I said, "But while a typo made in a word would be easily caught by anyone making a copy of the incorrect version, a typo in a number would not. Once somebody wrote 616 by mistake, anybody who made a copy of that version would have no reason to question the 616, unless they happened to know that it was meant to be 666."

"Exactly," Tuck said. "And back then, 666 wasn't the famous number it is now. 616 seemed just as reasonable a number as any other, so the typo spread like wildfire."

I thought back to my first day at work, and how my name had somehow gotten on file as "Jack Crouley." It was bad enough getting that corrected in HR's files, but the real problem was fixing all the electronic records.

The network support staff had been told that the new guy's name was "Jack Crouley," and they'd have had no way of knowing that it was a typo as opposed to simply an unusual name. So they had set me up with the user id "jcrouley." From that first mistake, it metastasized everywhere, and fixing it in every place proved to be a very difficult technical challenge.

Then again, we didn't have any pure techies at the firm. Our network support staff members were just mesothelioma lawyers who also happened to have technical inclinations, so they worked in both capacities. Maybe it's easier to spread a 616 around when you don't have time to focus on any one job.

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