Greybeard

MELBOURNE, VIC, AU In an exhausting debate that surprised no one, the two eldest UNIX administrators at Coral Reef Logistics once again used the majority of the monthly project meeting to continue their decades-long, passive-aggressive rivalry centered around the use of Emacs or VI. Ross Knight, Senior Solaris Administrator, wearing his well traveled “CDE is the window into the Sun” cardigan and trademark leather moccasin boots, interrupted fellow senior engineer Bill Walsh presentation by taking to the head of the room to proclaim, per his usual theatrics and little evidence, that “efficiency on all of the company UNIX systems would improve tenfold” by removing the “bloated, operating system of a monstrosity known as Emacs”, claiming that the mere existence of this “offensive, peeling foot skin of an application” slowed down the systems so much that “we’re absolutely hemorrhaging money”....

LONDON, UK 2-Feb-2022 The 2nd of February, a day that is associated with a large rodent predicting the weather in the United States has a significantly different meaning at investment powerhouse Thames Financial and Wealth. On the 2nd of February the senior It staff and the finance and budgeting department hold their annual forecasting meeting that decides the IT direction of the company for the upcoming year. This is also the only time of the year that mainframe architect Phil Sutawney emerges from “the cave”, a dark and dreary data center space that houses the company’s mainframe - a system that Phil built at the beginning of his career in 1978 and has kept a stranglehold on for the better part of 45 years....