[COFF] BTL Pranks

[jpl.jpl at gmail.com (John P. Linderman)]

> Did the non-Unix people also pull pranks like the watertower?

Every year when our director, Arun Netravali of center 1135, went on
vacation,
Scott Knauer, a department head, would pull some kind of stunt. One year he
covered the carpeting in Arun's office with green astroturf, so it looked
like
half of a tennis court. Another year, he recruited many of us to blow up
balloons,
which he collected in Arun's office by aiming a huge fan in that direction,
while we pitched inflated balloons into the corridor. Scott, being Scott,
completely
topped off the balloons by lifting the ceiling tiles near the office door.
I recall
walking into Building 3 on the day Arun was scheduled to return and seeing
balloons struggling to escape from every open window of his office.

Building 3 lacked the large stairwells like the one that housed the Peter
face
made of magnets. But Scott compensated by projecting Arun's image along
a long corridor, and covering it with magnets, so Arun's face was visible on
a sidewall as you approached the end of the corridor.

I found the playful attitude at the Labs in general as an indicator of
out-of-the-box
thinking that a research organization thrives on.
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