High School Madness (series) ep. 1

"Who is PROG11309 and PROG11286 ?"

The two guilty parties in PASCAL class were given admonishment and a penalty. What was the crime?

Mr. Frey had special guests in the building and the room to look at the VAX 3000, during which time the class was to be seen and not heard. Johnson and someone else decided that the RQ command (request bell to verify that the printer was online and active) would be funny. It would be especially funny if you did it about every 5 seconds, offsetting each other, so that it pinged lightly about every 2.3 seconds. After about 20 minutes of this, students were called aside (see above).

Study hall ... senior year, I had two back to back. You weren't allowed to leave early, and the study hall ... no sleeping, no talking, no rustling of paper, no wriring of non-school work. Thankfully I had to endure that only 3 classes before other opportunities became available.

On ocassion, TS and I were able to slip out and eat lunch at a Mexican restaurant nearby. They had the free chips and salsa, so they didn't ever get much money from us while in high school.

--- back to PASCAL ---
Those unaware of this ancient mini-computer ... meaning the forced network of terminals to a refridgerator-sized computer may not understand the relative boringness of the system. It did, however have a few neat features. Before the globalization and broader use of the internet, people had no purpose in naming their computer. Now XP expects you to name it, as it is networked, either in a building, house, or the net. Naming was a neat feature back then. We would often entertain each other or chat through name changes. It was untrackable unlike phoning or mailing each other.

I was no stranger to adolenscent humor and rudeness of names. It was mostly a little geeky white boy class. I think there were two girls and two black boys in the class. Out of 18-24, that isn't a big ratio. Anyway ... I was out of school on one day, which saved me a little lambasting.

There was a list of users on the system, listed in order of account number, such as PROG (programming class) 1100 (PASCAL) 56 (person 56 out of 2 classes).

ACCOUNT NAME LOCATION
PROG110056 RUTHLESS FWWHSFWCS

now ... when you have a bunch of guys together, you have a list of names that you can read down the center making nearly a sentence, omitting those not participating. There were a couple of students who named their computer the same thing day in and out. On the day I was missing, sniff, sniff, apparently another nosy teacher (later in this message and others) viewed the names.

SANTA
RAPES
BELGARIAN
ELVESAND
REINDEER
WITH
PLEASURE

There were a couple of others that got netted in there too. "Belgarian" was a kid who never changed his name, but was dragged into the mess because it was incorportated into the sentence.

I understand that their accounts went dead at one point, while others worked on. Carey (aformention teacher) came out and read off the account numbers. There was some stupid punishment like essay apology or something.

Carey, who required perfect Enlgish in the comment areas (areas that are for remarks and explanations only that do not affect the functionality of the program whatsoever) and would scrutinize it continually until he was happy. He had a control issue, that showed well here. He had other things to do, yet logged on, read the names and found it appalling that teen boys would act like ... uh, teen boys.

Frankly, I think Frey, our teacher, wouldn't have minded at all or cared, as long as we got our assignments done by the end of the semester.

A few words about Carey: my folks know his family, so I never really had any opinion. I did have one when I saw his ... painfully useless critique of spelling, grammar, and sentence structure when it mattered to no one. Also, more to the point, his unlike-a-teacher comments to MR and Monkeyjack, indicating that they were losers and would grew up to be losers. I'm sure that MR and Monkeyjack can explain this better.