Spring has sprung, little budding flower
The Big Iron Meltdown, part one
Under the hill in a comfortable hole, lived Bilbo the Hobbit in his bag-end abode. Father rich and respected, solid Baggins so named. Disappearing discreetly, mother’s Took clan be famed. He’d apparently settled, grown immovably so, until curious chance about fifty years old. A wandering Wizard, told tales quite splendid, for profit adventure gave pardon to send him. Good morning refrains to the Wizard he smoked, at seeking adventurers unbidden, provoked. Still, opening the door that burglar he must, marked on by Gandalf, the Wizard’s staff trust.
That intro is just a little bit of lore to set the mood (or mode) because we all played dungeon crawl, didn’t we? If you don’t know what a Gandalf is you’re probably really young and inquisitive. Welcome, I have a friend who used to work at Gandalf! I’ll tell the rest of that tale as I also tell another.
I’m going to write a story about an event you’ve never heard about because it happen inside an exclusive domain. I’m using first names only and if you know or knew me then you might find I remember you too. Some names I don’t know, for whatever reason, so I’ll also use pseudonyms. That should keep everyone else guessing who’s names are real and who’s aren’t. I’ll probably invent some features too but mostly it’s a memory dump. Enjoy.
This story begins as they all do, in a little out of the way place far from the sea…
The glass bowl was a windowed office to the right as one entered onto the Machine room floor. Ron had a console in the glass bowl. His right hand man, John had 2 more, one for standing at like the consoles at the tape drives. Ron was the CS-6, John, his CS-5. There were two more CS-5s — team leaders, a couple of CS-4s, a few CS-3s, more CS-2s and lots of CS-1s. I think I was in the glass bowl twice; when I began and when I left. Like everyone else that was newly hired you had no other business in there except your interviews; entrance and exit. There was one exception. She came late and got to stay.
Carole was a real keener and to carry that note book while I committed to memory an impulsive knowledge was something I admired. Especially as I saw her with Phil one time after Phil had glossed a similar lesson by me, so nonchalantly. He whipped the keys on the console as he demonstrated during my lesson, smart-ass, show-off he was. As I took a look at him and her that one time, I saw a Phil character. He’ll be that other Phil character towards her later though. He always is that other Phil character, especially as I reflect on the way he was. I imagine she’s had a most auspicious career in the Government though. Phil? I don’t know and I don’t care.
What that place looks like now, I can only imagine. What it should look like now, I could imagine and I don’t think I’d be far off. What the Fourth Floor looked like then though is burned in my memory. Probably because of that impulse knowledge about the shop I tried to attain. It seemed, at the time, to be the way to have kept the job. Throughout my time there, that’s what I tried to achieve: an ingrained knowledge matching the machines demands. Because in the Big Iron shops the world over, the machine demands and the man intervenes to serve it.
There was a single moment in which all that failed though and I was right there to see it happen. The Big Iron meltdown at Statistics Canada was the single most impressive event I have ever witnessed in my career. Save for Phil jerking off in front of me. That was funny and I should have asked if it was I that turned him on. Instead I told the hooker “Parties over.” She dug into her purse, came out with knives on her knuckles and flashed them a few times by my face, millimeters from my nose and when this man didn’t blink, she left. The stunning in the shop though happened long before Phil and I started getting into trouble. It must have been a sight to behold, that IPL after meltdown, when it had finally happened.
It wasn’t too long after I told my brother, in whose basement I was staying, that I had spent $1000 dollars on an IBM-PC clone during my trip to Toronto instead of moving out that I got a phone call. I recall teaching myself to juggle in said basement at the time. It was difficult as the ceiling was low. My other brother came over one time and was thrilled about the PC I had. He worked across the street from StatsCan (StatCan) in the DND data centre. Compared to Stats, DND security was lax. The brother I lived with also worked for DND. I’ve been their guests to some interesting places. Mike, I lived with fumed as I revealed the computer’s hiding place. I knew he’d be mad, I can’t help that. Chris however wanted to test his Pascal program on the PC. He typed it all in and before saving, he tried compiling it. That was a bad idea and he lost an hour or more of typing time to the bit bucket. I could not stop his finger from pressing the button so I watched it happen. It was as though I was getting a preview, a little taste if you will, in micro terms, from a Big Iron guy, what was to happen at Stats Canada that other memorable time.
There is no such term as abend in the PC world but that’s what my brother, Chris faced when the program failed to compile and the IDE crashed. What’s worse than abend? Gone like the wind.
Thwump and crash and the look on his face etched in my memory along with all his other changing faces. “Oh man was that me?” his face knotted, examining his arm from his elbow to his wrist briefly then looking at the console and without hesitation, as though an ingrained knowledge, he grabbed the aiphone but it was too late. “Oh, no, God help me now!” his face said. The Iron Master was already far stretching his strides from the glass bowl. Wow I thought as I watched it all unfold. Talk about moving like the wind!
It was Ron Brown who phoned me. He wanted to interview me. He said it was for the 1986 Census. He asked in the interview about my experience with running MRJE and whether I knew JES2/JES3. I told him about me being a data entry supervisor for a small crew as well as the contracts with the government I had recently completed. I told him PCs were big and getting bigger. He told me he was going to train me up to be an Iron Man. I said “Ok, I’ll take the job.”
