33 lines
1.5 KiB
Plaintext
33 lines
1.5 KiB
Plaintext
Acknowledgements
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Who should I thank? My so-called "colleagues," who laugh at me behind my
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back, all the while becoming famous on *my* work? My worthless graduate
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students, whose computer skills appear to be limited to downloading bitmaps
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off of netnews? My parents, who are still waiting for me to quit "fooling
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around with computers," go to med school, and become a radiologist? My
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department chairman, a manager who gives one new insight into and sympathy for
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disgruntled postal workers?
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My God, no one could blame me--no one!--if I went off the edge and just lost
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it completely one day. I couldn't get through the day as it is without the
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Prozac and Jack Daniels I keep on the shelf, behind my Tops-20 JSYS manuals.
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I start getting the shakes real bad around 10am, right before my advisor
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meetings. A 10 oz. Jack 'n Zac helps me get through the meetings without one
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of my students winding up with his severed head in a bowling-ball bag. They
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look at me funny; they think I twitch a lot. I'm not twitching. I'm
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controlling my impulse to snag my 9mm Sig-Sauer out from my day-pack and make
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a few strong points about the quality of undergraduate education in Amerika.
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If I thought anyone cared, if I thought anyone would even be reading this, I'd
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probably make an effort to keep up appearances until the last possible
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moment. But no one does, and no one will. So I can pretty much say exactly
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what I think.
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Oh, yes, the *acknowledgements.* I think not. I did it. I did it all,
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by myself.
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Olin Shivers
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Cambridge
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September 4, 1994
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