The Numbers Report

While working in IT production support at the local University, a University user called in somewhat upset and worried that her 'Numbers Report' was missing. When we asked her to give us more information, like report name, report number...she was unable to. It was simply, a 'Numbers Report'. It came every day, and she was worried that it was missing.

Perplexed, we made the trip across campus to see a copy of the report. The user said she saved copies of the report every day, going back some time.

When we go to her office, sure enough...there were stacks and stacks of Green-bar paper up against a wall. We are talking major tree homicide folks. Each daily report was over an inch thick, stacked high...there were thousands of them.

The output was IBM system dump information from a program that was abending. Daily, for years.

 To anyone but the most serious of system analysts, the output was useless, meaningless. And it did look like numbers, her name for the 'report'  made perfect sense. However, unless you were a journeyman IBM programmer, the numbers had little real meaning.  This user had been stacking these 'reports' up for months, even years.

Apparently, when we went back to the office to find out what had happened to  cause the daily output dumps from occurring, we discovered that one of the developers had found the program in error and had fixed it, causing the dumps to stop happening.  The developer had no idea that these dumps were actually printing and that someone was receiving the dumps via the campus delivery service. They had just seen the issue and corrected it.

We called the user and assured her that the missing reports were not a problem. We also advised her that she could destroy the existing stack of reports, that they would no longer be needed. Hesitantly she

Do we all have our own 'Numbers Reports'  in our lives that we stack up without thinking about them?


P.S.  The word 'abending' gets flagged as a spelling error by Word. So does 'abend'. Yet, in the IBM development world it is a very common word. In the IBM parlance, it stands for 'abnormal end'.  So, to summarize 'old developers take one final dump before they abend'.

7000 Sunset Paintings - Some with grouse

"Nothing had changed over the years. His father always painted the same picture, a melancholy sunset. Now and then, if whoever commissioned the painting wanted one, he would add a grouse in the foreground. Wallander’s father was a drawing-room artist. He’d honed his skill to such a level of perfection that he needed never to change his motif. It was only when he’d reached adulthood that Wallander realised that this had nothing to do with laziness or a lack of ability, but that this continuity gave his father the sense of security he needed in order to live his life.”

"Dogs Of Riga"  Henning Mankel


This picture shown here is one take on the paintings done by Wallander's father. Click on the picture to go to the blog I found this painting. It does not really live up to the picture of the painting I had in my mind while reading these books....but how often does that ever happen? A movie or other depiction of the image your own imagination conjured up fails to hit the high mark? And, does it matter, really?

I was fascinated by the thought of the 7000 sunset (some with grouse) paintings the author attributed to Wallander's father throughout the series of books. It speaks to me of the obsession sometimes required by artists, driving them forever on and steadily forward in pursuit of their passions!

I think of how obsessed authors like J.R.R Tolkien or J.K. Rowling must have had to create the lush fantasy environments of Middle Earth and Hogwarts. The same can be said for the works of countless artists and musicians throughout time.  What part does obsession play in art?

I will have to think about it the next time my youngest daughter shows me one of her thousands of yarn squares.

My whole life, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to blow that horn... Louis Armstrong 

Cheers, nca