The group I work with produces websites for the academic departments of a small liberal arts college. One of the faculty members of a certain department often displays behavior best described as…erratic. They’re somewhat aged so we’ve joked that perhaps this individual is pre-alzheimers. Today this person contacted the project lead for a project we’ve worked on them for the past several years and asked if they could have a copy of their project on CD ROM. Since it’s a server-based application this is not trivial to provide and the project lead wanted to know why. It turns out this faculty member was concerned that our servers might get infected with anthrax, thus destroying the project. (!!!) “Not that I’m not worried about you folks (ie us, the staff) but I really want to be sure not to lose all this work.’

Granted, a significant portion of the older generations are a little unclear on how computers work, but mistaking them for biological organisms? We all had a laugh at this poor person’s expense.