From: schubert@capri.berkeley.edu (John Schubert)
Subject: Report on San Francisco IBM Roll Out...fun reading...I hope...<gulp>
Reply-To: schubert@capri.berkeley.edu.UUCP (John Schubert)
Organization: U.C. Berkeley -- ERL
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 19:04:42 GMT


This is my report on IBM San Francisco's Roll Out event which took place
on Tuesday, April 7th from 1-5pm.  As usual I go into the smallest detail,
relevant or not, so if you don't have mucho tiempo I'd hit "n" now.

Well I certainly had alot of fun at IBM San Francisco's roll out event.

Thanks to Tim Sipple's concise listing of the events I was easily able to
locate the address and phone # for the SF event.  Thanks Tim, since this
was a one time event I don't think that we'll be seeing any: Events List,
Revision G's :-) :-) :-)

I had called to make reservations last week  The person I talked with seemed
a bit surprised when I brought up the fact that I did not see the FTN
broadcast listed on their schedule (the first one posted by David W. Levine
dwl@watson.ibm.com, thanks to you too for posting that list David!!) in
addition to the advertised talks by Wordperfect, Describe, Novell, and Borland.

This seemed to frustrate her as she said, "sir how do you know that, did you
receive an invitation or a flyer???" I said, "you see I have this list here of
all your roll outs that are going on around the country, actually it is quite
nice as I just looked for the nearest one and I found you!"  She said, "and 
this list, where did it come from?"  "Oh...just some newsgroup" was my response.

It got kind of funny when she said, "sir it is starting to look like you know
more about this than I do...please hang on."  She came back and gave me a
number to call and leave some information about myself.  I called the number
and a recording asked me to leave my name, company name, and phone number.
Well this presented a problem because in my earlier call the person I had
talked with seemed to have a problem with the fact that I was not part of a
company.  She wasn't mean, it just seemed to me to cause alot of confusion
when I said, "well I'm not with a company, I'm just a person."  I guess this
was wasn't good enough as she thought the name of my company was "Person, Inc".

So when I called the number I had to think of a good company name.  I ran
through a bunch of them: 

	1. FAQ, Inc.
	2. Microsoft
	3. Weed Eater Co. [a big OS/2 shop, I hear :-)]

But I settled on: The Sumner Group [you know from CBS's Knots Landing fame].

I had also previously made arrangements to meet Bob Cain (Robert Cain aka
rcain@netcom.com, aka the backup person, aka a person to whom I really really,
no I mean REALLY owe a great debt of thanks to....more about that later in
the post.)

We had decided to meet outside the elevators on the 22nd floor.  I had said
that I would probably be dressed casually, and that I would be wearing my
big, white "I want OS/2" button from the San Jose OS/2 & Windows Show.

So there I was with my jeans, blue polo shirt, tennis shoes, backpack,
white "OS/2" button on the back pack, and, of course, really cool looking
sunglasses, err I mean shades...dude.

Since I was there to have fun, but also with the intention of posting a report
I picked my attire so as to not attract too much attention to the fact that I
was an "outsider".  I did not want to stray too far into the "corporate" camp,
thereby jeopardizing my unbiased sense of reporting.  I, like CNN's Bernard
"Baghdad Bernie" Shaw have journalistic principles to uphold!  Therefore I
will not report on any aspect of my trip into or out of San Francisco.  I will
only report on what I saw in the building, and furthermore only on those events
that took place on the 22nd floor of that building, which did have windows, but
I won't talk about what I saw out of them.  Bernard Shaw for President!!

So I get on the elevator, which was full of people in suits and dresses.  I
almost started to laugh when Mr. Stuffed Brooks-Brothers-Shirt kept looking
over at me.  Well I guess it didn't help that I was whistling "It's a small
world....after all...[you know the song you can't get out of your head for a
week once you hear it]...."

