[TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm!

[don@DonHopkins.com (Don Hopkins)]

To: mimsy!rutgers!att!tanstaafl
Subject: Bob Morris, Jr.
Date: 5 Nov 88 17:15:21 EST (Sat)
From: rcj@moss.ATT.COM (Curtis Jackson)

Bob Morris, Sr. worked on my project here (Enhanced Modular Signal
Processor, or EMSP) at Bell Labs from about 1981 through 1984 or
1985.  I have to say that his son comes by it honestly -- Bob Sr.
was always cracking systems and passwords.  He once turned loose
his password finder on one of our systems and it found the passwords
for something like 55% of the accounts.  His other big interest
was involving huge huge primes.  He was always running this program
to try and find the next prime number.

He was a quintessential software hacker -- given the choice of saying
"box wid 4.5i ht 7i" to pic, or hacking the same thing in really raw
troff, he always did the latter.  He knew troff better than anyone
I've ever seen.  He was also one hell of a good drinking buddy.

True Bob Morris (Sr.) stories:

Bob would occasionally wear a suit (*gasp*) when meeting with the
Navy instead of wearing his normal holey sweater and jeans.  But he
never forsook his old hiking boots.  And these babies smelled real
bad when he took them off -- we are talking serious ODAIR here.
One day he was in one of two adjoining meeting rooms, and he took
his boots off.  The smell immediately permeated the room, and one
of the MTS, Robin, gingerly grabbed them and set them inside the
adjoining conference room.  Less than two minutes later, the connecting
door opened again and the boots were just as gingerly and silently
returned.  Robin gave up and put them outside in the hallway.

A waitress at our local pub, who had known Bob for at least 7-8 years
before I came on the scene, used to lift Bob's shirt and rub his tummy
right in the pub -- some kind of private joke between them.  Apparently
one day he returned the favor and lifted her shirt up *real* high.
So one winter day he and I went into the pub, and Marcia came up and
said, "Robert, look -- *two* shirts.  You're not going to get me this
time!"  Bob said, "Yeah, I bet you've got the bottom one pinned to your
you-know-what [sic]."  Marcia said, "All the way down to my ankles, bud!"

Not to give you the impression he was a pond scum to women; all the women
I knew really liked him as long as he kept his boots on.  ;-)

Have never met Bob Jr., but I do know he was hacking at Daddy's knee
(sounds like a scene from a horror film  ;-)  before he could crawl.

Curtis Jackson  -- att!moss!rcj  201-386-6409
"The cardinal rule of skydiving and ripcords:  When in doubt, whip it out!"


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