So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

In October 1985 the very first CICS Update was put together. Since the summer that year, articles had been coming in to the Xephon office. Created on an Apple II using the Zardax word processing program, the first issue of CICS Update was printed out and sent to the printers at the beginning of November. Early in December, issue 1 arrived on the desks of subscribers. The Updates were born.

I wasn't there for the launch, I joined Xephon in February 1986. Soon there was VM Update and MVS Update. Next came VSE Update and VSAM Update. Then TCP Update and RACF Update. Others came and went, some quicker than others. There was Web Update, Oracle Update, NT Update, and Notes Update. In the end there was AIX Update, CICS Update, DB2 Update, z/OS Update, WebSphere Update, TCP/SNA Update, and RACF Update.

For the past four years, I have been editing all of them – but no longer. The new editor is Amy Novotny, who you may know from her work on TCI Publication's zJournal. If you do have any articles you want to contribute to the Updates, you can send them to her at amy@tcipubs.com.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish is of course the title of the fourth book in Douglas Adams' Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy(!), and was published in 1984. It's what all the whales say when they leave Earth, just before the Vogon fleet arrives.

Good luck to Amy and the Updates in the future.
And if you need to get in contact with me, you can use trevor@itech-ed.com.
See you around...