When I got off of the elevator I didn't see any Bob Cain, but I did see alot
of little "OS/2" footprints on the floor that would lead anyone in the right 
direction.  As I walked through the door I noticed this person kind of just
lurking there, I think that he also noticed me looking around like I was
pretty lost.  At the same time we said, "BOB!! JOHN!! It's nice to finally
meet you...[other gratuitous greetings and handshakes followed]."

So we began to follow the footprints to a desk.  An IBM lady said for me to
please sign in and put a business card in a fishbowl for a chance to win a
free copy of GA.  I completely forgot about my fake company and said that I
didn't have a business card.  So while the lady and I debated about what to do
Bob came to the rescue.  He told me to use his business card, but to just
scratch his name out and write in my own.  So I did this.  Bob had also given
me another business card as well, at the time I thought that it was to be his
entry in the fishbowl and that I was to just throw it in with mine.  Apparently
Bob had already thrown a card in.  The second card was meant for me to keep.
So I had "accidentally" entered Bob Cain twice in the drawing. <do you hear
eerie music, you know the plot-thickening kind, hmmm it must just be me....>

So as it was about 1:05 we hustled into the first room we saw.  It was a demo
of OS/2 2.0.  There was a gentleman, all decked out in casual jeans, tennis
shoes, and white-IBM shirt, leading the demo.  The room was very nice.  It had
two large screen TV's set into the wall.  One was active with OS/2, the guy
was off the the right manning the computer.

Bob and I noticed that there was a box being passed around.  In it were a
bunch of fortune cookies.  It kind of caused a small interruption in the 
continuity of the show as the demo guy kept asking if everyone had taken one
of the cookies, but somehow he could not hear Bob and I yelling that we did not
have a cookie yet.  Finally we got one, my fortune said, "work smarter
with OS/2".

The demo leader then said, "Does anyone have a cookie that has something
special in it????"  It took literally 10 seconds, but then a guy right in
front said, "Well....mine says that....I get a free copy of OS/2 2.0...."
Well what a lucky guy.  So the demo guy turned around and carefully opened a
cabinet and took out a nice, shrink-wrapped prize!!!  Then there was this guy,
who probably must not have ate for 3 days, who kept eating the cookies.  As
something was being demo'ed it would periodically get drummed out by, "chomp,
chomp, chompchompchomp, hmmm, CHOMP!" 

One thing I found kind of interesting was (from my unique perspective) that
there was a small IBM employee (or maybe it was an Ooompa-loompa...?) in the
code cabinet.  I don't think anyone else could see her.  She was crouched right
next to the stack of free give away code.  I then understood why the demo
leader had opened the cabinet so carefully.  You see the small guard was
armed with a stun gun.  I guess this code is hard to come by!!! :-)

It also looked like she had taken a prisoner.  This "prisoner", who had
obviously tried to do something bad, and had thus received the "shock of his
life" was just lying there motionless, except for the occasional twitch.
He had a crushed can of Jolt in one hand (probably as a result of the
shock).  He had long black hair, a beard, jeans and a Hawaii-type shirt on,
but only one shower shoe (maybe the other flew off in a convulsion).  As the
guard closed the door (it made this sound like stone scraping on stone) it
struck me that I think that I recognized the prisoner.  I can't be sure but
I think this person once wrote a book on OS/2, what was that title, hmmmmmmm,
I think it was something like: "Inside OS/2", or "Outside OS/2", or "Outside
looking at the Inside's of OS/2", or "It's raining outside here, but I really
am looking at the Inside of OS/2" or something along those lines.....  And if
I'm not correct this was also the person who once claimed to have been only
"20 keystrokes away from the OS/2 2.0 source code....and had the audacity to
say that this newsgroup is very hostile. [can you imagine that????]  But what
was he doing here in the Bay Area???  Perhaps the answer had to do with the
small Edmund-Scientific electro-magnet that he was clutching in his other
hand....you know to scramble up that lovely magnetic arrangement that we know
as OS/2 2.0.  Well perhaps someday he'll post on the real reasons behind his
foiled mission.

Every so often during the rest of the demo I'd see some bright flashes of
light from the edges of that cabinet (you know, like from a big Xerox/Kodak
copier) and I would hear this "bzzz.......bzzzz........bzzzzzzzzzzzzz" and
then some evil laughter....and I thought that my James Rockford lock-pick set
might come in handy....silly me.  It looks like IBM was well prepared for
thiefs, impatient upgraders, and "competing company's" multi-skilled sabateurs.

Ok, back to the demo...really.

Like I said this guy is going through some pretty mundane stuff.  Well only
mundane for us comp.os.os2.misc'ers who are "in the know".  He is then
interrupted by some guy in the back asking, "what type of machine are you
running this OS/2 on??"  Well brace yourself for this one gang, I almost had
a heart attack when I heard the following:  [dg=demo guy, qg=question guy]

qg: What type of machine are your running OS/2 on??

dg: A ps/2.

qg: Well what type of ps/2?

dg: One that runs OS/2 well.

qg: [some garbled stuff, basically guy is mad]

dg: It's a 386.

qg: Well what type of 386????????????

dg: 386-20

qg: Well what about the rest of the system??

dg: It has a 120Mb hard disk.

qg: Well I should say that IBM says that OS/2 can run in as little as 4 megs
    of memory.  But ... [he kind of rambled a bit, seemed very nervous] ...
    in my personal opinion you should have 8 megs of memory.  This machine
    has 8Mb of RAM.

Ok now that was a fiasco.  I got the distinct impression that the people in the
room thought that they were in the process of being snowed by the demo guy.  I
was half expecting the demo guy to say that he was running a 486-33 with 32Mb
of RAM.  Most of the people there were from businesses that must have been
specifically invited BY IBM to come to this roll-out.  I don't know why the
demo guy was being so evasive about his system's configuration.  Maybe he just
thought that he was "cheating" (system wise, you know not having a 386sx-16
with only 4Mb of RAM) and didn't want anyone to find out.  It's not like he
was running OS/2 on the Starship Enterprise system or anything like that.
Hmmm, I wonder if IBM is going to port OS/2 over to Data's postitronic brain
architecture ....if they have problems I'm sure Wesley could help.  :-)

So he went on to ask the following question, "well we all know that OS/2 2.0
can have a maximum of 240 DOS sessions open at once.  Theoretically how many
windows sessions can be open at once???"  Well everyone was silent, I didn't
know the answer, neither did Bob.  The demo guy had to prompt people to try and
answer.  Finally a brave lady said, "256".  The demo guy said that is correct.
He walked back to that "cabinet" and took out a copy of OS/2 2.0, walked up to
the lady and said, "Congratulations!!"  I thought that was kind of neat. 
Everyone else could just sit there mumbling, grumbling, cursing, basically
doing anything to try and ignore the lady who was just happy as could be,
laughing and telling her friends, "I won it, I won it!!"

Well then we got some standard demo stuff.  He started up WP 5.1 (DOS) and
Lotus 123 for DOS, at the same time, by highlighting both icons.  That was
neat.

He started up chess.  He said, "it works now, you can lose".

Then he started up neko.  That was fun seeing the cat chase the mouse around.
But then he started up Excell for windows (not sure which version).  I had
to laugh as, right in the middle of explaining how OS/2 has windows support,
neko comes onto the spreadsheet and starts erasing everything in his path.  So
by the time the demo guy saw this, neko had run all the way across the window,
leaving this big, jagged, erased path across all of the cells.  This really
surprised the demo guy.  All he could say was, "well...feature or bug...I
really don't know."

Anyway that was about it.  The demo guy ran out of time.  They were only
doing 30 minute presentations, very basic too.  But I got the impression that
people were really impressed.

