Military lingo sure has a way with words. I learned a new whole vocabulary while donating 21 years to the service. My year in Nam with an artillery unit was the most lingo I had ever run across. I was in charge of a Metro unit …Need a clue ? Nahhh who cares…
Cheers,
I thought I was Waiting for Guffmann, Oh wait, wrong movie…
Metro unit Daryl? As an ex Naval Chief, I’m interested in all things Military. What is it?
Rod
“So what’s FUBARB?”
_ _ Beyond All Rational Belief
Rod
You asked for it !!
Metro is a short for meteorological. We were a weather team attached to an artillery unit and provided weather data for the big guns.
We really had it rough in Nam as we only had Miller low life and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer for nourishment. Bah ! That is a loooooong way from Guinness Stout the preferred one at my home.
Cheers,
I once held the record for the most “CTUs” used by a successfully terminating program.
In grad school, I was the only computer scientist in the chaos class. Though some of the math was over my head, the mathemeticians were delighted to have a computer scientist who could get their graphs done in a reasonable time without being yelled at by the VAX manager. They were trying to draw “Julia Sets” by “basins of attraction,” and the only picture they’d managed to get was 16 by 16 pixels and that took days of computer time.
I used the “Cyber” computer (that everybody looked down on) because it was really fast and I could schedule a job for 2:30 am when it wasn’t doing anything else. The next day, my CTU balance was negative bazillions and I had to ask the “MUCKM00” to let me log in. There was the output file, but the program hadn’t finished running till like 3 in the afternoon! I then passed the file through my Z80 computer to my IDS “Prism” printer and got a full page drawing of the julia set.
Once the mathemeticians saw that it was all yellow and black, they looked at their equations and found the mistake. They were expecting multi-color basins and the set itself in black. The corrected program produced the multi-color drawing a couple nights later in about 10 minutes.
The cyber staff teased me the whole school year over that[:D]
Tom Ruby said:
I once held the record for the most "CTUs" used by a successfully terminating program.In grad school, I was the only computer scientist in the chaos class. Though some of the math was over my head, the mathemeticians were delighted to have a computer scientist who could get their graphs done in a reasonable time without being yelled at by the VAX manager. They were trying to draw “Julia Sets” by “basins of attraction,” and the only picture they’d managed to get was 16 by 16 pixels and that took days of computer time.
I used the “Cyber” computer (that everybody looked down on) because it was really fast and I could schedule a job for 2:30 am when it wasn’t doing anything else. The next day, my CTU balance was negative bazillions and I had to ask the “MUCKM00” to let me log in. There was the output file, but the program hadn’t finished running till like 3 in the afternoon! I then passed the file through my Z80 computer to my IDS “Prism” printer and got a full page drawing of the julia set.
Once the mathemeticians saw that it was all yellow and black, they looked at their equations and found the mistake. They were expecting multi-color basins and the set itself in black. The corrected program produced the multi-color drawing a couple nights later in about 10 minutes.
The cyber staff teased me the whole school year over that[:D]
Tony,
I think Tom is telling off color equations, again.
madwolf
Tom,
When the subject turns to such words as you have injected into this conversation, I usually try to work swivel snap tack shackle into the gathering. That way, I can at least get a blank stare from some of the people. 
I have to confess that hearing the word “colour” , the one word I would recognise , I would have launched into an equally technical dissertation on Degas , Van Gogh , impressionists and the like . Because people in general are less than interested in such technical dissertations , they politely murmur things about having just seen a friend over there , excuse me won’t you , but there is always some glassy eyed chap swaying around who will not wish to show his ignorance , and you can drone on all night to a very appreciative chap who savours the attention . Pass me the bottle .
Mike
I shall ever be indebted to Mr. Ric Golding for enriching my vocabulary with FUBARB, and I also shall remember him for enriching the English Language as there is now not just comparative and superlative but super-superlative, too.
And, Mike Morgan, I searched all through Tom Ruby’s epic and never once ‘heard’ ‘colour’, but color was ‘seen’ to flit about a bit. Perhaps your translator was not turned on?
Art
Hmmmmmm Reading back through the replies, just validates my original subject line.
Que ?
Mike M
The foruns are overrun by Tom Smith! 