I have decided to merge my old blog (profappleby.wordpress.com) into my newer blog. I’ve carried across some of the old posts, including my recent foray into mainframes for project managers, and will bid farewell to the old blog at the end of this month.
Browsing Posts in Technology
As you know, this is my “official” blog. I have an older blog – the predecessor to this one – which I am transforming into a “mainframe-related” blog. The URL is:
http://profappleby.wordpress.com
The purpose of my “mainframe blog” is to provide a basic understanding of mainframe concepts and terminology to technical project managers. My hope is that this will lead to better communication between project managers and tech support staff as they plan and execute projects involving mainframe enterprise servers.
If this effort is successful, then there is a possibility that a seminar or class may be offered at a future time that will address the subject at a deeper, more technical level.
But first things first.
The January 14th, 2010 edition of The Economist has an interesting article about mainframe computers. The article is entitled Back in Fashion and provides some interesting insights into the status of mainframe technology and capabilities.
According to the article,
“IBM is also trying to attract new customers, particularly in fast-growing emerging markets. Without mainframes, India’s Housing Development Finance Corporation and the Bank of China in Hong Kong would have a hard time dealing with their explosive growth…”
The mainframe has evolved and adapted for many, many decades. Today, it combines the same stable, robust, secure platform that large organizations have depended upon for half-a-century, while also providing a highly scalable, manageable, and affordable platform for the development of new workloads (Linux, Java, Websphere, DB2, Oracle, etc.). And at a time when the benefits of virtualization are a dominant industry theme, the Z Series mainframe offers outstanding virtual capabilities.
An hour ago I was walking up and down the magazine section in a local bookstore, looking for the latest edition of the Economist magazine.
I didn’t find it.
I did see a copy of something called Hunter-Gatheress magazine. I’m serious. Talk about niche marketing. I’m sure there’s more to it than meets the eye, but I didn’t look at it - I just saw the title. (You know how I like to stand up for hunter-gatherers, so, naturally, the words jumped out at me.)
Well, I started thinking again about “ancient man” and how dismissive we can be of those who lived millenia before us.
I’m not headed down that path tonight. But I will say that just because people of a given time did not have the technological accomplishments that we have (which, by the way, I sum up as: electricity) doesn’t mean that they spoke in inarticulate grunts and struggled to draw even rudimentary inferences. Not at all.
Throughout the ages, men have asked the same questions and wrestled with the same mysteries, and, in reading what they had to say, I feel connected to all that came before me.
I read a book several years ago entitled A War Like No Other by Victor Davis Hanson. It’s a chronicle of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. It seemed so relevant to today – to our times. Perhaps that is because, ultimately, the issues, the conflicts, and the motives are common to all times. They are common to the human condition.
More recently, I’ve been thinking about reading (well, finishing) Plato’s Republic. It seems like a timely choice.
I decided, though, to begin with a book entitled The Presocratics by Philip Wheelwright, believing that Plato will make more sense to me now if I first build up a better understanding of Greek thought prior to Socrates. I’m only in chapter 1, but already I have had several “Ah!” moments.
Don’t get me wrong. I know that philosophy does not answer the most important questions. Nor does science. Nor does mathematics.
But we are rational creatures and we benefit from exposing our minds to things which are reasonable, beautiful, orderly, and true. It’s a better use of time than much of what we do each day. (If I want to see that which is irrational, ugly, chaotic, and false, I have but to turn on the television and listen to the pundits dispute with one another).
Put a little distance between yourself and the television/computer/internet every so often.
Take time to listen to the great pieces of music; view the great works of art; read the great works of poetry and other forms of literature; learn from fields like mathematics and philosophy the habits of clear definition and careful reasoning. It’s good to escape from technology sometimes and come back to terms with our humanity.
Play chess with a human being. Have coffee with a good friend. Spend an evening in conversation.
And, of course, look at the stars on a clear night.
If you’re reading this blog, you and I (there are two of us, right?) probably have some things in common. A love of astronomy is perhaps one of those things.
I felt rather nostalgic last night as I stepped outside after dark and looked up at the stars on a cold, clear winter night. It brought back memories of my youth when I would regularly spend hours outside looking at the sky, often with my telescope, but sometimes just reclining in a lawn chair and looking upward. I miss those times very much. They were times of joyful, focused solitude.
I became interested in astronomy at a very early age. I’m not sure when, exactly, but I think it started just before I began attending school. I recall my older brother having a telescope and I’m sure I must have looked through it.
Eventually, I had telescopes of my own and I began watching the sky and reading astronomy books with a passion.
My love of science fiction kicked in around 7th grade when a junior high friend suggested I read some books by Robert Heinlein. That really fueled my imagination; I couldn’t wait for the future to arrive when huge, rotating, doughnut shaped space stations would orbit the earth and rocket ships would routinely blast off from space ports to visit the stations, or the moon, or the planets.
In 8th grade, two milestones occurred. First, I suddenly discovered that I loved science, especially physics, so much that I wanted to make it my life’s work. Second, I discovered Star Trek. That fascination with physics endured for quite some time and I contemplated a career in astronomy or astrophysics.
I think it was my sophomore year in college that things changed. I still loved astronomy. A great date night for me was to visit the Fernbank Planetarium. But somehow the joy was always missing in class. I’ve never been able to understand why that happened, but I never quite got it back. Untethered from physics, I bounced through a variety of other career possibilities and ultimately found myself working on computer systems.
I never became Dr. Appleby, renowned astrophysicist. The space stations of today, with their broken toilets, are a shadow of the things I dreamed about. The spaceships? Same thing. The fascinating world I watched on Star Trek? It never happened. I guess it never will.
All of this (perhaps boring) preamble is connected to an article I read today about NASA’s next mission. It might be to bring back some rocks from the moon, or maybe a piece of asteroid. A third choice is to land on Venus.
Hmmm. What would I choose?
Rocks from the moon? I don’t know. I guess that would be okay. A piece of asteroid? Better, but not great. Land on Venus? I sort of like it, but I know it will end up generating more discussions about carbon dioxide. I’m sick of carbon dioxide. Let’s forget Venus.
How about going out to Saturn and grabbing something from the ring system? I like that. Or maybe scoop up something from one of the Jovian moons and check it out?
What I really want is a real space station.
Or a warp engine.
Something.
