Most of the guests at the visitation were family and the closest friends of the family. I failed to recognize many of them.
The folks who live in the D.C. area worked for the IRS, DHS, DoJ, Census Bureau and DoD. Most of them worked in IT and most of them were "contractors".
I overheard them chuckling. Another batch of new bosses blew in. The new bosses looked at the mainframes and COBOL programming and announced "This will never do!"
Once again the peons had to lead the bosses with little baby-steps. "It ain't the cost of the hardware, which is trivial. It ain't the cost of the programming which is not trivial. It is the cost of the validation, which is ENORMOUS."
So the US Government will continue to sail along on ancient but proven technology buried deep beneath the ground. Think of it as being like ancient plumbing. And like old plumbing, anybody with two brain cells to rub together is loath to start working on it because the pipes crumble beneath your tools and once started, you have no control over how deeply you must demo before you get solid pipe to latch onto.
I recall the passing of my grandmother. She was the daughter of a homesteader in the late 1800's in ND. Born in 1900. Seems like she passed in 1996. Not many peers like you say. Her pallbearers where all grand sons or grandsons-in-law. It was quite a tribute in my mind for those eight strapping men, essentially her descendants to heft the coffin and take it to the site. Not that it took much as she was about 4'10" but all business. She would roll that tooth pick to the corner of her mouth, point a long bony finger and admonish you to clean your plate. Still do it to this day.
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