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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Wordman wordman@*******.com
Subject: News you can use: SR fodder from the real world
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 09:10:08 -0500
Having moved to North Jersey recently, this item is near and dear to my
heart, and could easily be incorporated into Shadowrun:

http://pirate.shu.edu/~stevenma/cablevision
Message no. 2
From: Steve Mancini mancini@******.com
Subject: News you can use: SR fodder from the real world
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 08:57:15 -0800 (PST)
[Charset iso-8859-1 unsupported, filtering to ASCII...]
> Having moved to North Jersey recently, this item is near and dear to my
> heart, and could easily be incorporated into Shadowrun:
>
> http://pirate.shu.edu/~stevenma/cablevision
>

As someone who grew up in Northern NJ right outside of Patterson all
I can say is...

Get used to it...

-Da Minotaur
Message no. 3
From: David Yiannakos yiannako@*******.edu
Subject: News you can use: SR fodder from the real world
Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 12:21:53 -0500
At 11:57 AM 12/1/00, you wrote:
>[Charset iso-8859-1 unsupported, filtering to ASCII...]
> > Having moved to North Jersey recently, this item is near and dear to my
> > heart, and could easily be incorporated into Shadowrun:
> >
> > http://pirate.shu.edu/~stevenma/cablevision
> >
>
>As someone who grew up in Northern NJ right outside of Patterson all
>I can say is...
>
>Get used to it...
>
>-Da Minotaur


Does this mean that it's a bad thing that I want to move to Newark?


---Dave ('s not here man)
Message no. 4
From: Douglas Browne dejaffa@*********.net
Subject: News you can use: SR fodder from the real world
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 13:02:03 -0500
> Does this mean that it's a bad thing that I want to move to Newark?

Bad, not necessarily.

A sign of insanity, yes.

--Dejaffa
Message no. 5
From: David Yiannakos yiannako@*******.edu
Subject: News you can use: SR fodder from the real world
Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 13:01:51 -0500
At 01:02 PM 12/1/00, you wrote:
> > Does this mean that it's a bad thing that I want to move to Newark?
>
>Bad, not necessarily.
>
>A sign of insanity, yes.
>
>--Dejaffa

Hey, you gotta go where the work is...

---D('snhm)
Message no. 6
From: DemonPenta@***.com DemonPenta@***.com
Subject: News you can use: SR fodder from the real world
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 22:45:13 EST
In a message dated 12/1/00 12:00:30 PM Eastern Standard Time,
mancini@******.com writes:

> > Having moved to North Jersey recently, this item is near and dear to my
> > heart, and could easily be incorporated into Shadowrun:
> >
> > http://pirate.shu.edu/~stevenma/cablevision
> >
>
> As someone who grew up in Northern NJ right outside of Patterson all
> I can say is...
>
> Get used to it...

No kidding. North Jersey sucks; Asbury Park is like that some nights, but
happily, most of the shore is sane. Trenton area, we won't go there. South
Jersey....stay away from Atlantic City outside of the casino strip, all I'm
gonna say. However, USUALLY, they have the good sense to shove the fiber
UNDERGROUND in those areas. Usually. That letter made me INSTANTLY think of
the Redmond Barrens, actually. Or Asbury.
Message no. 7
From: DemonPenta@***.com DemonPenta@***.com
Subject: News you can use: SR fodder from the real world
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 22:47:14 EST
In a message dated 12/1/00 12:23:16 PM Eastern Standard Time,
yiannako@*******.edu writes:

> Does this mean that it's a bad thing that I want to move to Newark?

Yes. Newark is hell. Stay away from Newark. Go farther south in Jersey.
Message no. 8
From: Yiannakos yiannako@*******.edu
Subject: News you can use: SR fodder from the real world
Date: Sat, 02 Dec 2000 01:54:39 -0500
DemonPenta@***.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 12/1/00 12:23:16 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> yiannako@*******.edu writes:
>
> > Does this mean that it's a bad thing that I want to move to Newark?
>
> Yes. Newark is hell. Stay away from Newark. Go farther south in Jersey.

I know Newark is hell. That's why I want to be there. I
guess Bayonne would do in a pinch, but Newark would be
better.

---D('snhm)
Message no. 9
From: DemonPenta@***.com DemonPenta@***.com
Subject: News you can use: SR fodder from the real world
Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2000 10:38:31 EST
In a message dated 12/2/00 1:58:23 AM Eastern Standard Time,
yiannako@*******.edu writes:

> I know Newark is hell. That's why I want to be there. I
> guess Bayonne would do in a pinch, but Newark would be
> better.

Bayonne, from what I've heard, MAY be improving. Newark is decidedly NOT
improving. But...WHY?

