Acknowledgements

Who should I thank?  My so-called "colleagues," who laugh at me behind my
back, all the while becoming famous on *my* work?  My worthless graduate
students, whose computer skills appear to be limited to downloading bitmaps
off of netnews?  My parents, who are still waiting for me to quit "fooling
around with computers," go to med school, and become a radiologist?  My
department chairman, a manager who gives one new insight into and sympathy for
disgruntled postal workers?

My God, no one could blame me--no one!--if I went off the edge and just lost
it completely one day.  I couldn't get through the day as it is without the
Prozac and Jack Daniels I keep on the shelf, behind my Tops-20 JSYS manuals.
I start getting the shakes real bad around 10am, right before my advisor
meetings. A 10 oz. Jack 'n Zac helps me get through the meetings without one
of my students winding up with his severed head in a bowling-ball bag. They
look at me funny; they think I twitch a lot. I'm not twitching. I'm
controlling my impulse to snag my 9mm Sig-Sauer out from my day-pack and make
a few strong points about the quality of undergraduate education in Amerika.

If I thought anyone cared, if I thought anyone would even be reading this, I'd
probably make an effort to keep up appearances until the last possible
moment. But no one does, and no one will. So I can pretty much say exactly
what I think.

Oh, yes, the *acknowledgements.* I think not. I did it. I did it all, 
by myself.

Olin Shivers
Cambridge
September 4, 1994

