eric@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) (03/31/91)
In responding to several posters' pleas for the reinstatement of Mabel,
I clean forgot that the condensed `Story of Mabel' wasn't added to the
`scratch monkey' entry till 2.8.2, which most of you don't have.
Here is the relevant bit from 2.8.5:
@h{scratch monkey} n. As in, ``Before testing or reconfiguring, always
mount a scratch monkey.'', a proverb used to advise caution when
dealing with irreplaceable data or devices. Used to refer to any
scratch volume hooked to a computer during any risky operation as a
replacement for some precious resource or data that might get
trashed.
This term preserves the memory of Mabel, the Swimming Wonder
Monkey, star of a biological research program at a great American
university. Mabel was not (so the legend goes) your ordinary
monkey; the university had spent years teaching her how to swim,
breathing through a regulator, in order to study the effects of
different gas mixtures on her physiology. Mabel suffered an
untimely demise one day when a computer vendor @e{PM}ed the machine
controlling her regulator (see also @e{provocative maintainance}).
It is recorded that, after calming down an understandably irate
customer sufficiently to ascertain the facts of the matter, the
vendor's troubleshooter called up the @e{field circus} manager
responsible and asked him sweetly ``Can you swim?''. The moral is
clear: when in doubt, always mount a scratch monkey. See
@e{scratch}. @refill
I hope this satisfies Mabel's fans. The volume of the outcry for her
resurrection has been remarkable (which is actually pleasant, because
it vindicates my original idea that the story was worth including).
Art Evans (the gentleman who posted the story to comp.risks) is doubtless an
estimable person with whom I'd enjoy becoming acquainted, but a writer he
is not. In particular, it always bothered me how he muffed the punch line...
oh, heck, I guess I'll include the posting so you can see for yourself.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following, modulo a couple of inserted commas and
capitalization changes for readability, is the exact text of a famous
USENET message. The reader may wish to review the definitions of
@e{PM} in the main text before continuing.
Date: Wed 3 Sep 86 16:46:31-EDT
From: "Art Evans" <Evans@@TL-20B.ARPA>
Subject: Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
To: Risks@@CSL.SRI.COM
My friend Bud used to be the intercept man at a computer vendor for
calls when an irate customer called. Seems one day Bud was sitting at
his desk when the phone rang.
Bud: Hello. Voice: YOU KILLED MABEL!!
B: Excuse me? V: YOU KILLED MABEL!!
This went on for a couple of minutes and Bud was getting nowhere, so he
decided to alter his approach to the customer.
B: HOW DID I KILL MABEL? V: YOU PM'ED MY MACHINE!!
Well, to avoid making a long story even longer, I will abbreviate what had
happened. The customer was a Biologist at the University of Blah-de-blah,
and he had one of our computers that controlled gas mixtures that Mabel (the
monkey) breathed. Now, Mabel was not your ordinary monkey. The University
had spent years teaching Mabel to swim, and they were studying the effects
that different gas mixtures had on her physiology. It turns out that the
repair folks had just gotten a new Calibrated Power Supply (used to
calibrate analog equipment), and at their first opportunity decided to
calibrate the D/A converters in that computer. This changed some of the gas
mixtures and poor Mabel was asphyxiated. Well, Bud then called the branch
manager for the repair folks:
Manager: Hello
B: This is Bud, I heard you did a PM at the University of
Blah-de-blah.
M: Yes, we really performed a complete PM. What can I do
for you?
B: Can you swim?
The moral is, of course, that you should always mount a scratch monkey.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are several morals here related to risks in use of computers.
Examples include, ``If it ain't broken, don't fix it.'' However, the
cautious philosophical approach implied by ``always mount a scratch
monkey'' says a lot that we should keep in mind.
Art Evans
Tartan Labs
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's face it, people, that ending just does not work as well as it ought.
The moral isn't ``always mount a scratch monkey''; sometimes you gotta use
real monkeys, or you don't get any work done. The moral is properly
``*when in doubt* (that is, when you're going to do something that might
crash the system)'' always mount a scratch monkey.
I'm sure this is what Art meant, but it's not what he said. This and other
infelicities in the writing (rambling prose, shaky punctuation, awkward
anti-climactic appendix after the tildes etc.) made the scratch monkey
appendix target #1 when it came to trim time.
As much as possible, I tried to capture the flavor of the anecdote in my
condensation without reproducing the bugs. Is that satisfactory?
--
Eric S. Raymond = eric@snark.thyrsus.com (mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews)