Help! the computer is calling the police!

I submitted this story to DailyWTF last year. They published it, but for some reason, rewrote it (badly).

Here is the original (true) story...

In the late 80's, I was lead developer for a large hotel chain. We had 240 hotels running off of 4 big regional minicomputers. Each mini handled 60 or so hotels dedicating 6 ports for terminals, printers, etc. This pushed the hardware we were using considerably, causing occasional system 'burps', bumping all the ports numbers over by one. The front desk staff would see bizarre things such as print jobs dumping to their terminals, and the main menu printing out on the printer.

Each mini also had a single port dedicated to developer dial-in support. In the age of 2400 baud modems, security and hacking were tame issues, met by equally tame preventative measures.

Anyone accidentally stumbling upon the dial-in number would see a typical login page. Enter anything but a secret code of the day, and the would be hacker would be left pondering a message that their break-in had been detected, the line had been traced, and the police were being contacted... It was all fake, but we figured what the hell, try to scare em off.

One day, after a one of those system 'burps', a bizarre support call was received at corporate support. A front desk clerk at one hotel was on the line frantically exclaiming "Help! the computer is calling the police!"

A Day in the Sun

One summer when I was six, I was at a day camp near the beach club we sometimes went to. I really didn't like the camp, but hey, I was six, and didn't have much of a choice.

Anyway, one day we were playing softball. I was the 2nd baseman. Not being much interested in the game, I remember standing in the field, staring at the sky, feeling the awe of the sun and the clouds. Suddenly a whoosh went by my head as the ball whizzed past me. My inattention allowed the batter to get a triple out of it. The first basemen (remember we were six), came storming over and punched me hard in the shoulder while calling me an asshole.

It hurt, and I did kind of deserve it. I actually thought "yeah I guess I was an asshole. I kinda let the team down". Still I continued to stare at the sky and enjoyed a day in the sun.

Mothra

This giant moth appeared one morning in 2008, on the front door of the building I worked in. At leat a foot in lenght, it hung out for about an hour and then disappeared. Never saw anything like it before (or since).