elcome to my home page

Robert Gilsdorf
Computer Systems Engineer
RIG@centuryinter.net

I am Bob Gilsdorf. I am an IBM certified Technical Specialist AS/400 working for Sophisticated Systems, Inc out of their Birmingham, Michigan office as the Senior Technical Consulatant for the AS/400 computer system. I have been at the AS/400 and S/38 operating systems since IBM first announced them in the early '80s. If you need any help in this area, feel free to call us at 248-594-6317. Currently, we are working on Y2K projects for our customers. We have completed millions of lines of code for several customers. We can handle both re-coding and testing AS/400 application code. We are now gearing up to handle e-business and will soon be an IBM e-business partner.

I live in Grand Blanc, Michigan which is a suburb of Flint, Michigan. The weather here is:

My interests are varied including history, SCUBA diving, astronomy, computer programming, and science fiction. I like anything to do with technical innovation. I like Star Trek too even though I don't consider myself a "Trekkie" as such. Hobbies include counted cross stitch too (whenever I get the time)..

I haven't SCUBA dived in a long time, but I intend to start back again. I was NAUI certified back in 1970. I used to do a lot of diving near Alpena, Michigan, the ship wreck capital of Lake Huron. I know lots of shipwrecks there.

I like watching Star Trek, Babylon 5, and Farscape. I am a bit of a Sci-Fi junkie, but only for the good stuff. I don't think much of the horror movies or the "alien invader" movies that masquerade as Sci-Fi. A good Sci-Fi has humans in space ships or in the future coping with problems as they arise and not running around and screaming and getting killed. The best Sci-Fi says things about how people react and use their knowledge.

I read a lot of science fiction. My favorite author is James Hogan. I read many authors indiscriminately, but I like the way Hogan brings up ideas on many levels and uses Sci-Fi to say things that would turn into political "Hot Buttons" if said right out.

I like keeping up on anything dealing with astronomy and astrophysics. The makeup of this universe tells us a lot about how things go together. Space exploration is something I follow closely. I think space exploration and its spinoffs benefit us far more than many suspect. Check out APOD for some great pictures. ( The picture to the right is a GIF of Mars.)

To relax, I sometimes do counted cross-stitch. I generally get a picture I like and copy it onto a grid and use tear-away waste cloth to put it on a shirt. I take a long time to put a 14-count picture on a shirt, but I'm only doing it to relax anyway.

Feel free to email me at my address above if you share any of my interests.

Line Art I keep working on this page.I want to to put a lot of cool graphics and links later. I've got a lot of stuff, just no time to put it all together. I am pretty good at web pages and Java. Here is some stuff I did already. I put them here because they are no good for anything else and take too much time to paint up on the information "Slow-per" highway.
Watchtower - I made up this for a logo for Watchtower Recordings but it took too long to paint up to too any real good, so I put it here. Cool Java graphic applet.

CPYSPLF (700K)- Here is some AS/400 CGI stuff. It is a spool to HTML CGI using ILE RPG. There has been some demand for this software as it allows you to place output that would normally be printed in a browser window and save paper. It is a ZIP file with a save file inside. Once you download this to your PC and unzip it, copy it to the AS.400 using FTP and the BINARY mode transfer into a save file that you must first create using the CRTSAVF command. CA/400 can also transmit this using no translation, but FTP is better. The save file is at V3R7M0.

Also if you like this technique of sending SAVF over the internet, you will be happy to know it works on e-mail too as long as it's not too big.