What's your job?

[Bigdog57]

I am the last of a dying breed - a Mainframe Computer Programmer! I call myself a "Digital Paleontologist" - I get tasked with restoring old application jobs when the admin finds out that somebody actually uses the dataset that was made by a now-defunct computer job! I bring my little dinosaurs back to life....
My team does the Application Support for our Comptroller's Office - accounting, payroll, Federal Grants, etc.
I work for the Florida Dept. of Education, here in Tallahassee, Florida.
Not a bad place to live - close enough to the beach for fun, far enough away to mostly ignore the occasional hurricane.
Close enough to the North Georgia mountains for a long weekender trip.
The local shooting range is nearly in my back yard - one of the reasons I bought my property! I can buzz over there after work.
The National Forest also has lots of excellent forest roads for Dual Sport motorcycling. A lot of good fishing lakes nearby too. I can slip in there for camping when the job gets grueling and I need some 'stress relief'.
So far, I have 18 years on the books with the State - finally seeing the Light at the End of the Tunnel - Retirement in 12 years (if I go thirty).

[renodesertfox]

What's Your Job?

Howdy Bigdog,

Hope you can hang for 30 years if you want to. It was nice reading about what you do!

[renodesertfox]

What's Your job?

Howdy,

For me, since I'm retired now and have been since 2005 is too camp when ever we can. My wife who still works as an advanced practice nurse and I were talking about this very subject(camping) just a few days ago. We do camp quite often, even more than just average. We are two serious jeep campers, yet we belong to no formal club, because of their rules and we just enjoy each other's company to the max. Most folks with children are only able to go camping once or twice a year. We try very hard to go camping that many times in a month! So if you see my name plastered all over these pages it's only because we like and love to camp!

Now for me, I'm a retired industrial photographer and when I was working I was employed by a third party contractor to the Nevada Nuclear Testing program at the Nevada Test Site. I was a photographer there and before that I was also a photog in the US Army. You see photography has been my passion for over forty or more years. Some would say that my blood is Microdol-x and my religion is digital. Yes and camping is too my passion!

[jpurdy]

gee Bigdig57,
mainframe is an extinct word...most people I know snicker at the term.
everything has to be open systems and such. I was a dba on unisys mainframes and when I left much was being moved to and open systems environment. Some applications took years to actually get running correctly.
Oracle was used on the unix systems.
whose mainframes do you work on?

[Bigdog57]

We are a customer of the Northwest Regional Data Center which is resident at FSU. We use their IBM 3090 mainframe for our batch processing. At present, my team has only three full-time mainframe programmers, and about ten folks on the newer Server platform, running Oracle and DotNet applications. One day, we 'dinosaur wranglers' will learn that there 'new-fangled' stuff too.
But at present, it's a fulltime job keeping our applications going - it's what gets the DOE bills paid and the paychecks done each month!
Amazingly, India has become the world's center for Mainframe! I have found some online forums based there for Mainframe programmers, and occasionally ask them tech questions - at least then, I KNOW I'm talking to an Indian for tech help.... :D
In this case, they know their stuff too!

I dabble in photography too - started on an old Pentax K1000 SLR to learn the basics, and now have a basic digital HP camera. I do enjoy being able to do my own processing on the computer - really opens up the hobby!
It isn't any cheaper - paper and ink aren't inexpensive! But I do love the flexability and power to do my own work.
I am also ex-military. I did my first hitch (aircraft electronics systems tech) of four years in the USAF, based at Tyndall AFB in Panama City, Florida - a hundred miles from home!
Then, I reupped into the USN as an Electronic Tech on UHF Communications, as I wanted to travel. Spent six years doing that, for sure! Three years on an anti-submarine Frigate, doing paid "Carribean Vacations".....
I don't know what all the hullaballoo is over Gitmo - I enjoyed my visit there.... :rolleyes:

BD

[Scrib]

I'm currently in the defense aerospace business - selling GPS receivers to other companies, who put them into planes and missiles. Not a bad gig for a dumb grunt who used to jump out of airplanes!

I'm a big proponent of family camping and we'll go at least once a month, rain or shine.

[maryjstar89]

I'm a student. I hope to aspire to go into the movie business.