Winter Driving

 

I just spent a pleasant few hours watching YouTube videos of horribly inept drivers (not) coping with winter weather.  It caused me to wax nostalgic.

During my years at IBM, I had the good fortune to be paired with a grizzled old-timer named Dave Boyd.  Dave, by then, had over 30 years as an IBM employee, many of those in 'systems' having written the first AutoCoder syllabus and then taught the first AutoCoder class.  He was a true 'Renaissance Man', and it would not surprise me one bit if he actually fit Robert A. Heinlein's definition:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly.  Specialization is for insects.

Among many other things, he was a 'German car nut', owning, at one point, a 2L Porsche 914, a 1.8L Porsche 914, a Porsche 356 that he had lovingly restored to showroom condition, a BMW 2002, and a Volkswagen.  He used the 914s to race gymkana on frozen Lake Winnipesaukee NH each winter, and cherished his nickname, 'Iceman'.

He taught me many valuable lessons, not the least of these being 'how to drive in winter'.  One day he asked me "What steers a car?" and I replied "The steering wheel, of course!"  Dave smiled as he shook his head side to side.  "No, the rolling wheels steer the car.  A wheel that isn't rolling is either stopped or sliding."  I was reminded of that as I watched cars from Michigan to Arkansas zipping down icy hills, all four wheels locked-in-place and careening into other cars, some moving, some not.

Mr. Miyagi advised Daniel-San

Best brock is 'no be dere'

and the best way to avoid crashing into another car because of icy conditions is to stay home that day, but if you must be behind the wheel on a snowy or sleety day, remember this:  when you press down on the brake pedal, you stop the wheels from rolling and you stop them from steering, but you don't overrule Newton's First Law: an object in motion tends to remain in motion.

The same lesson applies when you're going through a tight turn on dry pavement: if you step on the brake pedal, you have just offered to pay whatever penalty the laws of physics charge.

Only the rolling wheels can steer a car.

 

Dave Boyd and the STSS

 

When I worked at IBM's Field Engineering headquarters Information Systems Department (FEIS) in the late 70s, I had the good fortune to collaborate on several projects with David P. Boyd, a truly gifted systems analyst with an impressive résumé of accomplishments, including writing the curriculum for the first Autocoder class.  (I don't know what 'Autocoder' is, by the way.)  Dave was the analyst and the brains behind the Suggestions Tracking and Statistical System (STSS), FE's first IMS DB/DC application.  For reasons that were not initially clear, I, a very junior programmer, was tasked with doing the core programming for this quite-elaborate application.

Management at FEHQ was very averse to slipping a date once the client had signed off on it.  That meant that on occasion programmers (and sometimes the analysts) would work through the night and sometimes through the weekend.

On one such overnight effort, Dave and I were returning from FE's Sterling Forest Data Center in the wee hours of the morning.  I don't recall the project or whether it was a one-day or a multi-day work-through, but I do recall that Dave had driven us there in his Porsche 914.  As soon as we were sure the project would make its deadline, we wrapped up and headed for the parking lot.  It was around 2 AM when we set off for Yorktown Heights where Dave and I both lived.  The only plausible route was Seven Lakes Parkway winding through Harriman State Park, one lane in each direction, heavily forested, and unlit save for the occasional traffic circle.  As we approached Tiorati Circle, Dave casually mentioned that Tiorati was the highest elevation on Seven Lakes Parkway.  "You know what that means, right?" he asked me.  I admitted that I did not know what he was asking.  "It means that we could coast from Tiorati all the way to the Bear Mountain Bridge.  Are you in a hurry to get home?"  I shook my head.  A minute later, Dave negotiated Tiorati Circle at 45mph and as he rejoined the main road, slipped the 914's stick into neutral.  For the next 20-something miles, gravity provided all the motive power to the car, and Dave only put it back into gear when we could see the bridge at the end of a long downslope.  It was the weirdest sensation: racing down a darkened country road at highway speed, with the road ahead illuminated only by the car's headlights, and the Porsche engine purring contentedly.

