I was in San Francisco a few years back and I was amazed to learn that Donald Knuth not only still lives, but it still giving these once a year lectures in Stanford. Going there, finding the right building in the university, and then seeing this man speak about things I could only barely follow gave me such a memorable evening. What a legend Donald Knuth is.
Knuth is also still reviewing TAOCP-related email and issuing reward checks. A teammate received a reward check for 1 hex dollar last month after finding an error in Seminumerical Algorithms. Along with the check, there was a printout of the original email with hand-written annotations.
Some of the checks added up to quite a bit more than that (if there's ever another error check for TeX it will be for $327.68), and one notable at a TeX User's Group conference stated that he had cashed a check for $40.96 and was grateful to DEK for it, since it put food on his table when he was a poor starving grad student.
