black boxes

I love it when a bureaucrat reacts to the proposal for a simple change as if this were such a risky thing (which really is to be expected when what he oversees is a black box to him) that he must first talk to the higherups during their next meeting, and then proceeds to forget to bring it up, but that's ok because he promises he will bring it up at the meeting after that.

taps

I should probably play Taps.

Today marks the last step in my decommission of our team's mainframe processing. When I started here almost 19 years ago, it was my sole responsibility to set up our mainframe-based components, and need I say that this was the only part of our system that never broke? The field's technology changed, and our team's needs. More and more of our system was shifted to unix-based processing and, early last December, was the last time that our remaining mainframe job ran. My pulling of the plug was much more lengthy than just pulling the plug, but it's done. I'm proud of the work I did.