5 Jun
2023
5 Jun
'23
7:30 p.m.
Rather an aside, but the alt.sysadmin.recovery message referenced
in https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/1999-November/001203.html
chimes interesting chords for me.
If you care only about technical stuff, you should skip to
your next e-mail message now.
On one hand, the doubly-embedded net.unix-wizards message
from Dennis, dated 1984-12-08, containing the original dsw.s:
that was posted a few months after I joined Bell Labs, and
may even have been partly my fault. 1984 was the nominal
15th anniversary of UNIX; as a member of the steering committee
of the recently-formed UNIX* Special Interest Group in US DECUS,
I convinced Dennis to attend the Fall 1984 Symposium, in Anaheim
in early December, as part of a celebration. As another part, I
made copies of the V1-V7 manuals in the UNIX Room and had them
shipped out so people could leaf through the history. I think
Dennis dug out the PDP-7 source-code books as a contribution to
that effort; I am all but certain we brought copies of those too.
Of course I had the copies returned not to the Labs but to my
home address. I still have them, now on a shelf in my home office.
A good friend offered to take care of shipping them back to New
Jersey, of course making her own copies in return.
I also recall that the conference hotel happened to give me
room 127. I offered to swap with Dennis, since he deserved
that number more than I did (the extra digit had already been
prepended before I joined) but he cheerfully declined.
On the other hand--not as historic except to me--the author
of the singly-embedded 1999-11-23 alt.sysadmin.recovery message
is now (and has for some years been) a co-worker and a good
friend.
So this single 1999 TUHS posting touches points near both
the beginning and the end (so far) of my career, and two
different groups of smart people who are fun to work with.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON