🚀 go-pugleaf

I know the following stories are true because they happened to me ... or I
happened to them ... um ... anyway:

When I first got interested in computers I was entirely self-taught.  I'd
read the manuals in the terminal room at CSUN and try to make stuff work.
One day I was fiddling with FORTRAN and trying to write to a file (this
was on a CDC 3300 running KRONOS, as I recall).  I set up my deck of cards
following the manual and ran the program.  It seemed ok, so I ran it again
-- and it bombed.  After much head scratching, I finally went to one of
the head gurus who'd helped me before.  He started reading through the
deck.  After about three cards his jaw dropped and he turned white. "My
God!," he said, "You've opened a file on the master disk!  It's
99% full! [the disk, that is]"

I told him I'd just done what the manuals said.  The next day, all the
manuals were gone from the terminal room.  I kid you not. (-:


These two aren't really easter eggs, but they existed at the time:

One of my first jobs involved analyzing the OMSI Pascal compiler with a
view to porting it to another system.  Two comments I found in the
compiler's source code were:

	Expression syntax too grotesque.  (On failing to parse an
					   arithmetic expression).

	Well, shit.  After all that work. (After a page of code trying to
					   figure out a floating point
					   expression).


Then there was the year I got the card punches to print lace cards that
spelled out MERRY XMAS and mailed them to all my friends.  (Well, I
thought they were clever (-: ).


This one happened to a co-worker at Rockwell's Shuttle Avionics
Development Lab (ADL).  He was having some problems with a shuttle
computer peripheral and asked the duty tech for advice. "You've got to go
into the mock-up and flip the switch," was the response.  So, off he went
to the Space Shuttle mock-up to flip the switch.  Of course, as he found
out, the Shuttle's cabin is literally _coated_ with switches.  The tech
hadn't even told him which one, let alone where it was. (-:

I can't claim to have actually seen this one, but the L.A. Times reported,
some time in the late '60s, that the following sign hung in the UCLA
computer room:

     ACHTUNG!  ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS!  DAS COMPUTENMACHINE IST NICHT FUR
     GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABBEN!  IST EASY SNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK,
     BLOWEN FUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT PITZENSPARKEN!  IST NICHT FUR
     GEWERKEN BY DAS DUMBKOPFEN!  DAS RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS
     HANTS IN DAS POCKETS, RELAXEN UND VATCH DAS BLINKENLIGHTS!

It must be true, or I wouldn't still remember it after 20 years. (-:

-- 
The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, holl...@ttidca.tti.com)  Illegitimis non
Citicorp(+)TTI                                                 Carborundum
3100 Ocean Park Blvd.   (213) 450-9111, x2483
Santa Monica, CA  90405 {csun | philabs | psivax}!ttidca!hollombe