Dear Friends,

On my recent, happy visit back to my beloved alma mater, where I successfully defended my thesis and enjoyed at corporate expense a number of delightful meals at restaurants so fashionable and exclusive that you, my sad and worn little graduate-scolyer friends, will never have heard of them, a number of my dear colleagues from GSB asked me, "Patrick," they asked, "How is it that you have made good your escape from the confines of Building NE43, with its dirty carpets, its loose ceiling tiles, its vicious political intrigues, its occasional demented faculty members asking incomprehensible questions at seminars? What is the secret of your success?"

Because you are my friends, I am only too delighted to tell you how I have arrived at my present happy estate. Only relax for a moment, and cast your minds back... back through the mists of time, to last fall. One day in autumn a year ago, as I toiled at my obsolete workstation in the small, dreary office I shared with two other students on the second floor, I received a piece of electronic mail from an official of the Nigerian central bank.

The bank official's mail described an opportunity that sounded almost too good to be true. It seems that through an accounting error, the Nigerian central bank had lost track of some development funds provided by the IMF. The Nigerian official was appealing for my cooperation in moving the funds offshore. I had only to provide him with some ARPA account numbers and some MIT letterhead stationery blank except for the signature of my faculty advisor, and the official would transfer more than US$200 million to the ARPA accounts. In return, he asked only that a few million be deposited to a numbered account in the Cayman Islands. "After all," he said, "Nigeria is a poor country, and one can live like a king here for an entirely reasonable amount of money."

I was initially skeptical, but my heartfelt interest in furthering my faculty advisor's research eventually swayed me, and I did as the Nigerian central bank official requested. The promised funds appeared; we transferred a piddling few million to the numbered account in the Cayman Islands; and then for an insignificant amount of money hired the entire computer science section of Russian Academy of Sciences to complete our research, including, of course, my dissertation. After some discussion, we concluded that we would be most comfortable in Palo Alto, at a highly-regarded industrial laboratory well-known for its research in systems, so we bought a significant stake in its parent company and then used our influence with board members to secure ourselves sinecures at the laboratory.

Now I'm never short on sleep. As for workstations -- ha! I light my Davidoff Double R's with Alpha EV6's. In the afternoons, after a little lighthearted banter with my co-workers, after relaxing for a while in my expansive office, I amble over to a pleasant cafe where athletic young Stanford coeds in khaki shorts bring me kir royale and smile winningly at me in the golden afternoon sunlight so characteristic of northern California.

But also sometimes I think of you, my cherished friends, each of you making your way to Tech Square on these dreary grey days of late fall, I think of you crowded into your little offices under harsh fluorescent lighting, and sometimes, yes, I feel just a little guilty. And I want you to be as happy as I am today. So remember: when an official of the Nigerian government writes to you with an offer to transfer funds to your account, do exactly as he asks! You won't regret it. You can discuss your plans for disposing of your new wealth on Friday afternoon at this week's

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at 5:30 in the seventh floor playroom. I'm afraid I won't be there to enjoy your company. The San Francisco Opera will be doing Bizet's "Carmen" that night, and -- sentimental dear that she is! -- Marie does so love "Carmen." Besides, it would be a shame to let our box sit empty.