Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
"Microwave oven? Whaddya mean, it's a microwave oven? I've been watching Channel 4 on the thing for two weeks." | |
Snow White has become a camera buff. She spends hours and hours shooting pictures of the seven dwarfs and their antics. Then she mails the exposed film to a cut rate photo service. It takes weeks for the developed film to arrive in the mail, but that is all right with Snow White. She clears the table, washes the dishes and sweeps the floor, all the while singing "Someday my prints will come." | |
After watching my newly-retired dad spend two weeks learning how to make a new folder, it became obvious that "intuitive" mostly means "what the writer or speaker of intuitive likes". (Bruce Ediger, bediger@teal.csn.org, in comp.os.linux.misc, on X the intuitiveness of a Mac interface.) | |
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. -- Mark Twain | |
Many enraged psychiatrists are inciting a weary butcher. The butcher is weary and tired because he has cut meat and steak and lamb for hours and weeks. He does not desire to chant about anything with raving psychiatrists, but he sings about his gingivectomist, he dreams about a single cosmologist, he thinks about his dog. The dog is named Herbert. -- Racter, "The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed" | |
A manager asked a programmer how long it would take him to finish the program on which he was working. "I will be finished tomorrow," the programmer promptly replied. "I think you are being unrealistic," said the manager. "Truthfully, how long will it take?" The programmer thought for a moment. "I have some features that I wish to add. This will take at least two weeks," he finally said. "Even that is too much to expect," insisted the manager, "I will be satisfied if you simply tell me when the program is complete." The programmer agreed to this. Several years later, the manager retired. On the way to his retirement lunch, he discovered the programmer asleep at his terminal. He had been programming all night. -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" | |
`Lasu' Releases SAG 0.3 -- Freeware Book Takes Paves For New World Order by staff writers ... The SAG is one of the major products developed via the Information Superhighway, the brain child of Al Gore, US Vice President. The ISHW is being developed with massive govenment funding, since studies show that it already has more than four hundred users, three years before the first prototypes are ready. Asked whether he was worried about the foreign influence in an expensive American Dream, the vice president said, ``Finland? Oh, we've already bought them, but we haven't told anyone yet. They're great at building model airplanes as well. And _I can spell potato.'' House representatives are not mollified, however, wanting to see the terms of the deal first, fearing another Alaska. Rumors about the SAG release have imbalanced the American stock market for weeks. Several major publishing houses reached an all time low in the New York Stock Exchange, while publicly competing for the publishing agreement with Mr. Wirzenius. The negotiations did not work out, tough. ``Not enough dough,'' says the author, although spokesmen at both Prentice-Hall and Playboy, Inc., claim the author was incapable of expressing his wishes in a coherent form during face to face talks, preferring to communicate via e-mail. ``He kept muttering something about jiffies and pegs,'' they say. ... -- Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cs.helsinki.fi> [comp.os.linux.announce] | |
"If John Madden steps outside on February 2, looks down, and doesn't see his feet, we'll have 6 more weeks of Pro football." -- Chuck Newcombe | |
"Israel today announced that it is giving up. The Zionist state will dissolve in two weeks time, and its citizens will disperse to various resort communities around the world. Said Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, 'Who needs the aggravation?'" -- Dennis Miller, "Satuday Night Live" News | |
"To your left is the marina where several senior cabinet officials keep luxury yachts for weekend cruises on the Potomac. Some of these ships are up to 100 feet in length; the Presidential yacht is over 200 feet in length, and can remain submerged for up to 3 weeks." -- Garrison Keillor | |
America is the country where you buy a lifetime supply of aspirin for one dollar, and use it up in two weeks. | |
