No flying grapefruit?

Back in the mid-1960s, this pilot fish has worked his way up to lead operator in a computer room with an IBM mainframe. What's unusual about that?

"We had an IBM 7010 -- 80K of memory, 16 9-track tape drives -- for processing, and several peripheral computers used for printing at a major stock exchange in Chicago," fish says.

"One oh-dark-30 shift, both the shift and assistant shift supervisor called in sick, so I ran the 7010 and the shift."

Nothing happens that fish can't handle, and he meets all the job deadlines. But one of the tape drives causes problems all night.

Fish knows one of the shift supervisor's responsibilities is updating the "flash report," which is used to communicate any problems or exceptions to the next shift and to management.

So he logs a flash report entry: "Drive 183 is NFG."

Next morning, he's called on the carpet by the assistant operation manager.

"We all knew what 'NFG' stands for and it was regularly used in the organization," says fish. "Unknown to me, it was never, ever used in the flash report.

"Thinking quickly on my feet, I said that it didn't have the usual meaning, but meant 'not for George,' meaning don't show the problem to the operations manager, George.

"After he stopped laughing, the assistant ops manager said, 'Get the @#$%! out of here and don't do that again.'"

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