M00se Droppings 06

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       A-M00SE-ING ANECDOTES AND ILLUMINATION BY AND FOR THE PAWNS OF THE
                                M00SE ILLUMINATI
 
 Issue #6 |  Disclaimer:  The Editor will place almost anything  |  Aug. 3, 1988
 ----------  in this newsletter out of a frantic desire to fill  ---------------
 the issue, so don't  blame him for the  quality or  content of the submissions.
 Excepting those  he may have written  himself, the enclosed items do not in any
 way represent the Editor's opinions.  In fact, let's be real safe, and say that
 as far as this newsletter is concerned, he has no opinions at all.  Okay? Good.
 ===============================================================================
 
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  ************************** EDITORIALS AND LETTERS ***************************
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     Once again, a late and rather small issue of M00se Droppings etc.!
There are a few things to note:
 
        1)  Several people have agreed that since they are signed up to
the M00se Illuminati discussion on CSNEWS, and receive M00se Droppings from
there, it would be best to be removed from the normal mailing list.  This
is entirely up to you.  If you wish to be removed from the normal distribution
network of M00se Droppings, let me or Kamikaze know.  Please do so soon,
as Kami has mentioned the M00se Droppings Distribution Network Mark II,
and it would be rotten if he had to remove lots of people from it after
he worked on it.
        2)  Kami also suggested that, since M00se Droppings is often large,
I provide only updates of the general list every issue, with a separate
mailing of a full list now and then to make sure everybody's up to date.
I intend to take his suggestion;  however, since this issue is short and
most of the changes to the list are alterations rather than additions, there
is a full list in this issue.  We seem to have lost two members, Cocker
at Governer's School and one of our CTSTATEU chapters.  If anybody has
information on these two missing m00ses, act on it as you see fit.  We have
also added two members, the Old Dominion U thr0ng.  Welcome, and bl00p!
        3)  GASP!  In Autoduel Quarterly issue 6/2, somebody has dared to
write a letter claiming that a group called 'The Illuminati' controls the
Anarchist Relief Front!  Since we, of course, control that group, or would
pretend to if we didn't, I suggest a letter campaign directed at Autoduel
Quarterly's ADQ&A department setting them right on this issue.  If you're
interested, let me know and I'll send you the address to use.  Thank Indiana
Joe for this piece of information.
 
     And now, on with the issue.
 
 
                        PUBLIC RELATIONS OPPORTUNITY
                        ============================
 
     I received a notice yesterday informing me that the tuition for
out-of-state students is increased from $1600 to $1975 per semester
and the per credit hour fee is now $132 instead of $107.  Does anybody
out there know whether foreign students who have stayed in NY state for
more than one year claim in-state student status?  If not, can the
mOOse or the illuminati do something about this.
 
Helpppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp
 
desperately yours
ALIEN
 
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******************************* EVENTS AND NEWS *******************************
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     As some of you may know, Camp Relay II:  The Quest For M00se (as I
have heard it called) will be taking place this weekend.  Those of you invited,
I'll see you there;  those who weren't, sorry, it's a closed party.  But
hopefully SOMEBODY will have a giant thr0ng party soon!
     The size of this party will probably be such that it will be near
reaching 'critical m00se'.
 
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***************************** FICTION AND POETRY ******************************
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Well, here's some fiction.  I don't know if it's original or not, so i'm
putting it here.  Unfortunately, I forget where it comes from, too.  I think
a Maine chapter.  Just haven't been that organized since my brakes failed...
 
 
Monday, I am going MOOS hunting.  It is basically a simple activity,
but requires a good deal of advance preparation.  In this business,
catching no MOOS at all is better than catching the wrong MOOS.
 
There are many different kinds of MOOS, different in both appearence
and disposition.  They come in different colors too, but that doesn't
seem to make a whole lot of difference.  The hunter must know, before
actually leaving the safety of the hunting lodge, what kind of a MOOS
he wishes to bag.  This descision by itself can take many years, but
after a few mistakes, one learns quickly or perishes--MOOS are dangerous
game.
 
In order to catch a MOOS, you have to have a lure.  Appearence is very
important, since a MOOS will tend to gravitate toward what it feels is
the best-looking in a crowd of hunters.  Once you have managed to get
the MOOS at close quarters, the job becomes substantially more difficult,
so for the time being I'll talk about appearence preparation.
 
Clothing is essential.  Most MOOS will shy away from naked hunters unless
they know them pretty well already.  And in any event, I don't know too
many hunters brave enough to walk around naked in that jungle to begin
with.
 
