Jolt Country

Happy birthday, Paul! I think you might have missed the birthday thread I created for you last year since you never replied to it so I'm going with a more attention-grabbing title this time around. All the nice things we said about you last year still apply, and you remain just as inspirational and beloved around here as ever.

The Pascal compiler you're working on is cool. It takes courage to step up and take something on like that. I'm able to talk myself out of doing most new things that occur to me with the no time excuse, but even if I did have the time my tendency to procrastinate and the ever-lingering fear of failure are always hard to overcome. XD Pascal seems like a perfect side project since it's already reasonably mature and doesn't have a large or overly demanding user base. You can fix bugs and gradually improve it at your own pace...and still have plenty of time to spend with your friends here on JC!

In retrospect, I should have referenced COBOL in the subject line. It seems so obvious now. My bad!

Happy birthday, Commander!

I think we should repurpose this thread so it's for secret messages we might not want Paul to read. This is obviously the safest place on the BBS for it given that recent events demonstrated that even PMs aren't necessarily eternally private.

So, anyone planning a CHRISTMAS SURPRISE for the Commander this year? A Starburst gift basket? A hard drive gift basket? A Jerry's pizza gift basket?

Happy birthday!

bryanb wrote: Fri Nov 27, 2020 12:09 pm In retrospect, I should have referenced COBOL in the subject line. It seems so obvious now. My bad!

What is this hard-on you guys have with associating me with Cobol? I haven't written any Cobol in more than 35 years and haven''t programmed professionally using it.

Tdarcos wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 5:18 am What is this hard-on you guys have with associating me with Cobol? I haven't written any Cobol in more than 35 years and haven''t programmed professionally using it.

Can we get this written on his cake, BryanB?

Flack wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 6:20 am

Tdarcos wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 5:18 am What is this hard-on you guys have with associating me with Cobol? I haven't written any Cobol in more than 35 years and haven''t programmed professionally using it.

Can we get this written on his cake, BryanB?

This is exactly the kind of top secret topic I want this thread to be used for. I've actually already called up the COBOL bakery and am weighing our options as we speak. They're pushing the Grace Hopper and IDENTIFICATION DIVISION. PROGRAM-ID. HELLO-WORLD. PROCEDURE DIVISION. DISPLAY 'Hello world!'. STOP RUN. cakes pretty hard, but they do offer custom cakes as well.

Does anyone believe for a second that Paul didn't find this thread by doing a forum search for COBOL? Search really came through for us this time. Thanks, phpBB!

Also, can you surround the message with (. and .) ?

Asking for a friend.

Also if you could draw (.)(.) on it I would appreciate it. That's more for me than the friend.

What is IBM's favorite color for their mainframes?

COBOLt blue, of course. They don't call IBM "Big Blue" for nothing.