Xref: utzoo rec.humor:18901 rec.humor.d:1631 comp.misc:5112
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!aplcen!wb3ffv!tcsc3b2!tcsc
From: tcsc@tcsc3b2.UUCP (The Computer Solution Co.)
Newsgroups: rec.humor,rec.humor.d,comp.misc
Subject: Re: Looking for Computer Folklore
Summary: The ultimate biggy gets into the best of plans
Message-ID: <530@tcsc3b2.UUCP>
Date: 10 Feb 89 06:35:44 GMT
Organization: The Computer Solution Co., Inc. of VA
Lines: 56

In 1968, while attending a large, midwestern University, I
worked in the Department for Administrative Research.  While
providing design and programming assistance to the Alumni
Records department, we ran into an interesting problem.

The Alumni Records office desired to embed all kinds of
information into the key value used to identify each of the
school's alumni.  This led to a very long, unwieldy key value.
When mailing labels were printed, both the key value and a
special code used by the mailing machines was required on the
top line of the label.  We ran out of space on the label.

Not to worry!  This fancy computer (a "brand new" IBM 360/50
running OS/PCP) could transform a numeric key value into an
alphanumeric value by converting the alumni-record key from the
too long base-10 number to a shorter base-36 number.  Just use
all of the letters and digits!

Just as we sat back to congratulate ourselves on serving the
user's needs with the clever application of technology, we got
a call from the mailing house ...

"Our delivery man just returned from the Post Office.  They
won't take your mailing.  It looks like somebody tampered with
your list.  You better get down here right away!"

There, on top of one of the trays of mail was a label with the
converted alumni record identifier.  It read something like ...

	-------------------------------
       | 123FUCK69A4       MM  43210** |
       | MISS INGRID BEASLEY  EDU. 29  |
       |   ...                         |

The mailing was instructing Miss Beasley to mark all further
correspondence to the office of Alumni Records with her "new
computer identifier code" shown on the label.  Needless to say,
the Office of Alumni Records failed to see the humor in it all.
We thought that at her age, Miss Beasley (Edu. 29) might actually
take the "computer's mistake" as a complement!

Thereafter, we were instructed to add the "DIRTY-WORD-ROUTINE"
which performed a table lookup of every word which a committee of
about a dozen of the raunchiest people in the department could
come up with.  But what about short phrases?  And how about
maintenance of the table?  Whose budget does this come out of?

A student programmer, invited to a meeting to "see design in
the real world" made an unwanted suggestion.  Just convert to
base-31 and don't use vowels.  It worked.  The next year, they
changed the alumni records identifier again.  I graduated.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David P. Romig				| The Computer Solution Company
UUCP      : tcsc@tcsc3b2		| 1009 Sycamore Square
CompuServe: 74116,2345			| P.O. Box 716
Voice     : (804)794-3491 x31		| Midlothian, VA  23113-0716