Randomly surfing around this morning - I stumbled across this comment tucked away in some obscure pre-1990's forum in glorious Times New Roman font. Written back in the days when terminals clunked, mainframes were the size of a room, men were men and women were pleased.

Disclaimer - I'm not responsible for any damage caused by anything you do to your computer - use these commands at your own risk... That being said, let's continue...

If you have them installed on your system you should see a list like this one:
 

TOOLS/UTILITIES - Run command TOOLS from any command line in System 21
XAT000 Administration Functions System: HQ140002
Type option(s), press Enter. Position to.....
1=Execute Command
Opt Command Description
 

Now you can get a single-board nuclear reactor that supplies stand-by power for the IBM System i for 12 years! The QBX-1 nuclear reactor card provides back-up power for up to 12 years. When the card senses a power failure, explosive charges (bolts) eject moderator and control rods from the reactor interior, within 20 mmsec, bringing the reactor to its fully-rated output of 20 KW, in less than one millisecond! Over its 12-year active life, the reactor’s power decreases by 25%, to 15 KW.

Integral heat fans provide convection cooling of the reactor’s 500W power dissipation while the reactor is in “stand-by” position. If your computer cannot furnish the 400 cubic feet per second of forced air for cooling, consider buying IBM’s heavy-water cooling jacket and stainless steel pump module, which fits conveniently next to your System i. Latches on each side of the reactor module let you quickly swap the radioactive core, should you need to replace it. An optional circular viewing port of lead glass lets you view the reactor’s internal assemblies, and also functions as a 10-million candlepower nightlight.

This week I mainly been playing with Turnover V100....

Preparing TURNOVER V100 (Software Change Management tool for IBMi Systems) for a major application upgrade, adding the ability to use Turnover Forms for specifically deleting and/or moving objects from one environment (library) to another. In this case its because we are un-merging a custom program library and breaking it out into application base objects, custom vendor objects and custom internal objects. Yes, its a nice bit of tidy up that puts a smile on my soul.

Configuring Turnover to make it do this however... does not... put a smile on my soul. It sometimes makes it quite grumpy in fact.

Especially when you get an annoying error on the TARGET system saying that it isn't defined to itself.

A TURNOVER distribution was received but no local system is defined. Unexpected results may occur.

No Shit Sherlock! 

I stumbled across this article with some really neat RPG tricks... I'm using one at moment so am cut/pasting it here for quick reference for myself.

For Years, Rumors have circulated that the false religion of Microsoft, who touts that large parishes can be run using Windows servers, actually runs their organization using more than a few IBM iSeries systems. The heathens have always officially denied it, but the rumors don’t go away. The story also goes that some time in the 1990’s they tried to replace their iSeries systems with 1,200 Windows servers in a year-long project that was eventually scrapped because A) they couldn’t process the data as fast as the iSeries and B) they had problems keeping so many servers operational.

ARMONK, NY - An industry insider (wearing a blue suit, white shirt and odd colored socks) let the cat out of the bag at the recent Annual IBM Stockholders Meeting held in Knoxville, Tennessee. He announced that Big Blue is in the process of acquiring Nintendo Corporation. In an attempt to shake the reputation that IBM sells old technology and to lure the younger generation to IBM products, IBM plans to merge the System i, the System p, and the Wii gaming console into a single product. The new product will be named the IBMii.

Since each system already uses the PowerPC processor Mr. X said it was a no-brainer. 

Power = i + p + wii

IBM Power Systems unifies IBM’s highly successful integrated platform, IBM System i™, with its fast growing UNIX operating system platform, IBM System p™ and with the wildly popular Nintendo Wii platform. Now you can take advantage of this single platform for all of your Wii, UNIX, Linux and i applications, with mission-critical virtualization provided by PowerVM™.

RPG would be Jehovah’s Witnesses - RPG programmers are of the elite 144,000 left in the world (because there are only 144,000 left in the world) and believe they are in the last days of the present world and lots of people make fun of them for their beliefs and rigid standards. They like to wear blue suits, even on their days off, and go to a lot of car boot sales.

COBOL would be Paganism - There was once a time when it ruled over a vast region and was important, but nowadays it’s almost dead, for the good of us all. Although many were scarred by the rituals demanded by its deities, there are some who insist on keeping it alive even today.

