The .Plan

Back in the day, to find out whether another student was logged into his or her UNIX account, you could type ‘finger [stalkeename] @ [collegename].edu‘ to obtain the information. The -finger- command also displayed additional user-customisable text, the .plan file, which would often contain anything from amusing quotes to inappropriate outbursts of college angst. After college, one of my classmates and I continued to update our .plan files regularly. Blogs have since taken over, but you can’t stop the signal. The .plan lives on.