Fun_People Archive
20 Jan
DESPERADO returns...

Date: Fri, 20 Jan 95 18:09:11 PST
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: DESPERADO returns...

[DESPERADO, an email publication not unlike a digestified Fun_People, has been
sadly missing until today when it reappeared like a phoenix.  Welcome back!  -psl]

Forwarded-by: tompar@world.std.com (Tom Parmenter)
From: DESPERADO

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From: PHILS@RELAY.RELAY.COM (Philip H. Smith III, (703) 605-0500)
Subject: Risks of hot lines

At our old building, we had a non-PBX line into the computer room.  It
was hooked to a Radio Shack environmental monitor, which would detect
high temp, noise, etc. and call a list of phone numbers until someone
responded.  That part worked fine.  But we started getting wrong numbers
-- we'd be in the room and hear the phone ring, and the robot would pick
up and start talking, but nobody who worked there would own up to it.
This happened several times per day -- too many even for telemarketing
-- and we couldn't figure it out for the longest time.  Then one day I
was driving home and heard an ad on the radio for a suicide hotline, in
nearby Maryland -- at number (301) 605-0525.  Our robot's line was
(703) 605-0525!  So some poor depressed person would get it together
enough to call the number, but without the 301, and would get a robot
saying "This is telephone number 6 8 5 0 5 2 5, the time is xx:yy,
temperature is OK, noise level is OK, alert 1 is OK, alert 2 is OK,
listen to the surrounding area for 15 seconds", after which it would
switch on a microphone so they could either uninterrupted hear machine
room noise or machine room noise with people saying "Hey, the robot's
talking" "Yeah, it does that" "Wow, weird" and the like.

I shudder to think of whether there were any lasting ill effects of this
problem.  The good news is that shortly after discovering it, we moved to a
new building with a new number.

...phsiii

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From: kgk@phanos.rasna.com (Greg Keith)
To: desperado@world.std.com
Subject: Welcome Back!

I'm not sure it's entirely congruent with your particular
iconoclasm, but for what it's worth, here's a little song lyric
that may or may not interest you (I have a 40 minute commute
and sometimes make up little songs.  You'll recognize the 
intended melody for this one.)



	    Making light of dark matter



	    Oh, dear, where can the matter be?
	    Can't find the mass to account for the gravity
	    keeping continuum's curvature unity --
	    where can the dark matter be?

	    Oh, dear, what can the matter be?
	    Can't be just atoms and scattered old star debris,
	    that stuff shows up in absorption spectroscopy --
	    what can that strange matter be?

	    Oh, dear, why must the matter be?
	    Just to keep faith in the Big Bang catastrophe,
	    latter day guise of Augustine cosmology.
	    Fiat!  The matter must be.


	    Greg Keith (kgk@rasna.com)
	    6/21/93
Fun_People Archive 20 JanDESPERADO returns...

Fun_People Archive
20 Jan
DESPERADO returns...
