Re: SAGE calendar

["Brett D. Watson" <bwatson@mci.net>]

actually, to be specific, john foderero was a grad student at berkeley
in the summer of 1980.  he was working on a mail notification program.
at the same time, heidi stettner worked on campus and used to bring
her dog to class and work with her.  the dog was popular on campus and
well known to students.  john simply named his program after the dog,
biff.  heidi, john and bill joy supposedly spent time trying to come
up with an explanation of 'biff'.  they decided on 'be notified if
mail arrives'.  heidi says the rumor that biff barked at the mail man
is a 'scurrilous canard'.

(i remembered reading this in salus' "a quarter century of unix", and
paraphrased)

-brett

> From:    Fred W Allen <deadhead@llnl.gov>
> Subject: Re: SAGE calendar
> 
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> Ross West wrote:
> > 
> > On Fri, 26 Apr 1996, David Steiner wrote:
> > 
> > > On Thu, 25 Apr 1996, Ross West wrote:
> > >
> > > >   I thought I might point out that (at least on my copy) of the Calendar,
> > > > April seems to have 29 days.  Must be the anti-leap year thing I forgot
> > > [ snip ]
> > > >   Oh well, see what happens when you don't beta test a product?  :-)
> > >
> > > Gee, Ross, I think they _did_ beta test it. Too bad you didn't know that
> > > you were one of the beta testers. ;-) My calendar has the correct number
> > > of days (at least for April; I will doing QA on mine between now and Dec :-
> ).
> > 
> >   As I pull down the calendar from its nailed up position on the wall, I
> > just noticed that it has a version number. v1.0  <Sigh>  Although the
> > stone blocks do read 4.4...
> > 
> >   A quick scan on the next month reveals that "Biff" was born on May 2nd,
> > 1978.  Any idea as to who Biff is?  (Who will be 18 then)  Or am I
> > missing something again?  (It's a plot I tell you!  The Usenet Cabal
> > strikes again!)
> > 
> > > I will agree with you on the Sun/Mon thing. I hate calendars that start
> > > the week on Monday (even if it does make more sense in a work oriented
> > > society). Too many years of "normal" calendars burned into my habits...
> > 
> >   I've now located a FarSide 366 page desk calendar that now hangs below
> > the sage calendar with the current date displayed in big numbers.  :-)
> > 
> > Ross
> > 
> > --
> >               Ross West                  |  Work : (416) 362-3747
> >      Systems/Network Administrator       |  Fax  : (416) 362-3727
> >  Internet Service Bureau of Canada Inc.  |  Email:  westr@isb.ca
> 
> I herd that Biff was a dog..
> A dog that barked when the mail was delivered to the appartment
> of the programmer who was writing the unix tool 'biff'.
> ...This programmer always knew when to mail arrived and
> named the tool for her dog.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> fred allen        :-) :-) ;-)                 fred@fredallen.com 
>       http://www.aimnet.com/~deadhead     deadhead@llnl.gov 
>           There are three types of people in the world.    
>               Those that are good at math and those that are not.