Posts by Admiral Grace Hopper

My physics teacher's complexion underwent a swift (and fortunately non-permanent) change after he welded the petrol tank on his Peugeot.

Work stuff

"Welcome on board. We use Slack for work stuff and Teams for management shit".

I knew I was going to get on with my new team.

Never assume, always check

When introducing people to new input devices or screen artefacts it's always good to remember that we aren't born knowing this stuff if someone doesn't grok it immediately then more often than not it's the explanation that is lacking. That being said, given that an architect works in a world of spatial relationships I might have been biting my lip to point of drawing blood in this instance.

IDMS(X)

Another of the last systems standing using IDMS(X) retires gracefully long after its planned life expectancy.

Chocolate?

If you want to kill something properly you need orange juice.

Laundering

On the death of a washing machine, the quickest way to get a replacement was to buy one from a someone selling one locally on eBay and go and pick it up. The seller, who reminded me of a chatty Silent Bob, helped me load it in my car. When I got the first load of washing out it seemed to smell strongly of Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester. Checking the machine over, I found a very soggy packet of shredded, strongly perfumed leaves in the washing powder hopper. I didn't bother telling non-Silent Bob that I'd found his stash as it seemed to be long past capable of combustion.

No Giugiaro

I'm a fan of the 1970s folded paper school of car design, but my word, that is an ugly vehicle.

I guess the truth hurts.

Excel is just a glorified calculator.

Fizzzzzzzzzzz!

If it wasn't for all the lithium and the way it plays nicely with water I am sure that it would make a very good boat anchor.

The Three Most Beautiful Words In The English Language

Cover Your Arse.

I was introduced to the CYA file at the start of my career and it has been of use as recently as yesterday. Today isn't over yet.

We've all made that call.

"It's not working, I need a new one".

"Is it definitely broken? It might still be repairable"

"I'll just check"

* pushing/sliding/falling/hard landing/breaking noises *

"No, it's definitely broken beyond repair".

Ah, "the bonus situation"

Doing live support deep into the dark hours of the morning seemed to incline many of us to channel Stanton and Parker. Happy memories of the good ship Nostromo.

Ideal platform

It sounds like the ideal platform for performing fuzzy logic.

s/unforgettable/unforgiveable/

I was a huge fan of Windows NT and its progeny for a long while, but between Vista and 8 I started to suspect that there were folk in Microsoft who really didn't like me. Win 10 worked fine, but I was always suspicious that they might go all 8 on me again. I haven't had cause to use Windows for a few years now and I can't say that I miss it.

"oh yeah ... that"

Back in the times of mainframes and driving to the Ops room when called out, I came in one morning to find that the team that sat next to us were all wearing frowny faces, bar the one angry and tired face and the guy with a face full of shame. Tired And Angry had been called out the previous night to discover that Shamefaced has been called out for the underlying problem the week before, fixed the problem by commenting out a loop with the intention of fixing it properly before the next weekly run and then forgetting all about it because beer. Without the loop the next run fell over in a bigger and better mess at the next run. Never underestimate the power of taking notes and holding proper handover meetings/stand ups.

Buttocks Of Power

Rooting around the temperamental disc controller on the only rack of Dell gear on the estate for the umpteenth time, I bent low to stare angrily the same bloody capacitor that had to be shorted so that we could could get the disc array booted up again. I hadn't noticed the doors on the racks behind me had been removed for reasons unknown to me. Capacitor shorted, I moved back to return the controller to its operational position. I felt something against my right buttock then heard the unmistakable sound of a hefty bank of discs powering down. My backside had found the power switch and switched off the discs in the rack behind me. I waited for the box to reach quiescence then hit the switch (wiping it to remove finger prints), waited for everything to turn green, locked my own rack doors, then went back and checked which system I had just given an unscheduled DR test. DEV - phew! No harm done. Since then, like when I drive, I always check behind me before pulling out.

Assumption

Never assume anything, not even that you and your interlocutor are talking about the same app.

Obligatory XKCD

Design Matters

I hope that the accommodation resembles the Hilton Hotel on Space Station Five