This brings to mind an amusing anecdote from my lab days. Only really involves our usual fare in that I was on the other side of a wall from an RS/6000. In any case, at the time I was in metals samples digest, which basically meant all day I was pouring soils and liquids in and out of tubes, cooking em, wash rinse repeat, so typically would have the stereo blaring all day.

Well an audit came through one day. I didn't know personally so was just doing the usual. Suddenly this guy in the cleanest lab coat I've ever seen in environmental walks in with a clipboard and I immediately run over and shush the radio, expecting admonishment from the managerial type escorting him about.

Instead, he asks that I turn it back on as anything else would be altering my typical work day and would misrepresent my practices in the context of the audit. I'll forever remember that day as the day my tunes of the day factored into a formal audit, and not even in the disciplinary way I would've thought. Luckily after that humanizing moment, the audit itself was a breeze, I think he even glossed over a few things because he was enjoying the tunes too.

So the lesson I learned that day is that everything, including your background entertainment, can be considered a condition of your working space and eliminating it for audits might actually misrepresent the nature of your work environment.

------- Original Message -------
On Thursday, February 9th, 2023 at 4:37 PM, Mike Markowski <mike.ab3ap@gmail.com> wrote:

This is far afield even for COFF, so apologies up front. Machines and OSes we fondly remember get older day by day. But many labs I worked in during undergrad & grad years and then in the workforce always had a radio going, and music never seems to age. When I hear Earth, Wind & Fire's "September" or Doobie Brothers' "What a Fool Believes," it's RSTS/E on a PDP11/70 as a teen, my first exposure to computers. Kraftwerk and Big Audio Dynamite mean Unix with Mike Muuss at Ballistic Research Lab in the early 90s. I had PX (military Post Exchange) privileges which Mike used to the fullest to buy fantastic lab speakers. The old ENIAC room, our work space, had thick walls. :-)

I wonder if particular music transports any others back to computing days of old. The current lab I'm in receives exactly 1 radio station from a local high school and streaming is blocked. Not sure that any new musical memories will be formed for my ever nearer days of retirement!

Musically yours,
Mike Markowski