# VG151 — Funny Shit

Being a TA is mostly pain, but occasionally you get comedy as a side
effect: newbie questions that make no sense, hilarious program behavior,
creative approaches to a problem, you name it. Every time I see one, I'll
post it here.

All screenshots and conversations are anonymized. If you see yourself in
this blogpost, please don't take it personally. These funny stories are
TAs' primary source of amusement. Please let us have them. Oh, and the
"shit" in this post's title is by no means derogatory.

If you feel extremely uncomfortable with any entry below, please send
email to `<fkfd at fkfd dot me>`.

## 2022-09-13, Lab 0

![They are adding an SSH key but the key they entered is "ssh-keygen -t
ed25519 -C example@example.com"](img/vg151_funny_shit/ssh-keygen.png)

This is a reenactment of a screenshot they sent me to troubleshoot.

## 2022-09-15, group chat

Someone asked if the compiler they need to install was VSCode. One TA
corrected them that VSCode is an IDE. Another TA corrected that TA because
VSCode is technically a text editor, and Visual Studio is an example of an
IDE.

_slow down we'll be getting there_

## 2022-09-22, TA group chat

One of our TAs decided to get a Moss account. The
[website](http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/) says:

![](img/vg151_funny_shit/moss_example.png)

<details>
<summary>Transcript</summary>
<p>To obtain a Moss account, send a mail message to moss@moss.stanford.edu.
The body of the message should appear exactly as follows:</p>
<p>registeruser<br/>
mail <i>username@domain</i></p>
<p>where the last bit in italics is your email address.</p>
</details>

Well, here my colleague goes (reenactment):

![](img/vg151_funny_shit/moss_reenactment.png)

<details>
<summary>Transcript</summary>
To: "moss@moss.stanford.edu"<br/>
Subject: Moss Register<br/>
registeruser<br/>
mail <i>their.email@sjtu.edu.cn</i>
</details>

Minutes passed and no reply. Another TA told them they should compose in
plaintext and that italics were unnecessary. Stanford lied; turns out the
message _doesn't_ "appear exactly as follows" after all.

## 2022-09-24, Gitea

![User with Jiang Zemin avatar closed a PR](img/vg151_funny_shit/jiang_avi.png)

AH, nothing like seeing a user on gitea with a pfp of a distinguished
alumnus of ours.

## 2022-09-27, Lab 2

![Zoom chatbox. Message reads "TA I needed to go for a nuclear acid
test"](img/vg151_funny_shit/nuclear_acid.png)

P… pretty sure it's called a nucleic acid test? \*Ground rumbles\* \*Hears
the word "Chernobyl" in the distance\*

## 2022-09-27, teaching team channel

One student reached out to ask this question (paraphrased):

> Can I use other languages than MATLAB for project 1?

Their rationale is, they thought the project description document we
handed them didn't specify which language (spoiler: it did), so they
assumed they could use any.

Well _in theory_ you could write the project in Python with matplotlib. Or
in C/C++ with OpenGL. But… better not talk about it.