Where Grumpy Old Men Come From
Jan. 4th, 2007 01:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prowler1971This is not urban legend. This is a story told to me by a former boss reprinted here with his permission.
So, here's how a young man like myself turns into a grumpy old man... ;-)
We have an older Avaya phone & voice mail system. One of my guys in NH was bitching about the difficulty updating voice mail configs from NH since he had to dial in via modem to Massachusetts to do the updates. Stunned, I looked in out static IP list and sure enough, the voice mail system has an IP address assigned. A quick telnet resulted in a login prompt and access to the management menu. However, the SCO-based Avaya system was looking for a terminal running in "AT386" emulation mode. (it prompted with the typical Unix "TERM=" prompt) I tried vt100, vt102, vt200, ansi, all the typical settings, but the function keys didn't work. Okay, easy enough, I just need to find a terminal emulator program that supports "AT386", whatever that is. My newish friend Google turned up an old friend that supports AT386 - Kermit! I downloaded the demo from Columbia University, set up a connection profile and voila! Perfect!
Pleased with myself beyond belief, I went to my local network admin in MA and said "guess what! Kermit supports the right emulation mode!"
Him: Blank stare.
Me: You know! Kermit!
Him: The frog?
Me: Hahaha, very funny Mr. Smartypants!
Him: Blank stare
10 years network administration experience, Windows only. Never heard of Kermit.
Okay, one bad experience. So I call the guy in NH. The only reason I didn't get a blank stare from him is because we were on the phone. Tried another network admin in NH. "Kermit who?" Three guys with a combined 30 years (Windows) system administration experience, never heard of Kermit. Two of them had never heard of xmodem, ymodem or zmodem either.
My boss is out sick, I know he'll know what Kermit is. Until he comes back I'm going to have to rant about "back in the day" when we had to make all our porn images out of zeros because we didn't have 1s yet.
And a true story follow-up. My wife knew what Kermit is.
Fuckin A
So, here's how a young man like myself turns into a grumpy old man... ;-)
We have an older Avaya phone & voice mail system. One of my guys in NH was bitching about the difficulty updating voice mail configs from NH since he had to dial in via modem to Massachusetts to do the updates. Stunned, I looked in out static IP list and sure enough, the voice mail system has an IP address assigned. A quick telnet resulted in a login prompt and access to the management menu. However, the SCO-based Avaya system was looking for a terminal running in "AT386" emulation mode. (it prompted with the typical Unix "TERM=" prompt) I tried vt100, vt102, vt200, ansi, all the typical settings, but the function keys didn't work. Okay, easy enough, I just need to find a terminal emulator program that supports "AT386", whatever that is. My newish friend Google turned up an old friend that supports AT386 - Kermit! I downloaded the demo from Columbia University, set up a connection profile and voila! Perfect!
Pleased with myself beyond belief, I went to my local network admin in MA and said "guess what! Kermit supports the right emulation mode!"
Him: Blank stare.
Me: You know! Kermit!
Him: The frog?
Me: Hahaha, very funny Mr. Smartypants!
Him: Blank stare
10 years network administration experience, Windows only. Never heard of Kermit.
Okay, one bad experience. So I call the guy in NH. The only reason I didn't get a blank stare from him is because we were on the phone. Tried another network admin in NH. "Kermit who?" Three guys with a combined 30 years (Windows) system administration experience, never heard of Kermit. Two of them had never heard of xmodem, ymodem or zmodem either.
My boss is out sick, I know he'll know what Kermit is. Until he comes back I'm going to have to rant about "back in the day" when we had to make all our porn images out of zeros because we didn't have 1s yet.
And a true story follow-up. My wife knew what Kermit is.
Fuckin A
