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this unicorn will self destruct in 30 seconds. for official ninja use only.
Well, it's been a fun day, I guess. I got lunch with Eli at Lulu's, and it wasn't too bad. (For those who haven't been around in a while, Lulu's, which was formerly Yum Wok, on Craig Street, has expanded in the past few months, so now it's like four times the size it used to be. It's slowly swallowing the entire corner of that row of stores.)
Then I spent a lot of time in the afternoon futzing with Perl and reading LJ, which was good because I futzed with Perl but bad because I didn't achieve what I intended to. I think I've got this mental block with Perl wherein "if it doesn't take 5 minutes, it's impossible or not worth doing", where I sit there going "there's no possible way I should have to write this much code. It's Perl. Someone has done it already," and then I give up and read LJ to destress. Of course, I discovered some new people on LJ to read about, so that was nice and nonproductive. (There's now a CMU alumni LJ community which mostly seems to span "people in KGB in the early-to-mid-1990s" so far)
After work I went to play D&D at Tal's, and he decided to level us last time. That is, we gained another level, not got killed by something. So we spent a bit doing that at the beginning of the session, and then we played a while. Brook made a nifty chicken pot pie for dinner. My character is becoming more reasonable to play, and Tim's is just becoming a powerhouse. (I think I have about as much fun roleplaying Tim's character as my own though. (Tim only comes out to Pittsburgh every few months if that, and since my character's more of a fighter than anyone else, I've taken his character on as my NPC. (Tim, you'd be so proud of me. We were questioning an orc and I had Grundar say "Can I question him... with my axe?")))
It's funny, I really do write about all of the boring stuff I do in a day on here, because that's how I write journals, but something gets me in that "other people are reading this" sort of way, and I want to tell cool stories, except there's sometimes nothing to tell, and I figure I'm boring the crap out of most of you. Then again, that's what I've been doing all along.
And hey, I got my dr4b backpack today! It's so cool! It actually has "dr4b" as the monogram! Go L.L.Bean!
I seem to recall I wanted to post something in here recently, but now that I try to remember what the heck it was, I can't. I'm sure it'll come to me sometime when I'm randomly elsewhere far from a terminal, and I'll forget it again soon enough.
Then I spent a lot of time in the afternoon futzing with Perl and reading LJ, which was good because I futzed with Perl but bad because I didn't achieve what I intended to. I think I've got this mental block with Perl wherein "if it doesn't take 5 minutes, it's impossible or not worth doing", where I sit there going "there's no possible way I should have to write this much code. It's Perl. Someone has done it already," and then I give up and read LJ to destress. Of course, I discovered some new people on LJ to read about, so that was nice and nonproductive. (There's now a CMU alumni LJ community which mostly seems to span "people in KGB in the early-to-mid-1990s" so far)
After work I went to play D&D at Tal's, and he decided to level us last time. That is, we gained another level, not got killed by something. So we spent a bit doing that at the beginning of the session, and then we played a while. Brook made a nifty chicken pot pie for dinner. My character is becoming more reasonable to play, and Tim's is just becoming a powerhouse. (I think I have about as much fun roleplaying Tim's character as my own though. (Tim only comes out to Pittsburgh every few months if that, and since my character's more of a fighter than anyone else, I've taken his character on as my NPC. (Tim, you'd be so proud of me. We were questioning an orc and I had Grundar say "Can I question him... with my axe?")))
It's funny, I really do write about all of the boring stuff I do in a day on here, because that's how I write journals, but something gets me in that "other people are reading this" sort of way, and I want to tell cool stories, except there's sometimes nothing to tell, and I figure I'm boring the crap out of most of you. Then again, that's what I've been doing all along.
And hey, I got my dr4b backpack today! It's so cool! It actually has "dr4b" as the monogram! Go L.L.Bean!
I seem to recall I wanted to post something in here recently, but now that I try to remember what the heck it was, I can't. I'm sure it'll come to me sometime when I'm randomly elsewhere far from a terminal, and I'll forget it again soon enough.
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Re:
That is an interesting bit of trivia. I'm embarrassed to say this, but I wouldn't mind reading a reasonabaly-edited history of CMU Academic Computing, were someone to write one.
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For a while they were letting holders of new Andrew accounts choose, and a lot of people just have their initials. That obviously doesn't scale either, though. Currently they seem to be using last names, at least for staff and grad students.
My husband was "haste@andrew" when he came to CMU in the mid-80s for grad school, because he mixed up the "ID" and "initial password" spots on the form. :-) I just fingered that address to see what would happen and I got redirected to Mark Haste, mh2006. Is that a sequence number or a class year? (Fingering haste+ gets a no-such-user response.)
So now I'm curious about how they generated IDs when. But not curious enough to do actual research. :-)
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Maybe there was some weird crossover with the TOPS-20 and andrew naming systems. I do remember when computing services switched from the "old-style" IDs to the new-style ones (in the summer of 1995) and the new "algorithm" for choosing a new user's andrew ID had 15 steps or so, with the 14th being "if all else fails use the old initial-initial-numberletter-numberletter system" and the 15th being "you now have a new andrew user ID!"
Last names seem to be the favored form of userid, followed by initial and last name, and then initials, with numbers after the initials when there are too many people with those initials, or then last names with numbers if too many people have the same last name, then first names with numbers, etc. I think it's way too complicated - they should have just stuck with the cool 4-letter stuff. It's not like it stopped the geeks from still calling people by their userids, it just made the userids a little bit easier for people to remember.
Anyway, it's not like "dr4b" is anything special, not like ee0r or fl0p or any of those. Actually, ms0p is kinda cool. At least it sort of has a pronunciation.
The only reason I'm so attached to it is because it's sort of been part of my identity for nine years now... sort of tough to let go, like a nickname or something. And it's certainly more unique than my name or any handles I ever had. Plus, when everyone else switched their IDs from old-style to new-style in 1995, I decided not to for some reason. Actually, I'm pretty glad I didn't. (It would have become "entropy", which is my CMU.EDU mail name, which I picked out when I was 16, before I realized people would email me asking questions about the campus convenience store.)
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