Re: More on AS400 Signon screen

["Booth Martin" <Booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 A useful tool if you go this route is Figlet, downloadable and free.  It
creates ASCII Art text for you, so you can make a text based heading.  (I
use it for reports also.  Its still primative but its at least simple and
adds a little flavor to the screens & reports.

An example (if this will post ok) is this:
          _     __
  __ _   (_)___/ /____ ___ _ ___  ___ _ ___    ____ ___   __ _
 /  ' \ / // _  // __// _ `// _ \/ _ `// -_)_ / __// _ \ /  ' \
/_/_/_//_/ \_,_//_/   \_,_//_//_/\_, / \__/(_)\__/ \___//_/_/_/
                                /___/




---------------------------------------------------------
Booth Martin   http://www.MartinVT.com
Booth@MartinVT.com
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-------Original Message-------

From: midrange-l@midrange.com
Date: Saturday, November 30, 2002 05:21:46 AM
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject: Re: More on AS400 Signon screen

Hello Trevor,

You wrote:
>I was wondering why we so often feel the need to change the signon

>screen. Our companies/customers are paying us to provide services that

>allow their businesses to operate. How is it that we, the service

>provider, find that we can charge our time for modifying the signon

>screen - something that has (IMHO) zero business value?


Many (most) companies don't charge for IT time so they consider it
free. It is usually done by an employee and therefore considered free.

I change the signon screen for the following reasons:

1/ To put my stamp on the system
2/ To hide unnecessary fields (INLMNU, INLPGM, CURLIB)
3/ To create a notice board
4/ To display a 'quote of the day'
5/ To show hardware, software and PTF levels
6/ To indicate status and availability of systems in a network
7/ To obviously differentiate multiple systems
8/ To display the company logo
9/ To regurgitate corporate bullshit (e.g., mission statement)
10/ To display usage requirements (e.g., approved purposes only)
11/ To prove I can do this without embarrasing myself

>I ask this a lot of my customers when I am refacing applications, and

>the general answer is "because we can". I am very interested in other

>"reasons" or reasoning. Is this one of the few times we can be

>artists? What positive business impact does it have?


Who cares? "Because I can" is good enough!

Regards,
Simon Coulter.