tada@athena.mit.edu (09/08/90)
This was an actual posting at MIT for a job oppurtunity. (I removed the phone numbers and address, but left the poster's name since he deserves the credit for this.) You are a great C/UNIX hacker, but you're ashamed to admit that you still use 1960's-era software development tools here in the Mecca of super-genius computer science. Your devotion to a subset of MULTICS may ear you jeers on the 7th floor, but it can also earn you up to $10,000 and a free trip to Paris on September 14th. I've got a pile (70,000 lines that compiles to 0.75 Mbytes) of C code written by some university weenies in Buffalo. It constitutes a fairly winning 3D modelling system for designers and architects. There is even a comprehensive luser's manual. A mysterious person in Switzerland wants to flog this software worldwide. Before it can be sold to millions of adoring fans, it needs to be polished up, i.e. fixed and extended. In particular, some guys in Paris want to look at the thing work on September 14th before parting with some serious money. Your task is to work 80 hours/week between now and September 14th. You'll have a Sun 3 or 4 located in a scenic Kendall Square warehouse and all the Vivarin you can Stomach. You might actually learn something about solid modelling and CAE systems. In particular, the system seems to have a megawinning redisplay algorithm. After you win totally on this hell-bent crusade to charm the Parisians, there's a chance for consulting during the term at outrageous industry rates. Why am I, Philip Greenspun, famous nerd and 200 lb. guzzler of French pastry, not doing this myself? For openers, the worst week of my life was spent learning C and programming an 8051 ($2 washing machine controller) to talk to an IBM PC. After ten years hacking Lisp Machines, God had finally sent me a machine commensurate with my abilities. However, the main reason is that I am busy being president of a startup company. Bankrupting a business is not as easy as it looks. Corporations exhibit a propensity for mediocrity that inhibits true success or failure. Alas, I'll be listening to creditors threaten to "punch [my] f...king face in" (yes, that's a quote) rather than munching bonbons with friendly Frenchwomen. If you are interested, immediately call me at [] or FAX a resume to []. You can mail a resume to Philip Greenspun Head Pimp [...] -- Edited by Brad Templeton. MAIL your jokes (jokes ONLY) to funny@looking.ON.CA Attribute the joke's source if at all possible. A Daemon will auto-reply. Jokes posted instead of mailed often don't have a valid reply address. Administrative note: A number of people are pointing out that the "is there a god" joke appears in a story by Isaac Asimov. It does indeed, although I have also heard it in other ways as well. But he is probably the original source. Asimov is an avid humourist, and those who like big collections should get his "Treasury of Humour"