On Mon, 12 Jul 2021, Mark Phillips wrote:

In HS (several decades ago), I wrote a matchmaking program for our senior
prom that crashed the dialup GE computer (ran out of memory) we used to
run Basic programs. Shhh.....I resorted to secretly matching everyone with
his/her boyfriend by hand....I was considered a computer genius until the
teacher in charge of the dialup account got a call from some very irate
folks at GE who threatened to remove the dial up terminal and paper tape
reader if we ever crashed their computer again.....he had my back and no
one found out. lol

Mark,

When I did my MS at the Univ. of Illinois decades ago, I wrote a FORTRAN V
ecosystem energy model of a lake for an ecosystem modeling course I took.
The code filled two boxes of 80-column Hollerith cards.

Toward the end of each semester we grad students needed access to the IBM
360's remote job terminals; my lab was in the Natural History Building and
the nearest RJE was next door in the Chemistry Building. The CS100/101
students waited until the last minute to run their projects and blocked
access to the card reader and line printer in the RJE. And we needed to
access the 360 at the Chicago Medical campus for our research.

So I'd often get a call in my lab asking me to run the model. As soon as I
had acess to the card reader and fed in the two boxes of Hollerith cards it
maxed out the S360 and locked out the RJE for a long time before printing
output about 3 inches thick of green-bared wide line printer paper. The CS
students gave up and went elsewhere. I killed my model job and let other
grad students use the RJE.

Grad student fun and games.

Rich

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