h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The heading over this page says, "we all lead interesting lives, and your journal is the place to tell everyone exactly what makes your days buzz by."

I am not sure that we all lead interesting lives. I suppose, I do. Or, maybe, I don't. It all depends on how exciting your life is in comparison.

I work for a computer company, Unisys. The various companies which formed the roots of Unisys have been around for over a hundred years. Most recently, in terms of large mergers and the like, Sperry and Burroughs merged in the eighties to form Unisys.

I am of the "Sperry" persuasion... Or, Univac, if you prefer. But, for a "mainframer", I am pretty young, comparitively. I graduated high school in 1989, and went into the Air Force in 1990. At that time, I could almost, almost turn a computer (pc) on and off.

My time in the Air Force was spent working on - Unisys mainframes. Most of the early ones still had peripherals with the Sperry Univac logos on them. When my contemporaries started moving into networking or Windows-based support, I couldn't help but yawn.

I had grown to like my customer base, and I enjoyed working with the systems I had been trained on. I am, by all accounts, a "jack-of-all-trades" when it comes to computers - or, well, I guess... anything. I can change the oil or the muffler or anything short of major on my vehicle, or use a tablesaw or bandsaw to create something with wood. I can use and administer basic Unix systems, and Windows seems a little like a no-brainer... I do it, but don't particularly enjoy it. I have trained - computer-based, at least, in various other environments.

But, at heart, I am a mainframer. The mainframes of today are not the ones of old. We now have all the old style security (for most systems, 3 strikes you're out!), and the 99.9% and higher uptimes, plus "open" systems, file access, web-based access to legacy data. My job is to keep all that stuff up and running..........

So, that's what I do... What do you do?