Topten help!

Article: 8866 of alt.hackers
From: thompson@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca (Christopher Thompson)
Newsgroups: alt.hackers
Subject: Topten help!
Date: 17 Oct 1995 05:02:31 GMT
Organization: Computing Science, U of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
Lines: 49
Approved: I'm hungry
Message-ID: 45vdd7$cfg@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca
NNTP-Posting-Host: falun.cs.ualberta.ca
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]
Status: RO

Okay, folks, I've been assigned the unenviable task of coming up with
a topten list for some t-shirts that the undergrad compsci association
is going to make.  I've searched *all over* the web and various
newsgroups looking for such a beast.  I know I *used* to have a couple
of lists but I must have deleted them.

Anyway, if anyone out there has a (humorous) topten (or top 100) list
of reasons to be in CompSci, *please* pass them along to me.  I'd really
appreciate it.  The list was due in last Friday [sigh].


ObWierdness:  I was sitting in class the other day, listening to a
lecture.  As always, I fell asleep.  I dreamt of a nightmare mode in
emacs.  [sigh]  I haven't played Doom in ages.

ObHack:  [Apologies, it's kind of lame]  A friend of mine was trying to
learn cgi stuff for his web page.  He decided to steal a friend's
mail-to-me cgi script.  Not a problem.  Except that it was marked
world-readable but *not* group readable.  We tried every method we could
to read this thing (including a netscape ftp).  No go.

Luckily, I had an account that wasn't in the same group.  Not a problem.


Acck.  That really was lame.  Okay, here's another one.

ObHack2:  My alarm clock keeps on failing.  It's a real pain.  It either
doesn't go off or, more likely, goes off hours late.  I missed tons of
classes and I needed to do something about it.

I wrote a small alarm clock program in C.  Really small.  All it does
is to check the time against the time I've set it to go off.  However,
if all it did was that, I'd probably learn how to turn it off in my
sleep (!).  So I have to answer a simple arithmetic question (random)
to shut off the alarm.  That leaves the reset button.

Now, I'm a very different person when I wake up.  I don't become
conscious for about five minutes.  I know I'd just hit the reset or the
power button.  So when the alarm goes off, it creates a temporary file
and outputs some junk to it.  Now, if I was to turn off the computer,
this would leave me with lost clusters.  Easily fixable, of course, but
my subconscious won't allow me to shut off the power.  It won't let me
"damage" the computer.

The result?  Well, I made my psychology class this morning for the
first time in two weeks.

-=Christopher Thompson=-

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