"like X-ing the Y"
like trying to secure Windows
Painters wrap Forth Bridge job after 121 years
The English language is preparing to mourn the loss of one of its most agreeable similes as painters finally apply the last lick of paint to the Forth Bridge. For well over 100 years, chaps armed with buckets and brushes have scaled the famous structure in a Sisyphean endeavour to keep it spick and span. Now, however, after a …
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Tuesday 6th September 2011 14:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
PR
It's all PR BS I'm afraid. I was told by somebody on the project a few years back that it was a myth that the bridge was constantly being painted. Futhermore he said he could cite periods where no painting was done on the bridge at all for some considerable time.
The whole myth got started because painting the structure is so complex that it obviously takes a very log time and somebody stated that it took so long that by the time the painters reached the far side they would have to start again at the other. There was never any official confirmation of this.
Indeed I remember a few years ago it being a news story (probably in the Scotsman) that the bridge was falling to bits because the painting had been stopped. They can't have it both ways - either the painting was stopped or it has been continuous since the bridge was erected.
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Friday 9th September 2011 13:54 GMT Grease Monkey
George IV Bridge does not cross the Firth of Forth. It's an elevated street in Edinburgh. You can't count it just because it's in Scotland you know.
There are two bridges at Queensferry, the Forth Bridge and the Forth Road Bridge. Although they are planning another road bridge. Further inland there are two more bridges although I think they cross the river Forth rather than the Firth of Forth. Those are the Kincardine on Forth Bridge and the Clackmananshire Bridge which bypasses Kincardine to the north.
So in short there are still only two bridges over the Firth of Forth.
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Tuesday 6th September 2011 15:34 GMT BristolBachelor
Reminds me of a backup once
Reminds me of my last company, when the tape drive broke on the software production server. Someone decided that we couldn't buy a new one, because the new SAN took all the money and it had an excellent new tape drive in. I was instructed to run a cron job each night to copy the source code repository to the SAN which was in a different building (The backup software couldn't backup to the SAN).
It took just over 25 hours to copy the entire repository over the internal network, so the next night the job started before the first had finished. I can't remember how long this nonesense went on for before they decided to buy a new production server and just connect it directly to the SAN. Whatever, it certainly saved the cost of a tape drive :)
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Tuesday 6th September 2011 16:06 GMT Marco Mieshio
P - lease....
This is old news and coupled with this the scaffolding is not down for three months. So it is not finished yet and it is old news that it is finished. The News in this country is tripe with a capital T. Have people forgotten that our government has been engaged in torture! This means if they can do it to them, they can do it to us.
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Wednesday 7th September 2011 10:53 GMT Intractable Potsherd
@Marco Mieshio
If I understand your post correctly, we should not be concerned with anything other than just one instance of something that has probably been going on in some form or another for a long time. There is no justification in your mind, for people to indulge in a bit of humour combined with non-political interest.
I'm sorry, you are wrong.
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Tuesday 6th September 2011 23:16 GMT nyelvmark
Like Xing the Y
I would think that the most appropriate alternative in this forum is: "Like designing a secure system". As soon as you think you've finished, somebody discovers a fundamental hack which means you need to go back and start again.
Something more in tune with the mentality of the Clapham Omnibus passenger is needed, though, I think. How about "Reaching your annual performance-review targets"? As everyone knows, achieving this feat will simply lead to your boss being replaced by someone with better "people management" skills, who will set you unreachable targets for next year.
A friend of mine had such a review, and was told that she wasn't doing what was specified in her contract of employment. When she objected that she didn't have a contract, her boss informed her that there was a provisional contract held in the HR department, but that it was confidential and so she wasn't allowed to read it.
She's looking for another job, but painting the Forth bridge probably isn't up her street.
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Wednesday 7th September 2011 08:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Can we see the QA reports?
I sincerely hope they applied that epoxy 100% perfectly to every square inch of the bridge; that epoxy is buggeringly hard to remove or patch, not to mention just a little bit toxic.
One little patch done badly, if left alone for a couple of decades due to "we don't need to maintain it anymore" thinking can lead to mighty costly repairs. Or spectacular failure. In my (amittedly worthless) opinion, I would stick with conventional micaceous oxide paint and regular maintenance. Sure, it costs $x per year, but thats better than the $x^2+y^6+z^17 you'll have to pay when something goes wrong. Cheapest contractors = what are the chances?
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Wednesday 7th September 2011 10:07 GMT Sandy Ritchie
meh!
Why change the saying?
I mean we still use, not enough room to swing a cat (of nine tails), freeze the balls off a brass monkey (cannon balls) and the likes.
Like painting the forth bridge... never ending with no apparent benefit! How about like paying your taxes... you keep paying them, but the country still goes down the pan and the professionally unemployed still get by with no income but have full sky package and a 40+ inch LED telly.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
