Cray avoided publicity, and there are a number of unusual tales about his life away from work, termed "Rollwagenisms", from then-CEO of Cray Research, John A. Rollwagen. He enjoyed skiing, windsurfing, tennis, and other sports. Another favorite pastime was digging a tunnel under his home. He attributed the secret of his success to "visits by elves" while he worked in the tunnel: "While I'm digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem."
One story has it that when Cray was asked by management to provide detailed one-year and five-year plans for his next machine, he simply wrote, "Five-year goal: Build the biggest computer in the world. One year goal: One-fifth of the above."
And another time, when expected to write a multi-page detailed status report for the company executives, Cray's two sentence report read: "Activity is progressing satisfactorily as outlined under the June plan. There have been no significant changes or deviations from the June plan.
Digging a tunnel under his home...
:oh-shit:
...to talk to elves.
:youre-welcome:
Reminds me of Socrates attributing stuff to his daemon aka his angel on his shoulder.
Sounds like it could be a fun project, but plenty of ways to fuck up and die
The real enlightenment is being elfpilled. Goblin mode is just a distraction.
BOSS, I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING, LITERALLY THE ONLY THING YOU CAN DO IS GET IN MY WAY
Digging a tunnel through my floor until I get carbon monoxide poisoning in the hope that it makes me really good at doing computer
I heard an apocryphal story about Cray from my computer teacher: they were delivering a super computer to a business when the CEO comes down to watch them installing it.
When the technicians powered it on for the first time, the CEO asked, "Where are the blinking lights?"
Confused, the technicians said "What blinking lights, sir?"
"Computers are supposed to have a bunch of blinking red lights on them so you know they're working! [Competitor's company] has a computer with blinking lights on it, are you selling me one that's worse than theirs?"
"N-no sir, we uh...left the blinking lights in the truck, but we'll install them right away!"
"Good!"
So the technicians stayed up all night drilling holes in the outer case of the computer and soldering red LEDs to random circuitry.
blinking lights
It's funny how that trope continues even today in movies and tv. If a computer is really powerful - it's got to have a zillion tiny lights.
we're not in the stone age anymore, the blinking lights are rgb now.
Wouldn't it be more fitting for dwarves (Or perhaps goblins) to give him life advice in the tunnels rather than elves?
Spoiler alert: he was lying. About the tunnel and the elves. Ask a stupid question and get a stupid answer.
wait remember that post recently where the woman's boyfriend compulsively dug tunnels...
