logo

callustollfree

800-748-2271

32_facebookData West Linked In32_twitter-2Google-plus-icondatawest

  • Home
  • Our Company
    • Our Mission
    • Careers
    • Our Partners
    • Newsletters
  • Our Clients
    • Client Overview
    • Water / Sewer
    • Electric
    • Natural Gas
    • Oil & Gas Pipeline Industries
    • Testimonials
  • BillMaster
    • Overview
    • Customer Service Tools
    • Extensive Reports
    • Automated Collections
    • Powerful Security
    • BillMaster Webshare
    • Free Demo
  • GeoSpatial Services
  • Pay Your Bill
  • Contact Us
  • News

C’mon Back Chronicles

by Richard Brown
December 18th, 2013

We all truly learn about backups only after a personal disaster.  Until then, the need for a backup is only an intellectual exercise that doesn’t seem worth the effort.  I earned my wings at the tender and arrogant age of 22 while working for the Navy in Virginia.  After some suitable training classes, I had impressed my superiors enough to assign me to the Systems Group.

There were operators for all our mainframe computers, and the only way for an operator to interact with a computer was using the Console, a teletype-like machine.  All jobs were submitted in card decks, and the operator was the only one who could save a programmer from disaster by overriding jobs that generated warnings or errors on the Console.

One day, shortly after collecting my desk, garbage can, stapler etc. and joining the systems group, I wanted to delete a file called WHODUNIT on a test system drive called TEST01, and smartly submitted a card deck for TEST01 with the command to:

SCRATCH

Now, this was the command to delete the entire disk drive, so a warning came up on the operator’s console, and he duly called me to make sure I really wanted to do that.  “Of course”, I cried, “and don’t call me again about stuff like this”.  I was a big shot in the systems group now, and knew what I was doing.  So he let it go….

What I really should have submitted was:

SCRATCH WHODUNIT

After returning innocently from lunch, I was met by a group of angry programmers and there was no tape backup of their test programs.  So I spent the next two days humbly rounding up card decks from angry programmers, and learning my lesson well.  Actually, there were three lessons here:

  1. Never be arrogant
  2. Always be nice to operators
  3. Always have a backup

Check in next time, for more stories and ultimate truth in the C’mon Back Chronicles.

Categories Billing Tips
Comments (0)

Leave a Reply

Click here to cancel reply.

« Upcoming Webinars
Making Wish-Lists Happen »

Contact our Utility Billing Specialists for a FREE DEMO!

BillMaster

Recent Articles / News

  • How to Encourage Customers to Use Web Payments
  • C’MON BACK – DEEPFREEZE
  • C’MON BACK – SCENARIOS
  • 2014 User Conference Registration
  • C’MON BACK – Back-up

Data West Corporation — 72 Suttle St., Suite M • Durango, CO 81303 • toll-free: 800.748.2271 • ph: 970.259.2330 • fax: 970.259.2930 • email