Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 10

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Trebuchet said:
I'm so old, when I was a kid tinsel was made of lead!
And I'm not making that up.
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I'm not old enough to have seen lead tinsel, but when I was little people were still using that fiberglass "angel hair" for Xmas decoration. My mom would put it on the mantel to look like clouds, then set the brass angel candlesticks in it. That stuff cut you if you even looked at it!
 
TragicMonkey said:
I'm not old enough to have seen lead tinsel, but when I was little people were still using that fiberglass "angel hair" for Xmas decoration. My mom would put it on the mantel to look like clouds, then set the brass angel candlesticks in it. That stuff cut you if you even looked at it!
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Don’t **** with the candlesticks and it won’t be a problem, OK?
 
I'm not 100% certain, but I think I've seen SQL inside COBOL programs in the past.

I've just done a very quick Google and found that SQL EXEC is a thing in COBOL.

(i.e. it's like a wrapper that takes the SQL in COBOL code and processes it with an SQL function)

This may be a specific COBOL/DB2 thing, which would explain why the memory is so vague, it's been 20 odd years since I've worked at a DB2 site.
 
novaphile said:
I'm not 100% certain, but I think I've seen SQL inside COBOL programs in the past.

I've just done a very quick Google and found that SQL EXEC is a thing in COBOL.

(i.e. it's like a wrapper that takes the SQL in COBOL code and processes it with an SQL function)

This may be a specific COBOL/DB2 thing, which would explain why the memory is so vague, it's been 20 odd years since I've worked at a DB2 site.
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You made me wonder. I worked at a COBOL DB2 site some many moons ago but was well into management by then but I knew the grunts must have do it some how.

So. Here's what IBM has to say.

COBOL programming examples
 
I was part of the Y2K COBOL experience.

I spent at least a year changing dates from 6 to 8 digits.
 
Another Y2K for a big bank programmer here. CICS, COBOL, DB/2. In COBOL for IBM z/OS you use "EXEC SQL" and "EXEC CICS" calls. The number of programmers who never handled basic sql problem return codes like timeouts drove me nuts. My wife tells me I started answering troubleshooting calls without waking up.
 
Norman Alexander said:
And hopefully DDMMYYYY or YYYYMMDD and not MMDDYYYY.
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I was involved in testing for Y2K conversion. This was vendor supplied software for which we had no access to the source code (which was coded in COBOL). This vender chose, for reasons I never learned, which is probably just as well, as I'm sure they would have made my brain hurt, rather than expanding the year field from 2 to 4 digits, to add a century field.
 
CORed said:
I was involved in testing for Y2K conversion. This was vendor supplied software for which we had no access to the source code (which was coded in COBOL). This vender chose, for reasons I never learned, which is probably just as well, as I'm sure they would have made my brain hurt, rather than expanding the year field from 2 to 4 digits, to add a century field.
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It does make it easy to put the six-digit field on the screen for entry and fill the century field programmatically. Many applications don't really need to cover more than 100 years, they just need to know where the century break is. For example, years 31 to 99 are century 19, years 00 to 30 are century 20. No sense making your users enter two extra digits on every date if you don't need to.
 
CORed said:
I was involved in testing for Y2K conversion. This was vendor supplied software for which we had no access to the source code (which was coded in COBOL). This vender chose, for reasons I never learned, which is probably just as well, as I'm sure they would have made my brain hurt, rather than expanding the year field from 2 to 4 digits, to add a century field.
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It's a q&d solution I have seen before. The only saving grace is they do not need to do any data conversion in situ. Just add a field at the end of each record/row.
 
User: "My monitor keeps going in and out."

(Actual photo)

picture.php
 
JoeMorgue said:
User: "My monitor keeps going in and out."

(Actual photo)

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=1083&pictureid=13295[/qimg]
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"If I'm not supposed to chew on the cables there should be a sticker on there saying so!"
 
Wudang said:
One place I worked went hot desking. The number of ethernet plugs with broken clips rocketed as so many lusers didn't give a damn about the next person using it.
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I wasn't aware it was possible to somehow pull a USB plug out in such a way or with such force that it basically skins the damn thing, living the "shell" of the USB plug inside the USB port, but I've seen multiple times in the last couple of years.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I wasn't aware it was possible to somehow pull a USB plug out in such a way or with such force that it basically skins the damn thing, living the "shell" of the USB plug inside the USB port, but I've seen multiple times in the last couple of years.
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I think that's an HDMI plug, and probably the result of someone brute-force removing it, without pressing the release button. (Note the release is visible in the picture)
 
JoeMorgue said:
I wasn't aware it was possible to somehow pull a USB plug out in such a way or with such force that it basically skins the damn thing, living the "shell" of the USB plug inside the USB port, but I've seen multiple times in the last couple of years.
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Yep, the little receiver dongles for wireless keyboards/mice are prone to that.
 
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