Then there was the telephone in the computer lab—the old kind of phone, with a rotary dial. The phone was programmed for only calling numbers within the school district. I started using it to dial into the USC computers to play computer games, by telling the switchboard operator, "This is Mr. Christ. I need an outside line." When the operator started to get suspicious after numerous calls, I switched to phone-phreaker tactics, dialing into the phone company switch and turning off the restriction so I could just dial into USC whenever I wanted. Eventually he figured out that I had managed to make unrestricted outgoing calls.