through that a lot in the 1970's, a time when applications were getting larger and dealing with higher volumes, and when remote users began to have access to host systems.

The reasons then and now, I suspect, were twofold: an unwarranted confidence in an organization's ability to make system changes and a reluctance to spend money - quality control is expensive.

One way to divide the universe of a data processor's responsibilities to users is:

1. Systems currently in production and *large* systems being developed for production.
   
   
2. Smaller one-time jobs.

It is critical that those in the first category be vetted by someone independent of the development, and in fact independent of the data processing area itself. One organization I worked for had a quality control person who vetted every single change to software used by clients. All proposed releases went through this QC person, and if problems were found the data processing area was notified and the release rejected.

No one in the company had the authority to make him change his mind.

The problems had to be fixed and the release resubmitted to him.

Another company I worked with - not as an employee, but in tandem with - had one person who was paid six figures and whose sole responsibility was to tell the company when to change hardware and when to change operating systems. Under no other circumstances could anyone else in the company - throughout the world - replace a mainframe or an operating system.

Such precautions are expensive but like the mills of the gods they grind exceeding small. In all the years I knew them, neither of these companies ever had a major problem that their controls were designed to prevent.

Contrast that with one large auction site, for example, which several years ago put into production a new billing system. They "tested" it in production by picking half (I think) of their sellers, leaving the others alone. For *months* the site could not bill the half under the new system. What was the cost in lost revenue, lost interest, and perhaps even lost sellers?

Never should have happened.

Never should have happened.

Never should have happened.

Another large site, one that pays people to write articles, is currently approaching the death rattle stage. Whatever possessed management I don't know, but it was decided that the current software be replaced using a new software package. Worse yet, the new software package had not been released commercially. Worse than that, even, was that the package hadn't even been beta tested.

Now when writers try to post an article it comes out garbled. Paragraphs appear in random order, functions that are supposed to work fail miserably, and "hit counts," the basis on which writers are paid, are hopelessly muddled. And readers are staying away in droves. How many will never return, even after things are stabilized?

In addition to a complete lack of quality control, a reason for failure was something that mainframers learned the hard way too, about using new products: Never be first. Never be last.

I commend that to you regarding your PC, your Mac, your laptop, your internet service: Never be first. Never be last.

Now I must confess that when I was a mainframe assembler programmer there were times when I was a cowboy. I did my own testing on programs that I wrote and ultimately pronounced them fit. I must confess also that occasionally, I (and my employer) paid for it. But these were all category two items, one time jobs, quickly fixed, sometimes not even seen in their problem state by the client.

We learned, and they will too.