Electronic Device Puns

He was later charged with battery

Because he was found guilty of a screen-shot.

She wasn’t unusual, nor was the travel bag she carried, except for one thing. She would approach people who were sitting on the beach, glance around, then speak to them.

Generally, the people would respond negatively and she would wander off, but occasionally someone would nod and there would be a quick exchange of money for something she carried in her bag.

The couple assumed she was selling drugs and debated calling the cops, but since they didn’t know for sure they just continued to watch her.

After a couple of weeks the wife asked, “Honey, have you ever noticed that she only goes up to people with boom boxes and other electronic devices?”

He hadn’t and said so. Then she said, “Tomorrow I want you to get a towel and our big radio and go lie out on the beach. Then we can find out what she’s really doing.”

Well, the plan went off without a hitch, and the wife was almost hopping up and down with anticipation when she saw the girl talk to her husband and then leave. The man walked up the beach and met his wife at the road. “Well, is she selling drugs?” she asked excitedly.”

“No, she’s not.” he said, enjoying this probably more than he should have.

“Well, what is it, then?” his wife fairly shrieked.

The man grinned and said. “Her name is Sally and she’s selling batteries.”

“Batteries?” cried the wife.

“Yes,” he replied. “She sells C cells by the Seashore.”

Back a few decades, I was working in a program with a local college in the Middle East.

The name of the program for ExPats has the clever acronym of "IDEA" (hey, I said it was clever); which stands for "Inter-Departmental Educational Adjunct". It's interdepartmental because my particular specialty not only covers field geology but also paleontology and a bit of archeology thrown in for good measure. Everyone hopes to have a good IDEA...

ahem...

Well, we saddle up and head for the Dune Sea out in the west of the country, where the Precambrian, Cambrian, Silurian, Cretaceous, Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene crop out and access is relatively easy and non-injurious.

Well, we caravan out, some 30 Land Cruisers, Nissan patrol, and the odd Mitsubishi Galloper strong. We all get our maps, compasses and split up into 5 or 6 special interest groups ("SIG's"); where each IDEA has his own GPS and LIDAR laser ranging apparatus. Reason being, that there are very few benchmarks out in the desert, and even those are constantly at the mercy of the shifting and ever-blowing sands.

Since we're split into groups and at any one time, ranging up to and including some 50 km2, when a real find is located, a device called the "DIME" (Digital-Interface Monitor Encoder) is attached and programmed into the GPS for location later; it is a digital sort of low-frequency transponder, developed from technology used by offshore drillers and jacket setters where benchmarks are even more transitory.

The way it works is rather simple. When something is to be marked for later retrieval, a series of wooden posts are pounded in a triangular manner around the find and the DIME is set, programmed with the GPS and attached to one or more of the posts.

That's the theory, at least.

Everything works well, especially all the hardened electronics and computer gizmos, but attaching the DIME to the stakes is the real problem. It can't be nailed, screwed or fastened with any sort of metal contrivance as that farkles the magnetic field and causes all sorts of goofy spurious signals. Zip ties don't last long in the heat and duct tape is right out. Many sites have been lost to the shifting sands this way.

Velcro doesn't work too well, as the sand fills the hooks of the receiving piece of velcro and soon renders it useless. String or fishing line work, but that's temporary (they melt). Glue or mastic are out as these are supposed to be temporary. Even plastic sleeves don't work due to the heat out

Because they're always told to "turn off electronic devices during taxi, takeoff, and landing."

When I was maybe 7 or 8 my dad was performing some routine maintenance on my mums van, probably an oil change or something. Anyway I asked dad what he was doing and he told me he had installed a time travel device that would take us back in time. My dad is still a geek and at the time the wizardry he could do with electronics left me with no doubts in my mind that he had in fact invented and installed a time travel device in my mums van. When finished he suggested we take it for a test drive.

The next morning we got up quite early, packed a picnic and loaded the family into the van to see the time traveling van in action, we drove for about an hour out of the city to a small town called......Middlemarch.

When we got there he said "Well we're in the middle of march now, and it was December when we left home!"

she said "No electronic devices can be used during battle" and a guy sitting next to me asks "What about our DSs?"