Oh I almost forgot to mention one thing.  Right at the end of the demo another
IBM'er walked in with the fishbowl (of business cards).  The fishbowl guy got
on his knees, bowed his head, and raised the bowl to the demo guy and
said, "my lord" (or something like that).  The demo guy picked a card.  It
seemed like he had his hand in the bowl for a long time.  Finally he took a card
out.  But he seemed confused.  Then he calmly looked up and said, "Well is
John Schubert here???" YYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS !
was the only thing I could say.  So here I am, the only guy in the room who
is wearing jeans running between rows of suits to go and claim my prize.  I
was happy, I still am happy.  Happy-happy, so very happy that the people who
are not happy for me should probably skip the next 5 paragraphs or they will
probably be even less happy with me.  I wouldn't want to be accused of
sarcastically hurting anyones feelings, now would I??????????????????????
:-) :-)

I do have to say that there was a very strange look on Bob Cain's face.  It
looked like he was saying: congratulations....you G*d D*amn, M*ther F*cking
S*ithole S*n of a B*tch for winning GA by writing your F*cking name on MY G*d
D*mn business card....G*D D*AMMIT why did I do that, WHY? WHY WHY oh WHY in the
hell did I EVER LET HIM DO THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But then again I could be wrong, perhaps he was just giving me his
philanthropic-congratulatory smile...and I'm sure that pen stuck half way into
the wall right next to him was just a coincidence as well... :-)

Bob, all I can say is, "Thanks".  I couldn't have won the golden code that
everyone else just has to sit and wait for, and fret over not having, and who
try and look for ways to speed up the process, and just have to be patient and
read reports by those, like me, that already, somehow, by the grace of God or
Business Card, have installed it on their systems, and in that installation
process created a very messy desk with all of those 21 disks and manuals now
just sitting there doing nothing except contemplating the existence of all
their fellow IBM OS/2 2.0 disks, that will probably be stuck in the
distribution channel for weeks, while their owners wait for the package to
arrive, of which I was once like since I followed the Timothy Sipples upgrade
deal advice, but who, like Tim, now has a free copy of the code, already
installed, and very playable-with I might add, and now has the luxury of just
sending in the upgrade at our leisure and not caring in the least when it
arrives....hell Tim, let's send in our upgrade form on July 31st just for fun.

Wow did you guys feel that???  It must have been an earthquake, or maybe it
was just everyone, who doesn't have GA, banging on their desks because they
ignored my warning, read the 5 evil paragraphs, and, somehow, were angered....
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

Actually I feel very privileged and lucky, thanks Bob!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But Tim, lets still send in our upgrade forms in 3 months, and mention that in
every post for the next 45 days.

I also went to the Describe session.  The lady there, Merrylee Croslin, was
demonstrating an alpha copy of Describe version 4.0 which, I believe, she
said would be out over the summer.  It looked very nice.

All in all it was a good show.  However I might be just a bit biased on that
fact.  Perhaps we could have a post from one of the unlucky people who had
to just sit there and watch me win a free copy of GA..... :-)


=====================================::::::::::\\\\\\\\\\\\/////////~~~~~~~~~

hokus pokus Bob-a Cain-a canna, hopefully, no reada this parta of the post-us


=====================================::::::::::\\\\\\\\\\\\/////////~~~~~~~~~~

Wow I hoped that worked.  Our local Unix wizard said that the above header
would keep this next part of the post from getting to Bob Cain's system.  I
think he said this would invoke the vooo-dooo part of the newsgroup, since,
he said that OS/2 is all vooo-dooo anyways.  You know [in your best voo-doo
voice] say:

    "Better DOS than DOS.....Better Windows than Windows........ZOMBIE!!!!"

I just have to get something off of my chest.  Later in the day the guys that
drew "my" business card came up to me and said that the reason they had taken
so long was that there was a slight problem during the drawing.  Apparently
they had first drawn one of Bob Cain's unaltered cards, but then noticed that
there was a second one in there as well, you know the one that I had
"accidentally" put in there, thereby disqualifying him from winning the free
copy of GA.  So they had to choose again.  They came up with the card that I
had written my name on, but had to inspect it much more closely to see if it
was a 3rd illegal Bob Cain entry.  When they found that was not the case they
just read my name.

Whew, I feel better now.  I hope Bob never hears about this....I know I can
trust all of you to keep silent about this as this is not a gossip-prone group.
:-) :-)

-John Schubert
schubert@united.berkeley