Strong Program Puns

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

A great bundle of Internet puns; enjoy!

You despise Microsoft FrontPage as a web editing tool and as extensions to your webserver.

You can answer the question ‘is the internet broken’ without laughing.

You can spot the theme behind the following list: RedHat, SuSE, Debian, Caldera, Slackware.

You can feel the load a server is under without actually checking statistics. It ‘just isn’t running right’ actually makes sense.

You maintain more than four websites and do not have time for a personal web page.

You know all of the following people by reputation and can explain what they’ve done that is relevant to your world: Steve Case, Linus Torvalds, Eric Allman, Sanford Wallace.

You know what TCP/IP stands for, not to mention DNS, HTTP, SNMP, BGP, OSPF, and DUN. You like acronyms.

I think Bing could have totally crushed Google if they had called it “Bang”. I mean, think about it.. “I BANGED Emma Watson last night.”

The Internet: where men are men, women are men, and children are the FBI…

On the Internet you can be anything you want. It’s so strange that many people choose to be stupid.

Girls are like an internet virus: they enter your life, scan your pockets, transfer money, edit your mind, download their problems and delete your smile…

Chuck Norris created the World Wide Web using a typewriter. When Chuck Norris plays hide and seek, even google can’t find him.

A press release: “Yesterday, for the first time a hacker was convicted of network penetration and went to jail to serve a 12 years sentence. According to the data of the central computer of the police, the hacker goes to liberty the day after tomorrow because of expiration of the sentence.”

Justin Bieber got 100,000 retweets for tweeting “Live life full”. That’s just 3 random words. I’m going to try now. Jockstrap squirrel potatoes.

Facebook: “My kids are perfect.” Instagram: “My kids are beautiful.” Twitter: “My kids are why I drink.”

The facts on this website are Chuck Norris’ smallest acheivements. If you knew what he was really capable of, you would never sleep at night.

Teacher: If you spend all your time sitting round playing on the Internet, you’ll be fat and useless when you grow up. Pupil: Wow! You must have spent hours surfing when you were a kid!

What kind of doctor fixes broken websites? An URLologist.