Well it's Tuesday again, and you know what that means? Announcements! Tomorrow marks my 35th service anniversary with IBM!

To mark the occasion, this is my second of five posts to remember my career, seven years at a time. This post covers my memories from 1994 to 2000.

Promotion to Advisory level Programmer

DFHSM was merged into a new larger product called Data Facility Storage Management Subsystem (DFSMS), becoming the DFSMShsm element. In 1994, I was promoted to Advisory level programmer, which IBM refers to internally as "Band 8". I worked my way up, first as a team leader for various line items and features, then chief architect of DFSMShsm, then chief architect of DFSMS, in its entirety, sharing the role with Savur Rao, who was located in San Jose, California.

A trip to Japan

In 1994, IBM sent me to Japan for a business trip.

While there, my American Express card was declined. I went to the American Express office.

• Was there an outstanding balance? Nothing more than 30 days, and all expenses were related to the trip I was currently on.
• Was there a problem with the magnetic stripe? No, it read correctly, despite the humidity.
• Was I still employed by IBM? When the AMEX person asked me this, I was floored? Of course, I was still employed at IBM, I am on a business trip on their behalf!

Confused and panicked, I called my then manager, B.J. Klingenberg, who explained to me the situation. Apparently, our new CEO, Lou Gerstner, had abandoned IBM's decades-old "Respect for the Individual" no lay-off policy, and instead of asking for volunteers, as they had done with the FAP in 1986, they were going to reduce headcount directly.

Management decided they needed to get rid of 130 people in my area, so 650 employees were selected. If you were on the list, you would have the option to voluntarily go. If they did not have enough to meet their target after eight weeks, than an outside third-party firm would be given a list of serial numbers that don't contain any hint of name, rank, or race associated with each employee. These third-party consultants would then randomly cross off 130 of the names, and those would be notified that they have been let go.

Because of time zones, Japan was one day ahead of United States, IBM suspended all corporate credit cards to those 650 employees before the list was announced. They would later re-instate the cards for those that were not crossed after the eight-week period. I explained to BJ that I had no intention of volunteering, and that five of the eight weeks were already book for IBM business trips, and what was I going to do without a credit card? He worked with HR to get my card re-activated, as an exception.

When I got back to the IBM Japan office in Makurahi, I explained my situation to them. They offered me a job right away! Each country has its own IBM subsidiary, so if IBM USA laid me off, IBM Japan could offer me a job on the spot, and were ready to do so, having seen me in action with customers already. Fortunately, I was not crossed off, so was able to keep my job in Tucson.

The end of Apartheid in South Africa

Later that year, in May, I was sent to South Africa. I was joined by colleagues from United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands. The four of us were sent to South Africa to re-establish IBM Business Partner relations, now that Apartheid policy was ended. We gave presentations on our latest set of storage products.

It was a scary time. Taxi drivers were throwing grenades into the cabs of their competitors, so I was advised to walk to the IBM building every day instead, hoping not to be mugged by thieves wanting my laptop.

At one evening event, a waiter presented the four of us a tray with a dozen chocolates. I declined, explaining my aversion to chocolate. The other three said, "Great, that leaves more for the rest of us!" However, when they bit into them, they realized these were chocolate-covered cockroaches. They asked me if I knew there were cockroaches inside, and I responded "I didn't, I could have eaten them as just cockroaches, but couldn't because of the chocolate!"

An unexpected raise

Back then, IBMers were ranked on a scale of 1 to 4:

1. Exceed expectations
2. Meet expectations
3. Below expectations
4. Your job is at risk

I was consistently a "1-performer", so got annual raises every April. So in September 1995, my then manager, Thaine Creitz, told me I was getting another raise. Not to complain, but why? He explained that since my divorce was final last month (August), he put in for a raise, because divorcees make better employees.

This apparently was general consensus of nearly every manager I worked for in IBM, on the premise that IBM divorcees are not distracted, and their loyalty to the company was not spread thin from familial obligations, as they are for the married folks.

My Rabbit story

In 1996, I published my first story. A comic book illustrator, Ted Rall, had asked out on the internet for stories of the worst thing they had done. Ted received over 600 submissions. I submitted my rabbit story, and made it as a finalist. This was my go-to story to warm up an audience, when I was working with a client, or teaching a class. Being able to tell one story confidently well, allowed me to hone my storytelling techniques. My rabbit story was also published in the monthly "Funny Times", in its entirety, as an example story to help promote Ted Rall's book.

Side note: One time, my sister was on a flight, and the man next to her told her the rabbit story, as if it was his own. My sister told him that the originator was her older brother, and he should be ashamed for pretending otherwise!

In December, I was contacted by Ted Rall's agent. They were inviting the contributors to the book to a talk show, hosted by Ricki Lake, up against members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). The talk show would cover all expenses, including round-trip air fare to New York city, hotel accommodations, transportation and meals.

I was all set to go, but sadly, we had a customer situation in Japan. Since I had been there many times before, my manager asked me to go. I had to bow out of my television appearance.

I no longer tell that story, as a few of my co-workers have complained about its content, and I have many other stories that are more recent. However, if you are interested, you can find it under "Lapicide" in Ted Rall's book [Real Americans Admit: "The Worst Thing I've Ever Done"], or ask me to tell you next time I see you in person.

The Y2K crisis

In the last 1990s, my team realized that the Year 2000 might cause computer problems, as we often only looked at the last two digits. In some places, we had changed the DFSMS code to be more resilient, adopting a window that mapped 77-99 as 1977-1999, and 00-76 as 2000 to 2076. In other cases, where we marked a tape to expire "99365" as a way to indicate "keep forever, never expire", we had to make sure the code treated this date correctly, even in the next millennium.

Unfortunately, after several versions and releases, nobody bothered to re-test these changes, and our customers discovered a few things were broken when the ball dropped on January 1, 2000.

While keeping it mostly out of the news, there were problems in nearly every industry, from air traffic control to credit card processing. My team would spend an intense month of January fixing problems in the code.

Promotion to Senior Software Engineer

My leadership handling the Y2K crisis got noticed, and I was promoted to Senior level, internally called band 9, and earned some IBM Stock options! Woo hoo!

Where are they now?

BJ Klingenberg retired from IBM, and is now a Lecturer at California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo, California. Ted Rall lives in Los Angeles, but no longer is a cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times newspaper, and we communicate regularly on Facebook. Ricki Lake's talk show ended in 2004, and most recently she has competed in reality shows like "The Masked Singer" and "The X Factor: Celebrity".

This week, I am celebrating by taking the week off for much needed vacation. If you enter comments below, I may not get to them until I return.