[bgribble]

I was a grad student in Austin in the 1990s. If Dijkstra showed up for one of the regular department-wide "lunch and learn" type talks, there was a bit of a buzz among the grad students in the room... you knew he was going to pop off with a total left-field question and the results would be pretty entertaining. Free cookies AND comic humiliation from a giant in the field! It was standing-room-only.

[pradn]

Did they have samosas from Ken’s at grad tea time back then? :)

[syndicatedjelly]

Any stories that stand out/are worth sharing?

[mcguire]

1. Asking prospective faculty if the colors (i.e. some of the phrases or expressions were highlighted in different colors) in their slides meant anything. I seem to remember him doing this to several new PhDs the dept. was thinking about hiring and none had a good answer. Apparently nobody warned them, either.

2. Asking a networking guy about the use of the term "stack" in his talk. A little unfair, given that the two uses (push/pop stack vs. network protocol stack) are unrelated, but still a bit funny.