Conference thebay::joyoflex

251.0. "Preachings from 'St. Silicon'" by DRAGON::MCVAY (Pete McVay, VRO (Telecomm)) Sun Sep 28 1986 17:18

              from "The Middlesex News", Middlesex County, Mass.
                             Sunday, 28 Sept 1986
                              by Deborah Malick
                 [some portions edited for readability -- PM]

       Jeffrey Armstrong, the former Apple Computer Inc. Marketing Manager,
    is now a saint.  Or so he says.

       St. Silicon.

       Armstrong follows C.H.I.P.--the Church of Heuristic Information
    Processing.

       He wears a chip on his forehead, dresses in a cream-colored suit,
    and during his "Sermon on the Monitor", proclaims the word of G.O.D.
    (Giver of Data) during cross-country speeches.

       He greets visitors with the sign of the microchip.

      "Follow me, and I will make you fetchers of data," Armstrong said
    in the lobby of--where else?--the Computer Museum [in Boston, Mass].

       ... "By 2020, there will be a Binary Bible and a Gideon's Bible in
    every room in the hotel," Armstrong said.

      "And the Giver of Data beheld everything, and saw that it was fairly
    logical," Armstrong read from his "bible".

      No religion--even a silicon sect--would be complete without its
    commandments.  A few of C.H.I.P.'s are:

         o Remember thy staff meeting and keep it holy.

         o Honor thy hardware and thy software.

         o Thou shalt not crash the system.

         o Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's hardware.

      He has a psalm for Silicon Valley Yuppies: "Though I commute to
    the Valley every day, I shall fear no evil, for my Mazda is running;"
    and a Golden Rule: "Remember the Golden Rule.  Do you unto data
    that which you can undo."

      ...Armstrong says he was anointed St. Silicon after a late night
    at work on a word processing file when lightning struck his satellite
    dish.  According to Armstrong, the "Keyboard Prayer" was on his
    computer terminal screen.

      He said he has since achieved "Nerdvana".

      A $4.95 poster, "Desperate for Data," based on the poem "Desiderata,"
    is due out soon.

    
    Is that St. Silicon or St. Silly - Con?

    He sounds like a di-agnostic to me.