John
Message no. 10
From: Matthew Resnick elwoodresnick@*****.com
Subject: News you can use: SR fodder from the real world
Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2000 21:19:01 -0800 (PST)
>I know Newark is hell. That's why I want to be there. I
>guess Bayonne would do in a pinch, but Newark would be
>better.

>---D('snhm)

A translation: Dave wants to be a fireman. That's why he wants to move
to newark. Much fires. Much chemical fires (interesting ones).


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Message no. 11
From: Richard Tomasso rtomasso@*******.com
Subject: News you can use: SR fodder from the real world
Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2000 13:42:12 -0500
Had a similar incident, but due to natural forces. During a bad
storm (probably a hurricaine) a few years back, our corporate
internet connection slowed to a crawl. No one could figure
out why. Turns out the storm had washed out a section of the
coast and took 100 meters of fiber optic cable with it. Just
happened to be our primary trunk connection.

All sorts of stuff can mess up data flow - lightning strikes,
drunk road crews, severe weather, sunspots, someone digging a
well without the proper permit.

_____________________________________________________________________________________
Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
Message no. 12
From: Richard Tomasso rtomasso@*******.com
Subject: News you can use: SR fodder from the real world
Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2000 13:42:52 -0500
Had a similar incident, but due to natural forces. During a bad
storm (probably a hurricaine) a few years back, our corporate
internet connection slowed to a crawl. No one could figure
out why. Turns out the storm had washed out a section of the
west coast and took 100 meters of fiber optic cable with it. Just
happened to be our primary trunk connection to the corporate
firewall. yay.

All sorts of stuff can mess up data flow - lightning strikes,
drunk road crews, severe weather, sunspots, someone digging a
well without the proper permit.

_____________________________________________________________________________________
Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
Message no. 13
From: Wordman wordman@*******.com
Subject: News you can use: SR fodder from the real world
Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2000 14:42:04 -0500
> All sorts of stuff can mess up data flow - lightning strikes,
> drunk road crews, severe weather, sunspots, someone digging a
> well without the proper permit.

A book called the Devouring Fungus: Tales of the Computer Age (out of print,
ISBN: 0393307328) details an incident where every Friday night, just after
most people left work for the evening, this company's satellite link would
develop weird, intermittent glitches. This went on for months, with people
checking all of the software and hardware over and over.

After several months, they kind of resigned themselves to not being able to
find the problem. One of the guys on the team left the building one Friday
and saw, as he did every Friday, that a group of the building's maintenance
workers were having a small tailgate feast. He continued walking to his car,
and saw one of the workers crumple a just-finished beer can and lob it over
the fence... into the company's satellite dish, where it rattled around for
a few seconds before falling off the edge.

Another story from the same book details two chip manufacturing companies.
One company had a strange problem where the defect rate of their chips
skyrocketed for the first few hours every Thursday. No one could figure out
what was happening, until a guy staying late noticed that every Wednesday
night, the janitors were using the chip ovens to heat pizza.

The other company also had a cyclical defect rate, but it went on a weekly
cycle. For about one week in every month, the defect rate would roughly
double for a week, then go back down. It turned out that the plant employed
a number of women and, as often happens when a group of women spend a lot of
time together, their menstrual cycles began to match up. At a certain point
in the menstrual cycle, the perspiration of the woman becomes a bit more
acidic than normal. So, basically, this mostly female crew developed a
collective 'acid touch' once a month, and messed with the delicate chemistry
of the chip making.

Wordman
Message no. 14
From: Snake Eyes snake.eyes@***.net
Subject: News you can use: SR fodder from the real world
Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2000 15:52:15 -0800
At 02:42 PM 12/5/00 -0500, Wordman wrote:

>The other company also had a cyclical defect rate, but it went on a weekly
>cycle. For about one week in every month, the defect rate would roughly
>double for a week, then go back down. It turned out that the plant employed
>a number of women and, as often happens when a group of women spend a lot of
>time together, their menstrual cycles began to match up. At a certain point
>in the menstrual cycle, the perspiration of the woman becomes a bit more
>acidic than normal. So, basically, this mostly female crew developed a
>collective 'acid touch' once a month, and messed with the delicate chemistry
>of the chip making.

This last one reminds me of a story I read back in the mid-80's about an
allegedly "sexist" Russian computer. There was a Soviet Army mainframe lab
with a bunch of terminals that would work just fine for male staff but
would lock up almost every time a female lab worker tried to log
on. Sometimes the terminals would freeze if a woman just passed near
one. This boggled the staff for quite some time, but through
investigation, luck and happenstance they eventually determined the
phenomenon was due to the release of some kind of static charge build-up
attributed to the synthetic fiber content in the particular brand of
pantyhose that the women were all buying at the same PX/store near the
lab. The problem went away once the lab staff banned pantyhose in the
computer room.

~ Snake Eyes

Further Reading

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Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.

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