Lyn Buchanan

Yeah.

In Augsburg, they had 12 different countries in that one facility, and they all had their own computers, their own computer systems and all that, that didn't talk to each other.

Well, I can program computers.

So they put out this thing where they wanted somebody to write a program that would tie all 12 computers together and get them talking to each other.

This one other sergeant wanted the job, I wanted the job, and I got it.

So about nine months later, I had the program written and came the time to demonstrate it.

And all the generals from 12 different countries got together and all.

And I went to the bathroom to make sure my hair was in place and no wrinkles in my uniform and all that.

And I came back, did my little song and dance for the generals, and then hit the enter key to start the program.

And the computer went dead.

And, I mean, I had tested this thing over and over and over.

And they all started laughing at me.

I turned around, and the other sergeant was at the back door of the room.

And he said, gotcha, and turned around and walked off.

He wanted that job, and he was just waiting.

I got flaming angry.

When I did, the entire field station went down.

There was an estimate sometime later that it was about $50 million worth of computers that just

went bad fried and uh so for the next period of time that's still classified we were everybody at the field station was going to work taking their crossword puzzle books and all this you know making it look like to the russian spy in the sky like business as usual

Come to find out later, the Russians were doing the same thing and were in East Germany because it had fried their computers too.