As part of MY personal preparations, I first look over my wardrobe.  This
is usually very depressing because I rapidly realize that none of my
clothing matches any particular fashion that has either existed in the
past or will exist in the near future.  This can be a liability, since
weird clothing tends to attract weird MOOS (if any).  Picking out what I
deem to be the best compromise out of the clean clothes pile, I then try
the outfit on.  Well, the pants are a little baggy but they're comfortable.
The shirt has to go, though, because it makes me look too undefined.  After
about three times through this rigamarole, I usually say "Fuck it" and
throw on an old sweatshirt and faded Bugle Boys (my one concession to the
world of fashion--and only because they're comfortable).
 
Once you have selected a (usually inappropriate) outfit, it's time to tend to
your bodily appearence.  A shower is usually a good idea, because MOOS that
are attracted to excessive body odor are usually not attractive to YOU. After
stepping out of the shower and soaking the bathroom floor, it is necessary to
examine one's self in the mirror for a few minutes to make sure that--in the
unlikely event that you DO bring home a MOOS--that there won't be anything
embarassing showing when you (un)dress it.
 
During this time, you might bemoan the fact that nature did not endow you
with a more classically handsome facial structure--that is of course unless
you possess such a facial structure already, in which case I have a hammer
at the ready to help you with that problem.  Eventually, you convince yourself
that you're not too bad looking--or at least that you're as good looking as
you're going to get without major reconstructive surgery.  The stubble is
just at the right length, in any event.
 
Various personal hygiene activities follow (such as towelling off before you
soak through the floor and start dripping on the kitchen below), each
meticulously performed up to the point where you become disgusted with
performing them and give up.
 
Hair has always been a problem with me.  Not that I have any lack of it, for
indeed it grows copiously on just about every available patch of skin on my
body.  However, the hair on my head has always been a problem.  After several
combings and rufflings which seem to achieve no effect other than to make
matters worse, I might stare wistfully at the can of Mousse my mother keeps
in the bathroom.  But, alas, I made a vow long ago never to use that hideous
stuff, and with one final ruffle I decide to stick with the "windblown" look.
 
Personal hygiene activities concluded, the next step is putting your clothes
on.  For most of us, this presents no major logistical difficulty... But then
again, I have been known to have been last seen hopping down the hallway
with my sneaker caught in my pantleg because I forgot to put my pants on
first.
 
Once dressed, a final view in the mirror is obligatory to judge the overall
effect. "Hey, not bad at all!" you might say to yourself--but the question
you must keep in mind is "Will it be effective in attracting the type of
MOOS I'm after?"  Usually, the answer is "No," but since it is usually too
late to change anything by this point, your only options are to stay home
or throw trepidation to the winds and go out anyway.
 
Certain kinds of MOOS are attracted by the type of vehicular transportation
you use to get you to the hunting grounds.  At one point in my life, I had
a nice, high-performance sports car to use--but ironically at that point in
my life I had no need to hunt for MOOS because I already had one.  When that
MOOS went, the car went up for sale and now I have a $600 brown Chevette with
randomly distributed nasty dents.  Not the kind of car, as Mr. Picher would
say, that one would use when "Cruising for MOOS."
 
One of the gravest errors that a MOOS hunter can comit is to hunt alone.
Not only is it more dangerous, but the MOOS will look at you and think that
if you can't even keep the company of another hunter you probably aren't
worth the trouble to investigate further.  Another MOOS-hunter folly is to
hunt with someone who is substantially better looking than you are.  There
is nothing more discouraging than seeing the MOOS you have in your sights
gravitate toward your hunting partner.
 
Once you have selected a hunting partner, the next step is finding a
location where you can hunt.  Unfortunately, it seems as though any MOOS
"hot spots" are usually targeted by many, many, other hunters as well.
This makes the outcome of a hunting expedition more in doubt, but there
is little to be done for it except to persevere.
 
When you arrive at the hunting ground, you must set about making yourself
visible.  You can do this by shouting "I want MOOS!" at the top of your
lungs, but then you be subsequently visible because there will be a large
area around you which neither hunters or MOOS will cross into.
 
The whole process after this point becomes too tedious to explain.  Usually,
you end up with nothing, or with a MOOS that you decide you don't really
want (which is usually the result of not REALLY knowing what kind of MOOS
you want in the first place).  After trying several locations, you and your
hunting partner usually give up and go home.
 
