Work stories: 1978

 "Little old Lady from Calgary-a" [Previous ¦ Next]

As a student I took a computer course, just to please my teaching supervisor! The University of Calgary Computer Science Department has a bank of mainframes, complete with deck readers, card punchers, shelves for computer printouts, and a scheduling board to book your time (only hockey rinks were booked later at 2AM) on a time share system using JCL (job control language). I believe it was an IBM mainframe, or perhaps a DEC VAX, but its claim to fame was this: Jim Gosling broke into the system just to prove to Comp. Sci. that he was worthy of empolyment there, and the rest as they say is history (hint: he started Java and went onto Sun Microsystems, like many a Canadian export).

So the final project on my Comp. Sci. 101 class was to simulate a skin disease by having noughts and ones eat each other according to certain rules across a virtual flatscape (think Flatland and the Game of Life, you can google it). But try as I may I couldn't get the @#$%^&* program to work! So I go see my TA the Friday it was due, and he said to stew over it over the weekend and come in on Monday to tell him the result. So on Sunday night I hoof it over to the lab, as that was the only free time slot to run jobs iteratively until they worked. So I stood beside this little old lady by the card punch, and guess what? She was cussing about these letter O's and number Zero's that are indistinguishable to her poor eyesight (don't ask me what a retiree was doing punching cards, it takes all sorts I guess). Bingo! I realised I was careless in my Os and 0s (see it you can tell which is which just there LOL), corrected my code and voila! the printouts were ready in a flash and my TA was happy Monday morning. To say the a little old lady saved my belief in computers is a understatement.