You Must be a Mainframer If...

  1. When someone mentions green card, you don't think of immigration
  2. You understand the significance of version 3.8
  3. You think of DASD not DISK
  4. You know what a disk pack is
  5. When someone mentions RENT you don't think of housing expense
  6. You know that WAD has nothing to do with gum
  7. You think that fixed font, green on black is an ideal programming environment
  8. You know where "pluckin' and shuckin'" really came from (and wish you didn't)
  9. You know that the head of string is not an HR position
  10. You think of DASD when someone mentions string
  11. You don't trust any machine you can lift or step over
  12. You remember when your computer had an air bag in it (and a compressor to inflate it)
  13. You understand how a computer can work better with 30 gallons of water in it
  14. You know that a functional recovery routine is not physical therapy
  15. You don't feel that having only two concurrently active paths to any disk is sufficient
  16. Your field engineer has ever shown up with parts to fix your computer BEFORE you even know it was broken
  17. You know what load unit dials are, and how to use them
  18. You know why BALR 14,14 works like it does
  19. You don't consider channels something on TV or part of a product distribution system
  20. You think any system that can't successfully scale past a 4 - way for a single image is a toy
  21. You remember punched cards and why they were called unit records
  22. You know what a drum card is
  23. You know that a DASD FARM isn't where little DASDs grow
  24. You know CORE is in an apple.. mainframes use monolithic memory these days
  25. You DO know what CORE memory is
  26. You understand why 31bit addressing and not 32bit
  27. You know that DEBE does everything but eat
  28. You spell "kicks" CICS
  29. You can make a sentence out of just acronyms, and your peers will understand it perfectly
  30. Your computer has always been made up of multiple processors
  31. You expect your system and application to stay "up" even if one of the processors it is using fails
  32. You can recite at least three meanings for the ISC acronym
  33. You remember having to press REQUEST on the console
  34. You know the keystroke for EOB (Alt + 5)
  35. You know domains were something that Amdahl invented
  36. You know that REUS is not waste recycling
  37. You know that a Coupling Facility has nothing to do with the railroad
  38. You know that a control register has nothing to do with Point Of Sale
  39. When someone says prism, you're not thinking of light diffraction
  40. When someone mentions a "pizza oven" you don't immediately think of food
  41. You know the difference between UNI, MP, AP, and SMP
  42. You think of availability in terms of end user access to applications, not just recovering to the C:> prompt
  43. You consider most horizontal scaling clustering to just be wanna-be's
  44. You find taking a stand-alone dump to be perhaps annoying, but not offensive
  45. You remember HIPO and know that it's not a zoo animal
  46. You know why you can't pop address plugs across strings (especially on MSS staging volumes)
  47. You know why blue cables and not grey
  48. EREP doesn't scare you
  49. You know what CUU means
  50. You know what DISOSS is and it doesn't scare you
  51. You remember consoles that were more like electric typewriters than display terminals
  52. You remember the advent of dot-matrix printing and thought it was sooo cool
  53. You know PROFS doesn't refer to college teachers
  54. You don't have to be told when to press the Enter key
  55. You don't spend hours looking for the "ANY" key
  56. You know the difference between BTAM, TCAM, QTAM, and VTAM
  57. You know who "the BUNCH" were (Burroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC and Honeywell)
  58. You know that SPOOL is an acronym (Simultaneous Peripheral Operations Online)
  59. You don't think that address space is an area on an envelope
  60. You remember when having four "screens" on one, in orange on black was a big deal
  61. You've successfully used PSW RESTART
  62. You know what Reset, Load, Rewind, Start had to do with
  63. You understand the benefits of connection-based communication architectures
  64. You know that TSO TEST could not test everything
  65. You know that just because your manager wrote some code, that didn't make it authorized
  66. You know that AC(1) had nothing to do with room temperature
  67. You know that Carrier Sense Multiple Access / Collision Detect is how a token succeeds in life.
  68. You know the relative merits of Count Key Data and Relative Block Addressing
  69. You know that //EOJ is not a web address.
  70. You know what IEFBR14 does and how many APARs were taken on it (4)
  71. You know what an APAR is (Authorized Program Analysis Report)
  72. You know that DITTO is an acronym. For DOS, no, not that DOS, the other DOS. (IBM Data Interfile Transfer, Testing, and Operations Utility).
