dive into mark

Mac Finder screendump via ImageWriter II printer © Blake Patterson / CC

Benjamin Mako Hill is awesome. That reminds me of a story.

During my brief tenure at Cornell University, I worked at the campus computing labs. It was just grunt work — keeping the waiting list during peak hours, refilling printer paper, and playing Tetris-as-a-desk-accessory (because the Macs were all on System 6 without MultiFinder). I was technically employed by CIT, which I think stood for “Cornell Information Technologies.” They were the organization that ran the computer labs. But nobody except employees really knew that; people assumed I worked for The University and didn’t know or care about internal bureaucratic structures.

Anyway, in the back of the computer labs, we kept boxes and boxes of printer paper. This was dot-matrix paper, with the edges that you had to thread into the (ImageWriter) printers and then tear off after you printed. CIT could never seem to keep printer paper in the labs that needed it, and about once a week we would get a call from another lab across campus crying that they were out of paper and could we please send some over right away? And by “send some over,” of course I mean “carry some over.”

In an effort to deter theft (because everybody steals printer paper), we were told to write “Stolen From CIT” on the outside of each box. The thinking being, if someone were to break into the (locked!) cabinet and make off with an unwieldy box of near-worthless paper, they would be foiled by Good Samaritans who saw this insignia on the outside of the box and reported the crime. Seriously, that’s exactly how it was explained to me.

Of course, nobody knew what “CIT” stood for, nobody wanted our printer paper except other CIT labs, and and nobody ever took the boxes out into the open air except us, the hapless CIT employees, who had to carry said boxes to said labs.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon would be proud.

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Six comments here (latest comments)

1. I miss the dot-matrix paper and the ability to make a banner for a party. If that box were still around I’d totally steal it.

   — Leah Culver 

2. It’s always a blast transporting campus computer equipment from one building to the next, especially after someone robs two computer labs within a week.

   — http://jldugger.livejournal.com/ 

3. And of course, the paper would then get used for stupid things like Finder screendumps.

   — http://clickpass.com/public/serhei 

4. if someone were to break into the (locked!) cabinet and make off with an unwieldy box of near-worthless paper, they would be foiled by Good Samaritans who saw this insignia on the outside of the box and reported the crime.

   What an awesome idea! I shall do the same around here with out copier paper, which seems to dissolve in thin air…

   — David Collantes 

5. As I read your post, my browser has “Property of [dive into mark]” in the title bar. A passer-by noticed this, assumed I’d stolen my browser from you, and reported me to the appropriate authorities.
   The system works.

   — http://groovymother.com/ 

6. Do you fancy making your html and body elements have a white background colour? The top gradient looks a bit weird, suddenly slicing from white to off-yellow (which is my default background colour).

   — Phil Wilson 

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