tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171341864795894452.post6818057180335549695..comments2022-02-15T22:44:33.362-08:00Comments on N.O.A. Rawle: Through the Eyes of a Stranger : Win! Win! Win!N.O.A. Rawlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15718721706857262161noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4171341864795894452.post-92212394416322556502016-06-04T13:44:14.209-07:002016-06-04T13:44:14.209-07:00This may be more a story of keeping something from...This may be more a story of keeping something from going wrong, but hope you will find it amusing. Back in graduate school, I worked on an automated telescope before "automated telescopes" were really a common thing. All the commands were six-letters long. Sometimes six-letter commands can be pretty cryptic. However, my graduate advisor used to like to log in (often late at night) and see how the telescope was doing. Even if it was working, if he encountered a command he didn't know, he would sometimes try it out just to see what it did. Sometimes this would crash the telescope resulting in a late night phone call for me or the other student in the office to come fix the telescope. (My graduate advisor lived about 300 miles away in a different city!)<br /><br />So, my office mate and I hatched a plan. We created a command called "slfdst" (short for self destruct). It produced a little countdown on the screen and then the message: "Congratulations, you've just destroyed the telescope."<br /><br />We then merrily left it there. About three weeks later, I get a phone call at 11pm from my graduate advisor. "That's not very funny, Dave." And he hung up. I knew exactly what he'd tried to do, but he never called again after trying commands he didn't know!<br /><br />My email is dsummers[at]zianet[dot]com (just replace the bracketed words with the appropriate symbol!) David Lee Summershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16965309580286946378noreply@blogger.com