• Beavis (unregistered) in reply to Exick

    Service Level Agreement

    //Works with Tapes //And IOF/CICS/ISPF

  • Blackice (unregistered)

    Mmmmm more pics of the redhead please =)

  • (cs) in reply to DaveK
    DaveK:
    Buffled:
    DaveK:
    RogerC:
    Osno:
    So? Where's the WTF? That the tapes are too far away and this girl didn't bring more than one in the last, say, 10 runs?
    Military intelligence.
    [citation]
    The real WTF is you people who leave in all the extra crap in the cut-n-paste URL. I'm referring to: &start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
    The real WTF is that you would care. What are you doing, retyping the URL manually instead of clicking on it?
    HTML nazi?
  • (cs)

    I actually liked the writing, apart, of course, from the silly "they worked out a solution, but I'm not gonna tell you what it is" bit.

    But what I don't get is that Leah noticed a problem with the tapes, which caused her to start running back and forth all the time, and then ran back and forth for three and a half hours before calling Sacha again? Come on, I would believe 10 minutes, but three and a half hours? WTF?

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to Beavis

    see, I thought it would be Software License Agreement, and I was trying to figure out how that was such a major issue or why they'd be doing an automated job that sends it off...

  • (cs) in reply to anon
    anon:
    see, I thought it would be Software License Agreement, and I was trying to figure out how that was such a major issue or why they'd be doing an automated job that sends it off...
    There's a website called Google, located at http://www.google.com, that can help you with stuff like that.

    Service Level Agreement

  • ME (unregistered)

    There was a fault in a backup system. It was detected and fixed under SLA time. The only WTF that comes to mind is WHERE the F is the problem?

  • pong (unregistered) in reply to Code Dependent
    Code Dependent:
    There's a website called Google, located at http://www.google.com, that can help you with stuff like that.

    http://lmgtfy.com/

    Please use.

  • the amazing null (unregistered)

    i think the wtf is that the "guru" gave a solution that was as bad as a novice would give: just push the job to a low-capacity storage solution that you will have to change over and over. i imagine in his mind, it served them right for bothering him. the run is sad, the WTF is the guru's advice.

    at least that was my take on the story.

  • Jake (unregistered) in reply to RogerC
    RogerC:
    DaveK:
    Buffled:
    DaveK:
    RogerC:
    Osno:
    So? Where's the WTF? That the tapes are too far away and this girl didn't bring more than one in the last, say, 10 runs?
    Military intelligence.
    [citation]
    The real WTF is you people who leave in all the extra crap in the cut-n-paste URL. I'm referring to: &start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
    The real WTF is that you would care. What are you doing, retyping the URL manually instead of clicking on it?
    HTML nazi?
    I *hate* Illinois HTML nazis!
  • (cs) in reply to Exick
    Exick:
    TRWTF is that he mentions using all those acronyms all the time without knowing their meanings, but then like a dumbass doesn't bother explaining what SLA is.

    The REAL WTF is that in 2009 people still don't know how to use a search engine. It means "Service Level Agreement", which is just a fancy way of saying, "The level of response and performance you promised you'd deliver to your customer."

    Geez, do you hire people to chew your food for you too?

  • synp (unregistered) in reply to Pim
    Pim:
    I actually liked the writing, apart, of course, from the silly "they worked out a solution, but I'm not gonna tell you what it is" bit.

    But what I don't get is that Leah noticed a problem with the tapes, which caused her to start running back and forth all the time, and then ran back and forth for three and a half hours before calling Sacha again? Come on, I would believe 10 minutes, but three and a half hours? WTF?

    I could believe it if it's private Leah and Captain Sacha, or Master Sergeant Sacha or Warrant Officer Sacha.

    Sometimes those new recruits are afraid of what they perceive to be "the brass".

    That may be why she was calling Sacha rather than the Mainframe guru directly.

  • (cs) in reply to the amazing null
    the amazing null:
    i think the wtf is that the "guru" gave a solution that was as bad as a novice would give: just push the job to a low-capacity storage solution that you will have to change over and over. i imagine in his mind, it served them right for bothering him. the run is sad, the WTF is the guru's advice.

    at least that was my take on the story.

