This morning I saw a car on the road with a vanity license plate that read “DE PNGA”. Now, I understand that “de Pinga” can mean “amazing” or “wow”, but I originally learned the word “pinga” with the salty* meaning (if you’ll pardon the blue imagery, gentle reader) of “a gentleman’s phallus”; so it was pretty amusing to see a plate reading “[of/from] the dick”.

*Pun intended

The group I work in doesn’t always have a lot of say in the decision-making process, but we’re almost always impacted by those decisions. Server changes in other departments, software licensing agreements, firewall changes, whatever it is, it’s going to end up affecting our daily work to some degree.

To that end, we get a lot of “heads up” sort of mail, where some thoughtful soul realizes that we should at least know about what’s going on, and forwards us a copy of a thread wherein Great Things have been discussed, and are now being handed down from on high, usually prefacing it with the familiar abbreviation FYI. Not all of these decisions are popular in my group, but we just have to suck it up. Such is life.

It was during a recent deluge of FYIs from our boss that one of my colleagues noted that FYI could also stand for “Fuck You, Idiot(s)”. It certainly fits sometimes, and makes reading these forwarded threads much more amusing, albeit in an admittedly sophomoric manner.

The fact that this interpretation also makes many of the messages in my inbox a little more honest is something I try not to think too much about.

Tim is moving on
only one explanation
must be the sunspots

Our boss is ever on the lookout to improve processes, increase knowledge, and expand skillsets in our department. Nothing wrong with that. To that end, he’s got subscriptions to, and memberships in, various professional organizations, newsletters, and other industry-oriented stuff, and often forwards it our way. Nothing wrong with that, either.

I must admit, however, a certain trepidation about listening to things published by HDI’s Support Professional Information Network. Maybe it’s just me, but an information source named SPIN doesn’t win any instant points for reputability.

The movie about the Zodiac killer’s exploits and the ensuing investigations was released recently, and with great fanfare and noise in the greater Bay Area, the murderer’s old stomping grounds. Local radio and press outlets have been much abuzz over it.

I will likely not see this movie. Not so much because of any antipathy for its subject matter; it’s just because I don’t see many movies, period. For some reason I’m always loath to go to the theater, though I generally enjoy myself once I get there. I am, however, an avid reader of movie reviews.

Over the weekend, I read the San Francisco Chronicle’s review of Zodiac. The reviewer didn’t think all that much of the flick, which is neither here nor there for me, personally, but I couldn’t help but be irritated by this flub of the reviewer’s logic (emphasis mine):

… At times, it becomes frustrating—for example, about 30 minutes are spent pursuing a lead that goes nowhere. Why bother putting that in the movie?

Ummm… yeah. Now, pardon my impertinence, but didn’t every lead in that case actually go nowhere?

no movement, no life
cold, bitter wind rustles leaves
deserted campus