Yep. Hearing that solution to the problem was just beyond reason. Its like they didn't just set some compile flags and constants for the architecture, but decided that their code had to calculate it every time the variable is needed. The line about finding if /dev/null moved was also pretty scary.
I remember cracking up then forwarding it to all kinds of people and forums. Along the lines of "remember this" if you try to justify trusting the OpenSSL codebase for anything.