  73. You know that FS didn't take over from the mainframe, but became a pretty good System/38.
  74. You don't understand all the furor about security... it's a given
  75. You think that two computers that can't share the same data for update is silly and archaic
  76. You know that RESERVE has nothing to do with dinner or wine
  77. You know that RELEASE isn't kicking back with a cool one
  78. You know what Select Out Bypass is
  79. You know that BUS and TAG aren't children's games
  80. You know that SPIE and STAE are not commands for your pet
  81. You know the difference between STAE and ESTAE
  82. You think count - key - data is the way all information should be structured
  83. You know that FETCH Protect isn't a way to keep your dog from getting to the bone stash
  84. You think that all systems should be able to run at 100% 24x7 without having issues
  85. You know that 24x7x365 was coined by someone who didn't understand math
  86. You don't find 6 months of continuous up-time without having to restart the system as unusual
  87. You don't "boot" a system, you IPL it
  88. You don't know what throwing an exception means, but do know what an abend code is about
  89. You think that all the bits of a word should represent a numerical value the same way it's written... high order on the left
  90. You know the difference between single and multi-mode fibre cable and where to use which
  91. You can create a tape backup of something and know you can read it back on another machine
  92. You think nothing of sharing a database between transactional and batch work, and maintiaining response time
  93. Creating a 2 billion row operational, transactional database capable of sustaining thousands of transactions per second doesn't even warrant a raised eyebrow
