TORONTO USERS GROUP for Midrange Systems
s everyone who attended the TUG tenth anniversary celebrations can attest, a very good time was had by all. Prior to the evening's festivities, three speakers provided information on various aspects of AS/400 server usage. Bill Larner of IBM Canada reviewed that morning's IBM AS/400 announcements; Doug Fulmer of the IBM AS/400 Group in Dallas spoke on the AS/400 as Server; and Joe Clavee of The Aberdeen Group in Boston compared the facilities offered by NT and by the AS/400 as a server. IBM publicized the meeting, provided the speakers and covered half of the cost of the afternoon. The board would like to thank everyone at IBM who helped to make the afternoon a success, and especially our new IBM Liaison -- Lisa Jobson.
The celebrations in the evening began with an unscheduled presentation from Garth Issett of IBM. Garth presented TUG with an engraved plaque wishing TUG a "Happy 10th Anniversary". A very pleasant surprise which left me almost speechless. So Garth, a rather belated heartfelt thanks from us all. The plaque will be on display at our next meeting for everyone to see. The evening continued with Neil Andrus humorously recapping a few of the more memorable moments in TUG's ten years of history, and with Wende Boddy's slick automated slide show, complete with stirring background music. The pictures included in the show were certainly not all stuffy posed portraits. Many were candid shots from various events that obviously surprised some attendees as they or their neighbours recognized the faces.
Then it was on with the dinner and the infiltration of the Mysteriously Yours troupe into the group. Everyone welcomed Country and Western star Billy Ray Virus back to his home town of Hooterville. We all quickly got to know his wife, his girlfriends, his rival, his manager, and his twin brother the sheriff, not to mention a few of our regular meeting attendees who seemed to have made his acquaintance. Before the inevitable murder and the invitation to everyone to solve it, door prizes were distributed and the 10th anniversary celebratory cake was cut by six past presidents and myself. The cake was served as the fourth course of an excellent dinner. As to the murder and the murderer, you had to be there, and even then few amongst us correctly identified the culprit. Successful guessers and the less successful, were all rewarded with a souvenir of the evening in the form of a bottle of wine "Bottled Especially to Celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Toronto Users Group for Midrange Systems". The entire event was organized by Léo Lefebvre with assistance from Wende Boddy, Neil Andrus, and other members of the board. A very successful evening Léo, many thanks from us all.
Unfortunately we cannot provide the same party favour at our next meeting of members on November 22. The meeting does, however, promise to be a engrossing evening. Dave Knott will be speaking on Object Oriented Concepts, and then Tom Dzorevski will present an example of Object Oriented techniques using the NHL draft system. This should put a little flesh on the bones of "OO" for those of us who have yet to get to grips with the topic. In the light of the renewed respect for legacy systems and the possibility of using "OO" to access legacy data, this should be of great interest to those of us who cannot afford to redevelop from the bottom up. Please call Wende with your expected attendance numbers as soon as possible.
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