C would be Judaism - it’s old and restrictive, but most of the world is familiar with its laws and respects them. The catch is, you can’t convert into it - you’re either into it from the start, or you will think that it’s insanity. Also, when things go wrong, many people are willing to blame the problems of the world on it.

Java would be Fundamentalist Christianity - it’s theoretically based on C, but it voids so many of the old laws that it doesn’t feel like the original at all. Instead, it adds its own set of rigid rules, which its followers believe to be far superior to the original. Not only are they certain that it’s the best language in the world, but they’re willing to burn those who disagree at the stake.

PHP would be Cafeteria Christianity - Fights with Java for the web market. It draws a few concepts from C and Java, but only those that it really likes. Maybe it’s not as coherent as other languages, but at least it leaves you with much more freedom and ostensibly keeps the core idea of the whole thing. Also, the whole concept of “goto hell” was abandoned.

This video highlights a recent event at the USC Film School, bringing together the Hollywood film community with top IBM scientists where they talk about how the world might be in the year 2050. IBM’s Tim Washer, with the mic, steals the show with his witty comments. Enjoy.

Rochester MN - The new IBM Power™ 995 server is the most powerful server ever offered by the IBM Galactic Empire. This server provides out-of-this-world performance with massive scalability. The Power 995 is by far the most remarkable technological product of the IBM Galactic Empire. It is a brutal and awesome culmination of engineering and science of a galaxy-spanning organization. With unrivaled power, it can perform an infinite loop in under 4-seconds and requires two HALT instructions to stop it.

It was designed to help enterprises, governments and empires deploy the most cost effective and flexible IT infrastructure while achieving the industry’s best application performance. As the most powerful member of the IBM Power™ Systems family, this server provides exceptional performance and massive scalability. It’s full range of complex, mission-critical applications include:

• Large-scale transaction processing
• Massive-scale server consolidation
• Ultra-high bandwidth communications
• Super-advanced data mining and warehousing
• Small planetary systems destruction
• At 900 km (550 miles) in diameter, the IBM Power 995 must be deployed in a low-earth orbit and requires a 12-year lead time before orders of this product become operational.

Equipped with ultra-high frequency IBM POWER9™ processors in up to 1000-core, multiprocessing (SMP) configurations, the Power 995 server can scale rapidly and seamlessly to address the changing needs of today’s empires. It can seamlessly consolidate millions of UNIX®, IBM i (formerly known as i5/OS®) and Linux® application workloads onto a single system.

Note: The following are humorous (and sometimes serious) quotes gathered from the internet. Since it’s all a big rip-off, I am assuming no copyright whatsoever. I don’t even guarantee that they are accurate. Now that you’ve been warned, enjoy.

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. — Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943

The word user is the word used by the computer professional when they mean idiot. — Dave Barry

My computer beat me at checkers, but I sure beat it at kickboxing. — Emo Philips

There are two major products that came out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don’t believe this to be a coincidence. — Jeremy S. Anderson

640K ought to be enough for anybody. — Bill Gates, 1981

Applying modern technology is simply finding the right wrench to pound the correct screw. — Author Unknown

As many of you know, I was very instrumental in the founding of the internet. — Vice President Al Gore to Katie Couric, March 1999

Dear AS/400 Geek,

I am a System i programmer with 1 year experience and I work for a large company with over 30 programmers.  I don’t seem to be taken seriously by my peers or my boss.  What can I do to enhance my career advancement opportunities within my company and to achieve credibility with the other programmers?

Washington DC (AP) — In a speech accepting his party’s nomination, Mitt Romney pledged to wrest control of the Internet from its creator, Al Gore, and turn it into a “God-fearing, gun-filled, sexless, Republican Internet” if elected.

Speaking at the GOP national convention, Romney also promised to introduce a bill requiring every computer on the network to be powered, not by “liberal, Gore-loving electricity,” but by safe, dependable oil.

He promised to update every website on the net with a contact option for "You may also call to speak with a missionary over the phone."

“My friends, let me ask you, do you know what the Internet really is?” Romney said to the crowd. As no one seemed to know, Romney then went on to talk about Social Security and Medicare.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — In a joint press conference in St. Peter’s Square this morning, Microsoft Corporation and the Vatican announced that the Redmond software giant will acquire the Roman Catholic Church in exchange for an unspecified number of shares of Microsoft common stock. If the deal goes through, it will be the first time a computer software company has acquired a major world religion.

