The following is an actual (edited) response to one user's intense complaint that he had to revalidate himself for the spring semester because the fall accounts were being closed.
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 02:03:14 -0500 (EST) From: Charles McGrew <mcgrew@klinzhai.rutgers.edu> To: USERNAME@remus.rutgers.edu (Removed for some reason or other) cc: mcgrew@klinzhai.rutgers.edu Subject: Re: fall 1999 accounts closing JEsus christ! I'm taking 300 level CS classes EVERY SEMESTER. I'm a declared CS major. look me up. I shouldn't have to go through the trouble of dealing with this kind of message at all. put me on the list for perpetual remus account renewal. having my account threatened to be closed every couple of weeks at a university where I'm paying so much in tuition is nothing but pure unadulterated harassment. ... darn it, you've found me out! OK, I can come clean now -- I was hired with the express purpose of sending your this kind of mail every couple of weeks. It's in my job description. During my interview, the only question I was asked was, "Can you perpetually send mail to anyone named USER NAME?" "Yes, I said. Oh, YES!" "Good," they said, "you're hired." And I was pleased. Greatly pleased. For you see, I was raised to send you such mail. My daddy would sit me on his knee. "Son," he would say, "remember, where you get old enough to type, there will be a fellow named USER NAME. He isn't born yet, but he will be. And you must send him email. Perpetually." I nodded my head, and wrote the name "USER NAME" on my little hand in felt-tipped marker. It washed off, of course, but that was all right. And my Daddy was pleased. Greatly pleased. For you see, his father had told him too: "Son, one day you will have a son, and you must make sure he sends mail to USER NAME." My Daddy nodded, because he was big on non-verbal communication. And My Granddaddy was pleased as well. For his father had passes this on to him, and now he was now off the hook, having fulfilled his obligation for his existance. Family legend has it he moved to Ohio and founded Goodyear Tire and Rubber, but nobody knows for sure. And you know, I got to wondering - why? Why this obsession in my family with USER NAME? I asked my relatives all over this land. They didn't know, but they reminded me that I had a responsibility, indeed THE responsibility, yea the family legacy, to send USER NAME email. It was the albatross around the family's neck, the thing we always told ourselves caused our spines to be curved and our acne to be so vivid. And I, I was the chosen one -- the one to send the mail. But that was not the why. I still had to find the why. So I went -- to Scotland, to the land of my forefathers and three mothers; to search the family crypt back in Aberdeen; the place where legend had it that the first McGrew had changed his name to avoid prosecution and founded the line that had led to me and a host of superfluous other McGrews. There I found a parchment written in 1523 by Angus "Nobby" McGrew that read, "Herein is put down the reason for sending email - whatever that may be - to USER NAME. It is... It is... arrrrgh." I took it to the Glasgow archeology and fishmongering department at the University of the Corner Pub, and their best guess is that he died while writing it. So we'll never know. But I still have the family legacy to... to.... arrrrgh. :-) ... anyway, I've added you to the csmajor account; you shouldn't have to worry about it until your graduate. Charles