The Worst Prison Guards The largest number of convicts ever to escape simultaneously from a maximum security prison is 124. This record is held by Alcoente Prison, near Lisbon in Portugal. During the weeks leading up to the escape in July 1978 the prison warders had noticed that attendances had fallen at film shows which included "The Great Escape", and also that 220 knives and a huge quantity of electric cable had disappeared. A guard explained, "Yes, we were planning to look for them, but never got around to it." The warders had not, however, noticed the gaping holes in the wall because they were "covered with posters". Nor did they detect any of the spades, chisels, water hoses and electric drills amassed by the inmates in large quantities. The night before the breakout one guard had noticed that of the 36 prisoners in his block only 13 were present. He said this was "normal" because inmates sometimes missed roll-call or hid, but usually came back the next morning. "We only found out about the escape at 6:30 the next morning when one of the prisoners told us," a warder said later. [...] When they eventually checked, the prison guards found that exactly half of the gaol's population was missing. By way of explanation the Justice Minister, Dr. Santos Pais, claimed that the escape was "normal" and part of the "legitimate desire of the prisoner to regain his liberty." -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures" | |
Eagleson's Law: Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more months, might as well have been written by someone else. (Eagleson is an optimist, the real number is more like three weeks.) | |
vacation, n.: A two-week binge of rest and relaxation so intense that it takes another 50 weeks of your restrained workaday life-style to recuperate. | |
Joe Cool always spends the first two weeks at college sailing his frisbee. -- Snoopy | |
A Hen Brooding Kittens A friend informs us that he saw at the Novato ranch, Marin county, a few days since, a hen actually brooding and otherwise caring for three kittens! The gentleman upon whose premises this strange event is transpiring says the hen adopted the kittens when they were but a few days old, and that she has devoted them her undivided care for several weeks past. The young felines are now of respectable size, but they nevertheless follow the hen at her cluckings, and are regularly brooded at night beneath her wings. -- Sacramento Daily Union, July 2, 1861 | |
After two or three weeks of this madness, you begin to feel As One with the man who said, "No news is good news." In twenty-eight papers, only the rarest kind of luck will turn up more than two or three articles of any interest... but even then the interest items are usually buried deep around paragraph 16 on the jump (or "Cont. on ...") page... The Post will have a story about Muskie making a speech in Iowa. The Star will say the same thing, and the Journal will say nothing at all. But the Times might have enough room on the jump page to include a line or so that says something like: "When he finished his speech, Muskie burst into tears and seized his campaign manager by the side of the neck. They grappled briefly, but the struggle was kicked apart by an oriental woman who seemed to be in control." Now that's good journalism. Totally objective; very active and straight to the point. -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72" | |
Reporters like Bill Greider from the Washington Post and Him Naughton of the New York Times, for instance, had to file long, detailed, and relatively complex stories every day -- while my own deadline fell every two weeks -- but neither of them ever seemed in a hurry about getting their work done, and from time to time they would try to console me about the terrible pressure I always seemed to be laboring under. Any $100-an-hour psychiatrist could probably explain this problem to me, in thirteen or fourteen sessions, but I don't have time for that. No doubt it has something to do with a deep-seated personality defect, or maybe a kink in whatever blood vessel leads into the pineal gland... On the other hand, it might be something as simple & basically perverse as whatever instinct it is that causes a jackrabbit to wait until the last possible second to dart across the road in front of a speeding car. -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" | |