Of course, this is not to say that you did not enjoy your MOOS hunting
expedition.  There seems to be some inner peace that comes from this
communion with nature, some natural tranquility that comes from pursuing
the dreaded MOOS and coming home completely skunked.
 
Eventually, the wise hunter realizes that active MOOS hunting is not
very fruitful or beneficial.  MOOS seem to posses a great sense of irony,
because the good ones usually show up when the hunter isn't putting forth
any particular effort to find one. Unfortunately, the MTBMOOS (Mean Time
Between MOOS) seems to increase proportionately with the quality of the
MOOS.  Ahh, well... C'est la MOOS, eh?
 
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*************************** MISCELLANEOUS NONSENSE ****************************
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This was sent by the same person, but I'm putting it here in the hopes that
I got at least one of them in the right place.
 
 
                MR. MICRO MEETS MS. MINI
 
Micro was a real-time operator and a dedicated multi-user.  His broadband
protocol made it easy for him to interface with numerous input/output
devices, even if it did mean time-sharing.  His links with authors and
editors connected him with many of Silicon Valley's expert systems and
artificial intelligentsia.
One evening, just as the sun was crashing, he arrived home and parked his
Motorola 68000 in the main drive (he had missed the 5100 bus that morning)
and noticed an elegant piece of liveware admiring the daisy wheels in his
garden.  "She looks user-friendly.  I'll see if she'd like an update
tonight" he thought to himself.
He browsed over to her casually, admiring the power of her twin, 32 bit
floating point processors.  Even her parms were parsed!  He hadn't seen
structured lines like this since his prom.  "How are you, Honeywell?" he
asked.
"Yes, I am well," she responded, batting her optical fibers engagingly and
smoothing her console over her curvilinear functions.
Mini was her name, and she was delightfully engineered with eyes like COBOL
and a Prime mainframe architecture that set Micro's peripherals networking
all over.  Fears of becoming a UNIX were soon fading like vaporware.
Micro settled for the straight line approximation.  "I'm stand-alone
tonight, and looking for an assembly," he said.  "How about computing a
vector to by base address.  I'll output a byte to eat, and we could get
offset later on."
Mini ran her priority process for 2.6 milliseconds then transmitted: "8K,
I've been dumped myself recently and a new page is just what I need to
refresh my discs.  I'll park my machine cycle in your background and meet
you inside." She walked off leaving Micro admiring her solenoids.  "Wow!
What a global variable!  I wonder if she'll like my firmware?" Micro
thought.
That night they sat down at the process table for a form feed of fiche and
chips and a bucket of Baudot.  Mini was in a conversational mode and
expanded on ambiguous argument while Micro gave occasional acknowledgments,
although in reality he was analyzing the shortest and least critical path
to her entry point.  He finally settled on the old `Would you like to see
my benchmark' subroutine.  But Mini was one step ahead.  She was suddenly
up and stripping off her parity bits to reveal the full functionality of
her operating system software!!
"Let's get BASIC you RAM, and go for some downtime on the spread sheets,"
she panted.  Micro was loaded by this stage; he was afraid his software
wouldn't respond.  Fortunately, his hardware policing module had a
processor of it's own and soon was in danger of overflowing it's output
buffer - a hang-up that Micro had recently consulted his analyst about.
"Core!" was all he could say.
Micro soon recovered, however, and Mini went down on the DEC and opened her
device files to reveal her data set ready.  His floppy soon was coming up
to speed.  He acessed his fully packed root device and was just about to
start pushing into her stack when she executed an escape sequence by
popping back to level 1.
 
"Oh no!" she piped.  "You're not sheilded!"
 
"Reset, baby," he replied.  "I've been debugged."
 
"I haven't got my current loop enabled, and I'm not ready to support child
processes," she protested.  "That would make me mother bored!"
 
"Don't run away," he said. "I'll generate an interrupt."
 
"No way!  That's too error prone, and I can't abort because of my design
philosophy."
 
Micro was locked in by this stage, though, and could not be turned off.
She soon stopped his thrashing by introducing a voltage spike into his main
supply, whereupon he fell over with a head crash and went to sleep.
 
"Computers," she thought as she compiled herself at the asynch.  "All they
ever think about is hex."
 
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*************** AND, OF COURSE, THE UBIQUITOUS M00SE LIST UPDATE **************
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     Hey, whaddaya know, this is longer than I thought it was.  The general
list will follow this issue in the mail.  Until next time,  Bl00p!