The other thing that was kind of wonderful is: I was a graduate student, and the Hertz Foundation was paying for my tuition. And that was kind of a funny story, because I sort of went... I slid right from undergraduate to graduate, and I was kind of acting like a graduate student as an undergraduate, but... in the sense that I was spending most of my time in the labs, and when it came time to do graduate school, I needed a source of tuition, because my parents had paid for my... the deal with them was they said they'd pay for my tuition, and I just had to earn my... all my living expenses and things like that. So in fact I earned my living expenses by taking on jobs that were interesting, sometimes around MIT.
But the most interesting job I had was I worked for the Milton Bradley company as a toy designer. And so I would go out to Springfield and work on electronic toys. And so I got to be part of the project that made the very first Simon, actually made the sounds of the Simon and... and programmed the very first Simon. I didn't think of the idea, but... They had the idea, but they didn't know how to build it. And that's still one of the most successful electronic toys ever. But since I could design chips and electronic toys were coming along, then Milton Bradley wanted me to design a chip for a video game. And so they sent me down to Texas Instruments, and I had this great time at Texas Instruments designing the first chip for a video game. And it was in the... in the building where they made calculators. And... but they wouldn't give me a calculator, because Texas Instruments had a rule of what level of employee you had to be to get a calculator. And I... it had lots of levels. And every time you got promoted, they gave you a little bit higher wall around your office. And it was all, like, go up six inches. And that summer, I got promoted, like, seven times. And so my wall got up to be about this high. But they still... I still never got to the point of being issued a calculator. And even though I was designing chips for them, and... so I had to borrow a calculator, but of course I worked all night, they all went home. And so it really annoyed me I had to borrow the calculator, so I would go to the head of the group and I would pick the lock on his office and I would borrow his calculator and then I would leave him a note saying, 'You weren't here, so I just borrowed your calculator', just to sort of bug him, and then relock his office. And then the next day I came in, he didn't say anything, but the next night I did it and I went in, and his calculator was locked into his desk. So I picked the lock on his desk and I left the note saying, 'Thanks, I just borrowed your calculator.' Relocked his desk, relocked his office. So then I came in the next day and there's this crew installing more locks on his door, but idiotically, like, it's exactly the same kind of lock that I had picked, no better lock, just more of them. So of course I just picked all of the locks, went ahead and picked the lock on his desk and left a note saying, 'Thanks, borrowed your calculator again.' And then finally they issued me a calculator.