Date: Wed, 14 May 86 17:30:39 edt From: Pete Cottrell <pete@gymble.umd.edu> To: lab-people@mimsy.umd.edu, staff@mimsy.umd.edu Subject: gymble rouletteHere's a chance for you all to get a little illicit gambling under your (zmob) belt. For a measly dollar, you can take a chance on picking gymble's next hardware failure. There will be winners in 2 categories: date of failure and point of failure, with the pot being split evenly for the 2 categories. In case of ties, winnings will be split between the lucky individuals.
For the date, pick a time between now and June 30th. The person with the choice CLOSEST to the failure date wins, i.e. you can win even if you pick a date before the failure. You only have to be the closest.
For point of failure, you have the following choices:
The failure must be hardware-related, something that Pyramid needs to come out for. This means that you can't trash the disk yourself and expect to win, but you can expect to be eviscerated. All entries must be made by 6pm Friday May 16th and become the property of the Parallel Processing Lab. Winners agree to allow the Lab to use the winner's name and likeness in any advertisements the Lab sees fit. The placing of an entry constitutes acceptance of these terms.
In the event there is no failure by June 30th (hahahahaha), all monies will be cheerfully refunded with no interest.
While we have experienced several disk failures recently, you should also know that within the last 3 weeks we have had service calls to repair the tape drive and a terminal controller (ITP), so there IS something else to bet on besides the /u1, /u2 and /u3 partitions.
This lottery is open to anyone who has the spirit of adventure that made this country great. Tell your friends and loved ones. We are considering calling Pyramid to see if they want in on the action (but we'll only call them after we disable the remote diagnostic port).
Entries may be placed with Pete, Steve K, Roger or Neal.
"You gotta play to win"
Date: Thu, 22 May 86 16:54:47 EDT From: Pete Cottrell <pete@brillig.umd.edu> To: lab-people@mimsy.umd.edu, staff@mimsy.umd.edu Subject: pyramidOk, we all had fun with the little lottery we ran on gymble going down. It was just a private joke among us and we had a good laugh. I made sure it was a private joke by keeping it in-house and local. Unfortunately, someone forwarded the mail to another mailing list with nation-wide distribution. Yesterday, we got a call from Pyramid in California asking us if we were really having that many problems with the disk and by the way, who is this Pete Cottrell fellow and why is he running this lottery?
I doubt anything will come of this but let me stress the following: Keep private mail private! These mail lists are somewhat privileged and NOT meant for redistribution. Besides potentially screwing me royally, you could put the University in an awkward and legally liable situation. Staff mail is, as the James Bond movie title goes, "For Your Eyes Only". Let's be discrete.