STSS had been mandated to FEIS by Corporate because the Suggestion Department in Endicott (NY) was nominally run by the Field Engineering Division even though it served all non-plant locations in the United States and thus served several different divisions' employees.  The nature of the project involved a great deal of data entry, so much that it stretched over several years.  Since it was to be a 'flagship application' and involved technologies FEIS was largely unfamiliar with, the project time line was allowed to extend far longer than would otherwise be permitted.  While I did most of the design and coding, several other programmers would now and then be pressed into service to produce parts of the system as well.

When it was complete, the software was cut over to run in parallel test mode.  That is: Endicott considered it to be "running in production" even if everyone in 'production' considered it to be not-yet-installed.  Getting it documented and installed was my job alone since everyone including Dave had been shifted onto other projects leaving me as the last man standing.  After several abortive attempts to get 'the package' accepted by the production side of the house, it became clear that some sort of animus was at work to prevent STSS from becoming 'official', and the animus extended to my own management who steadfastly refused to intervene to get an otherwise perfectly-working software system past a gamut of ever-changing rules.  In August, 1979, with STSS still officially uninstalled, I left IBM for greener pastures.  Within six months, Endicott's management began complaining to Corporate management about the situation, and Corporate told FEHQ to 'get that installed or find a new job'.  Presto!  Installed!

Each of the plant locations also maintained their own Suggestions Departments and each therefore had the same problems associated with tracking and counting submitted suggestions.  Before too long, plants here and there started whining that they didn't have an STSS of their own.  Dave Boyd — as the most knowledgeable person regarding STSS — was pulled back from whatever he was then doing and assigned the task of visiting each plant and installing a copy of STSS for each of them.  Well, plants aren't only in the United States.  There are plants in Milan Italy, Corbeille-Essonnes France, Boeblingen Germany, and several other places.  Dave got The Grand Tour of Europe.

Years later, I would learn that FE was resentful at Corporate HQ 'ramming STSS down their throats' and assigned the newest, greenest programmer they could find to screw up that project to a fare-thee-well, but they never told me about their nefarious plans.  Thinking they meant the project to be a success, I did everything I could to get it to work.  They were very, very upset that I succeeded, and I think they were more surprised than I that it turned out as well as it did.

IBM, I hear, no longer has a Suggestions Program, so FEHQ got their wish after all.

 

Life after IBM

 

Those of us who remember IBM in the good old days (™, ® U.S.Pat.Off.) will shed the occasional virtual tear for the old girl, knowing full well that her glory days are gone forever.  There will never be an IBM like the one we knew.  For the benefit and illumination of those who never had the experience, we tell our tales.  Some of them reflect well on IBM;  others...  not so much.

STSS

In the mid-70s, somebody, perhaps Roy Turnbull, the manager of the Endicott Suggestions Department, got the idea that the process of logging suggestions in, routing them, tracking them, and awarding the ingenious and lucky suggesters should become more automated.  'Suggestions' was a corporate function although the individual Suggestions Departments were administered locally by the plants that housed them, or FE (Field Engineering) for the non-plant employees.  As a result, it was Armonk that mandated the Suggestions Tracking and Statistical System (STSS) and FEHQ Information Systems (White Plains) that got the task of building it.  It was unclear for a long time why FEHQ management named me, the new kid on the block with only 4 years experience, as lead programmer for FE's first IMS DB/DC application consisting, finally, of 9 HISAM clusters, 40+ MID/MODs, and 27 PL/I application programs.

Dave Boyd, an analyst with many years experience in systems design, was lead analyst and he produced a brilliant design that has stood the test of time.  He also demanded that STSS's code be rigidly structured and peer-reviewed.  By the end of 1978, the entire system had been running in parallel-test-mode for 6 months and the team felt comfortable with calling it 'done'.  The team dispersed and I set to work collecting and categorizing the fragments of documentation that we had generated over the past few years.  The first submission was rejected as 'incomplete' and I spent a month building the missing parts.  Then it was rejected for a different reason and another month went by.  Then another rejection.  And another.  I asked my manager for political help to overcome the nit-picking from Production that was denying STSS final approval.  He politely declined.

