"afh3" wrote in message news:sCk2c.127102$4o.165856@attbi_s52...
Oh don't I hear you. In college I once saw a kid drop down to his knees and
start sobbing as the person in front of him using the card reader (standard
issue of course for computer science class back then) turned around more
quickly than he was ready for and caused the several-hundred-card deck in
his hands to fly out if his grasp and flutter to the floor like so much
confetti -- apparently just hours before the project was due.

I remember trying to help him pick them up, and he just kept sobbing "No,
no, go away, I can do it, I can do it."

That's why sopme of us (specifically, those in line BEHIND the
person this happened to) made sure every card in the deck had
a sequence number on it, so you could simply dump the cards in
any order in the reader and punch a brand new sequence properly
sorted.

It was the first "big" program I wrote. Dropped a couple of decks
after that, and never had to resort a one by hand.