Word: accounting
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...this paper, I examine one of Harvard's tiniest but most socially significant genres of literature: the plan file. To those of you unfamiliar with this academic field, please allow me to explain. When someone fingers your account on the Harvard UNIX server, the screen displays the last time and place that you logged on, as well as an optional message--the plan--that greets whoever is fingering you. Most often, these plan files are either blank or filled with a brief witty saying. It's not uncommon, however, to see plan files that push the very envelope...
...plan file is so steeped in irony, so full of wink-wink suggestion, that its purpose can be easily obscured. In one sense, a plan file is like a calling card, announcing your position and social status to whoever wants to call on you. Since anyone can finger your account, a plan file is theoretically written for everyone to read. But at the same time, the text establishes an intimate bond between author and reader. To finger someone's account means expressing interest in that person, however benign, and the plan file must by its very nature take that attraction...
...must go unanswered. Their authors don't really expect consolation over e-mail. Fishing for actual sympathy over the Internet would betray a great deal of weakness; on the other side of things, nobody wants to admit to e-mail stalking other people ("Dear X: I was fingering your account at 4:30 a.m. and noticed your distressing plan file.") If these authors never expect a response, whom are they writing to? Perhaps they are writing to God. It would be comforting to think He reads ours plan files like slips of paper tucked inside the cracks of the Wailing...
...scholarly account of the plan file is complete without a few critical suggestions. In order for the plan file to survive as a genre, it must continually reinvent itself both in terms of form and content. What makes for a successful plan file? The trick is either to be fascinatingly banal or else ambitiously epic. For example, keep a list of everything you've eaten, item by item, in the last week: "Two Snickers bars, eight cups of soup, one serving of baked scrod...".Update us on your nightly dreams. Transcribe your internal monologue in the most minute detail: "Itchy...
...Quad-bound will find the "Shuttleboy" Unix function particularly useful. Although originally created by David Malan '99 for his friends, Shuttleboy now allows students campus-wide to view the full shuttle schedule (or customized versions) just by logging on to telnet. Setting up the function for an individual telnet account simply requires one to follow clear on-screen instructions and customizing the program by selecting the desired options. Shuttleboy automatically accounts for special holiday shuttle schedules...