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Dictionary O'Modern Terms

Here's a dictionary of terms that any engineer can appreciate. Most of them were sent to me by other people. Some I just found lying around. Absolutely none of these terms were created by me. I'm not sure if they're funny or depressing. You be the judge.

If you have any additional terms to add to the dictionary feel free to mail them to me at mdipper@alumni.engr.ucsb.edu. If you're just going to be a Seagull Manager, fly over someone else.

404

Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested document could not be located. "Don't bother asking him . . . he's 404, man."

Adminisphere

The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.

Assmosis

The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss.

Betamaxed

When a technically superior concept/product looses out to a lesser product due to bad marketing. This term came about came into existence after the demise of the Sony Betamax.

BFNB

"Bad Flack! No Biscuit!" - Subject of an e-mail message from Don Marti containing a forwarding of an exceptionally clueless promotional article. Now used by the staff at Linux Journal (and soon the rest of the world) whenever a flack produces an exceptionally clueless piece of work.

Blamestorming

Sitting around in a group discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who was responsible.

Chainsaw consultant

An outside expert brought in to reduce the employee head count, leaving the brass with clean hands.

CLB

Career Limiting Behavior. See CLM.

CLM

Career Limiting Move - Used among microserfs to describe ill-advised activity. Trashing your boss while he or she is within earshot is a serious CLM. (Also known as CLB)

Cube Farm

An office full of cublicles.

Dilberted

To be exploited and oppressed by your boss. Derived from the experiences of Dilbert, the geek-in-hell comic strip character. "I've been dilberted again. The old man revised the specs for the fourth time this week."

Flack

One who provides publicity; a press agent. Flack is thought to have come from anti-aircraft barrages that resemble the persistence of press agents who barrage the press with publicity schemes.

Flight Risk

Used to describe employees who are suspected of planning to leave the company or department soon.

Management by Wandering around

Practiced by people who don't want to be at their desk when the phone rings.

Microserfs

The title of an excellent book written by Douglas Coupland ¹. Any software engineer, not at the management level of a large corporation. The serfs of the high-tech feudal system.

Ohnosecond

That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake.

Percussive Maintenance

The fine art of whacking an electronic device just right to get it to work again.

Postal

A state of mind of a person committed to killing all of his or her coworkers. Attribute to a string of shooting in U.S. post offices committed by postal workers.

Prairie Dogging

When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm and everyone's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.

RDB

See Rectal Database.

Rectal Database

The very private location from which instantaneous answers to questions may be retrieved. "I pulled that one from my rectal database."

Salmon Day

The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.

Seagull Manager

A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, poops over everything and then leaves.

Tourist

People who take training classes just to get a vacation from their jobs. "We had three serious students in the class; the rest were just tourists."

Treeware

Printed computer software/hardware documentation.

1. I have a copy that I bought a few years ago.