The first thing you need to know about this article is that it was written in February. The next thing you'll want to know is that I was on the big island of Hawaii at the time. Having dispensed a hearty dose of island-envy, I can proceed to tell you that my host was a remarkable octogenarian known in these parts as Doc Boone. He is a multifaceted individual, but his life's accomplishments are eclipsed by a sobering and shriveling fact-he is surely the only man on the planet to have performed his own vasectomy.

Segueing from vasectomies to computers is not simple, but suffice it to say that para-dise is fully computerized in support of the transport, feeding, entertainment, and lodging of the tourist. The AS/400 is a popular tool for hotel management.

Gloria Krier is the reservations manager at the Kona Surf. She has lived on the Big Island for nine years. Originally from Minnesota, she worked as an integrated circuit designer in California before abandoning the high stress and high pay of high tech for the softer stresses of island life.

The hotel's room inventory system runs on a five-year-old AS/400. "Economy and reliability are important here," explains Krier. "Life is expensive in the islands, and tourism is the primary source of revenue both for residents and the government. The tourism industry is heavily taxed since public services have few alternate funding sources. So we watch our expenses."

Adds Krier, "We have no money for frills, and staffing is minimal. When we find something that works, we stick with it. The AS/400 has been great in that regard. It was inexpensive to buy, and I can't remember the system ever being down."

Krier's data processing staff consists of two part-time data entry clerks (one of whom also does the nightly backups), and a consultant. The consultant installs PTFs and performs minimal system management functions, acting as the replacement for the IBM branch office that was downsized out of paradise in January of this year.

But I'm on vacation, so enough business for the moment. I want to go snorkeling and Doc tells me about the Captain Cook Monument reserve. He says most people kayak across the mile-wide bay to reach the reserve, but he winks and tells me to swim instead. I am exactly half-way across, tiring, and plotting my revenge on the good doctor when the dolphins come.

While dolphins, too, have endured downsizing, they are not affected by the island's fiscal and technical frugality born of isolation. That singular factor inhibits island-based midrange users from exercising the full potential of their AS/400s. Krier, for example, runs monthly reports, then manually plugs data into a PC spreadsheet rather than employ the data sharing capabilities of the system. "We would like to automate the forecasting and monthly recap process," says Krier, "but can't afford the programming costs. Besides," she notes, "it really isn't very time consuming to do it manually."

Simplicity and economy are themes echoed by other AS/400 customers, particularly long-time residents of the islands. Newer arrivals, accustomed to the mainland's support-rich technical environment, talk wistfully about application backlogs and ideas for new development projects. Locals, by contrast, seem resigned, if not content, to work within geographic and economic constraints.

Gary, an employee of a dive shop (recommended by Doc for its night dives) and relatively new to the islands, has a novel idea for an AS/400 application. "The safety of our customers," he said, "is always our primary concern. Scuba divers are required by law to provide proof of certification before we can take them diving, or rent them equipment, or even fill their tanks. We've had divers come here from the mainland who forgot their certification cards. That makes for frustrated and unhappy customers and lost business opportunities."

Gary wants to establish a computer link with the two primary scuba certifying organizations, NAUI and PADI. A simple driver's license could then be used to match a customer's name against those in the certification database. The remote systems could provide the dive shop with verification of certification, and the local system could update the host with a transaction date and the number of dives contracted by the customer. Over time, dive shops would have access to a complete diver's profile, including date of last dive and total number of dives made by the customer. "That would help us identify those customers with little or infrequent diving experience who may need special attention but are reluctant to ask for it," said Gary.

Such an application could well be marketable to other dive shops, but the cost and complexity-which would be moderate on the mainland, explains Gary-made it prohibitive here. "The nice-to-have applications," he said, "seldom make it to the front burner."

I tell Gary about my swim with the dolphins, bullet quick, ballet graceful, gracious beyond human merit, and inquire about the night dive. He tells me it's an opportunity to watch mantas feed, close up. He explains that mantas, with their stealth-technology sleekness and six-foot wing spans, feed on plankton, which are attracted to light. Accustomed to divers and artificial light, the mantas gather, unafraid, to feed. I'm hooked. A few hours later, swaying on the bottom of the ocean, I watch enchanted as they glide past me, looping in slow, graceful spirals, mouths open, eyes ancient and wise, looking squarely into mine.

Back at Doc's, serendipity. Doc has a visitor, an archeologist from the midwest who first met Doc when she did research on the big island over a decade ago. She's here to dot the i's on a project that would transpose dry, lugubrious field work into multimedia computerized presentations for students. I ask what system she's using. PCs at the moment, she says, but her department is requisitioning an RS/6000. Have I heard of it?

She has my attention. The island, she explains, is basically a pile of lava. Over the centuries, newer lava flows cut underground channels called lava tubes through previously hardened lava. The island is honeycombed with them and ancient Hawaiians used these chambers to entomb their honored dead. Her plan is to remap earlier findings and, with computer graphics and video, to reproduce a "field experience" for desk-bound students.

That field experience, she tells me, will include a spectacular geological segment on how the island was-and still is-being formed. Lava, I'm told, still flows from the flanks of the Kilauea caldera some 16 miles to the sea. By day, the steam plumes created by the interaction of earth, fire, air, and water can be seen from 20 miles away. But the spectacle begins by night.

Standing by the ocean, I can see gashes of molten lava on the black hillsides. It flows, mostly unseen, cracking the earth's crust at irregular intervals, leaving red wounds on the nightscape. Slowly, inexorably, the crimson mass inches toward the sea, where it oozes and slides into the ocean; two primal forces locked in the sizzling combat of creation.

The students, I think, will not be disappointed.

Victor Rozek has 17 years of experience in the data processing industry, including seven years with IBM in Operations Management and Systems Engineering.