Recently in Elsewhere On The Site... Category

I've been getting a (relatively) huge spike in hits to the Office Lexicon from google.co.uk searches for "office jargon." Can anybody explain this to me?

And as long as I'm talking about the Office Lexicon, I may as well add this entry I've recently heard:

Pull A Scotty - To tell your boss that a given (difficult) task will take X time, but you finish it in X/2 (or X/5, or even X/10) time. From Scotty on ST:tOS, who would tell Captain Kirk that (say) regonculating the warp core retroincavulators would take days, but would complete the task in hours because the survival of the ship depended on it. (Courtesy co-worker Tim O.)

Tags: Office Jargon

Slacker Window - The gray area between screwing up an unpleasant assignment badly enough that you won't be given similar ones in the future and screwing it up badly enough that you get fired. A way to avoid Carter's Trap.

Just in time for the Three Rivers Open this weekend, I've finally put decent pictures on my Shoaff Park Disc Golf Course page.

Tags: Shoaff Park Disc Golf

Eighty-Eighty Split

When you're splitting your time 50-50 between two bosses, and each boss bases his 50% on the fact that there are approximately 160 hours in a week (q.v. Hundred-Hundred Split).

Grandboss

Your boss's boss.

Spiderphone

A speakerphone with one or more remote microphones wired to it. Used in large conference rooms; beware the fauxne pas.

Because I can't get enough abuse and keep volunteering for more, I am now experiencing the antonym of the Zero-Zero Split, the Hundred-Hundred Split:

When you split your time 50-50 between two bosses, and one of them thinks everything he wants you to do is more important than anything the other boss wants you to do, so he tasks you like you're working for him full time. Of course, the other boss thinks exactly the same way. Opposite of Zero-Zero Split.

Update: Upon further review, the above is pretty unfair to my day-to-day boss, who is a good guy and understands that I'm not really fully tasked in my regular job at the moment. However, my additional boss seems to think that 50% of my time is based on there being 168 hours in a week.

Today's new term for the Office Lexicon is 'Shotgun start':

Starting requirements analysis, system design, software development, and testing of a project all at the same time. (from golf - an event that starts with participants starting on different holes at the same time, with the start signalled by an official firing a shotgun)

A real time-saver if you have a well-understood task; a recipe for disaster in most other circumstances.

Today's new word for the Office Lexicon is heisenbug:

Heisenbug - a software bug you can't find using the debugger, because the debugger changes the timing of the program's execution enough to keep the bug from happening. (From the idea that the act of observing something changes it, which is part of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.)

Spotlight on the new entries on my blogroll:

• Da Goddess has a heartwarming epiphany story.
• Rodger may have migrated to SondraK's, but he's still Rodger.
• Random Nuclear Strikes: Nukevet hunkers down in preparation for Ivan.
• Jay Reding is always a good read, especially for his dissenting commenters (one guy who argues in good faith and another that, well, you'll just have to see for yourself).
• Garfield Ridge: I went for the Nork Noooook News. I'm staying for the sidebar quotes.
• Beautiful Atrocities has stumbled across the cure for flatuenza. OK, that's hardly fair. He also profiled a real Afghan freedom fighter we all should know more about.
• A Secular Franciscan Life finds a picture that epitomizes dangerous stupidity.
• Veruka Salt reworks an old joke that'll knock 'em dead in Jenin. And not a moment too soon.
• Misers's sensitivity to Beslan imagery is quite reminiscent to me of Gerard Van derleun's.

And I still owe the other half of my Labor Day weekend story. And my other birthday party story. Sheesh.

New entry in the Office Lexicon:

Zero-Zero Split

When you're supposed to be splitting your time 50-50 between two groups or projects, and you tell each boss that your other tasking is taking all your time. An effective way to goof off, as long as your bosses don't compare notes.

A couple of new entries in the Office Lexicon tonight: clearboard and Sharpening The Saw.