I have eventually met the Higher Management. They are considering hiring me to
produce a simplified version of the Magic Libram I had mentioned in my
previous note, and to provide some amount of Magic Training to my colleague so
she can quickly become competent enough to maintain the software I wrote. The
only difference with their former 'project' is that I managed to convince them
that this isn't going to magically solve the problem, and will only help in
'easy' cases, "but then that's better than nothing" they said. My impression
is that this conviction will wear off in a few weeks, but nevermind. They took
back all keys from me, and said I wouldn't be allowed to work during the
weekend any more, and then only in the user's room, although "this could
perhaps be re-considered later". What is certain is I won't have time nor
desire to prepare any kind of document during weekdays in the overcrowded user
room where you have to file the queue to get yourself a terminal. Well
needless to say I wasn't very pleased and set up my price relatively high (ie
"unthinkably high for an unexperienced beginner" in their own scale, but since
the duration of the work is very short I am confident that they can find the
money if they do want to). The Managers are presently "considering" the offer
and will produce a return code shortly.
Meanwhile I'll be off tomorrow and all of next week because of exams,
mandatory courses and similarly rejoicing activities. When I come back ERIC's
password might have been changed if the management's return code was nonzero,
but the account will be kept alive anyway since they have decided not to
remove my software and they'll therefore need it for maintenance. This is
satisfactory as it implies that I'll be able to have my mail forwarded later
without problem.
All of this to tell you that in the future, I will probably appear more often
on ERIC@PASTEUR (5 min from home) or ERIC@FRULM11 (20 min from home) than on
ERIC@FRECP11 (1h15 from home). I would like to express my deepest thanks to
Stephane Accart and Bernard Caudron, who have kindly accepted to create guest
accounts for me on their nodes and to take up all the important distribution
lists held at FRECP11, thus preventing a possible disruption of traffic
(although it would now seem that LISTSERV@FRECP11 will stay alive, this wasn't
all that obvious at the beginning).
A final note: I can retrieve the stuff in the reader of ERIC@FRECP11 and
ERIC@CEARN from either account. I will set up ERIC@FRULM11 likewise the first
time I use it, but presently I can't pick up anything from its reader. However
mail in the reader of ERIC@PASTEUR can't be summoned from anywhere (that's a
HASP-connected ASCII machine, and what mail and message service it provides is
already astonishing considering the primitive link protocol that is being
used). I would say that at present it would be best to keep sending mail to
ERIC@FRECP11, and if it suddenly disappears, just send mail to PASTEUR and
binaries to FRULM11. Also, please note that PASTEUR cannot process print files
(it does support NETDATA so that's not a problem) - this implies that LISTSERV
console logs can't be retagged there. I plan to use PASTEUR for mail since
it's on my regular way back home, and FRULM11 only when access to a VM system
is required.
Cheers, Eric
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