In May of '79, I was directed to demo STSS at the FE Awards Conference in Miami.  I thought then it might be a ploy to get me where I could be given a surprise award for what I considered a great achievement.  It wasn't;  it was just a work assignment.  My appraisal in June was disappointing, the raise following was insulting, and an expected promotion to Staff Programmer did not appear, nor did the one thing that might have kept me happy enough to grin and bear it: a transfer to Tampa.  I considered it 'the handwriting on the wall'.  I updated my resume, soon had a job offer, handed in my resignation, and left to do some contract programming, eventually winding up in Houston.

After I left IBM, all hell seems to have broken loose.  Endicott complained to Corporate that their beautiful, fully-functional system wasn't yet in production.  Corporate told FE to solve that problem pronto and — voila! — it was suddenly accepted for production.  When Armonk finally saw it in operation, they mandated it for all Suggestions Departments world-wide, and Dave Boyd got to tour Europe (the parts with IBM plants, anyway) installing it here, there, and everywhere.

It turns out that FE management didn't like the idea of bean-counters in Armonk deciding what projects FE's programmers would work on, so they handed STSS to someone they thought would probably screw it up.  They wanted STSS to fail but never bothered to tell me, so I made that bumblebee fly.

P.s.:  when we loaded the tracking database with historical data, the oldest suggestion we could find was from September of 1929, so all the code in STSS understood that a year smaller than '29' was, perforce, 2000-something.  STSS was the first Y2K-compliant application in IBM's history.  In 1978.

1984

Houston had been riding on this huge bubble of oil, and the housing market was on fire.  When the bubble burst, oil companies started laying people off and the housing market collapsed.  Preferring to set my own course, I had started looking elsewhere.  One recruiter asked if he might send my papers to IBM-Clear Lake and I agreed.  A week later I had an interview, but when I got to IBM that day, nobody seemed to know who I was or why I was there.  They had me (re)fill out the 6-page IBM application, then spun me through the canonical four interviews before sending me on my way.  Two weeks later, I received a letter:  'thank you for spending time with us, etc., etc., unfortunately...'.  The letter was dated the day of my interviews, but it was mailed much later.  I assumed they had finally seen my historical personnel jacket and realized their error.

A former colleague at IBM happened to be talking to me in 1984 and casually asked: "How's the job?"  I admitted that I was looking and he offered that IBM-Tampa might be interested in my skillset.  I recited the above tale and suggested that if Tampa were still interested in me after reviewing my jacket, they could call.  On December 4th as I was sitting down to dinner, my phone rang.  Whatever had happened at IBM-Clear Lake remains unexplained.  One thing led to another, and by year-end, I was an IBMer once again.  I often suspected that institutional-IBM later came to regret it.

I had been 'over the wall' and had discovered that there is breathable air there.  There was life outside IBM!  Further, I also knew that IBM was not The Emerald City whence originated all the really good ideas.  My presence contaminated innumerable otherwise-faithful IBMers.  By the time I pre-retired in 1992, there were managers in Tampa who wanted to see me dead.  Not 'gone';  dead.  It goes without saying that I never made it past 'Staff Programmer'.

Life on the outside

For two dozen years, contracts have kept bread on the table, put kids through college, paid the mortgage (off), and sent us on European vacations.  As much as we might miss the familiarity of the IBM we once knew, we realize that the nature of modern employment is such that no company can ever again hope to have a workforce that thinks of itself as 'family' and expects to work for the same company for an entire career.  The pace of life is itself enough to prohibit that, and the ability to seek out more optimal situations with ease means that job hunting is no longer reserved for times when 'the handwriting is on the wall'.