[ale] Fwd: A funny thing happened on the way to the lug meeting

Thu Oct 18 22:45:15 EDT 2001

----- Forwarded message from Stephan Greene <sgreene at patriot.net> -----

Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 22:26:56 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [evals] A funny thing happened on the way to the lug meeting

This was so funny, I had to share it.

(Background:  DC LUG nominally meets once a month at a really nice
auditorium at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Betehsda, MD.
Due to current security changes, evening meetings have been cancelled, so
some of the folks are getting together for pizza instead of meeting and
then going for pizza.  Looks like some of that other mystery powder got
snuck into the mozzerlla....)

Steve

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephan A. Greene     sgreene at patriot.net        ka1lm at amsat.org
Herndon, VA           1-703-654-6032 office  1-571-233-1194 cell
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 17:38:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: Maxwell Spangler <maxwax at mindspring.com>
To: ale at ale.org
Cc: DC Linux Users Group <dclug at tux.org>
Subject: Re: [dclug] Meeting

On Thu, 18 Oct 2001, Christopher J. Graham wrote:

> I was not able to make it to the dclug meeting last night like I planned.
> What did I miss?

About 10 of us showed up and were eating dinner, having a chat, when armed
terrorists burst in the room with guns and bombs.

The put us up against the wall with our hands above our head and wouldn't let
me finish my soda despite my sore throat.

It seems they had been escaping some other crimial activity in bethesda and
ran into victors to get away from the many police cars we heard with sirens
driving madly around bethesda.

We noticed one of them had a small satellite phone hooked up to a toshiba
liberetto (a really small laptop) and was using it to communicate with others.

When we noticed this and we asked them what operating system they were
running.  They yelled at us but we could see it was Windows, and I still
couldn't get to my soda.  It was a Dr. Pepper.

Serge started to tell them that if they're using Windows, they're not Free at
all and no matter what they do to bomb our country and hurt our people, as
long as they're not using Free Software they're not ever going to be Free.

They started at Serge and said something like "All your base are belong to us"
whatever the hell that means...

So then Serge recited some speech from heart from a guy named Eben that talked
recently in DC.  Serge managed to convert half of us, including some of the
terrorists from our previous beliefs, to some quasi-communist doctrine based
on high-technology and Free Software.  That's free as in Libre and not as in
Beer, and my soda continued to cost me money without my being able to drink it
so I was not very swayed by his speech.

Alan McConnel came out of the bathroom at this point and said "What is THIS?"
and I said, it's a Toshiba Liberetto, and he said, no--the them, pointing at
the terrorists, and I said, yeah, half are into Free Software now and the
others "just don't get it"  So Alan was put up against the wall as well but
before he was he managed to ask "Do they know about TeX in Afghanistan?"

It was about this time that they finished going through our wallets looking
for ID cards and saw that Megan Larko worked for NASA and they thought it said
"NSA" and gave her a really hard time.  So we explained that it was NASA, the
guys who put people on the moon and we asked the terrorists where they were
when the first guy walked on the room and they had to think for a while
because they couldn't remember.

While they were distracted thinking about how the moon looks like Khandar in
the summer time (and the winter, and spring and fall), I managed to make a
call on my phone.  I called Fede and said "we're being hijaaked--there are
terrorists here, they have guns and Windows 2000 for encryption with their sat
phone" and he said "Hi, This is Fede and Lisa, we're not here right now but if
you leave a message we'll get back to you" but what I know he really *meant*
was "Windows 2000 is a pretty sad choice for people who are against the big
corporations that represent american and keep other people down while making
other people rich..." but then my cell phone battery went dead.

We were very nervous, but I think what happened next--they spoke farsi or
something so we coulnd't tell, but We think the people on the phone sent them
an email with instructions on how to get out, but when they opened it, it had
a virus and the virus said "down with america" and put poison symbols all over
the screen.  "See!" we told them, you need Free Software.

Realizing they had no other options at this point, they grabbed some pizza and
made a mad rush out the back door, possibly to get to safety, or possibly just
to find another group of captives that don't know about Free Software and
won't try to harass them about it so much.

I took a gasp and drank the rest of my warm Dr. Pepper.

It was a pretty good meeting--we got some people interested in Free Software,
as I said earlier.

I hope this goes in the archives :)
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Maxwell Spangler
Program Writer
Greenbelt, Maryland, U.S.A.
Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area

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----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Steven A. DuChene	sad at ale.org
			linux-clusters at mindspring.com
			sduchene at mindspring.com

	http://www.mindspring.com/~sduchene/

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