[953] in Humor
HUMOR (long, but good): Mount Summit Macintosh User's Group
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Mon Jul 3 09:50:26 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 03 Jul 1995 09:45:58 EDT
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 1995 16:59:37 -0700
From: connie@interserve.com (Connie Kleinjans)
From: jeff.snyder@octel.com
Long, but worth the read.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Dear Robert,
I am writing this letter to congratulate your group on the awards recently
received by your newsletter.
Our publication is also called "The Voice" but is not nearly as nice as yours.
Our group is called "Mount Summit Macintosh User's Group" and I have been the
President since its formation. The town of Mount Summit is located in the
rolling hill country of central North Carolina. Our main industry is
agriculture. The interstate is more than 75 miles away so we are a bit off the
beaten track, but our close proximity to Hickory makes up for our isolation.
We like to think of ourselves as part of the "New South." Of course it's a lot
like the "Old South," but the pickup trucks are Japanese and some of us own
personal computers.Often people wonder what use we have for computers in a rural
setting, but there are many uses for them here in "the sticks." Del Smith runs
the local paper and handles the entire publication on his Mac II and
Laserwriter. Del also handles many other local publications such as the Church
paper and our "Voice." Doc Simpson was the first one in town to get a Mac, and
he does everything on it. Jake Mills runs the general store and keeps all the
inventory and books on an accelerated Mac Plus. There are a number of local
farmers who own Macs, but none of them use the machine to keep books on their
farming operations. Keeping books on a computer allows you to know just exactly
how much money you are making, a truly depressing experience for a farmer. Al
Colbert was the first one to get a spreadsheet for the Macand spent a whole week
figuring his profit and loss for the last five years. It took us several hours
to talk him down off the barn. All I can say is thank goodness he didn't hurt
the chickens.
I was getting ready to go to our last meeting when my dear wife Lorraine told me
that I should take our dog Booger down to the meeting so he could get some
exercise. Let me tell you a little bit about Booger. He sleeps more than any dog
I have ever seen. We might as well have 70 pounds of dog meat covered with some
black fur sitting on the front porch. I have tried to explain to Lorraine that
the dog is useless but she does not agree. She insists that Booger is only
resting up. She says that dogs can sense real danger, and when the time comes
Booger will be a veritable tornado of fury.
This theory was put to the test three weeks ago when a half drunk Hank Tellirude
stormed onto my front porch demanding to see his wife. He was convinced that Big
Rosie was stepping out on him (she was) and that she had made a turn onto my
road last night (she hadn't) and was currently in myhouse (she wasn't). To help
convince me he was serious he blew one of my porch chairs into toothpicks with
his 12-gauge. After about 5 tense minutes I managed to convince him that his
wife was not here, and had not been here in months. After I got him calmed down
he apologized profusely for his behaviour and promised to replace the porch
chair. Booger slept peacefully through this entire event, only a few feet away.
I pointed out to my wife that Booger had failed in his duty to protect me, but
she would have none of it. She insisted that since I was able to calm Hank down
that there obviously had been no real danger. Booger had sensed this
instinctively and if there had been real danger, Booger would have been a
veritable tornado of fury. Sometimes there is no making sense of that woman, but
she says the same about me sometimes so I guess that makes us even.
There is one time when Booger is a veritable "tornado of fury." That's when
someone wakes him up. You have to shake him a little to do it, but when someone
wakes Booger up he is the most bad-tempered dog I have ever seen. He takes such
grave offense to having his sleep disturbed that he takes it upon himself to
tear the offending person limb from limb. The last person to wake Booger up
still walks with a limp.
We argued for a short time about my taking Booger to the meeting. I argued that
a dog has to be conscious to benefit from exercise, but pretty soon she gave me
"that look" and I gave in. Our meetings are held at the American Legion
Hall in
town. It dates back to before "The Big One" (WWI) and has a hand-painted mural
covering the full length of one wall depicting heroes of the Civil War, like
Robert E. Lee and Jeb Stuart.
Microsoft had sent a rep to do the presentation and he was already there,
talking with our Treasurer Abner Mills. Abner ran the general store for many
years before turning it over to his son, Jake. Oddas it may seem, Abner does not
keep the club's books on a Mac, but uses a set of ledgers like he did at the
store. I have asked him about it but he says that any machine that adds a column
of figures that fast cannot be giving the matter proper thought. Abner's
favorite program is MacPaint, which he is known to have used for hours at a
stretch.
Abner pulled me aside and in a conspiritorial tone informed me that this fellow
had been sent from Washington and was therefore a Yankee. I told him that he was
from Washington state, not Washington, D. C. and we entered into a discussion
about whether or not this made him a Yankee. Other attendees began to arrive and
we dropped this issue. Our Disk of the Month sold briskly. Tom Wopat had put
together his complete collection of digitized Country and Western sounds. "Take
this job and shove it, I ain't working here no more" is a popular shutdown sound
and always good for a hoot.
