BOFH: It's Friday, it's time to RTFM BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns "Just wanting to know if you've got the answers to the RFIs on our RFP – as we need them ASAP," the Boss says, practicing his acronyms. "The RFIs for the RFP?" the PFY says. "You never said you needed them PDQ. I emailed the vendor for clarification but they were either AFK or AWOL so I …
sounds like a ....
backronym
/ˈbakrənɪm/
noun
an acronym deliberately formed from a phrase whose initial letters spell out a particular word or words, either to create a memorable name or as a fanciful explanation of a word's origin.
"Biodiversity Serving Our Nation, or BISON (a backronym if ever there was one)"
amazing how many acronyns a re coincidentally cool sounding words,
Like RAID , which in some circles has changed its definition from inexpensive to independent.
Like RAID , which in some circles has changed its definition from inexpensive to independent.
Yeah, that one's transition always bemused me... if the damn disks are in an array then they are no longer independent.
I suspect the manufacturers of disks had some impact on the perversion of RAID to RAID. :)
Indeed, although around here it's usually said as planning rather than preparation.
I have even taken to referring to a "spot of PPP" at home, for the piss-poor performance (or sometimes planning if it's something that hasn't been thought through properly) part of it.
And my better half has also taken it up as an occasional exasperated mantra when things go wrong.
Some trends in the military would shorten that to P6, like C2 means Command & Control.
That said, my memory has mostly wiped that time to prevent injury, but I vaguely recall they had acronyms composed out of acronyms so initially you were two level decoding before youir brain just decided to use it as a noun instead to save CPU time and headaches ;)
Years ago, I was in a managers meeting, 20 or so of us minions, sector manager, area manager, auditors plus our CEO showing his face. Usual farce. Then some smart Alec started complaining about the TLA's and FLA's that were coming down from HO without explanation. Much nodding of heads and general grunts of agreement from the top table. Much later that night when we were trying to drink the entertainment fund dry, the CEO came over and quietly asked what TLA's and FLA's were. He was informed Three and Four letter acronyms. Thoughtful look, point taken and for once, acted upon.
fact that I didnt even need to think about about most of those and killed another keyboard with a fit of laughter that made my throat sore hence I need the TCP
Although the boss did ask what the cause of merriment was before he started with.
"Our estemed* prod engineer is leaving next week...."
"And?"
"I would like you to take over some of his duties as your PFY seems to think you are getting too old to go crawling around the machining cells"
"Uh huh.... what duties?"
"Only sitting in on the scheduling meeting on a thursday so you cant come to my office monday morning, throw the schedule on my desk and say "what the *^^( is this &*%*&*?""
So.... it seems my PFY has not only stabbed me in the back , but also given me another meeting to goto and trying to deprive me of monday morning fun..... only 6 months in and I've trained her so well....
*thats what he thinks, everyone else thinks the guy is not as good as the boss thinks...
Years ago our corporate overlords had a habit of making every little thing into an acronym. I was due to present my latest engineering tool to an internal, international symposium (via webex) and I'd not bothered coming up with a name for it since the main task, as we all know, is getting the bloody thing to work.
Anyway, knowing their penchant for acronyms I titled my presentation Sound Hemisphere Integration Technique for Calculating Radiated Acoustic Pressure.
Turn that into an acronym you b----rds.
My employer makes large machines and their engines, and at one point tried to get everyone to start using what they called "mnemonics" for every data channel recorded during testing. On the one hand, it made sense so that you could search the data, you don't want one group calling it "engine speed" and another "tacho", or something. The implementation, though, was terrible, with chained together things that were sort of mnemonics, but the collection was not. We'd end up looking at lists of channels named "ZZTPMM", "GREMTS", "ILPFHI" and "EDNDST".
Example: ENTCPA1
EN - it's an engine
T - it's a turbocharger
T - it's the compressor side
P - it's a pressure
A - it's air pressure
1 - it's the number 1 turbo
There you go, number one turbo compressor outlet pressure. Now go find your engine speed channel at ENNCF.
The rebellion was strong. These channel names are still out there, but they're buried deep in a nerd layer between the data acquisition software and the analysis/reporting.
Many years ago, when "cloud" was a new and not too familiar buzzword, my employer at the time** decided to create a consultancy service offering to help customers decide when/if/whether to move to cloud. It was known internally as the Cloud Opportunity Workshop [or Workbook depending on who you spoke to].
I was asked to run up a quick prototype tool to record the observations and automate some of it and so I created one in a few days using Ruby on Rails [again up and coming / trendy at the time -- don't blame me I was assured it was a demo that wouldn't be used in production!! ho-ho!].
I named it the "Planning and Assessment Toolkit".
It actually reached the proofreading stage of the marketing flyer before the potential acronym was spotted. I thought that COWPAT was a reasonable name for the marketing spiel of the time.
** I've since moved on and then retired -- the employer in question was bought up and absorbed.
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