the ark of mark

Recently I was reminded of an old story that entertained me so much I just had to share.  I will be careful about how I tell this because there is an outside, highly remote chance that the parties involved could hear about this, and there is also an outside, highly remote chance that the secret involved is still a secret (which would only make this funnier).

When I was in college I spent my summers working at a couple different places as an engineering intern.  It was a glorious time of slow computers, bad golf shirts, and scads of homemade ham sandwiches for lunch which I stored all morning in an unrefrigerated desk drawer.  Things are so much different today.  Now I prefer turkey sandwiches.

I worked for one engineer who at one point had one of the only two computers in a very large building.  For this computer to have been more primitive might have required a pull-starter.  Surprisingly, this computer did include some sort of video game.  The engineer had a technician buddy who would come in occasionally during lunch or on breaks to play the game for a few minutes.

Eventually the technician started talking primitive video game trash.

The game had one of those leader board features from the old arcade days where players could type in their initials (or, more likely, their favorite crude three-letter word) if their score made the top ten.  The technician’s scores dominated the leader board and he made sure the engineer knew it.

So the engineer stayed after work one night (after the technician had gone) and posted a score in the top ten.  A few nights later he played again and achieved the top score.  The technician was a little bummed by this but undeterred.  He increased his efforts and over the course of the next couple weeks finally got the high score back.

The engineer stayed after work again and reported the next morning that he had once again taken the top spot.  The technician was good-natured but visibly frustrated at this news as he left the engineer’s office.  It was clear he did not at all like how easily the engineer overtook him.  I witnessed this exchange and the engineer must have felt guilty enough that it was time to come clean.

Or maybe he was just so proud he couldn’t keep it to himself.

It seems the engineer barely even knew how to play the game.  You’re guessing he was having his kid play it for him, but no.  After hearing the technician bragging one day, on a hunch the engineer poked around in the file directory where the game was stored.  He located a simple text file with a name that was something like HIGHSCORES.TXT.  Every so often he would simply go into that file and type himself up a new high score and move his buddy’s efforts down the list.  To this day it remains one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of a guy pulling a fast one on a friend.  Brilliant.

I guess the lesson here is the guy who is good at the game will always be topped by the guy who can game the system.