Copyright 1995-2016 by Kevin G. Barkes

All rights reserved. This article may be duplicated or
redistributed provided no alterations of any kind are
made to this file.

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DCL DIALOGUE

Hidden Lines in the Bottom Line

Originally published June, 1995

By Kevin G. Barkes

As a one-person business, time is especially valuable to me.
That's because the product I'm selling is my time, and
there's a finite amount available. So, like many
consultants, I try to structure my operations to keep
non-billable time to a minimum.

Of course, I also have to keep an eye on business expenses.
Every dollar I save in my cost of doing business is an extra
dollar in my pocket.

A business consultant friend of mine was attempting to
branch into the home-based business field. He felt he could
make a fortune applying the high-powered cost control
knowledge he had gained from consulting with
Fortune-whatever companies to small businesspersons like me.

However, he did acknowledge there were some cultural
differences between huge corporations and outfits like mine,
run by guys who work in their basesments in their underwear
while watching Dragnet reruns on Nick at Night.

He offered to give me a free review of my operations to help
him get a feel for the issues unique to small operations
even though, he quickly pointed out, business was business,
regardless of size.

I gave him my books and a week later sat down with him to
take a look at how I could make myself more profitable.

Noting that my expenses seemed about normal, Mr. Bean
Counter zeroed in on the category of computer hardware and
software support costs. "This seems kind of high," he told
me. "How many PCs do you have?"

"Six or seven," I replied, "but none of the hardware and
software support costs are for the PCs. They're all for my
VAXstation hardware support and full OpenVMS software
support."

Mr. Bean had never heard of OpenVMS. "Can't you switch
everything over to PCs?" he asked. "You could save a lot of
money by getting rid of those exorbitant support charges."

He gave me a funny look as I dissolved into laughter.

"Let me explain it to you," I said. "The software that I use
for the core of my revenue-producing business is on the VAX.
It's also the server for all the PCs, and I put all critical
DOS applications on the VAX so I can access them from any of
the PCs. That way, if a PC goes down I can continue running
from another PC on the network.

"The per day cost of VAX and VMS support equals about 20
minutes of my normal hourly consulting charge.

"The only unscheduled downtime I had on the VAX last year
was from power failures. I spend about 40 minutes a day
doing restarts of Windows when it runs out of resources, and
rebooting PCs that hang for various reasons or have to be
reconfigured to run specific applications.

"If I could, I'd get rid of the PCs completely and run
everything on the VAX. If that were possible, I'd be able to
add an extra 40 minutes a day to my available billable time,
which would not only pay for the cost of hardware and
software maintenance but generate enough extra cash to
cover, say, my long distance phone expenses.

"As far as I'm concerned, every dollar I spend in VAX and
VMS support makes me two dollars of additional profit," I
concluded.

Mr. Bean sat quietly for a minute. I could see the inner
turmoil in his eyes: cold, hard bottom-line numbers versus
intelligent, rational business management and system design.

"I'd get rid of that VAX thing," he said, finally. "Now
about those subscriptions to Starlog and these rubber
chicken purchases from the Archie McPhee catalog..."

Thank goodness the CEO of my company understands
computers...

*******************
One-Line Wonder

Al Zirkle of the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren,
VA offers an interesting DCL quiz he concocted:

"Given integer DCL symbol Y containing a year after 1858,
compute DCL symbol L which is TRUE if and only if Y is a
leap year. Do this using only DCL, and in as few statements
and characters as possible."

Give up?

Here's Al's solution:

"I can do it in one statement totalling 36 characters:"
 
$ y=2000
 
$ l=3-f$cvt("28-feb-''y'+1-",,"month")
 
Symbol L will be either integer 0 or 1.
 
"As you can see," Al explains, "it relies on the fact that,
on a leap year, the day after February 28 is in month number
2, but in other years it is in month number 3.
 
"I would never use this code in a production procedure,
because not only would nobody else ever understand it, but
neither would I after a few weeks.  Also, I consider it a
very bad idea to abbreviate anything in a procedure (like
F$CVT for F$CVTIME)," Al explains.

Do you have a one-line wonder or a Stupid DCL trick you'd
like to share? Send them to me at any of the addresses
listed below.
 
*******************

Kevin G. Barkes is an independent consultant who wonders
when the crack financial analysts will blast DEC for not
having an "Analog Unix" to go along with its "Digital Unix"
offering. Kevin lurks on comp.os.vms and can be reached at
kgbarkes@gmail.com.