a live one!

[Bob & Cecelia <n3lym@amsat.org>]

I've found Steve Mentzer, he writes:


Yes, I am the Steve Mentzer in question.  Forgive me for not remembering you, 
but I have trouble remembering what I did last week, let alone 15 years ago.

As for what I'm doing now: I'm President of The Core Group Inc., a company that 
provides service and support for a manufacturing software package.  We're based 
in Pittsburgh, PA.  I'm now 32 and (still) single.

The only memorabilia I know I have is printouts of some e-mail messages from my 
account in a box somewhere.  If I find it, I'll forward anything potentially 
relevant to your project.

As I write this, I'm recalling a few things:
1. We were messing around with the operating system tables one weekend and 
caused the system to crash in a bad way.  I think they had to restore it from 
tape.
2. Late one night I found someone was accessing the system through a "back 
door" so I decided to change the priv password.  It was quite late and I didn't 
know who to call, so I waited until morning.  This upset a few people.
3. Ed Boas (I think that's how it's spelled) routinely used ALL CAPS IN 
PORTIONS OF HIS MAIL MESSAGES.  I still don't know if he intended to convey 
yelling by doing this or not.
4. The OS would let you "garbage collect" by opening a file and allocating 
space for it.  The unallocated space would be filled with whatever was in the 
system memory at the time, so if you just closed the file it would often 
contain pieces of other people's mail messages and other fragments of things.
5. I used to do a lot of funky stuff in TECO, the system text editor.  But I'm 
sure if I looked at it now I wouldn't have a clue about it.

Feel free to ask questions if you need to.  Maybe something will jog my memory 
... I think my account was [1,42].  Does that sound right?

Regards,

Steve Mentzer
The Core Group Inc.
Pittsburgh, PA
Email steve@thecoregrp.com