A column about nothing
You know, I think there’s really a generation gap forming because of all the technical jargon we use in computing. Take electronic mail. When I told my mom I was e-mailing people she asked me why I was sending letters 2.71828 times.
In the small apartment, hidden within one of the higher dimensions of the sixth floor of MC, all was quiet. At least until the door burst open and a man ran in shouting, “Sine! I need your help!!”
The occupant of the room looked up from where he had been sitting, reading ‘Captain Hooke’. “You can’t test any more programs on our system, Cray-mar!” he declared. “Your last one forced us to decommission napier!”
“I didn’t come about that,” Cray-mar protested. “I came because you’re the secret head of the Maintaining Flawed Computers Federation.”
“You have an MFCF affair?”
“Well, in a way. See, there’s this girl I’m seeing, and she’s not receiving the e-mails I send her.”
“Ah. But you know, you’ve never been great with e-mails. Or females for that matter.”
“But this is waaAaAaay beyond strange, Sine; it’s like they’re not getting sent out of the building!”
Sine frowned. “You’re sure it’s an internal problem?”
“Sine, I’m telling you, my messages are not getting off the campus!”
Sine’s eyes narrowed. “Then it must be Neumann! Problems with mail always originate from his corner of the building… plus the guy is always scheming.”
“Hey, Scheme is a perfectly good coding language,” Cray-mar objected. “I use it all the time.”
“Regardless, I’m suspicious of what he did with those new CPUs we installed to get him to improve performance… stay here, I’m going to go and investigate.”
It took five knocks for Neumann to answer his door, and when he did he refused to open it the whole way. “Hello, Sine,” he greeted.
“Hello, Neumann,” Sine returned. “What are you doing in there?”
“What makes you think I’m doing anything?” Neumann asked innocently.
“The fact that something in your room is announcing ‘you have mail’ every ten seconds. You’re purloining people’s e-mail, aren’t you!”
“Errr… well so what if I am!” Neumann stated angrily. “People take it all for granted, they never think about all the work that’s done to get those messages from point A to point B! All those overworked electrons! Besides, it’s not like I was going to keep them indefinitely. Just a day, maybe two…"
“Neumann… I was hoping not to resort to this, but if you don’t release all the mails I’ll be forced to release some pictures of you taken at the last MathSocks meeting.”
“What?” Neumann recoiled in horror. “How could you get pictures of my socks? That meeting was closed to the public!”
“Aha!” Sine responded, whipping a card out of his wallet. “But you can do more with the mathNEWS Press card!”
“But this is blackmail!” Neumann protested.
“Well it seems like mail is the only language you understand,” Sine observed.
“Curses!” Neumann groused. “All right, you win this round, Sine… but you haven’t beaten me! I’d watch your step next time you walk under an elm or pine tree!”
E-mail was restored in a matter of hours. And once again, all was quiet on the higher dimensions of the sixth floor.
-Greg “hologrami” Taylor
[This appeared in Volume 78, issue 3, Oct 9, 1998. Shortly after the big Issue 500, which did include a classic “press mathNEWS” card (MC3035) on page 29.
I forget why I brought the column back after four months. It's true the University of Waterloo's Napier server (named for John Napier) had recently been decommissioned, while Neumann (named for John von Neumann) sounds like Newman (from Seinfeld), but I don't think that would have been enough?
Anyway, Sine is officially named, while Cray-mar is a call out to Cray Supercomputers. For those not in the know, the sixth floor of the math building was like a maze of offices, including dead ends. You'll see I now start the column with a stand-up comedy gag too, much like the original show.]
