Re: [TUHS] Talk about some interesting things about Dennis

[Jon Steinhart <jon@fourwinds.com>]

Norman Wilson writes:
>   What is Dennis's character? Is he very humorous? Thank you.

Well, this isn't specifically about his character, but the story
of how I first met Ken and Dennis is amusing.  And it was a long
time ago so some of the details may be slightly off.

I was a summer student working on the second floor of Building 2.
My MO was to bike up to the labs every morning, and I do mean up
if you've ever been on Glenside Road.  I would work until dinner
time, bike home, have dinner, borrow the car, and go back to the
labs and work until I was almost too tired to drive home.  In the
wee hours one night I was waiting for something to run and was
getting hungry, so I headed up the the food machines in the attic
on the 6th floor.  While I was waiting for my food I heard a very
mechanical sounding voice going "fuck fuck fuck fuck ...".  I had
to investigate.  Under a heating duct there was a door with a
frosted glass window on which was an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper on
which the word UNIX was spelled out in black electrical tape.  It
was the source of the sound.  I opened the door and discovered Ken
and Dennis and maybe some others playing with their recently
acquired Votrax speech synthesizer which they were teaching to
swear.  I also remember in later weeks that it would announce
"x o'clock and all is well" on the hour where x was the current hour.

I think that maybe everyone was high on the smell of the developer
for the C/A/T paper.

Jon