Xref: utzoo rec.humor:18626 rec.humor.d:1575 comp.misc:4977 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!granite!tp From: tp@granite.dec.com (t patterson) Newsgroups: rec.humor,rec.humor.d,comp.misc Subject: Re: Looking for Computer Folklore Keywords: scratch monkey Message-ID: <396@granite.dec.com> Date: 8 Feb 89 16:24:23 GMT References: <7143@pyr.gatech.EDU> <532@geovision.UUCP> <4575@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM> <799@n8emr.UUCP> <1065@wasatch.UUCP> Reply-To: tp@granite.DEC.COM (t patterson) Organization: DEC WSE, Palo Alto, Ca Lines: 86 in the computer folklore vein... >From: cetron@wasatch.UUCP (Edward J Cetron) >-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.....) I looked in the ol' archives, and, sure enough, I'd saved the "always mount a scratch monkey" story: :Path: topaz!ll-xn!nike!ucbcad!ucbvax!decwrl!postpischil@being.dec.com :>From: postpischil@being.dec.com (Always mount a scratch monkey.) :Newsgroups: net.jokes :Subject: Rape, a bathroom, and a monkey :Date: 21 Aug 86 15:35:45 GMT :Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation :Lines: 109 : :... : -- edp : Eric Postpischil : "Always mount a scratch monkey." :... : : :Next, we have the Scratch Monkey story. : : Seems one day Bud was sitting at his desk when the phone rang. : : Bud: Hello. : Voice: YOU KILLED MABEL!! : B: Excuse me? : V: YOU KILLED MABEL!! : : This went on for a couple of minutes and Bud was getting nowhere, : so he decided to alter his approach to the customer. : : B: HOW DID I KILL MABEL? : V: YOU PM'ED MY MACHINE!! : : Well to avoid making a long story even longer, I will abbreviate : what had happened. The customer was a biologist at a university : and he had a PDP12 that controlled gas mixtures that Mabel : (the monkey) breathed. Now Mabel was not your ordinary monkey. : The University had spent years teaching Mabel to swim and they were : studying the effects that different gas mixtures had on her physiology. : It turns out that the Field Service Branch had just gotten a new : Calibrated Power Supply (used to calibrate Analog equipment) and : at their first opportunity, decided to calibrate the D/A converters : in the PDP12. This changed some of the gas mixtures and poor Mabel : was asphyxiated. Well, Bud then called the Branch Manager of the : Field Service branch: : : Manager: Hello : B: This is Bud DeFore, I heard you did a PM at the University : of Blah-de-blah. : M: Yes, we really performed a complete PM. What can I : do for You? : B: Can You Swim? : :The moral is, of course, always mount a scratch monkey. Just after I first heard this, I was visiting a professor at Washington University School of Medicine who'd been having problems with some of his PDP-11's. I noticed a little metal contraption with lots of little straps on it. I was informed that they'd would strap a monkey to it so they could experiment with visual perceptions stuff, like how well a monkey could track a moving object with its eyes while its brain was being "stimulated" (a euphemism for "receiving electric shocks"). It seems that one day they'd left the monkey strapped in just before somebody came in to run diagnostics on the '11 controlling the lab instruments ... they ended up with one very fried monkey. (apparently this was only one in a long series of horror stories about "those dumb lab assistants who always screw up my experiments" so this is really "med school folklore") Our little conversation ended with: me: Well, that just goes to show you... professor: Yes? me: Always Mount a Scratch Monkey. -- t. patterson domain: tp@decwrl.dec.com path: decwrl!tp icbm: 122 9 41 W / 37 26 35 N % opinions herein are mine alone and certainly not those of DEC