Size matters

Before most people had Net access -- even those at the original dARPAnet universities -- we all had to rely on the likes of Cecil Adams and a few other columnists for answers to the strangest questions. Over the weekend I stumbled across one of Cecil's old columns that I first read some 20 years ago:

Dear Cecil:

I think my roommate is having sex with his cats. Could you explain the biological reasons why cats can't be impregnated by human beings? --T.S., Chicago

How appropriate.

Help!!! Our database is out of room!!! Can we delete redo logs? Can we truncate tables?

The operating system uses more than 2GB of space. The database software is also taking up two gigs of space. The way they have it configured, $OurBigApp uses about 3GB. They have more than 4,000 users and not surprisingly, nine gigabytes isn't quite enough space to hold all their data and documents.

Everything is installed on a 16GB drive.

Twenty-four years after it was first written, Cecil's answer to "T" of Chicago is still astute:

Dear T.:

For the same reason you can't park a Cadillac in a closet, you bozo.

:s/bozo/fuckwit
x-posted from HuSi.