In the NYC blog, Ed mentioned "Jimbo's fish" in a comment. This morning I had email from Jim, aka Jimbo, the first contact I've had with him in 6 years or so. (A result of learning that email sent to durf[at]gleaningmeaning since 2008 was not being downloaded by my email clients - now fixed.) So this is probably a good time to tell you about the fish.
When I first started working at Lam Research in 1983, Jim was the guy who showed me the ropes. We became good friends. Not that he couldn't be annoying at times - one of his favorite tricks was gluing our coffee cups to our work benches. One Friday I decided to get even.
After work that day, Twila and I went to a store and I bought the largest fish they had. It was fat and about 2 feet long. We went back to Lam. I emptied the top of Jim's toolbox and laid the fish inside, then closed the top.
The next Monday morning, Jim and about 4 other guys were sitting at his worksite, talking and drinking coffee. I thought it wiser to stay at my own area, which was about 20' away. I kept watching Jim out of the corner of my eye. After a while I saw the guys nodding and looking around, and then Jim suddenly jumped up, rotting fish in hand, and ran toward me. I zipped away into the office area just as quickly and, just before I turned a corner, I saw the fish fly over my right shoulder and onto someone's desk.
That didn't stop Jim's practical jokes, but no more fish appeared. We didn't even get in trouble for the flying fish incident. Things were a lot looser at Lam in those early days.
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