Conference turris::womannotes-v2

    "movers and shakers" - power people
    
    "syntactic sugar" - wordage that makes programming sweeter, but
    is unnecessary to the basic program - from a professor at MIT (whose
    name escapes me)
    
    "drop-dead date" - the date at which you do not take any more feedback,
    input, etc on a certain document / design / whatever.  I assume
    it's probably because if they come to you after that date, they
    were warned when the date was, and you have every right to tell
    them to drop dead because they should have come up with the comments
    / changes beforehand.
    
    "writing for the least common denominator" - may be peculiar to
    my immediate writing group.  This is writing for the least-informed
    audience to which a certain document is aimed.  Makes the product
    "idiot-resistant" to use/install, where idiot is not necessarily
    someone who is stupid, but may be someone who assumes they know
    what they're doing even if they may not have that much prior knowledge.
    
    "rat-hole" - as in "we're going down a rat-hole here".  Meaning
    it's a waste of time, and will yield no real results to continue
    this discussion.
    
    

	This contains a few. Peggy later had most of it publish
	as a newspaper column.

					-Tom_K
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* d i g i t a l *             I N T E R O F F I C E   M E M O R A N D U M
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TO:  RSTS.DIS					DATE:  9-DEC-82
						FROM:  Peg Alzmann
CC:  LIST.LST					DEPT:  RSTS/E Development
						EXT:   264-4671
						MAILSTOP:  MK1-2/L02
						ENGNET:  ARK::ALZMANN



SUBJ:  BUZZ WORD FOLLOW-UP MEMO

Before I give you the benefit of my remarks, I will take a moment to 
figure out what I'm supposed to say.  Since this is my last memo to you
before I leave this esteemed group, I want you to be aware that I've
included here ONLY the buzz words that my esteemed colleagues have 
so righteously accused me of omitting from my first memo.  It is solely at
their request that I attempt to do it [sic] a second time.

I fully realize that it was July 12th since I last communicated our status
in the creative process.  Many of you have warned me against poking down
ratholes, and have channelled my natural instincts away from publishing to
the world, into a more civilized "need to know" type of memo.

Since I don't know WHO needs to know just WHAT, I intend to argue for the
alternate route of redundancy.  This is sometimes known as going the whole
nine yards, but I prefer to think of it as reinventing the wheel.

There are those who have asked for just the vanilla version with one or two
flavors of the functionality of the hidden agendas I intend to use as gating
factors in formulating this viable message.  My answer is more or less set
in cement:  I LIKE THE BELLS AND WHISTLES, and I have enough warm bodies to
make this dream become a reality.

Now, we have not as yet established the metrics for this operation, but you can
be sure it will be transparent to the user.  Our mind set has been to migrate
the customer base to a sink or swim attitude.  We don't want to get beat up
before we've determined whether we will get good or bad press.  You must
remember, we are revisiting many old issues, not to mention very old problems.

For all intents and purposes, we intend to put a stake in the ground NOW.  This
characteristic could turn out to be a real bennie for us as a team.  If we
consult our resident guru, or technical giant, if you will, we'll be certain
to go off and do the right thing.  Our productivity will be measured against
the potential diagnosis of our well-established benchmarks.

At our last Woods Meeting, someone mentioned that functionality is still an
issue.  Rather than get blown out of the water, we have made the decision to
accept kludges, but they will be acceptable only as primary and/or elemental
fixes, and nothing more.

If we push back, as uninhibited engineers must (I refer you to "Soul of a New 
Machine"), we will find it's really a piece of cake after all.  Oh, and before
I forget, absolute MUST READING is Tom Jones' "HOW TO GET NAIVE USERS TO TRY
OUR USER FRIENDLY, MENU DRIVEN, CUSTOMER INSTALLABLE, SERIAL SYNCHRONOUS/
ASYNCHRONOUS SIGNALS AND THEIR SEGMENTAL INTERACTIVE NETWORK ROUTINES FOR
POSITIVE THROUGHPUT IN THE MONITOR EMULATOR".  It is quite delightful!  I
managed to zip right through Chapter 1 in less than 3 weeks during commercials
on "60 MINUTES".

All that I have tried to get across to you, over and over, is:  as your manager
I have finally had it with information access, downtime, off-line, EPROMS,
literal symbolisms, bubblegum, and alternate energy sources!  In other words,
I want to understand, JUST ONCE, a memo that I have written...................
......................
		      .
			.
			 .
			  .
			   .
			    .
			     . P
				e
				 g
				  g
				   y

    re .2
    I think that is the long and short of it, the whole nine yards, the
    big picture...

