> Did the non-Unix people also pull pranks like the watertower?

Every year when our director, Arun Netravali of center 1135, went on vacation,

Scott Knauer, a department head, would pull some kind of stunt. One year he

covered the carpeting in Arun's office with green astroturf, so it looked like

half of a tennis court. Another year, he recruited many of us to blow up balloons,

which he collected in Arun's office by aiming a huge fan in that direction,

while we pitched inflated balloons into the corridor. Scott, being Scott, completely

topped off the balloons by lifting the ceiling tiles near the office door. I recall

walking into Building 3 on the day Arun was scheduled to return and seeing

balloons struggling to escape from every open window of his office.

Building 3 lacked the large stairwells like the one that housed the Peter face

made of magnets. But Scott compensated by projecting Arun's image along

a long corridor, and covering it with magnets, so Arun's face was visible on

a sidewall as you approached the end of the corridor.

I found the playful attitude at the Labs in general as an indicator of out-of-the-box

thinking that a research organization thrives on.