More white stones.
Mid-1970s. My favorite white stone. The DCC had several traditions. One of the strongest was the formal coffee break. We had a large coffee break room with long boardroom kind of table, comfortable chairs, and a big stainless steel coffee maker (handled on rota by the secretaries -- at our peak, we had four secretaries (three of whom could take dictation in three or more languages) and 18 professionals) -- everyone had to bring a cake on his/her birthday (supposedly baked by the birthday person) and volunteers frequently brought goodies of one kind or the other to the morning break (we had two breaks a day, one about 9:30 AM, and one about 2:30 PM, each lasting from 20 minutes to one hour -- at one time, at the suggestion of John Goselin from WTC HQ, we dropped back to one coffee break a day, but that only lasted for about two weeks -- the purpose of the breaks, which were compulsory, was to facilitate communication -- and it worked). During one break, an uncaused spell of silence fell on the group (referred to by the Romans, in Latin of course, as "Mercury passed by") just prior to three of the Swiss Research guys coming in late -- they paused at the entrance, and we all looked up in expectant silence -- finally one of the Swiss research guys, Felix Closs, asked "What did Cyril say this time?"
Mid-1970s. A slightly off-color stone. Frank Corr (introduced to me on our first meeting in RTP in the 1960s as "the smartest man in FSD", now dead from liver cancer) did not often cause a spell of silence, but on one occasion he did. We had just started a Monday morning break, and the conversation had not really commenced -- Frank, apparently trying to kick things off, asked me "Cyril, what did you do this week-end [slight pause] besides drink?” This did not get the conversation off to a smooth start.
Mid-1970s. A small white stone. I showed up late at an afternoon coffee break, and as I came in the door everyone looked up at me with quizzical expressions. I said, "Please excuse me. I was on the phone with Frank Cary [IBM CEO at that time and an old acquaintance of mine]." Everyone laughed, and the break proceeded to its conclusion. As we were leaving, Clayton Andrews (generally called "Andy", founder, and at that time still Director, of the DCC, dead now) said "Cyril, would you come up to my office with me." -- He, shrewd guy that he was, had realized that I was not joking (or, at any rate, was stating a fact) and wanted to find out all about it.
Mid-1970s. Another RTP white stone. While assigned to the DCC I had for all intents and purposes an unlimited travel budget (which made me a Swissair VIP -- several interesting stories there) and so naturally tended to flit hither and thither. On one occasion I was at RTP when Fred Brooks was there on one of his consulting assignments -- I forget doing what. A number of us chanced to have lunch together in the IBM cafeteria, and as was his custom Fred dominated the conversation. We were talking about the Japanese and their peculiarities and for some reason Fred saw fit to give us the Japanese 101 lecture (need for consensus, respect for age, etc.). After he got through rattling on about respect for age, with examples, I remarked that the older I got, the wiser I thought that social characteristic.
Nobody at the table laughed, though several smiled -- Fred did not smile -- he gave me a long thoughtful look and went on to something else. [The two best systems guys I worked with in IBM were Glenn Henry and Fred -- and neither had a sense of humor (they were smart enough to recognize humor when it occurred and would on occasion socially smile or maybe even laugh; however, they apparently found nothing funny).]
1Q65. My second best white stone. I first met Fred in 1964 and had extensive work and social interactions with him for many years (we were the same age, came from the same background, had three children of the same ages, were next door neighbors for seven years, etc., etc.); however, neither of us liked the other (about the only interest outside of work and family we shared was C. S. Lewis -- Fred also liked Tolkien -- I thought, and think, that Tolkien produced nothing but shit -- also, Fred disliked beards even more than Kuehler did -- Fred for years as head of the Computer Science Department at Chapel Hill would not hire, or accept as a graduate student, anybody with face hair -- also, Fred once remarked to me at a party at my house that he could recognize Christian code when he saw it), though I certainly respected him, and I think he had some respect for me.
In early 1965 I was managing the data communications programming group for OS/360 (BTAM, QTAM, and RJE -- at that time, RJE had not started, BTAM was in pretty good shape, but there was a lot of resistance to QTAM) and having quite a bit of difficulty keeping QTAM in plan. Fred, who had originally been engineering manager for S/360 was at this time programming manager for OS/360 (and starting to phase out to take over the CS department at Chapel Hill), and it was his custom to conduct a formal review of every component of OS/360 prior to external release of information (S/360 and OS/360 had both been announced on the IBM magic date of April 7 -- this time April 7, 1964 -- but no detail had been provided in re OS/360). The meetings were quite formal and held in Fred's office (he had a big office and a big desk with a long boardroom kind of table making a T with his desk the crossbar at the top of the T -- all the powers that be in OS were there other than my second level manager (Jim Kessler, an old SABRE guy -- I had replaced him as the first line manager for data communications -- he never showed up at any meetings I attended – save one – that story will be covered later)).
We were all present at the meeting start time of 9:30 -- with the exception of Fred. We waited quietly for about 15 minutes until Fred came in. He slammed the BTAM and QTAM draft SRLs down on his desk and looked around the group catching eyes. Then he apologized for being late -- said that he had been engrossed in the QTAM SRL and could not put it down -- said that QTAM was a "pot of gold, a box of jewels -- the finest thing in OS/360" [exact quote – the words are graven on the inside of my eyelids]. Needless to say, you could have heard a pin drop (I think everyone there, including me, had been expecting that the result of the meeting would be the demise of QTAM). Anyway, I do not recall much subsequent detail of the meeting, but needless to say I did not have any problems after that keeping QTAM inplan. [It should be noted that the designer of QTAM was John Beurket, who had been on notice when I came in as manager -- the only way I kept him was to tell Scotty Locken that if John went, I went -- it was about John that I was on the phone with Frank Cary in the DCC stone above -- they wanted to fire him again because he wrote a nasty memo about FS before it became politically correct to write nasty memos about FS -- they didn't fire him this time either -- in fact, Cary wrote him a letter of apology that read like a letter of commendation (at Andy's suggestion I wrote Cary a follow-up memo to our telephone conversation -- his letter to John contained much of my memo -- I tried to get them to fire John's manager (Pete Schneider, the MULTICS guy IBM hired to do TSO), but they wouldn't).]
Custom Search