    Because when you measure disk costs in dollars per byte, as opposed to pennies per gigabyte, tape is the way to go? You go back some 30-odd years, and for high-capacity data storage at a reasonable price, tape was it.

  • Paul (unregistered) in reply to AC
    AC:
    We actually used to store data on tape. Because the disks (called DASD, or Directly Attached Storage Device) were so small and expensive.
    Actually, from my memories of working with an IBM System/370 VM the disks were actually very big! (like about the size of a 2 year old child). They did, however, only store between 40 and 150MB of data. You rarely changed disks because they were so big.

    Tapes might hold a few GB. You rarely changed tapes because they held so much data.

    On a typical night-shift in the mainframe room, we might have changed disks 2 or 3 times and tapes 5 or so times. (and stacks of cards LOTS of times - being careful not to drop them ;) )

    ISTM the tapes were for long term data storage, the disk was for mainly for virtual memory and temporary storage (the 370 typically had 2MB RAM)

    The other thing is that the tapes weren't your average DAT or AIT tapes, they were a lot bigger, and heavier. They probably weren't stored in boxes either, but individually in racks. So, potentially Leah could have carried a few at a time, but if she'd dropped them because she was carrying too many at a time, she'd have been in trouble. The mainframe was probably asking for specific tapes as well.

    I suppose the real WTF is that the tapes were so far away. When I worked in a mainframe data centre, the tapes were about 10 yards away from the computer.

  • (cs) in reply to Zapp Brannigan
    Zapp Brannigan:
    Shnebby:
    The real WTF is he is acting like military computer techs are going to get a soap party. Those parties are reserved for real soldiers, when mistakes cost lives. These are the guys that got time out cards when they were under too much stress. I noticed he used "military" and not Marines or Army. I am guessing Air Force. Forgive me if I don't "cry you a river" after messing up SLA, at least you will still have a job.
    Good men didn't die face down in the mud in Vietnam so you could miss your SLA. This is your tape drive there are many like it but this one is yours.
    I'm gonna guess Democrat here. Johnsonian, but still Democrat.

    Of course, it could equally well be Republican.

    Either way, "Good men didn't die face down in the mud in Vietnam so you could miss your SLA..." Sheesh. Have you actually worked with the military, or do you just jerk off during Tom Cruise movies?

  • (cs)

    As we've established, the SLA in the story means Service Level Aggreement, but it's an interesting coincidence that former Symbionese Liberation Army member Sarah Jane Olson (aka Kathleen Soliah) made the news today with reports that she'll be paroled next week.

  • Brave Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to pink_fairy
    pink_fairy:
    Zapp Brannigan:
    Shnebby:
    The real WTF is he is acting like military computer techs are going to get a soap party. Those parties are reserved for real soldiers, when mistakes cost lives. These are the guys that got time out cards when they were under too much stress. I noticed he used "military" and not Marines or Army. I am guessing Air Force. Forgive me if I don't "cry you a river" after messing up SLA, at least you will still have a job.
    Good men didn't die face down in the mud in Vietnam so you could miss your SLA. This is your tape drive there are many like it but this one is yours.
    I'm gonna guess Democrat here. Johnsonian, but still Democrat.

    Of course, it could equally well be Republican.

    Either way, "Good men didn't die face down in the mud in Vietnam so you could miss your SLA..." Sheesh. Have you actually worked with the military, or do you just jerk off during Tom Cruise movies?

    Whooosh!

  • Not as DULL as you (unregistered) in reply to pink_fairy
    pink_fairy:
    Zapp Brannigan:
    Shnebby:
    The real WTF is he is acting like military computer techs are going to get a soap party. Those parties are reserved for real soldiers, when mistakes cost lives. These are the guys that got time out cards when they were under too much stress. I noticed he used "military" and not Marines or Army. I am guessing Air Force. Forgive me if I don't "cry you a river" after messing up SLA, at least you will still have a job.
    Good men didn't die face down in the mud in Vietnam so you could miss your SLA. This is your tape drive there are many like it but this one is yours.
    I'm gonna guess Democrat here. Johnsonian, but still Democrat.

    Of course, it could equally well be Republican.

