Free iWoz by Steve Wozniak, Gina Smith Page B

managed to make it look as if someone else had done it. That's a step beyond the old rule "Don't get caught." I learned how to use that technique many times throughout my prank career. And if you're shocked that I can trick people with my pranks and not feel dishonest about it, remember that the basic form of entertainment is to make up stories. That's comedy.
I don't know if they ever did anything to that guy, but I doubt it. I hope not. It's not like they could catch him with a TV Jam- mer. As far as I knew, I had the only one.
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But I did end up getting in some trouble that year.
You see, I started writing programs that could kick paper out of the computer over at the computer printers everyone had to use at the Computer Center of the University of Colorado. That wasn't a big deal. But then I thought, Okay, what are computers for? They're for calculating numbers. Calculation has always been central to my association with computers, you know. So I tried to think up something really clever.
I wrote seven programs—they were all real simple but extremely interesting in a math sense. One of them dealt with what I called "magic computer numbers." That would be the powers of two. So 2 1 equals 2, 2 2 is 4, 2 3 is 8, 2 4 is 16. These are the binary numbers all computers work with, so they are the most special of all the computer numbers.
I made it so the printer would print out the results formatted in a way that was readable. For instance, one line might say: 1,2. That meant 2 to the first power is 2. The next would say 2, 4: 2 to the second power is 4. You will see that the numbers get really big really fast. For example, 2 to the eighth power is 256; 2 to the sixteenth power is 65,536. So pretty soon I am filling up pages with these really long numbers! After enough pages, the powers of 2 would be almost a line long. Then they would expand to two or three lines. Eventually it got to where each number might be a whole page or more!
Another program worked with Fibonacci numbers. These are numbers that go in a sequence like 1,2, 3, 5, 8,13,21,34 ... Each Fibonacci number is the sum of the two numbers preceding it. So it's a never-ending sequence. All of my seven programs did this— calculated numbers in these long, ridiculously long, sequences.
Some programs have loops and don't stop running because there is a bug, or a problem, with a program. That is called an infinite loop, which I told you about in connection with the chess game I did back in high school. Anyway, the Computer Center automatically kicked off any program that ran more than 64 seconds. So I figured out that all my computers could print out 60 pages in under 64 seconds, and that's why I wrote each program to print out only 60 pages all numbered page 1, page 2, etc. The next time I ran the program, it would print the next 60 pages (beginning at 61), and so on. I wrote all my programs so they would punch some cards I could use the next time so the programs could pick up where they left off.
I would walk over to the Computer Center every morning and drop my seven programs off. Then, around noon, I would pick up my outputs and resubmit the programs. Then I would come back in the evening and resubmit them. I would get three runs a day times 60 pages times seven programs piling up in my dorm room. Mike, my roommate, started getting a little upset at all the space it was taking up. It was really piling up: reams and reams, feet and feet of computer paper, all stacking up in my dorm room.
Then, one afternoon, I got to the Computer Center for an afternoon run and they didn't have my programs there. There was a note there saying I should see my professor right away.
I went to see him in his office. He said, "Okay, sit down." He started a tape recorder—he punched a button and started recording us. I remember I got a bit scared.
"You've been running these programs on your own," he said.
And I said, "Yes. We were in a programming class. I was learn- ing