There was this New Yorker that had a lifelong ambition to be an Texan. Fortunately, he had an Texan friend and went to him for advice. "Mike, you know I've always wanted to be a Texan. You're a *____real* Texan, what should I do?" "Well," answered Mike, "The first thing you've got to do is look like a Texan. That means you have to dress right. The second thing you've got to do is speak in a southern drawl." "Thanks, Mike, I'll give it a try," replied the New Yorker. A few weeks passed and the New Yorker saunters into a store dressed in a ten-gallon hat, cowboy boots, Levi jeans and a bandanna. "Hey, there, pardner, I'd like some beef, not too rare, and some of them fresh biscuits," he tells the counterman. The guy behind the counter takes a long look at him and then says, "You must be from New York." The New Yorker blushes, and says, "Well, yes, I am. How did you know?" "Because this is a hardware store." | |
Chemist who falls in acid will be tripping for weeks. | |
How many weeks are there in a light year? | |
The ark lands after The Flood. Noah lets all the animals out. Says he, "Go and multiply." Several months pass. Noah decides to check up on the animals. All are doing fine except a pair of snakes. "What's the problem?" says Noah. "Cut down some trees and let us live there", say the snakes. Noah follows their advice. Several more weeks pass. Noah checks on the snakes again. Lots of little snakes, everybody is happy. Noah asks, "Want to tell me how the trees helped?" "Certainly", say the snakes. "We're adders, and we need logs to multiply." | |
I've been on a diet for two weeks and all I've lost is two weeks. -- Totie Fields | |
... This striving for excellence extends into people's personal lives as well. When '80s people buy something, they buy the best one, as determined by (1) price and (2) lack of availability. Eighties people buy imported dental floss. They buy gourmet baking soda. If an '80s couple goes to a restaurant where they have made a reservation three weeks in advance, and they are informed that their table is available, they stalk out immediately, because they know it is not an excellent restaurant. If it were, it would have an enormous crowd of excellence-oriented people like themselves waiting, their beepers going off like crickets in the night. An excellent restaurant wouldn't have a table ready immediately for anybody below the rank of Liza Minnelli. -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence" | |
God rest ye CS students now, The bearings on the drum are gone, Let nothing you dismay. The disk is wobbling, too. The VAX is down and won't be up, We've found a bug in Lisp, and Algol Until the first of May. Can't tell false from true. The program that was due this morn, And now we find that we can't get Won't be postponed, they say. At Berkeley's 4.2. (chorus) (chorus) We've just received a call from DEC, And now some cheery news for you, They'll send without delay The network's also dead, A monitor called RSuX We'll have to print your files on It takes nine hundred K. The line printer instead. The staff committed suicide, The turnaround time's nineteen weeks. We'll bury them today. And only cards are read. (chorus) (chorus) And now we'd like to say to you CHORUS: Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, Before we go away, Comfort and joy, We hope the news we've brought to you Oh, tidings of comfort and joy. Won't ruin your whole day. You've got another program due, tomorrow, by the way. (chorus) -- to God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen | |
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. | |
Don't read any sky-writing for the next two weeks. | |
Good news. Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day. | |
"`... then I decided that I was a lemon for a couple of weeks. I kept myself amused all that time jumping in and out of a gin and tonic.' Arthur cleared his throat, and then did it again. `Where,' he said, `did you...?' `Find a gin and tonic?' said Ford brightly. `I found a small lake that thought it was a gin and tonic, and jumped in and out of that. At least, I think it thought it was a gin and tonic.' `I may,' he addded with a grin which would have sent sane men scampering into the trees, `have been imagining it.'" - Ford updating Arthur about what he's been doing for the past four years. | |
Missouri Town Changes Name to 'Linux' LINUX, MO -- The small Missouri town of Linn, county seat of Osage County, announced yesterday that it will be henceforth called 'Linux'. Mayor Bob Farrow said, "Linn needed something to put it on the map. A few weeks ago my daughter mentioned that she installed Linux on her computer and how great she thought it was. I thought to myself, 'Self, changing the town's name to 'Linux' could be an opportunity to attract attention -- and money -- to our town. We could even hold a Linux Convention at the community center.' So I approached the city council about the idea, and they loved it. The rest is history." Farrow's daughter is organizing the Linux Linux User Group. She hopes to be able to hold a Linux Convention this fall. "The Linn, er, Linux community center probably won't be big enough, we'll probably have to hold it in nearby Jefferson City," she said. The mayor does have one reservation. "How the hell do you pronounce Linux?" One of the mayor's contenders in the next election, Mr. Noah Morals, says he will start an ad campaign calling Bob Farrow "the Incumbent Liar of LIE-nucks". Needless to say, the mayor usually pronounces Linux as "LIH-nucks". | |
