# "Not now, Igor!" *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 18 Jan 2021* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Gwern Branwen *18 Jan 2021, 17:21* > I saw him at Dragoncon. He invented one of the machines that makes Pringles, and told a story from his time there. > > They were tweaking a machine and for some reason it had to be really steamy, so they built a sort of indoor shed to contain the steam. He and a lab partner worked in there a lot, and they dealt with the steam in different ways. He wore a white lab coat. His partner, who was about six foot eight and solid muscle, wore nothing but shorts. > > The company liked taking tourists through the area. One day, Gene and his partner were in the shed and finished something up, Gene opened the door, and there was a big group of tourists just outside. There he was, steam billowing out, lab coat, right behind him an apparently naked giant, and all these people just stared at him. > > So he said "Not now Igor, there are people here" and closed the door. https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/bdhx61/rip_gene_wolfe_19312019/ekymzc4/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25652868 ``` gwern https://www.gwern.net ``` ---