computer threat greater than nuclear one

[Dave Meury]

Paul's post about Bill Joy got me thinking about Seymore Cray (yes, that 
Cray) who I had heard used to dig in his basement.  Searching on his name, 
I found the following on a site called interesting-people.org.  Though I 
was originally going for a wisecrack about him "seeing more" than he was 
letting on and therefore digging some kind of shelter, I found this 
anecdote much more interesting from a number of perspectives and will let 
it speak for itself:

Mr. Cray would do much of his computer design work on a fresh pad of 
engineering paper, frequently going through an entire pad in a day.  There 
have been many legends that have grown up around Mr. Cray's reclusive work 
habits which frequently went late into the night. Mr. Rollwagen recounts 
one story of a customer who visited Mr. Cray's home in Chippewa Falls. When 
the man asked, 'what were the secrets of his success, Mr. Cray said, "Well, 
we have elves here and they help me."  When the visitor, who was a French 
scientist, expressed his astonishment, Mr. Cray took him to look at a 
tunnel that he had dug under his home. Shored up with four by four cedar 
logs, the tunnel appeared to go in random directions, at one point going 
straight up into Mr. Cray's lawn.  (Mr. Cray later explained to Mr. 
Rollwagen that the tunnel had gone straight up because one day it had 
collapsed while he was digging it and a tree in his front yard had fallen 
into the tunnel.)  Mr. Cray explained to his visitor that he would work at 
his home on computer design problems for three hours at a stretch. When he 
reached a technical stumbling block, he would then retire to the tunnel 
where he would dig for an hour.  "While I'm digging in the tunnel the elves 
will often come to me with solutions to my problems," he said.