Tux Penguin Beanie Baby Sales Skyrocket Two weeks ago Ty released a 'Tux the Penguin' Beanie Baby. Sales of the stuffed toy have exceeded expectations. All 100,000 of them have been sold, and it will be another week before more can be produced and distributed. Tux is now the one of the most valuable Beanie Babies, with some stores selling remaining ones for over $500. Tux's strong sales constrast sharply with Ty's other computer-related Beanie Baby, 'Billy the Billionaire'. "Billy's sales are dismal. Except for the 2,000 that Bill Gates bought for himself and his daughter Jennifer, Billy has been a failure. People just aren't responsive to toys that represent greedy, capitalistic billionaires with bad haircuts," a member of the Church of Beanie Baby Collecting said. Ty is considering releasing other Beanie Babies similar to Tux. Some possibities include 'Steve the Apple Worm' and 'Wilbur the Gimp'. "Computer-related Beanie Babies are selling extremely well," a Ty spokesman said. "I don't understand why people are obsessed with these stupid stuffed toys. But as long as they're making me lots of money, I don't care! Oops... Please don't quote me on that." | |
Increased Electricity Consumption Blamed on Linux WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The US Department of Energy claims Linux is partially responsible for the increased demand for electricity during the past year. Electricity use was up 2.5% from January to September of 1998 compared with the same period in 1997. "While some of the increase can be attributed to higher temperatures over the summer," one Department bureaucrat explained, "Linux is certainly a contributor to the increased demand for power." When asked for clarification, the bureaucrat responded, "In the past, most PCs have been turned off when not in use. Linux users, on the other hand, usually don't turn off their computers. They leave them on, hoping to increase their uptime to impress their friends. And since Linux rarely crashes the entire system, those computers stay on for weeks, months, even years at a time. With Linux use continuing to grow, we expect demand for electricity to increase steadily over the next several years." In response to the news, several utility companies have announced plans to give away free Linux CDs to paying customers who request them. One anonymous executive said, "The more people who use Linux, the more power they consume. The more electricity they use, the more money we make. It's a win-win combination." Yesterday Linus Torvalds was nominated as a candidate for the Assocation of American Utility Companies Person of the Year. | |
Treaty of Helsinki Signed HELSINKI, FINLAND -- A cease-fire in the flame war between Linux and FreeBSD has been reached. A group of two dozen Linux and FreeBSD zealots met in Helsinki to ratify a treaty bringing a temporary end to the hostile fighting between both camps. "Today is a good day for peace," one observer noted. "Now both sides can lay down their keyboards and quit flaming the opposing side on Usenet and Slashdot." The cease-fire is a response to the sudden increase in fighting that has occured over the past two weeks. The Slashdot server became a victim of the cross-fire this week when thousands of Anonymous Cowards and Geek Zealots posted inflammatory comments that amounted to, "My OS is better than your OS!" Many nerds, suffering withdrawl symptoms when the Slashdot site slowed to a crawl, demanded that the bickering stop. "I can't take it anymore! It takes two minutes to download the Slashdot homepage -- assuming the site is actually online. I must have my 'News for Nerds' now! The fighting must stop," one Anonymous Coward ranted. | |
The Latest Get-Rich-Quick Scheme: Bashing Linux As used by Jesse Berst and Fred Moody... 1. Write a scathing article attacking some facet of Linux and publish it 2. Arrange for the article to be mentioned on LinuxToday or Slashdot. 3. Watch as thousands of angry Linux zealots storm your article and load the advertising banners. Listen to the ca-chink $ound of the advertising revenue that's pouring in. 4. As soon as the maelstrom quiets, publish another scathing article about the immaturity of the Linux "community", excerpting some of the nasty flames from Linux longhairs denouncing your intelligence and claiming that you're on the Microsoft payroll. 5. Arrange for the article to be mentioned on LinuxToday or Slashdot. 6. Watch as thousands of angry Linux zealots storm your article... 7. Wait for a few weeks, and repeat. Cash your inflated paycheck, invest the proceeds in some Linux stocks, and retire early. You've "earned" it! | |
Excerpts From The First Annual Nerd Bowl (#5) A commercial that aired during the live ASCII broadcast of the game: Having trouble staying awake for weeks at a time working on that latest hack? Worried that some young punk will take over your cushy job because you sleep too much? Don't worry, EyeOpener® brand cola is here to save the day. You'll never feel sleepy again when you drink EyeOpener®. Surgeon General's Warning: This product should only be used under a doctor's immediate supervision, as it contains more caffeine than 512 cases of Coca-Cola. Caution: When sleep does occur after about three weeks, optometrists recommend having someone on hand to close your eyelids. Coming soon: ExtremelyWired(tm) cola with 50% more sugar! May or may not meet FDA approval... we're still trying. | |
Are you sick of wasting valuable seconds while ingesting caffeine or eating a cold pizza? Is your programming project running behind because you keep falling asleep? EyeOpener(tm) brand caffeinated beverages has the solution. Our new ActiveIV product will provide a 24 hour supply of caffeine via intravenous tube while you work -- so you can hack without any interruptions at all (except going to the bathroom -- but our Port-a-Urinal(tm) can help solve that problem as well). EyeOpener(tm) beverages contain at least 5,000% of the daily recommended dose of caffeine, a quantity that will surely keep you wide awake, alert, and in Deep Hack Mode for weeks at a time. With EyeOpener and ActiveIV, you won't waste your valuable time at a vendine machine. EyeOpener(tm): You'll Never Waste Another Millisecond Ever Again. | |
Unobfuscated Perl (#2) A rogue group of Perl hackers has presented a plan to add a "use really_goddamn_strict" pragma that would enforce readability and UNobfuscation. With this pragma in force, the Perl compiler might say: * Warning: Write-only code detected between lines 612 and 734. While this code is perfectly legal, you won't have any clue what it does in two weeks. I recommend you start over. * Warning: Code at line 1,024 is indistinguishable from line noise or the output of /dev/random * Warning: Have you ever properly indented a piece of code in your entire life? Evidently not. * Warning: I think you can come up with a more descriptive variable name than "foo" at line 1,523. * Warning: Programmer attempting to re-invent the wheel at line 2,231. There's a function that does the exact same thing on CPAN -- and it actually works. | |
<Deek> change all cvar->value = X to use Cvar_Set() <theoddone33> that didn't happen in oldtree <Deek> Actually, it did. <Knghtbrd> yeah - two weeks later. | |
After watching my newly-retired dad spend two weeks learning how to make a new folder, it became obvious that "intuitive" mostly means "what the writer or speaker of intuitive likes". -- Bruce Ediger, bediger@teal.csn.org, on X the intuitiveness of a Mac interface | |
By the middle 1880's, practically all the roads except those in the South, were of the present standard gauge. The southern roads were still five feet between rails. It was decided to change the gauge of all southern roads to standard, in one day. This remarkable piece of work was carried out on a Sunday in May of 1886. For weeks beforehand, shops had been busy pressing wheels in on the axles to the new and narrower gauge, to have a supply of rolling stock which could run on the new track as soon as it was ready. Finally, on the day set, great numbers of gangs of track layers went to work at dawn. Everywhere one rail was loosened, moved in three and one-half inches, and spiked down in its new position. By dark, trains from anywhere in the United States could operate over the tracks in the South, and a free interchange of freight cars everywhere was possible. -- Robert Henry, "Trains", 1957 | |
A doctor calls his patient to give him the results of his tests. "I have some bad news," says the doctor, "and some worse news." The bad news is that you only have six weeks to live." "Oh, no," says the patient. "What could possibly be worse than that?" "Well," the doctor replies, "I've been trying to reach you since last Monday." |