An item here last week about the Web site Corrupted-Files.com had one reader reaching deep into the memory bank for similar tale that also deserves sharing.

Corrupted-Files, if you missed it the first time, sells unreadable Word, Excel and PowerPoint files to students and others who in turn submit them to professors, bosses or clients in the hope that the files won't be opened -- and "the problem" discovered -- until they have had a chance to actually finish that term paper or work project.

Writes Bob McNally of Worcester, Mass.: "Your "More than the files are corrupted" post brought back memories of years long past. In the 80s I was doing contract programming in Z80 assembler for a company that manufactured teller terminal systems.

"When a project was running behind and the customer needed a delivered system there was a manager who would write a letter for the delivery of the software. He would then staple the 5.25 inch floppy diskette to the letter and mail it to the customer. When the customer called about the disk with the staple through it he would apologize about "the secretary that keeps doing that" and promise to send a new disk immediately.

"If the software was ready they would get a diskette with the updated software. If he needed to buy a few more days, another diskette would be prepared by inserting a small piece of double-stick tape into the floppy so that it would not spin when inserted into the drive. A second letter and the diskette would be mailed to the customer.

"This guy could stretch a delivery date by a couple of weeks easily!"

Neither Buzzblog nor the management of Network World condones any such behavior, of course, because it's wrong, wrong, wrong to submit corrupted files, just as it was wrong in the 1980s to staple letters to floppy disks. Wrong.

That said, however perfunctorily, I now ask that you all come clean and tell the group of the techniques you've used -- or credibly know of -- to artificially extend a pesky deadline.

Should you require the cover of anonymity, please rest assured that I will provide it.

If you had to choose?

Four times I've read this sentence from a press release and it makes no more sense the fourth time than the first: "If caught in the rain with a choice of a mobile phone or an umbrella, nearly 37 percent of Americans would choose their mobile phone."