Newfoundland? Ok, now for something ~completely~ off-topic:
Back during 09-11, a lot of commercial flights were grounded for some days --
all over the world maybe, in Europe and the US for sure. A lot of
transatlantic flights went to earth in Newfoundland, and hundreds or maybe
thousand of passengers glutted all the hotels; there was no place to put them.
Newfoundlanders took the overflow into their homes, fed them, sometimes
entertained them. It was all the news at the time, here.
I swore if I ever met a Newfie, I'd buy him dinner, as a ~very~ slight return
on the karma earned. I have yet to pay off on that debt; it's accumulating
interest.
If you or your coworker ever happen by North Carolina...
---
Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313
/* While mathematicians often do not have much humility, we all have lots of
experience with humiliation. -Dan Goldston, in his acceptance speech for the
prestigious Cole Prize */
-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of
David Spiegel
Sent: Monday, October 11, 2021 10:44
This reminds me of a story from the early '90s, when I worked for a
multi-national food company. (I actually worked for more than one.) One of the
Help Desk guys decided to customize "his own" TPX screen. He made it say
"Welcome to Hell".
When I got in, I booted DOS (IBM PS/2 Model 70), started Windows 3.1 and then
started PCOMM. As soon as I noticed the "greeting", I walked over to the Help
Desk and nonchalantly asked Billy if he had customized anything since 17:00 the
day before. He admitted to changing the greeting, but, had no clue that he
would be affecting 2,000 users coast to coast.
After a string of blue words including: "Lard Tunderin' Jeezus" (hat's
Newfoundland-speak for what we now call Whiskey Tango Foxtrot), he removed it.
I pointed out to him that he was fortunate that I arrived before the president.
He would've bought me a coffee, but, we had free coffee at work, one of the
perqs (a bad pun).
--- On 2021-10-11 10:22, Bob Bridges wrote:
> Managers have no sense of humour where it doesn't matter. Well, some
> managers.
>
> I still remember fondly my messing with a coworker's PC menu. I don't
> remember which menu system we were using at the time, but Roberto had found
> some little gag app that would display a blimp for a few seconds with your
> selected message scrolling across it. So while he was out I fixed up his
> menu so that when he fired up Word, it would 1) display the blimp ("Roberto
> is a doofus!"), 2) erase the blimp call from the Word menu option so it would
> look normal, and 3) start Word. The Harvard Graphics option would put the
> blimp back in his Word option. So until he figured out the pattern, it would
> display the blimp at seemingly random intervals, but whenever he looked at
> the Word option under the covers there was nothing there.
>
> I was also charmed by a (different) coworker who modified his copy of PC DOS;
> instead of "Bad command or file name", it said "Say what, hippo fingers?". I
> never bothered until just now to verify that those two messages are exactly
> the same length; I just assumed that his replacement was no longer than the
> official text.
>
> All very harmless. I guess I'm just not a serious hacker.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of
> CM Poncelet
> Sent: Sunday, October 10, 2021 22:23
>
> This reminds me of someone at a Company I worked for, can't remember which,
> where some programmer had displayed a prompt for whatever to which an
> end-user replied "f*@k" - upon which the program then replied, "Your place or
> mine?" Needless to say, management was not amused by this and the programmer
> was given a "good talking to" if not then also put on "garden leave". <grin>
>
> --- On 10/10/2021 15:52, PINION, RICHARD W. wrote:
>> The only thing I ever put on a system, similar to that, was a TSO program
>> which produced a crude picture of the one finger salute. You could put
>> whatever message you wanted on the hand. Silly me, I had the program
>> executing at TSO logon. Management was not amused.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Peter Sylvester
>> Sent: Sunday, October 10, 2021 9:36 AM
>> You could have "protected" the VM systems as much as you want, if a "friend"
>> send you an exec/script/clist and you execute it. the was actually created
>> as small joke by a student at one of the EARN/BITNET nodes who did not see
>> that it could escape from the site.
>>
>> my old friend Helmut on the neighbour node detected "patient 0". It rapidely
>> entered vnet which was shutdown (to remove all copies afaik), earn bitnet
>> was saved by Eric Thomas by filtering in rscs. You had to execute it, a
>> global social attack/joke, not like the other real worm in sendmail
>>
>> --- On 08/10/2021 16:43, David Spiegel wrote:
>>> "... What about the Christmas Card Worm? ..."
>>>
>>> That was AFAIK on a VM system, not, an MVS system.
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