Confessions of a researchaholic

An intern collaborator thanked me for a quick editing of the abstract of an upcoming paper submission, which reminded me of the the following story reflecting how our PhD advisers (or senior collaborators) could influence our work styles:

A few days before the SIGGRAPH 2002 paper deadline, while trying to submit the abstract from a paper draft, I received an error message saying that it was over the length limit (maximum 600 words, if I remember correctly). I could do a quick trim of the abstract but worried that I might not be able to preserve the content in such a short form, and thus sent a message to the paper advisory board asking whether I can have a longer abstract in the paper file.

Several minutes later, my PhD adviser emailed me a shortened version of the abstract, with perfect content and length.
I thanked him for his (astonishing) quality and speed, and wondered if he could read my mind (or, more likely, network traffic). He said that he happened to be on the advisory board and thus saw my message.

A few hours later, I received a reply from the paper chair clarifying that the abstract for the submission form was mainly for the paper sorting process and can differ from the abstract in the submitted paper file.