Glendale, CA - Cocoa is a hot new programming language developed by Nestle Microsystems.

The language was originally designed for programming hot chocolate machines but Nestle soon realized that the language had the potential to do much more.

Because it is “architecture neutral” it can run on any device with a microchip including PCs, the System i, Cray computers, Coke machines, Timex watches, car stereos, TVs, DVD players, mobile phones and microwave ovens.

You can literally surf the net and bake a potato at the same time! With the Cocoa Virtual Machine (CVM) on the System i it can run all Cocoa applets.

In an announcement that stunned the computer industry, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan admitted the Unix operating system and C programming language created by them is an elaborate prank, kept alive over 20 years. Speaking at the recent UnixWorld Software Development Forum, Thompson revealed the following:

“In 1969, AT&T had just terminated their work with the GE/Honeywell/AT&T Multics project. Brian and I had started work with an early release of Pascal from Professor Niklaus Wirth’s ETH labs in Switzerland and we were impressed with its elegant simplicity and power. Dennis had just finished reading ‘Bored of the Rings’, a National Lampoon parody of the Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy.

As a lark, we decided to do parodies of the Multics environment and Pascal. Dennis and I were responsible for the operating environment. We looked at Multics and designed the new OS to be as complex and cryptic as possible to maximize casual users’ frustration levels, calling it Unix as a parody of Multics, as well as other more risque allusions. We sold the terse command language to novitiates by telling them that it saved them typing.”

Luxor, Egypt - An Egyptian-Dutch team unearthed a hall in a tomb at Zira Abu al-Naga, on the Westbank at Luxor. The tomb was thought to be another burial site because of its proximity to the tomb of Tutankhamun. However, upon entering the tomb, the discovery of a lifetime was made – an ancient data center, most likely used for the administration of King Tut’s royal society. Most astonishing was how well the data center was preserved with the main AS/400 server still intact. Most Egyptologist have agreed that the Egyptian culture was very advanced, but no one dreamed they had this kind of technology.

It is now much easier to understand how the Ancient Egyptians dug their tombs and built their temples.

In an exclusive interview with Mid-Deranged, SCA chief Zahi Hawass, the world’s most renowned Egyptologist, offered the following perspective: “Why is this discovery important? Because it answers so many questions of how the Egyptians were able to do what they have done.

Believe it or not, we have discovered an amazing and easy technique that will convert your ordinary PC laptop to an Apple MacBook. After much research and trial and error, we have perfected and simplified the technique so that anyone can make the conversion. We actually have one running in the lab at this moment. See the following photo as proof!

Another classic IBM iSeries commercial. Where were these ads during the Superbowl?

Rochester MN - With the recent announcement of the new IBM Power Systems which will replace the System i hardware, the i5/OS will also be replaced and renamed. Because of the much greater capabilities of the new operating system, IBM has named it the Virtual Universe Operating System – VU/OS.

Running under VU/OS, the individual user appears to have not merely a machine of their own, but an entire universe of their own, in which they can create or remove their own programs, databases, libraries, users, networks, and planetary systems. They need only specify the universe they desire, and the VU/OS system generation program (QGOD) does the rest. This program will reside in the QSYS library. The minimum time for this function is 6 days of activity and 1 day of review. In conjunction with VU/OS, all system programs have been replaced by one program (QPROPHET) which will also reside in the QSYS library. This program has no parameters as it knows what you want to do when it is executed.

New York, NY - In the relatively modest confines of the Helen Mills Theater in New York City, Mike Daniels, Senior Vice President of IBM Global Technology Services, outlined IBM’s plan to save energy. As part of IBM’s Project Big Green, the services arm of IBM announced today that its 190,000 service technicians worldwide will be using the latest in green, zero-emissions, vehicles. The new service vehicle is called the “Smart Cart” and is produced by Smart GmbH, a subsidiary of Daimler AG of Germany, the same makers of the Smart Car.

This eco-friendly approach will reduce IBM’s overall carbon output by as much as 7,500 tons of carbon emissions per year and save IBM $145,600,000 in fuel costs. In addition to the benefits to the environment, it is estimated the average service technician will lose about 16 pounds, saving IBM an additional $56,000,000 in health care costs.

So that’s what IBM is up to. What’s your company doing today to help protect our environment?