    
    	   One thing I have noticed about the computer industry
    	(from a system manager's perspective) is that it seems to
    	be a very violent business.  Witness:
    
    		"Hey Greg, what's wrong with my process?"
    
    		"It's hung!"
    
    		"Oh.  What does that mean?"
    
    		"It means I have to kill it."
    
    		"Oh my!  Is that... really necessary?"
    
    		"Don't worry, you won't feel a thing.  There,
    		you're dead.  Go ahead and log... wait."
    
    		"What?  Hey, my screen went blank."
    
    		"System just crashed."
    
    		"Mercy!  Well, what can you do?"
    
    		"I have to go boot it again."
    
    		"Is that reall good for it?  I mean, doesn't that
    		void the warranty or something?  Surely they'll 
    		see the dents."
    
    		"No, I mean I have to boot the operating system."
    
    		"Well if it's operating, why boot it?  Shouldn't you
    		leave well enough alone?"
    
    		"Look, I have to boot it in order to get the crash
    		dump."
    
    		"Is that something you really want?"
    
    		"Hmmm... Fatal Bugcheck... "
    
    		"Is that serious?"
    
    		"Not really.  I'll just hammer out a few changes to
    		the code and it'll be good as new."
    
    	   - Greg

    glarf.  I want to use one of your examples in a complete reversal,
    Greg.  "Boot" really means "bootstrap" refers to "pulling oneself
    up by one's bootstraps", an appropriate description for the computer
    gradually hoisting itself into full operation.  Definately non-violent,
    even constructive in full force.  We software types always forget
    where that word really originated.
    
    I shorten it to "boot" also.
    
    DougO

    My boss's boss requires him to attend the "headbasher" every day!
    
    The person I worked for a few years ago made his people attend the
    "dog and pony show" once a month!
    
    m

    
    operators go "cut tapes" for us...
    
    analysts "put out fires" for users...
    
    managers bring us "opportunities"  (problems)...
    
    we "feed" our printers and "tune" our software...
    
    t.

In '81 I worked on a DG mini that allowed 
the sys manager to temporarily grab all 
CPU time.  The name of the command and the
mode it established:   Hog Mode

Meigs

    
    Was that the Eclipse...?

    Sales & Marketing = S&M = Smoke & Mirrors
    
    naive user
    
    one-plus (functionality added after phase one?)
    
    And, last but not least, one I dislike because it comes out of a
    _primarily_ male-oriented power structure and terminology and is
    so overused:  "team player" and all other sports-related terms,
    often used exclusively (in some companies anyway) by senior managers
    when they want to motivate others!
    
    Nancy

    <--(.10)     
    
�     And, last but not least, one I dislike because it comes out of a
�     _primarily_ male-oriented power structure and terminology and is
�     so overused:  "team player" and all other sports-related terms,
    
    Amen on that!  I was baffled yesterday when told that a program was in
    "full court press".  I still don't know what the original term means
    when it's at home, but I've worked out that it's prolly from basketball
    (I should thinkg "court" is unlikely to refer to tennis or volleyball)
    and is a term for urgency. 

Re:  .11

>  I was baffled yesterday when told that a program was in "full court press".

When a basketball team gets the ball after the opponents have scored they
have ten seconds to move the ball into the opponents' half court.  In a
half court press the defenders will quickly bring all their players into
their own half court so as to position themselves optimally to defend their
basket.  By contrast, with a full court press some of the defenders stay in
the offense's half court and try to take the ball away (or at least prevent
them from moving the ball into the defense's half court within the allotted
ten seconds).  This is a much more aggressive defensive style, which can
result in some very spectacular steals when it works, but it risks leaving
the basket undefended in some cases if the offense can manage to break
through.

I would guess that a program in "full court press" would have all of its
resources fully committed, and that there was little or no margin for error
or slippage.

					--Q (Dick Wagman)

    The book "Games Mother Never Taught Me" is about the use of
    sports terminology in business and the underlying double meaning
    and also war terminology and strategy used in business.
    
    m

    Thanks, Q, makes much more sense now (and your estimation fits what
    I know of the program's state)

    
    
    		Crunch mode...
    
    					andrew

    See 359.34 for Dawn Evan's metaphor on world-process defaults of
    childcare (emphasized in Bruce Laru's .35).
    
    DougO