President's Message from Don Rima

No Meeting This Month!

WAM Contacts:

President: Don Rima 703/742-3744 F) 703/742-0448 dr2@access.digex.com
Vice President: Jack Fugiel 301/489-1103 F) 301/474-1609 fugielj@wdni.com
Secretary: Peter Maher 703/834-3706 F) 703/834-3707 1stplace@crosslink.net
Treasurer: K B Soni 301/590-7121 F) 301/590-0213 kbsoni@aol.com
Newsletter Editor: Tom Jones 301/515-4438 F) - - twjones@erols.com
Director: John Blum 410/265-1300 F) - - jblum@mail.bcpl.lib.md.us
Director: Pam Johnson 703/978-5212 F) 703/978-5360 pjohnson@i-t-works-inc.com
Director: Paul Lambert 410/381-6396 F) - - pg_lambert@prodigy.com
Director: John Rodrigues 703/519-1569 F) 703/683-5100 majobo@aol.com

Sponsor New WAM Members - - Win $100 Gift Certificate

To qualify for the drawing, please ensure that you let John Rodrigues know the name and telephone number of each new WAM member that you have sponsored. John can be reached at 703/519-1569 or at majobo@aol.com. (This promotion is effective April 1, 1998.)

John Rodrigues developed this great idea as a means of delivering more value to our members. Thanks John!

U P C O M I N G E V E N T S

Elections in October !

Please give some serious thought to running or nominating someone to run. This is a volunteer organization and as such we need active board members to provide the speakers and events that make the organization successful. The personal commitment required is really not very extensive, and you can tailor it to your own skills and preferences. You WILL find it a personally rewarding experience. [Competitive Pay/Regular Raises/EOE/Free Parking/etc, etc] Please give this some serious thought and give me a call if you have any questions.

Peter Maher 703/834-3706 or 1stplace@crosslink.net.

JAM '98 ... The best, most power-packed one-day-er on the East Coast! The first Friday of December WAM presents the finest technical conference ever ... An ALL NEW line up of sessions featuring the likes of Al Barsa, Sandra Bullock, Susan Gantner, Wayne Madden, Walter Mitty, Jon Paris, Dina Shore, Jim Sloan, Carson Soule, and the ever-popular May Busch. You'll hear about AS/400 System Values, Family Values, JAVA, intermediate CL, RPG IV, E-commerce, and there's a full track (4 sessions) on ILE-programming, AND a HANDS-ON session on creating a WEB page on the AS/400.

We know resources are especially thin this year in terms of both time and dollars. That's why we've brought all these folks and topics together for you on December 4th. So plan to give yourself and your staff an early Christmas gift by enrolling for JAM '98.

To enroll contact KB Soni at 301/590-7121 or kbsoni@aol.com. For technical questions on sessions call Don Rima at 703/742-3744 or dr2@access.digex.com.

Bone up on the latest AS/400 technology with on-line tutorials! IBM's AS/400 Partners in Development (PID) Web site has a dozen Internet Based Education (IBE) tutorials covering the latest additions and enhancements to AS/400 technology. For instance, the current subjects (IBM's been adding to the offerings) are DB2/400 V4 Overview, Application Development for Domino, Net.Data, E-mail, TCP/IP Overview and Configuration, Domino for AS/400 Installation/Configuration/Administration, HTTP and AS/400 Web serving, Net.commerce, Domino Mail Configuration, Domino-AS/400 Database Integration, and Server Based JAVA on AS/400.

The FREE courses tend to last 1 to 2 hours and require you to have JAVA and Javascript enabled on your browser, with RealPlayer available to handle the audio. Some courses also include video. To browse the list of courses see http://www.softmall.ibm.com/as400/education/courses.html.

Mary McConnell will be our featured speaker at the September 15 meeting. Her topic is OS/400 Version 4 Release 3. A Senior Systems Engineer in the Baltimore office of IBM, she will bring insights from the vantage point of 19 years experience in the industry. Mary has been a standout speaker at JAM as well as our regular monthly meetings. You won't want to miss this opportunity hear her presentation.

Manufacturers:

• If IBM made toasters ... They would want one big toaster where people bring bread to be submitted for overnight toasting. IBM would claim a worldwide market for five, maybe six toasters.
• If Xerox made toasters ... You could toast one-sided or double-sided. Successive slices would get lighter and lighter. The toaster would jam your bread for you.
• If Radio Shack made toasters ... The staff would sell you a toaster, but not know anything about it. Or you could buy all the parts to build your own toaster.
• If Oracle made toasters ... They'd claim their toaster was compatible with all brands and styles of bread, but when you got it home you'd discover the Bagel Engine was still in development, the Croissant Extension was three years away, and that indeed the whole appliance was just blowing smoke.
• If Sun made toasters ... The toast would burn often, but you could get a really good cuppa Java.
• Does DEC still make toasters?... They made good toasters in the '80s, didn't they?
• If Hewlett-Packard made toasters ... They would market the Reverse Toaster, which takes in toast and gives you regular bread.
• If Cray made toasters ... They would cost $16 million but would be faster than any other single-slice toaster in the world.
• If the NSA made toasters ... Your toaster would have a secret trap door that only the NSA could access in case they needed to get at your toast for reasons of national security.
• If Sony made toasters ... The ToastMan, which would be barely larger than the single piece of bread it is meant to toast, can be conveniently attached to your belt.
• If Timex made toasters ... They would be cheap and small quartz-crystal wrist toasters that take a licking and keep on toasting.
• If Fisher Price made toasters ... "Baby's First Toaster" would have a hand-crank that you turn to toast the bread that pops up like a Jack-in-the-box.
• And, of course: If Microsoft made toasters ... Every time you bought a loaf of bread, you would have to buy a toaster. You wouldn't have to take the toaster, but you'd still have to pay for it anyway. Toaster'95 would weigh 15000 pounds (hence requiring a reinforced steel countertop), draw enough electricity to power a small city, take up 95% of the space in your kitchen, would claim to be the first toaster that lets you control how light or dark you want your toast and would secretly interrogate your other appliances to find out who made them. Everyone would hate Microsoft toasters, but nonetheless would buy them since most of the good bread only works with their toasters. If Apple made toasters ... It would do everything the Microsoft toaster does, but 5 years earlier.
• If SAP made toasters, the manual to run the toaster would be approximately 10,000 pages long. The toaster would come with 2,500 switches which would all have to be set in an exact pattern and in a precise sequence in order to toast specific kinds of bread. Each pattern would be established by SAP's experts as the "Best Practices" method of toasting that kind of bread. It would take a team of basis and functional contractors about 1 year to configure the toaster in the best manner, and then another 6 months to test it. In the mean time, your entire family would need to attend extensive training classes on how to use the new toaster. In order to support end users and consultants, MIT would establish a list-server for people to post questions and answers regarding toaster set-up and operation. Of course, the on-line help would randomly pop up in German. But once it was running, you'd get the best toast in the world.