Xref: utzoo rec.humor:18610 rec.humor.d:1567 comp.misc:4963
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cetron
From: cetron@wasatch.UUCP (Edward J Cetron)
Newsgroups: rec.humor,rec.humor.d,comp.misc
Subject: Re: Looking for Computer Folklore
Message-ID: <1065@wasatch.UUCP>
Date: 8 Feb 89 04:40:41 GMT
References: <7143@pyr.gatech.EDU> <532@geovision.UUCP> <4575@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM> <799@n8emr.UUCP>
Reply-To: cetron@wasatch.utah.edu.UUCP (Edward J Cetron)
Organization: Morrison-Knudsen, Industrial Buildings Division, SLC, UT
Lines: 41

In article <799@n8emr.UUCP> lwv@n8emr.UUCP (Larry W. Virden) writes:
>
>I dont know if anyone else has repeated this one or not.  I was at a DECUS
>conference about 6 yrs ago when a system programmer was laughing about
>programming a Dec machine to seek around on a disk drive enough to cause the
>cabinet to rock.  Apparently this became some sort of a game, so that they
>actually wrote programs to make the drive cabinet walk around the room to 
>particular locations...

	Well, the DECUS part is right, the rest of the story sounds right, so
I guess this was me....but Larry, you left out WHY we made the RP's wander!

	Seems I was a young hotshot programmer-type and was working in the
corporate research unit of a big company (lets see, it makes LOTS of bandaids).
Well, it was the first time I ever used a machine with a disk drive in a room
that I could find (much less have permission to enter).  Never having had a
computer with version numbers before (this was RSX-11M 3.0 - dating myself
huh?) I never purged my directory.  Also given that I was hacking an immense
Data-entry and retrieval system in Fortran-IV (more dating (-: ), TKB would
do intense things to the drive, which was fragmented beyond belief.  This
tended to upset the system manager, one Mark Googleman, no end, since he'd
have to move the beast back into position.  Since two hackers on one machine
naturally tend to competition (could you crack into the machine, get priv'ed,
and log the other off BEFORE they noticed and logged you off?) and I was
embarassed when confronted with the proof that this was my fault, I naturally
bluffed my way out explaining that I was doing on purpose.  Well, one thing
led to another, and it became a ritual to leave taped papers to the floor with
one's name on it in the computer room.  The object was to spend as much time
from 9:00pm until 7:00am WITHOUT ENTERING THE COMPUTER ROOM, running programs,
doing TKB's etc, in order to move the RP's in a fixed manner.  In the morning,
the person with the disk drive closest to their name won the pool of money.

	I had slowly become the 'hardware champion' until one day Mark
managed to program the tape drive for christmas carols...sigh, I was so
devastated that I didn't even take up his challenge to make the RP's perform
accompaniment......

-ed cetron

(but no list of computer folklore can be complete without the "always mount
a scratch monkey" story... The originator was/is on the net somewhere.....)