Uncle has a post that implies the father of super-computing, Seymour Cray, may not actually be dead but alive and well in Austin, TX:
The City of Austin Tuesday released photos of the web of tunnels a man dug underneath his East Austin home.
Under the yellow home are three stories of tunnels. For at least two years, neighbors suspected owner Jose Del Rio was up to something strange, but had no idea just how busy he’d been.
For those of you who don’t catch the reference Seymour Cray was known for this tunnel digging:
As Rollwagen tells it, Seymour Cray, the company’s elusive founder, has been dividing his time between building the next generation of supercomputers and digging an underground tunnel that starts below his Chippewa Falls house and heads toward the nearby woods. “He’s been working at it for some time now,” says Rollwagen, who reports that the tunnel is 8 ft. high, 4 ft. wide and lined with 4-by-4 cedar boards. When a tree fell through the top of the tunnel several years ago, Cray used the opening to install a periscope-equipped lookout.
Of course he wasn’t building a bunker or any such nonsense. In fact he was much more sane:
“I work for three hours, and then I get stumped, and I’m not making progress. So I quit, and I go and work in the tunnel. It takes me an hour or so to dig four inches and put in the 4-by-4s. Now, as you can see, I’m up in the Wisconsin woods, and there are elves in the woods. So when they see me leave, they come into my office and solve all the problems I’m having. Then I go back up and work some more.”
Yeah we computer people are always a little quirky.