When you travel as much as I do, you have the opportunity- nay, the responsibility- to read man pages. While sharpening the saw, so-to-speak, on increasing my teaching skills, I came across the following command:
[Fri 08/01/11 06:05 MST][pts/1][x86_64/linux-gnu/2.6.22-14-generic][4.3.4] <aaron@kratos:~> zsh 31 % who am i aaron pts/1 2008-01-11 06:05 (:0.0)
Nothing special about that, but I thought to myself, “Are ‘am’ and ‘i’ really options to the ‘who’ command, or is it just one of those things?” So, i pulled up the man page on ‘who’. Looking through the options, I don’t see an ‘am’ or ‘i’ option. However, at the bottom of the man page, right before the AUTHOR section, the following paragraph is as follows:
If FILE is not specified, use /var/run/utmp. /var/log/wtmp as FILE is
common. If ARG1 ARG2 given, -m presumed: ‘am i’ or ‘mom likes’ are
usual.
The ‘-m’ option just means to print only the user and hostname associated with STDIN. However, the arguments ‘mom’ and ‘likes’ are also valid, instead of ‘am’ and ‘i’. Are you serious?! So, from the terminal yet again, the following command is run:
[Fri 08/01/11 06:05 MST][pts/1][x86_64/linux-gnu/2.6.22-14-generic][4.3.4] <aaron@kratos:~> zsh 32 % who mom likes aaron pts/1 2008-01-11 06:05 (:0.0)
I always knew mom liked me best! 
{ 5 } Comments
try these, they are fun:
$ who just farted
$ who ate that
$ who can go
The possibilities are almost endless
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Any two arguments will work. It doesn’t have to be “am i” or “mom loves.”
[Reply]
Just remember you’re also “who to blame” when things go wrong…
[Reply]
Odd. I got home to my Kubuntu Gutsy box, and this isn’t working. No output at all. Also no output for “who -m”
[Reply]
Shouldnt it be “whom”?
[Reply]
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