Your Host

Kirt Blattenberger
... single-handedly
redefining what
an engineering
website should be.

Carpe Diem!
(Seize the Day!)

5CCG (5th MOB):
My USAF radar shop

Early 21st Century Office Terms

• BLAMESTORMING - Sitting around in a group discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who is responsible.
• SEAGULL MANAGER - A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps all over everything and then leaves.
• CLM - Career Limiting Move - Used among microserfs to describe ill-advised activity. Trashing your boss while he or she is within earshot is a huge CLM.
• OHNO-SECOND - That minuscule fraction of time in which you realise that you've just made a BIG mistake.
• PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE - The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.
• BODY NAZIS: Hard-core exercise and weightlifting fanatics who look down on anyone who doesn't work out obsessively.
• CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.
• IDEA HAMSTERS: People who always seem to have their idea generators running.
• MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the Couch Potato.
• PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.
• SITCOMs: What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids. Stands for: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage.
• STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.
• SWIPED OUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.
• TOURISTS: People who take training classes just to get a vacation from their jobs. Example: "We had three serious students in the class; the rest were just tourists."
• CHIPS AND SALSA - Chips = hardware, salsa = software. i.e.: "Well, first we gotta figure out if the problem's in your chips or your salsa."
• G.O.O.D. Job - A "Get-Out-Of-Debt" job. A well-paying job people take in order to pay off their debts, one that they will quit as soon as they are solvent again.
• IRRITAINMENT - Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The O.J. trials, Ally McBeal, Monica Lewinsky, etc.
• DEINSTALLED - Euphemism for being fired. Heard on the voice mail of a Vice President at a downsizing computer firm: "You have reached the number of a deinstalled vice president. Please dial our main number and ask the operator for assistance".
• ASSMOSIS - The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss.