Fun about OpenVMS bigots

You know you're a VMS bigot when:

You think case sensitivity is some ones idea of an April Fools joke
You keep trying to use the EDT keypad in Word.
You know why the SHOW SYSTEM display had to have the "system uptime" field increased beyond 999 days.
You have the complete VMS docset on display in your living room.
Your mail file doesn't grow to the size of the national debt.
You expect upper AND lower case to work the same way
You wish your car was as reliable as your computer
You keep wanting Digital to produce "Visual DCL"
You don't think about the Milky Way when you hear the word "Galaxy"
You travel to Nashua twice a year, to get the newest fashion in T-shirts and jackets
You know where NT stores its data if they really need it to be saved
You know what Wes Melling was talking about, saying: "When you absolutely can't tolerate down-time"
If you think that the word "legacy" refers to the next generation of Lego toys that your kids want.
You remember the VAXworks group
PATCH is your favorite text editor
You can cite chapter and verse in the docset
You know what the bars on the wall in front of ZKO spell
The first thing you think of when you see a dollar sign isn't money
You refer to Unix as the only commercially available computer virus
When you know that the console sequence to force quorum recalculation without crashing the cluster.
When your Exchange mail is set to auto-forward to STAR
When you know the boot file sequences to make an efficient TU58 console boot tape.
You insist on typing SET DEF [-] at your PC's DOS prompt
Your LOGIN.COM exceeds 200 block and is on its thousand-something version
Your LOGIN.COM file contains its own debugging language
Your LOGIN.COM is written in Macro
When you need to discipline the kids at home, you refer to it as CMKRNL time
You think that "grep, awk, yacc" sounds like a death rattle
When you hear ICBM's you don't think of nuclear warfare
You know what happened November 17, 1858
You wonder why folks spend extra for a BACKUP tool
You feel like you're using a crayon when you're working on a PC
You still have a VAX architecture manual
You can retrieve a file from another system with a one-line command instead of running a program, logging into the remote systems, and getting the file.
None of your hardware uses PCI
You tend to type a dollar sign in front of most verbs
You think EXCHANGE is an OpenVMS utility for manipulating mass storage volumes
You don't understand why e-mail needs to be in a format that uses half a megabyte of disk space for a one-page document.
You maintain OpenVMS accounts on your workstation for coworkers who have migrated to PCs
You think a form with one page of information should fit on your screen without scrolling
You know what INSQTI means
You know that fork queue is not an insult
When you type $show dev d at the c:\> prompt and expect it to work
You need a mouse with three buttons and the middle button is useful
You turn 40 and tell friends that your are 28 hex
A normal date is written as dd-mmm-yyyy
You never saw the euphemism in "VAX Headroom"
You expect all machine instruction to work left to right
You can solve any problem with a TECO macro
Your favorite "portable" language is TECO
You see the movie Spawn and keep thinking about sub-processes
You think Carl Sagen was wrong about "Galaxies"
The only question about restoring a backup is finding it
You believe a computer might handle more than one user at a time
You feel Robert Frost was talking about quotas when he said: "Good fences make good neighbors"
You presume that calling between languages "just works"
You do not expect the previous version of your file to be destroyed by the new one
You still measure performance in VUPS
You understand that 'open' is a silent prefix
You know there is more to bliss than ignorance
You know RMS does not mean 'root mean square'
The concept of a blue screen of death is foreign to you
You think that a command line interface is better than a GUI
You're surprised to find out that "cluster" is a new concept
You have forgotten how to reboot because your system's been up so long
You reboot your desktop station once every 15 months (and only because a tornado caused a city-wide power blackout)
You don't have to reboot your workstation daily
You know you can find out how to use a command by typing help and get it
You use your VMS system to backup important files from your PC
You don't need the UNIX for Dummies and Windows for Dummies to perform simple functions
You want nothing to do with eunuchs
You choke on your coffee when someone tells you Microsoft does clusters
You Laugh when someone tells you they are certified for PC systems programming.
You use SDA as your CLI
Your debuger is Delta or xdelta
You have no difficulties with using Debug in six windows on a VT100
You know for sure that you will never meet a TPU macro virus
You really can't think of anything Bill Gates actually invented
The most useful app on your PC is Telnet. the second most useful app on you PC is the CD player
You never thought I was that bright to begin with.
You know why the VMS development machine is named STAR
You are still seeking "Compose Character" key on your PC keyword
You answer 52.444 when someone asks your address
You can talk about clusters with over 10 nodes
You have to drive your car to ready the other Cluster nodes
You have used patch/abs to patch an Alpha image and it worked
The Pacific Northwest is still best known for its trees.
You know what PMDF stands for
You don't exit your editor when you leave for a two week vacation
You actually expect your mail to work
You don't follow up an email with a phone call and a fax
You think that Microsoft is a new type of softserve ice cream
You see no reason at all for a _minimum_ password lifetime.
You know that the kernel is part of the operating system not Mr. Sanders first name
You can use threads for more than sewing
You can convert your phone number to hex
You can use SDML
You know what SDML stands for

(This was posted to INFO-VAX by alanC).

Comments to: Martin P.J. Zinser
Last modified: 20010401