    Either way, "Good men didn't die face down in the mud in Vietnam so you could miss your SLA..." Sheesh. Have you actually worked with the military, or do you just jerk off during Tom Cruise movies?

    I'm going to guess no sense of humour here.

    Of course, it could be trolling.

    Either way... Sheesh. Have you never read an internet forum before?

  • .peter (unregistered)

    I laughed hard. I tought it was funny.

    But then, I am German, so for normal people there was nothing funny in there, i suppose.

    Captcha: saluto - yes, I salute the added picture in the article.

  • The amazing null (unregistered) in reply to Bappi

    I get why tapes are useful both today and historically. The problem is using the SMALL storage device's mount point NOW. If it were 30 years ago, this would have been reasonable, unless the storage media was still 1/400 of the required size.

    You can likely install Vista from a half-mile high stack of single-density 5.25 inch floppy disks, if you try hard enough. It would an inappropriate waste of time but, 30 years ago, it would have been hard to do better.

  • (cs) in reply to pink_fairy
    pink_fairy:
    Zapp Brannigan:
    Shnebby:
    The real WTF is he is acting like military computer techs are going to get a soap party. Those parties are reserved for real soldiers, when mistakes cost lives. These are the guys that got time out cards when they were under too much stress. I noticed he used "military" and not Marines or Army. I am guessing Air Force. Forgive me if I don't "cry you a river" after messing up SLA, at least you will still have a job.
    Good men didn't die face down in the mud in Vietnam so you could miss your SLA. This is your tape drive there are many like it but this one is yours.
    I'm gonna guess Democrat here. Johnsonian, but still Democrat.

    Of course, it could equally well be Republican.

    Either way, I'm gonna guess 'asshole' right here.

    Unlike you, I won't try to blame it on mebership of some group which is my personal bugbear: I will at least credit you with being able to come up with personality flaws entirely of your own.

    You do get the Zap Brannigan reference, don't you?

  • Jason McMullan (unregistered) in reply to Paul

    10 yards ~ 30m

    So, yeah, about 10 yards away for her, too.

  • Jason McMullan (unregistered) in reply to Jason McMullan

    No, I'm a tard. 10yards ~ 10m.

    can't do math when sleepy brain go poop

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Jason McMullan
    Jason McMullan:
    No, I'm a tard. 10yards ~ 10m.

    can't do math when sleepy brain go poop

    You're still a 'tard - 10 yards ~ 9m.

  • Terry Kennedy (unregistered)

    This reminds me of something similar that I perpetrated completely by accident. Back in the days of the Arpanet, when we used "@O" instead of "TELNET" on a terminal server, many hosts had open guest accounts.

    One day, I decided to connect to a system at NASA AMES. Upon identifying myself as user "guest", password "guest", I received the message: "USERLIB HAS BEEN MIGRATED - THAW IN PROGRESS" which generated dozens of tape mount requests (which I could see on my terminal). After the operator had mounted each of these tapes in order, I received the message "ACCOUNT HAS BEEN CLOSED" and was disconnected.

    Some years later (early 80's) I actually visited NASA AMES in person and happened to meet the person who had been the operator at the other end of my terminal (now a systems programmer). He remembered the incident in detail 8-}

  • Watson (unregistered)

    The WTF in this story is obviously the phone that continues ringing after it has been answered and throughout the conversation.

  • Nick (unregistered) in reply to Shnebby
    Shnebby:
    The real WTF is he is acting like military computer techs are going to get a soap party. Those parties are reserved for real soldiers, when mistakes cost lives. These are the guys that got time out cards when they were under too much stress. I noticed he used "military" and not Marines or Army. I am guessing Air Force. Forgive me if I don't "cry you a river" after messing up SLA, at least you will still have a job.

    Yeah, because no combat hardware uses computers.

  • Casey (unregistered)

    Sigh....

    The WTF is it should have been a restart, not a resubmit.

    The job before it bombed at the tape error could have burned through a bunch of scratch tapes, and did not have enough left to run the job from the top again. Scratch tapes are usualy pulled and loaded into the library by day shift. The night operator may have never had to load scratch tapes before, and might have had to eject tapes to make room.

