Xref: utzoo comp.misc:4949 rec.humor:18587 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!rn10+ From: rn10+@andrew.cmu.edu (Ronald J. Notarius) Newsgroups: comp.misc,rec.humor Subject: Re: Looking for Computer Folklore Message-ID: Date: 7 Feb 89 16:14:05 GMT References: <7143@pyr.gatech.EDU> <532@geovision.UUCP> <768@ur-cc.UUCP> <1356@umbio.MIAMI.EDU> <2859@ddsw1.MCS.COM>, <380@atlas.tegra.UUCP> Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 25 In-Reply-To: <380@atlas.tegra.UUCP> This isn't directly about computers, but... My father was a Mecanical Engineer for RCA's old tube plant in Harrison, NJ. When they laid him off (he simultaneously got a letter from David Sarnoff, congratulating him on the patent for a new process he had come up with, with the layoff notice) he ended up with a small company called National Berellyia (sp?) Corporation. They transfered him from NNJ to their plant outside of Doylestown, PA, where he was set to designing a new IC package to compete with the (then relatively new) DIP package. He performed fabulously, meeting all of the specs set down to him by his boss. They presented it to the client, who said: "I love it, it's beautiful, but -- that's not what I wanted, and I can't use it!" Another design of his was taken to a trade show, given a host of orders...and then the plant gave one delay after another after another... Smell a rat? So did the SEC. When they walked in and took over, they discovered nice little cost overruns -- like the $1000 in gold bathroom fixtures charged (by the company president) to Dad's accounts! The company president fled to Switzerland with $2 million of embezzeled cash, the plant was shut down, and now my Dad runs an Iron Works. Anyone need any railings?