RE: BRMS holiday experience

I'll have to digest most of your post before responding to all of it, but
I'll start now:

> #1 - A "Scratch Pool" is just a bunch of tapes that have been 
> initialized by BRMS. Usually this is done via the INZMEDBRM command.

I have _never_ been able to initialize a new blank tape in either 3581 I
have to a name I want.  I have spent hours and hours on more than one
occasion to no avail.  I have tried INZTAP and INZMEDBRM.  I have physically
loaded it into the drive via front panel controls and I have mounted it thru
WRKMLBBRM.  The only thing I was ever able to do was intialize to "BLK001".
That's it.  I have always ended up doing:

1) VRYCFG TAPMLBxx *OFF
2) VRYCFG TAPxx *ON
3) Initialize
4) VRYCFG TAPxx *OFF 
5) VRYCFG TAPMLBxx *ON

> Give each tape a unique Volume Serial Number and let BRMS 
> control when a tape can be used based on expiration date.

My tapes names are unique and expire when I want (except for this holiday
thing).  And they have a name that means something.  Why does everybody tell
me to do it another way?  This is the simplest way I could come up with for
the operator.