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Jason McMullan:
    No, I'm a tard. 10yards ~ 10m.

    can't do math when sleepy brain go poop

    You're still a 'tard - 10 yards ~ 9m.

    Actually it's 9m and 14.4cm.

  • Blah (unregistered) in reply to Benny

    submitter of the story here. it was against army regs to grab more than one at any time, plus she had to log the change in closet contents in some paper form, attached to the closet. funny, funny times.

  • (cs) in reply to Blah
    Blah:
    submitter of the story here.
    So what was the original problem and what did you do to solve it?
  • What (unregistered)

    Post redhead plox

  • Jon H (unregistered) in reply to JamesQMurphy
    JamesQMurphy:
    The real conversation between Sacha and the mainframe guru:

    Guru: It's just a faulty tape-mount issue. All you'll have to do is change this parameter in the JCL file and re-submit the job for execution.

    Sacha: Ok, no problem.

    Guru: Hey, who's working in the NOP tonight?

    Sacha: The new girl, Leah. Why?

    Guru: Wanna have some fun?

    Replace the last one with:

    Guru: How is she?

    Sacha: Hot, but a trifle out of shape. Why?

    Guru: I can fix that...

  • (cs)

    ... The second time it asked me for a tape, it would probably have occurred to me to just grab a bundle of the things.

    Addendum (2009-03-18 05:56): Oops, didn't read the previous comments.

    Well, okay.

  • (cs) in reply to Ken B
    Ken B:
    dpm:
    Three and a half hours later {...} The poor girl had run a 30 meter dash some 400 times
    60 meters x 400 = 24000 meters = 24 km = 14.4 miles

    400 dashes / 210 minutes = 1.9 dashes / minute = 114.3 meters / minute = 1.9 meters / second

    I agree, she must be in good physical shape to keep that rate up for that long.

    You forgot:

    400 tapes * 10 seconds to change tape (she had a lot of practice!) = 4000 seconds (66 2/3 minutes) lost to tape changes.

    210 minutes - 66 minutes = 144 minutes for running

    400 dashes / 144 minutes = 2.8 dashes / minute = 167.4 meters / minute = 2.8 meters / second

    You forgot the time needed to fill out the tape request application form for each tape :) Or maybe she got smart after the first few tapes and decided to just keep track of the number used and photocopy the form the required number of times when her shift was up. Initiative in the ranks is all the hype these days...

  • (cs) in reply to Pim
    Pim:
    Anonymous:
    Jason McMullan:
    No, I'm a tard. 10yards ~ 10m.

    can't do math when sleepy brain go poop

    You're still a 'tard - 10 yards ~ 9m.

    Actually it's 9m and 14.4cm.

    9m ~ 10m

  • Enrico (unregistered)

    I call shenanigans - a store cupboard with 400 spare tapes?

    Where is this rosy land of crazy excess?

    I realise it's the military and they have a budget and everything, but the story doesn't even make casual reference to the mountain of requisitions forms i'm assuming an adventure like this would gobble

    Still - see tech girl running, run tech girl run, thanks for the image ;0)

  • ballantine (unregistered)

    I'm suprised nobody has made some sort of gag about "getting into Leah's pants". Sudden outbreak of maturity or something?

  • Cro (unregistered)

    I love the smell of a missing SLA in the morning...

    CAPTCHA: saluto

  • Cro (unregistered)

    missed not missing...

  • (cs) in reply to that one guy
    that one guy:
    JamesQMurphy:
    The real conversation between Sacha and the mainframe guru:

    Guru: It's just a faulty tape-mount issue. All you'll have to do is change this parameter in the JCL file and re-submit the job for execution.

    Sacha: Ok, no problem.

    Guru: Hey, who's working in the NOP tonight?

    Sacha: The new girl, Leah. Why?

    Guru: Wanna have some fun?

    EXACTLY! I remember doing similar when I was in the military.

    We once sent a new private on a trouble call to room 120 with the problem title "User having problems removing his hard drive". Room 120 was a mens bathroom.

  • Rhialto (unregistered) in reply to AC
    AC:
    You youngsters probably don't know this, but there is another use for tape besides backups. Storage. We actually used to store data on tape. Because the disks (called DASD, or Directly Attached Storage Device) were so small and expensive.

