Cross-posted to both VM-ESA-L and Linux-390 lists. Sorry for the duplication and the length.
Like Dennis Wicks a couple of days ago, Im hanging up the green card too. After a career spanning 36 years, I am going to retire on the first of the month. Ive been working with computers since I was 16, and with VM since 1984. Now Im going to go finish my fifth book (maybe start a sixth), do a lot of bluegrass music, some general aviation, restore my grandmothers 1955 Oldsmobile and run my wifes fiber-arts business for her. And Im going back to school and finally get an education instead of the four degrees I got the first time. Even though I will no longer be gainfully employed at The Boeing Company any more, I will still continue to lurk on these lists for at least a few months from my home e-mail address, and may even offer some free (worth every penny) advice from time to time until I lose interest or the industry changes so much I dont know what youre talking about. I have been asked to present a couple of sessions at SHARE in Seattle that I have given before. Since I live in Seattle, this is no problem for me. I hope to see many of you there. If you want any advice on hotels, restaurants or sights to see, drop me a line. If you can, take the tour of the Boeing plant 40 miles away in Everett. Reserve early! For those who are interested, my position will be opening up. Boeing will actually have 2 positions in VM Systems opening, as soon as we fill the position of Delivery Systems Manager. My last two managers quit within three months of each other. Maybe its my deodorant? I dont know when the position(s) will open up. I doubt that hiring will be an immediate priority for the new manager. But go to http://www.boeing.com, at the top select employment, and at the right select Job Search. This is Information Technology or possibly Computing Delivery Systems, Salaried Non-Management, state of Washington, Experienced. The job title is System Design Integration Specialist, which might be abbreviated Syst Desn Intgr Spec. Search keywords VM or ESS or LINUX, and maybe on the job classification BCBDP4. This might be filled at a P3 or even a P2, so check those too. Id check once a week. These reqs dont stay open very long when they do open up. The last time we opened a req, we got 88 applications, interviewed 6 and hired none of them. The position is still open. For those of you who might be interested in my egotistical ravings about my career, read on. The rest of you, (as we said in Mississippi) buh-bye, now! My first exposure to a computer was in 1963 when CDC donated a Bendix G-15 to our high school. It had 2K of rotating-drum memory, had to be programmed in hex, its only mass storage was punched paper tape and had 1500 VACUUM TUBES! We named it Archibald after a dimwitted janitor of our acquaintance. I worked with a lot of batch-style computers during college and in my first jobs. But my introduction to systems work started as a graduate student at UC Davis in the Crocker Nuclear Laboratory. We had a Dec PDP-15 to do our real-time data acquisition of nuclear event data. But every time we changed the electronics, we had to pull off the covers and get our soldering irons out onto the backplane, and then reprogram the operating system to recognize the changes. I also was part of a NASA grant to do some work into the semiconductor properties of certain metal oxides. That work became part of the body of knowledge that led to the use of MOSFET transistors, which became the basis of Very Large Scale Integrated Circuits. After getting my degree, I became an Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Mississippi, but most of my publications were actually in the field of computer science. There were these new things called microcomputers on the market. This was BEFORE- the Apple II, the TRS-80 and long before the IBM PC. My original Southwest Technical Products 6800 currently resides in the Boston Computer Museum as their second-oldest microcomputer. I actually had to write a multitasking Disk Operating System for this machine from scratch! I finally decided I wasnt cut out for academic politics and sold out to the corporate interests for the big bucks. I joined an engineering firm in New Orleans doing work in pollution transport. One day, the IT people were having trouble with the synchronous RS-232 terminals on the IBM 360/155 and I offered to help since I was bored with engineering. I got my oscilliscope from the car and traced the problem to a multiplexor card. This saved them money since they didnt have a maintenance contract. They were so impressed, I was offered the position of Systems Programmer. The engineers wanted a more interactive system to work with than the VSE that was running, so the DP manager and I convinced management to upgrade to VM. In 1984 I did my first install of VM/SP2 with a VSE guest on our new 4331 and havent looked back since. The New Orleans heat finally got to me in 1988 and My wife and I got jobs with Boeing in Seattle, where weve been ever since. Ive been working with a fine team of people and had the opportunity to play with , er, investigate a lot of technology. At SHARE in Anaheim in 2000 I heard about Linux on the mainframe and worked a pirate project to bring it up. Three months later, the boss said We need to investigate this Linux thing. How long will it take you to get it up and running?. I had to reply that it was already up and running! All in all, its been a fun ride. (Except for a couple of years when I had a really bad boss.) Im proud to have made a few small contributions along the way. Buh-bye,now! Gordon Wolfe, Ph.D. "The Definition of a gentleman is a man who can play the banjo -- and don't!" Mark Twain Gordon Wolfe, Ph.D.
