Acronyms

The LOTR was on again and I was ignoring it as usual when Jolene came in with my morning meds. I was thinking my interest in the LOTR had pretty-much vanished with my ex who got me started. ...said something to the effect of “wonder why?!!”

This morning I was reading that Monty Python flame which is so good with words, phrases, not repeating, however used many times like :

2. I have many hammers in many places,
3. saves remembering to bring one,
4. including one on my belt to:
5. beat myself on the head because
6. it feels SO good when I stop!

Now I know why my interest has flagged.

...and speaking of Monty's flame and the type of writing it represents, makes me recall all I've done in the past. Except for a few in high school and college plus lots of letters, all of my writing has been technical. Dry, factual, linear in execution. Technical text-book stuff. Dry enough to sop up the Atlantic stuff.

Speaking of which, here's a sample (go get your pillow, turn off the stove, put the cat out):

At Grumman, I was endeavoring to write a maintenance manual for the shut-down sequencer on the 17 foot video projector I'd designed for the DARPA X-29 simulator. This gadget was extremely dangerous if the procedure was not followed properly due to the 75 KV power supply and the nasty X-ray levels generated. Unfortunately, a piece of Government Supplied Shit, err, Equipment was “required” (and I like turds in my punch bowl) which had the nasty habit of freezing every time the sequencer was at a stage called kiss-yo-mama-goodbye. This, of course, meant a few additional people were needed at the laundry.

This failure was caused by SEU's, single event upsets, which are often caused by radiation or, in more recent times by Windoze in the form of the “Blue Screen of Death.”

As an aside, I see Windoze has improved on the BS of D with the “Black Screen of Despair.” This has allowed me many hours of pleasure. Please, sir, may I have some more?

The manual had the usual trouble-shooting tree, the “if” followed by the “then” in expanding branches ad-nearly-infinitude except when coming to the GSS, err, E where I decided to tell the repair techs how to disable the piece of junk safely, go out and drink oneself cross-eyed while waiting for the GSEs internal CMOS to drain from leakage like yo-mama's.

Grumman's hierarchy didn't like that so the guys “helped” me with some nautical terms that were even richer.

 

Have you ever noticed how many acronyms are in use? In electronics, military, Latin ones for non-pretentious medical folk (not doctors, especially the ignorant ones, that need to sound like they actually know something they don't ), basket weaving, de-fuzing IEDs, all kinds of stuff. Who needs English? The internet is rife with them and the dictionaries to convert one to the other (translators). Eventually we'll wind up with a near-infinity (how can you have that?) of acronyms and language will perish.

This is kinda like the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything. 42 works for me. Here's why:

When one is born, one is pretty-much a tabula rasa with desires. These are simple; warm, well-fed, peaceful, it's nice in the womb. Being born is the shits. First, your skull is mashed like a blob of Play-doh. After hours of that crap, one is typically squirted into the rubberized mitts of a sadist in a deep-freeze who's gonna hold you by the feet and slap you on the ass. Lookin' like this day's gonna suck...

You know what's gonna happen even if you don't remember squat. Who'd want to? Ever hear of PTSD? Everybody's had it, most forget it, and the rest we provide with drool cups, wrist bands, and constant surveillance. Works that way in one's Golden Years as well. Not a whole lot to recommend other than the alternative and that really sucks...

The following section will have to wait for a while before be
Hit Countering posted on the web. Too intricate, subject to too much error, philosophically too brief. Maybe in a month or two.