    DASD is Direct Access Storage Device. As a contrast to say, sequential access for tape.

  • synp (unregistered) in reply to Paul
    Paul:
    AC:
    We actually used to store data on tape. Because the disks (called DASD, or Directly Attached Storage Device) were so small and expensive.
    Actually, from my memories of working with an IBM System/370 VM the disks were actually very big! (like about the size of a 2 year old child). They did, however, only store between 40 and 150MB of data. You rarely changed disks because they were so big.

    Tapes might hold a few GB. You rarely changed tapes because they held so much data.

    I think you've got your eras mixed up.

    in ESA times (somewhat after plain old S/370 but before S/390) you had 3380 DASD with about 800 megs each, and 3480 tapes, with about 200 megs each.

    Later on, in S/390 times, you'd have 3-Gig 3390-3, usually virtualized on RAID But that's late 90s.

    Earlier than that (late 70s) you had the 3340 with 70 Megs and I don't know what kind of tapes.

    Anyway, since they're talking about a robot here, I'm guessing we're talking at least late 90s.

  • (cs)
    nhung:
    サイト制作 秋葉原　メイド <...> デリヘル

    The Japanese are spying on our military's SLA procedures!

  • David Emery (unregistered)

    This sounds awfully like the inventory systems I worked on 30 years ago in the Army. (SAILS and DS4, in case there's anyone else reading this who's that old...)

    But at least they're using computers bigger/better than the IBM 360/30 I was dealing with.

    As a previous poster mentioned, on those old iron boxes, tapes were used for storage, and one problem we had in DS4 was the need to do an external sort. That's where the number of -keys- is bigger than what you can hold in memory. I had to code one myself one day for a similar system, and it took me several hours in the local college library to find a good description of an external sort algorithm. Obviously, tape is both slow and sequential, so the sort algorithm had to be carefully crafted to read/write as little as possible, and -never- roll back the tape unless absolutely necessary.

    dave

  • David Emery (unregistered)

    Here's some WTF details on the one Army system I worked with (not 'on', not MY code)

    The first run of the "daily cycle" was 27 hours.

    The core of the program was the 'master catalog file'. Every time you ordered something, there'd be a (rather large) record added to the master catalog file. This file grew to 3 full tapes, because once a record was added to the file, there was No Way to take it off. That file got read multiple times during the 27 hour daily run. We should have had something like 50k records, the file grew to something like 127k records (some details are getting fuzzy after 30 years...)

    We ended up manually rebuilding that file, and I did a bit of forensics. The one I still remember that created a catalog file entry came from when we were doing inventory in one warehouse. This was back in the days of punched cards, and one data entry clerk got pissed off at his supervisor, a warrant officer (addressed as 'chief') Part numbers were 15 alpha-numeric characters and warehouse locations were 5 alpha-numeric characters. The inventory card would have the part number, the location and the count. The card I finally dug up had a part number of "FUCK YOU" a location of "CHIEF" and a on-hand inventory count of "69". Yup, another catalog entry on the tape.

    dave

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    Picture girl has awesome hair. That is all.

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered) in reply to David Emery
    David Emery:
    ...This was back in the days of punched cards, and one data entry clerk got pissed off at his supervisor, a warrant officer (addressed as 'chief') Part numbers were 15 alpha-numeric characters and warehouse locations were 5 alpha-numeric characters. The inventory card would have the part number, the location and the count. The card I finally dug up had a part number of "FUCK YOU" a location of "CHIEF" and a on-hand inventory count of "69". Yup, another catalog entry on the tape.

    Mandatory trolltastic observation: The whitespace character in "FUCK YOU" is not an alpha-numeric...

  • (cs) in reply to Peter
    Peter:
    I, pant, don't, pant, get this, pant
    Pervert.
  • c (unregistered)
    The poor girl had run a 30 meter dash some 400 times
    Note that the article doesn't say she brought 400 tapes as most of you suggested, it says she ran that distance 400 times, possibly carrying all the tapes she can balance on her breasts =) ...I mean hands.

    But I do find that hard to believe considering the calculations some of you made.

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