  94. You can state, with accuracy, how busy your machine is
  95. You can tell who used what resources on your machine, and when
  96. Someone says "sigh" and you think SIE
  97. When something has a problem, you know documentation will be available to solve that problem
  98. You don't understand why other people in IT don't understand what an LPAR is
  99. You think that OSA isn't a Japanese word
  100. You understood the value of Token Ring
  101. You know that FDDI is just Token Ring on glass
  102. Your program don't track no steeenking rodent
  103. You don't consider BTAM, QTAM, VTAM to be kinds of headgear
  104. You logON to a system, you don't logIN
  105. You know how to find out what maintenance is on your system, definitively
  106. If someone mentions BDAM or ODAM, you know they're not swearing
  107. You know your machine knew how to "phone home" way before E.T.
  108. You can find data, because you know it's pointed to by a catalog
  109. You know that GOO VOO is not part of a 50's "oldies" song
  110. You remember when computers had lots of blinking lights, and know what they meant
  111. You know what a "tape ape" is
  112. You can explain the phrase "no ring, no write"
  113. Virtualization is not a new term to you
  114. You actually used report writer to write a report
  115. You know that PTF's might come after your APAR.
  116. You think you can fix the jam in the MFCM
  117. If you remember the sequence PCP, MFT, MVT.
  118. If you keep a FLOWCHARTING TEMPLATE (GX20-8020-2) in your desk drawer.
  119. If you know that much of FORTRAN was written in FORTRAN!!
  120. If you know what the BOMB is that the CE picked up from the airport (core memory tester - SIMM )
  121. If you still carry a "HEX" TI calculator
  122. You know how to "SUPERZAP"
  123. You know what MIPS originally meant, and can explain why it doesn't mean that today
  124. You know that IEF, IEB, IDC, IEA aren't names of consulting firms
  125. You don't think the reader is a newspaper
  126. You know what green-bar is
  127. You know that a data cell is not a jail for data... well, maybe
  128. You don't think about running daily anti-virus scans, and still feel safe
  129. You don't think of JECL as the other personality of Hyde
  130. You know what packed decimal means
  131. You can spell anything in eight characters
  132. To you, COND EQUAL is not ambiguous
  133. COND ONLY makes perfect sense
  134. You know that Super Zap isn't a sports drink
  135. You know what a VTOC is
  136. You expect applications that fail to "clean up" after themselves
  137. You know that IEHIBALL is not a computer utility
  138. You know that MIDAW is not a medical remedy
  139. You remember MG sets and PCDUs
  140. You think all computers belong on a raised floor
  141. You've ever written a CCW string
  142. You know what PCI code is
  143. You remember belt-driven disk drives
  144. You know DOS runs on a S/360, not on an Intel machine
  145. You understand the relevance of Fredrick P. Brooks' essays
  146. You know that PCP is an operating system, not a recreational pharmaceutical
  147. You know what a puddle of oil on the floor next to your 2311 or 2314 meant
  148. You think of a boot as half of a pair of footgear
  149. You know that ISAM is not a means of self identification
  150. You remember when your computer had an alarm bell or horn in it
  151. You know what happened if the printer "tape" broke.
  152. You know what a printer tape is
  153. You know what happened when you forgot to put a punch in channel 12 on above tape
  154. You know why not to put your cup of coffee (or other) on top of a 1403 printer
  155. You know the history of JES2 and JES3 and why you were a JES2 or JES3 bigot
  156. You know that "bursting" is not an explosive result
  157. You know what decollating is
  158. You know that ASP is not a snake, and has nothing to do with the WWW
  159. You know that HASP isn't something to keep the barn door closed
  160. You know why VM programmers disliked MVS (it had something to do with it being harder to spell)
  161. You knew what a "chad" was before the 2000 elections
  162. You convinced your manager that there was an op code called "Eject Chad Box" when said box spilled on the floor
  163. You know why to punch sequence numbers in a card deck
  164. You know that BPAM is not a cooking spray
  165. You know what a CVOL is
  166. You know that a CAM List was not auto parts
  167. You know that MOUNT and DISMOUNT have nothing to do with equestrian activities
  168. You know what happens when someone tried to re-sequence a deck after it was dropped, not knowing there were several phases all having been punched with the same sequence numbers
  169. You know that FORCE did not come from Star Wars
  170. You think computer utility names like GREP, KILL, AWK, MAN, BIFF and VI are just silly
  171. You consider any terminal not functioning in block mode to be just plain inefficient
  172. You know why you need an ACEE
  173. You know that command chaining was not a management technique to get more work out of people
  174. You know that POPS is neither a beverage or a frozen novelty
  175. You know what a TNL is and how to insert one
  176. You know that REXX is not your dog's name
  177. You named your dog REXX
  178. You thought nothing of running hundreds to thousands of time sharing users on a 1MB system
  179. You've replaced the typeball on a 1052 console with an APL one, just to freak out the operators
  180. You know what a rotate tape is
  181. You know that being disabled for interrupts is not a handicap, unless you're in a wait state
  182. You know that a DIRF bit is not a spongy play toy
  183. Your computer has a real SILI bit
  184. You think of bandwidth in terms of MegaBYTES and not Megabits
  185. You know that OSA is not a strange Star Wars character trying to say something
  186. You've spent hours arguing with your peers about the fastest way to clear a register
  187. You know where the GVRFLB (pronounced guver-flub) is located
  188. You know that "The BLOB" is not a Sci-Fi monster
  189. You know that MAS has nothing to do with religion, or your mother
  190. You know that Replicate Imbed has nothing to do with sex
  191. You've found yourself with friends singing songs extolling MVS or JES after 10:30 PM in a strange city
  192. You really thought long and hard about naming your dog FICON
  193. Your vanity plate says MIPS-R-US
  194. A day at 90% average utilization is just another (easy) day
  195. You think that one TCP/IP stack is just not enough
  196. You aspire to DIM
  197. COBOL is not a foreign language for you
  198. You know that USS reduced the gap with "them"
  199. You know what TCO is and what to do about it
  200. You can chargeback
  201. You can audit resource use
  202. You don't think of SPECTRA as having anything to do with early spy movies
  203. You remember GECOS
  204. You can watch the highest priority work in your system get dispatched behind the lowest and be way relaxed
  205. Your CE is a trusted professional, not a toy operating system
  206. You don't think twice about running OLTP and BI in the same database
  207. You know that RISC means Really Important Stuff is in the Compiler
  208. You think RISC is something to be minimized
  209. You know that CISC means Crazy Instruction Set Cruncher (just kidding... but we could start a rumor!)
  210. It has never even occurred to you to run just ONE application on ONE machine
  211. You know the difference between 3-tier logical and 3-tier physical application architecture
  212. You remember 1964 for the S/360 and not the Mustang
  213. You know that NIP is not racially derogatory
  214. You don't go to the Catalog to order items for the house
  215. You use version control for a list like this
  216. You thought that creating or reading this list was fun
-- Darryl Van Nort, with the contributions and assistance of IBM co-conspirators Ken Bell, Art Breslau, Mark Nelson, Ward Christensen, Monte Bauman, Neal Setchell, Bob Vik, John Schlosser, Sam Adkins and Liz Holland. Version 1.0, August 2005.


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