The presentation got off to a bad start as the Microsoft rep explained that he
had never really used a Mac and only knew the IBM versions of the programs. He
had spent about 15 minutes explaining Microsoft corporate philosophy and getting
everyone set for a good snooze when he pulled out the Frisbees.
He explained the game like this. He would holler, "Who's got the best
spreadsheet for the Macintosh?" or some such corporate hoo-hah. One or more of
us would leap to our feet and yell, "Microsoft's got it!" The one who displayed
the most unbridled enthusiasm would have the Frisbee hurled in their general
direction. Now, folks in Mount Summit are not given to displays of unbridled
enthusiasm and neither are they given to making complete fools of themselves
just to get some cheap plastic Frisbee. However there was one attendee at the
meeting who DID want that Frisbee. Abner's dog Bingo is the most Frisbee crazy
dog I ever have seen. The dog will play Frisbee until it is near-on to dead and
still beg you to throw itone more time. Bingo was sitting beside Abner that
night and saw the Frisbee ready to launch.
The Microsoft rep yelled out, "Whose got the best multi-platform spreadsheet
solutions!!?? " As silence fell over the room, I felt for the first time a stab
of regret that no one chews tobacco anymore. The ring of a well placed shot into
a spitoon would have been the only accurate expression of our feelings as a
group. The Microsoft rep must have felt asstupid as he looked holding that
Frisbee. After a few seconds he got embarrassed and just threw the thing into
the audience. The orange colored disk sailed over the room with Bingo tracking
it with a precision that no high-tech radar system could hope to match. As it
sailed over Bingo's head she leaped a full seven feet into the air, executed a
half twist and caught the Frisbee neatly in her mouth. The room erupted in
applause at the magnificent catch and Bingo proudly trotted up to the front of
the room to give the Frisbee back to the presenter for another throw.
The rep took the Frisbee as if it was a dead animal and set it aside. You would
think he had never seen something with teeth marks and a little dog slobber on
it. Abner called Bingo back to his chair and held her in his lap in case the rep
decided to try another throw. The presentation went on for another thirty
minutes. The rep said repeatedly that the Mac was "cute" and "fun" and that it
was very easy to use, "Just like Windows." He would use "Ya'll" in his
conversations and then laugh like it was some sort of joke.
When he said that we could use Excel to "count our grits" he thought it was the
funniest thing he had ever heard, but none of us got the joke. Mostly we thought
he was making fun of us. In response to a simple question about using Excel to
factor rainfall into crop yield projections, the rep replied that you have to
use Pagemaker if you want to crop graphics. Just when I was about to cut the
city boy short, he decided to give the Frisbee trick another try.
He was smart enough to skip the "Microsoft's got it!" part and just throw the
thing. He hurled it at the side of the room opposite Bingo to avoid having a dog
catch it a second time, but Bingo was ready. When the Frisbee sailed towards the
opposite side of the hall, Bingo could see that time was of the essence. Rather
than jumping from Abner's lap to the floor, Bingo broke from Abner's grip and
made a dash across the laps of the attendees. She made the jump to the floor
when crossing the center aisle and became a blur of motion. She was moving in
for a clean interception at breakneck speed when someone reached up and plucked
the disc from the air.
The look of hurt disappointment in Bingo's eyes lasted only for a second. The
problem of momentum, a freshly waxed hardwood floor and a wall mural depicting
Civil War heroes only 10 feet away quickly became more urgent. Bingo went in to
one of those frantic, back pedaling scrambles that dogs do when they can't get
traction. With a sickening thud she landed at the feet of Stonewall Jackson in a
yelping heap of legs, hair and tail. Abner rushed to the howling animal's side
and cradled her is his arms. He began protesting loudly that the Microsoft rep
had killed his dog and that he should be strung up from the oak tree "like the
yankee spy that he was."
With the way the presentation had been going there were a few people nodding
agreement. The sweating city boy apologized profusely and then did the only
intelligent thing I saw him do all night. He gave Bingo a Frisbee. The dog
promptly stopped yelping and began wagging her tail. I told the city boy to go
up front and wrap it up while I settled Abner down. After we ended off the
meeting and everyone had gone home, the city boy said that he thought it all
went "Pretty well, considering what a dull crowd we had." You know, I really
should have stopped him when he went over to wake up Booger and give him a
Frisbee.
Best Regards,Orville Charlotte, President Mount Summit Macintosh User's Group,
Mount Summit, N.C.
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All Contents Copyright 1995 Robert I. Wright All Rights Reserved.Unauthorized
Duplication Prohibited.
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