Copyright 1992-2016 by Kevin G. Barkes

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redistributed provided no alterations of any kind are
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DCL DIALOGUE

Originally published September, 1992

To Beep Or Not To Beep

By Kevin G. Barkes

It's not that I have anything against swimming. I just have
a sensitive complexion. As Woody Allen once said, "I don't
burn, I stroke."

Dermatological considerations notwithstanding, the missus
had me trapped. It was a hot Friday afternoon. Virtually all
of my clients had taken off early to enjoy a long weekend,
and the phone hadn't rung in hours. Even the photocopier
supply and disk defragmenter salespeople seemed to have
disappeared from the planet.

She forced me to put on my swim trunks. "Oh look," I
muttered to myself. "The Great White."

"You look fine," she said. "Now come on."

"Ten minutes," I said. "I have to check CompuServe for
email."

I tried to look busy, but it was a waste of time. She caught
me posting Monty Python lyrics on the VAX Forum. "Come on,"
she said. "You promised me you'd go into the pool as soon as
things quieted down."

Ack. The Pool.

The accursed vinyl-clad monster which had added a couple
thousand to the asking price for our house. Sucked up 11,500
gallons of water. Blindsided me with $1,000 of unexpected
expenses for a new pump and filter and enough chemicals to
purify the drinking water supply of Mexico City. It was more
than an aversion to bright sunlight, heat and chlorination.
It was a matter of principle.

Alas, I could tell from the deadly gleam in her eye there
was no escape. I picked up the business phone to transfer
calls to the answering service. Normally, I'd tell the
operator to wait ten minutes and call my beeper, then use
the page as excuse to extricate myself from the situation.
The dodge had saved me before from interminable school
programs and visits to my wife's relatives.

No luck this time. My better half was rooted next to me. She
grabbed the phone from my hands immediately after I
completed dialing.

"Hold all calls unless it's a dire emergency," she told the
answering service operator. "Then you can get him on the
beeper."

She hung up the phone, grabbed me by the scruff of the neck
and started hauling me out the back door. "Wait!" I cried. I
have to start a job on the VAX. Only take me two minutes!"

"Two minutes. Period," she growled. I sat in my chair and
typed the Program furiously. (The comments were added
later.)

I executed the command procedure, grabbed my beeper and
followed her outside. I placed the beeper on the chaise
lounge, then dangled my legs in the cold water, watching the
chlorinated stew turning the hair on my legs a ghastly
white.

She grabbed my legs and started to pull. Just then, like an
angelic chorus, my beeper let out its plaintive cry.

I grabbed it, looked at the display and showed it to my
dismayed wife. "Hokey smoke! 777! A system disk crash!"

I darted from the pool, dove into my car, and sped away to
the comforting darkness of the local googolplex and the
umpteenth showing of "Batman Returns".

I love DCL.

(A few notes: The command procedure merely copies modem
commands to a terminal port. The WAIT statements following
the COPY commands give the modem time to execute the
command strings. The actual call to the paging service
is the line beginning ATDT. I use a national paging service
with a toll-free 800 number. The commas are pauses; the
1234567 is the pager id code; and the 777 is the number
to display on the pager. The #s are item terminators
for the paging service computer. You can use variations
of this procedure to beep you when a batch job completes,
when a particular user logs on to your system (a la Clifford
Stoll), or to call you out of that interminable Monday
morning staff meeting.)

****************

DAIN BRAMAGED, PART I

Several persons noted yet another apparent error (sigh) in 
the correction to the PURGE_MIDDLE procedure in the June
issue. I said the DELETE command doesn't accept relative
version numbers, which is obviously a bonehead comment.

What I meant to say was the /EXCLUDE qualifier to DELETE
doesn't accept them.  To quote the DCL Dictionary, "Wildcard
characters (* and %) are allowed in the file specification.
However, you cannot use relative version numbers to exclude
a specific version."

And as for this limitation to /EXCLUDE being unique to
DELETE... let's just drop the subject, ok? I don't want to
even discuss the astute observation by several sharp readers
that since PURGE itself has an /EXCLUDE qualifier (and, yes,
it doesn't accept relative version numbers), it would be
possible to write the procedure with one PURGE/EXCLUDE
instead of two DELETE/EXCLUDEs, since PURGE automatically
retains the highest version of the file, anyway. Thanks to
Mark Jaeger, Ken Nellis, Lou Miller and several less tactful
anonymous others for pointing this out.

I gotta stop watching Dragnet reruns at 4 a.m. while writing
this column. 

DAIN BRAMAGED, PART II

Another example of stellar DEC marketing: I decided to buy a
TSZ07 9-track tape drive for my VAXstation so I can
distribute BBS files in a format other than TK50s and to
handle my database publishing applications. The good news is
the TSZ07 is a DECDirect FastShip item, so it can be shipped
by the end of the next business day after ordering. The bad
news is the country kit, which contains such mundane items
as the power cord and SCSI cable, isn't. Expect up to a
30-day delay, I was told. I hope Alpha workstations come
with their power cords in the same package...

DAIN BRAMAGED, PART III

DEC Educational Services still has every single member of my
family on its mailing list, five months after I advised them
of their error (see the June and August columns for the
sordid details). The latest mailing? Five copies of an offer
to subscribe to DEC's Reference Service, otherwise known as
Things You Can Get For Free If You Take Your Salescritter To
Lunch. You know, DEC, you could probably knock a couple
bucks off the price of the subscription if you eliminated
all those duplicate mailings. Or maybe have enough surplus
cash to stock more than one TSZ09 country kit.

JOLTING DISCOVERY

My mention of Jolt Cola in June brought some inquiries from
persons unable to find it in their areas. I don't have the
name or address of Jolt's corporate office, but I'd suggest
calling your local soft drink distributors for information,
since the cola's made under license across the country.

Jolt is more marketing flash than substance, truth be told.
Its cola taste is rather nondescript, and its caffeine level
is somewhat suspect. Computer Language magazine did an
analysis of caffeine-laden soft drinks a few years back in a
wonderful parody of software product comparisons. Turns out
Mountain Dew has the highest caffeine content of any soft
drink. I don't drink it because it's too sweet for my taste,
and my family gets alarmed when I type with my feet. And at
my age, it's not good to go for a week without blinking.

GROUP PARTICIPATION

Last month was a busy one. Aside from the aforementioned
folk who pointed out the PURGE_MIDDLE gaffe, letters,
comments and code were received from Emily Morse, Brian
Toby, Dave Boyle, Michael deTreville, Mike Geist, Farshid
Elahi, Allen H. Porter and George H. Trudeau, among others.
Should be some interesting stuff showing up here in the
coming months.

***************************

Kevin G. Barkes is an independent consultant whose penchant
for keeping odd hours sometimes results in marital strife.
"Sometimes I wake up grumpy," he reports, "but most times I
just let her sleep." Kevin lurks on comp.os.vms and can
be reched at kgbarkes@gmail.com.

*************************

Program 1.

$ SET NOON
$! Wait a short period of time:
$ WAIT 00:03:00
$! Initialize the modem
$ COPY SYS$INPUT TTA2:
ATZ
$ WAIT 00:00:03
$! Call the beeper
$ COPY SYS$INPUT TTA2:
ATDT8005555555,,,,1234567#,,,,777#,,,#
$! Wait for all this stuff to complete
$ WAIT 00:00:45
$! Hang up the modem
$ COPY SYS$INPUT TTA2:
ATH
$ WAIT 00:00:03
$! Reinitialize it
$ COPY SYS$INPUT TTA2:
ATZ
$ DEALLOCATE TTA2:
$ EXIT