Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
שמואל בן ל״ביש
Under construction
Welcome to the homepage of Shmuel (Seymour J.)
Metz,
http://www.mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3.
E-mail to the owner of this account may be addressed to
smetz3@GMU.EDU.
Good Bosses
The Internet is full of stories about bad bosses.
I believe that it is time that the good bosses got some notice.
-
At a small Army base, I worked in the DP section of the Comptroler's office for a
warrant officer
who:
- Knew what he wanted.
- Ensured that we understood what he wanted.
- Got out of our way and let us do what he asked of us.
- Had our backs.
That may not sound like much, but I greatly appreciated him, and I've worked for bosses where none of those was the case.
Mr. Condon, it was a pleasure to work with you.
-
At a Federal Government data center, we had a system crash,
and all the managers clustered around the console getting underfoot.
The project manager asked who was actually working on the problem,
and ordered everybody else out of the computer room.
That greatly speeded recovery, and my respect for him went up a notch.
-
At a Federal Government data center, we did periodic disaster recovery (DR)
tests. My boss on the government side would:
- Bring half a dozen copies of the Stand Alone Restore (FDRSAR) tape
and ask me if that was enough.
- Order me to take a nap when I wasn't needed.
- Pull a random tape, tell us to consider it lost, and proceed with
the test without it.
- Point to a random member of the test team, declare him dead, and
proceed with the test without him.
The first two made a successful test more likely, and the last two
made it more likely that we would catch problem in our recovery
documentation.
Humor
The danger of DHMO
Some T-shirt designs I've come up with, most of which are available from CafePress
Cartoons I enjoy
Some verse I get a chuckle from
Warning: here there be sarcasm and politics.
Miscellaneous funny writings
Personal
I'm married with two daughters and have eclectic but idiosyncratic
interests. Among other things, I enjoy.
- Bridge, although I haven't played in years.
- Chess, although I haven't played in years.
- Classical music, especially large orchestral works of the Romantic
period and later. I don't, however, go in for things like 12 tone.
- Computer architectures
- Ethnic cuisine.
- Fantasy, preferably humorous
- Mathematics
- Musical Theatre
- Operating systems
- Pets - I'm one of those people
that like both cats and dogs, as well as some less common species.
- Programming languages
- Puns and other word play
-
"Haddocks' Eyes",
Through the Looking-Glass, chapter VIII
-
"Uncleftish Beholding",
Poul Anderson,
Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Vol. 109, no. 13. Davis Publications. pp. 132-135.
- Science
- Science Fiction, preferably hard
- Theatre
I've attended
Cass Technical High School in Detroit,
Wayne State University" (WSU) in Detroit and
State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY/AB),
now University at Buffalo, in Amherst.
Professional
I am a senior systems programmer and software developer with
experience on a wide variety of languages and platforms. I have
participated in the design and development of two operating systems,
and am familiar with low level details of several communications
protocols. My experience is heaviest on MVS and VM, but is not
limited to IBM platforms.
For more information on my background, click on
brief résumé,
recent CV
or
full CV.
Sample code:
- STOWBLDL subroutine to allow PL/I
I/O to multiple members of a PDS with a single OPEN.
Needs private macros and IBM macros.
- Quick and dirty
UNOBFUSCATE
Perl script to analyze e-mail for spam reporting.
- Prefix macros for THE and XEDIT
Documentation:
Publications
orcid.org/0000-0002-6358-8257
Spam Fighting
Take the Boulder Pledge.
Click for more info.
If you are having a problem with spam, you may find these links to
be useful.
- Good starting places:
- Some links to vocabulary
- Reading headers
- Some useful lists of links.
- Tools
Politics
דַבֵּר אֶמֶת לְכֺּחַ
I Have a Dream
I have a dream that we elect a Black, female, handicaped, Hispanic, Jewish, left handed, short president and
nobody finds it unusual.
Stop the hypocrisy
Omerta is not a family value.
Borrow-and-spend is not a conservative value.
Antisemitism is not a progressive value.
In the wake of Iran-Contra and the January 6, 2021 coup attempt
Some of these are available as tee shirts from CafePress
In the wake of russian war crimes in Ukraine
Support your local police - but hold them accountable for misconduct.
Insist that
- Citizens be adequately compensated for property damaged or lost due to search or seizure
- Citizens be adequately compensated for business continuity issues due to damge to or seizure of business records.
- Impounded evidence be securely stored and protected from damage or theft
- Impounded business records be expeditiously copied and returned
- Injured police be adequately cared for
- Police be adequately equipped
- Police be adequately monitored
- Police be adequately trained
- Police be held civilly and criminally liable for misconduct
- Survivors of deceased police be adequately cared for
Support our troops, not the brass.
Demand that Congress raise taxes to fund better care for veterans,
low ranking personnel and their families.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose:
All lives matter - stop the slaughter!
If they bomb your ashram, my church isn't safe.
If they bomb your church, my mosque isn't safe.
If they bomb your mosque, my synagog isn't safe.
If they bomb your synagog, my temple isn't safe.
If they bomb your temple, my ashram isn't safe.
I'm well aware that some countries, e.g., China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, have a much worser record than we do,
but as a US citizen I am more aware of and more ashamed of the outrages at home.
The Henry A. Wallace Police Crime Database
contains far more cases than I can list here, but some samples are:
-
Adult lives matter
-
Asian lives matter
-
Black lives matter
-
Children's lives matter
-
Female lives matter
-
Jewish lives matter
-
Latino lives matter
-
Moslem lives matter
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