Conference thebay::joyoflex

Note 1096.0         Perssonal names - please explain here...         No replies
                        ^
                        |
    
    BTW thanks for the explanation... That's always been of interest and
    now I know!
    
    As for mine, I love a good double-entendre...  and I have another one
    brewing, albeit more visual...
    

    Of course, it does depend on the particular fixed-width font your
    X display, terminal or termulator offers...
    

    mine is from a Python sketch about the Spanish Inquisition (no one
    expected it..):
    
    "...among our chief weapons are (personal name) to the Pope..."
    
    
    --Angela

Mine is from the latest book in Douglas Adams Hitchhikers
Guide Trilogy, Mostly Harmless.  

Larry

    Mine, which is always in Latin and may be the spark that set Derek off
    on this topic, currently is:
    
    	Ut res per opera mea meliores fiant
    	May things be made better by my works
    
    Could change tomorrow, though - watch the space above.  :-)

Mine, (which I admit is not original) is because I am a 
Kiwi living in France and I derive a perverse personal
feeling of vengeance when insulting the French navy 
every time I enter a VAXnote.

/Chris.

    well that's odd - my personal name didn't show up
    in .4 although the name itself is still set...
    
    it is "fear, surprise, and an almost fanatical devotion"
    
    
    --angela

    
    Re: .7
    
    Perhaps you have a personal name set for MAIL but not for NOTES? Try
    entering SHOW PROFILE at the notes prompt.
    
    JP

    The title of a sci-fi short story I read a while ago.  
      Now who wrote it ???

kbear (memory is the second thing to go :-)

    I think it might have been Frederic Brown, and "gand" refers
    to Gandhi's non-violent non-cooperation, applied here as the
    foundation of an entire planet's culture.  But I don't think
    you have the right title.
    
    		-John Bishop

    re .7: thanks JP - I never knew about that...
    
    re .10: is that the story where people unite against 
    violence with the phrase F.I.W. (freedom: I won't)?
    
    
    --angela

<- .10 .11

	I 'm fairly sure the title is correct. Or maybe that was the
    last line in the story?  Anyhoo, yup that's the one.

kbear

    Mine's a reference to ISDN, in which the Basic Rate Interface provided
    for 2 B-channels and one D-channel transmitting over one bit of wire,
    roughly, I think. I guess the D is for `data', but no one ever told me
    why the control channels were dubbed `B'. Lots of ISDN implementations
    today use the Primary Rate Interface (32B + D, or 26 in some parts of
    the world), but my name's not that long.
    
    b

    re: -1
    
    The "B" channels in ISDN-speak are "Bearer" Channels; they carry the
    telephony connections.  The "D" channel is, indeed, the "Data" channel,
    which is used primarily for signalling purposes to set up the
    connections (although some implementations allow the user to use the
    bandwidth for data connections, primarily packet data; i.e., X.25).
    
    The Basic Rate Interface is 2B+D, where each B channel is 64K, and the
    D channel is 16K.  The Primary Rate Interface is 30B+D in Europe and
    some other places, where each B channel is 64K (still) and the D
    channel is also 64K; in North America, Japan (and other places that use
    the T carrier digital hierarchy) the PRI is 23B+D (23*64K +64K).  Back
    to your regularly scheduled program...
    
    My PN is familiar to all avid readers of DEC (ooops, make that digital)
    documentation.

    Over the years I've used several that I can still remember:
    
    "Technology is my vorpal sword"
    when I was a Technology Consultant, the vorpal sword was the deadly
    weapon used in Jabberwocky (author: Lewis Carroll). 
    
    "An emigrant in Paris"
    when on relocation from the UK in la Belle France
    
    "Don't worry we have a cunning plan"
    after the planning of the 1994 European restructure was announced. 
    It's a misquote from Baldrick who always has a cunning plan which
    inevitably is either so silly or so unsuccessful that it's very funny.
    
    My current one is a quote from Sid, the cafe owner, in Last Of the
    Summer Wine.  It seems to me to sum up the attitude of so many people I
    know of when they're faced with immense problems.

    	As you can see from the following, I have been using the same
    personal name for at least 6 years. A personal name, in my opinion,
    should be just that; something that people can recognise you by even if
    you are forced by outside circumstances to change node names, user
    names, or even companies.
    
    	The name came as a train of thought, thinking as a security
    consultant. Almost all security problems in computer systems come from
    letting human beings have access to them, and if you give something
    access to your computer system that does damage you are bringing in a
    trojan horse.
    
    	Then think of what humanity is doing to the ecosystem. They should
    never have been allowed here, but now they are here they are going to
    be very difficult to get rid of, a bit like a computer virus.
    
    	Anyway, 6 years later I am a programmer rather than a security
    consultant, but I have seen no reason to change my node name, user name
    or notes personal name. I know of someone in another notes file who
    uses a TPU procedure to select at random a personal name from a large
    file every time she enters NOTES, but that way lies schizophrenia.
    
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
              <<< BONNET::TOOLS:[NOTES$LIBRARY]VALBONNE.NOTE;2 >>>
                  -< It's not just a job, it's an adventure >-
================================================================================
Note 1015.9                England,dreams and stomachs                   9 of 27
PASTIS::MONAHAN "humanity is a trojan horse"          9 lines  24-MAR-1988 09:49
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    	Actually, there is nowhere in Cheddar that actually makes cheese,
    but I have had excellent cheese from a small dairy about 6 miles from
    Cheddar. They use traditional methods, and they make a bit of a show of
    their cheese making process. I suppose it could qualify as Cheddar,
    since that would probably be the nearest large village.
    
    	American cheddar cheese bears no significant relationship to the
    real product apart from the name. They probably should call it buffalo
    cheese - at least that is a place name they can call their own.
    

    >Almost all security problems in computer systems come from
    >letting human beings have access to them,
    
    >Then think of what humanity is doing to the ecosystem. They should
    >never have been allowed here, but now they are here they are going to
    >be very difficult to get rid of, a bit like a computer virus.
    
    Don't forget the famous line, "We had to destroy the village to save it."
    
    We'll have to kill every last one of us to save ourselves.
    
    -- Norman Diamond

    My personal name is borne out of working in support for too long.
    
    Ofttimes we would get off the phone after talking to some air-head
    customer and quip "What planet was _he_ on?".
    
    Combine that line of thought with another quip going something like "He
    was asking me to help him sort out (insert problem type here); I don't
    knwo what number he thought he'd dialled".
    
    Mix them together in a cocktail shaker of a brain and you get to "Which
    universe did you dial?" which is pronounced with dollops of incredulity
    and the emphasis on the interrogative.
    
    Jon
    
    p.s. I have a friend who uses one of my favourite pieces of surreal
    personal nomenclature: "Every clown has a silver lining".  If you're
    out there Graham, post a reply!

I used to use "The secret is strong ears."  This came from a story I read in the 
L.A. Times several years about a long-lived ritual competition among a tribe
of native Alaskans (I believe it is Alaska. They're from *somewhere* in northern
North America).  The competition involves carrying some heavy object over a long
distance by hanging the object from one's ear.

The interviewer asked the champion his secret to winning.  His reply is what I
used to use as my personal name.  I thought it a good description of an 
essential part of systems analysis and problem solving.

With Digital's recent and seemingly accelerating activity to divest ourselves
of a lot of software business and more and more employees, customers analysts 
and consultants asking what our software strategy is, I've cynically changed
my personal name to what it is now:  "our middle name is 'Equipment,'" as an
indication of what I think our software strategy is.

Bruce

    Re .9, .10, .11, 12:
    
    the author was Eric Frank Russell
    
    There's a bit about him (including "And then there were none") in the
    Science Fiction conference NOTED::SF, notesd 468, 785 & 888.