Hilarious story. And Gerry Sussman swears it's completely true.

edit: GLS = Gerry Sussman, creator of Scheme, co-author of SICP, and MIT professor.

Hand in your geek black belt when you leave.

This GLS is Guy L. Steele (also a creator of Scheme). Gery Sussman is Gerald J. Sussman.

You may keep the geek card.

Oh, shoot. Too true. Gerry definitely recounted this story to me, although I can't recall now whether he claimed he was involved or not.

I am Aston's total lack of geektitude.

"Gerry definitely recounted this story to me"

- so your geek card is lifetime membership eh ?? ;)

From mccoyn's Reddit comment:

"The isolated grounds was what I thought it was while reading the story.

I bet when this was installed, there was a problem with the sound buzzing. Isolating the grounds would make it go away, like magic. But reconnecting the grounds while the computer was on would create a sudden ground change that might crash the computer, more magic."

Being the curious type, I don't think I would have let such an interesting switch sit idly by for a year like this guy did. Why didn't he investigate it further after first making the discovery?

Such a great story though.

Triage (though I bet it kept popping into his head at inopportune times).