1. We’re back from Japan
2. Please welcome Clark Kidd
3. TUNING Letter 2002, No. 6
4. Updated CPU Chart
5. SHARE in Dallas
6. Happy New Year!

1.  We’re back from Japan

We had such a great time touring the Japanese pottery towns that we extended our trip.  We missed our home and work, and were especially ready to leave when snow fell in Tokyo the day we were departing.  We’re awfully partial to sunny Florida.  Email in Japan was seldom a problem but we should be able to reply to technical correspondence a little more quickly now.

2.  Please welcome Clark Kidd

Our biggest news is the addition of Clark Kidd to our company.  He starts January 1, 2003, and we think he’s a perfect match for us.  Cheryl and Clark have known one another for several years, and have traded war stories at SHARE and CMG.  He previously worked for ASG (Landmark) and Legent (Morino Associates), and brings to Watson & Walker an extensive knowledge of WebSphere, UNIX, open systems, capacity planning, I/O systems, and many other areas.  And he writes like a dream!  (So does his wife Kathy, an author in her own right.)  We’ll have more information about him in the next TUNING Letter.  You’ll be very pleased with the new material from Clark in upcoming issues.  You can contact him at clark@watsonwalker.com.  Please join us in our very enthusiastic welcome for Clark!

3.  TUNING Letter 2002, No. 6

TUNING Letter No. 6, the last issue of 2002, should be emailed to electronic subscribers within the next two weeks.  Print subscribers should look for their copies to follow shortly thereafter.

4.  Updated CPU Chart

The March 2002 CPU Chart (revised April 2002) will have one more update this year.  In October, IBM announced a z800 model 0E1, a 40-MIPS model, which makes it the smallest z800 and the smallest IBM machine to support z/OS without emulation.  In December, IBM announced a z800-0X2, a 2-way machine that comes in at about 160 MIPS.  A completely new CPU Chart will be sent to electronic subscribers and the additions will be sent to print customers next week.

5.  SHARE in Dallas

The spring SHARE conference will be held in Dallas, Texas February 23-28.  There are registration discounts until January 10th, so you may want to register as soon as possible.  Go to http://www.share.org for registration, hotels, and to see the agenda.  There are fewer sessions this year (the economy is hurting everyone), but the quality of the sessions is as good as ever.  SHARE is my main training conference.  I’ll be giving my “Cheryl’s Hot Flashes” in session 2543 on Friday at 9:30 a.m.  Clark will be giving session 2928, “Tuning z/OS for WAS 4.0.1,” on Thursday at 11 a.m.  We’ll both be spending a lot of time with our two favorite SHARE projects: EWCP (Enterprise Wide Capacity and Performance) and MVSO (MVS Open and Distributed).

6.  Happy New Year!

We hope you all had a wonderful holiday and we wish you a wonderful new year, hopefully one filled with more, not less, peace.

Stay tuned!