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I received the following story through one of those typical email blasts – but this one did not say that I have to forward it if I don’t want to roast in hell. It is good enough to not need such encouragement. Without further ado…

George Phillips , an elderly man, from Meridian, Mississippi, was going up to bed, when his wife told him that he’d left the light on in the garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window. George opened the back door to go turn off the light, but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things.

He phoned the police, who asked “Is someone in your house?”

He said “No, but some people are breaking into my garden shed and stealing from me.”

Then the police dispatcher said “All patrols are busy. You should lock your doors and an officer will be along when one is available.”

George said, “Okay.”

He hung up the phone and counted to 30.

Then he phoned the police again.

“Hello, I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people stealing things from my shed. Well, you don’t have to worry about them now because I just shot them.” and he hung up.

Within five minutes, six Police Cars, a SWAT Team, a helicopter, two Fire Trucks, a Paramedic, and an Ambulance showed up at the Phillips’ residence, and caught the burglars red-handed.

One of the Policemen said to George, “I thought you said that you’d shot them!”

George said, “And I thought you said there was nobody available!”

I only remember once waiting for the cops after the alarm went off accidentally and I did not know how to handle this (new alarm!) It look about four hours that a squad car showed up and I remember contemplating the possibility that I REALLY needed them. Now I know what to do – beside being prepared to handle things myself the way George made the cops believe he had.

Oh, yes, do you know that the police, sheriff and cohorts do not have a duty to protect and  help you?

Have you ever wondered where Google got its name from. There are some of these companies that have become household names and nobody really considers any more where their names come from – Amazon, Yahoo, et al.

But somebody must have sad down and really thought about it. It is rare that something is materializing out of thin air. Often we get an inspiration from something that passes by – even if only fleeting.

Google, after being known around the world and even becoming a verb now could not possibly admit that its name would not reflect deep thought (pun intended) and consideration, so the official version is that Google comes from the mathematical term “googol”, to equal 10¹⁰⁰, a number much larger than even the atoms in this universe.

But here I now have for you the  real source of the  name:

Today I re-read, for the xth time, Douglas Adam’s “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and there it was – plain and simple:

In the story of this (must read) book where the two programmers Lunkwill and Fook talk to the computer Deep Thought the first time after its completion to find out if it will indeed be able to compute an easy answer to all the questions about life, the universe and everything, and this computer classifies itself as only the second most powerful computer in the universe, the following dialog pursues:

“There must be a mistake,” he [Lunkwill] said, “are you not a greater computer than the Millard Gigantubrain at Maximegalon which can count all the atoms in a star in a millisecond?”

“The Millard Gigantubrain?” Said Deep Thought with unconcealed contempt. “A mere abacus – mention it not.”

“And are you not,” said Fook leaning anxiously forward, ” a greater analyst than the Googleplex Star Thinker in the Seventh  Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity which can calculate the trajectory of every single dust particle throughout a five-week Dangrabat Beta sand blizzard?”

“A five-week sand blizzard?” said Deep Thought laughingly. “You ask this of me who have contemplated the very vectors of the atoms in the Big Bang itself? Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff.”

There you have it – modest Google does not (yet) compare itself with Deep Thought.

A little side note that other well know subjects have been inspired by Douglas Adams. Many of you will know the TIFF file format used to store image data. This format is a tagged format and one of the initial tags that identifies the file as a TIFF file has a value of 42 and the official comment was that this value was chosen for the deep meaning of this particular value. The drafters did not quite come out with the full credits for this value which took seven and a half million years to compute, but made this tongue in cheek choice for all those geeks who know TIFF and Douglas Adams.

Heaven is Where:

• The Police are British,
• The Chefs are Italian,
• The Mechanics are German,
• The Lovers are French and
• It’s all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is Where:

• The Police are German,
• The Chefs are British,
• The Mechanics are French,
• The Lovers are Swiss and
• It’s all organized by the Italians.

But I guess, judging from the latest development, the British as police is not quite heaven any more, so I suppose the above might be a bit outdated – time has even caught up with the British.

The Onion Network brings the breaking news story that the first Chinese astronaut to go willingly has been launched into space and that -  should something goes wrong – he has been equipped with tools to fix whatever needs to be fixed, he has a hammer and some nails.

China Launches First Willing Manned Mission Into Space

Yesterday, May 25th, was Towel Day. I spend bigger part of that day at the country club and have to admit that I was not sure of all these people with towels were really celebrating towel day or if the just brought the towels to dry themselves after the dip in the club’s lake.

I certainly hope that the crowd, from the 3 year to the 70 year old are aware of the significance of this day in memory of the late writer Douglas Adams, but the only person I actually was sure about was this gentleman…

He wanted to stay incognito, but confirmed my guess that he was indeed aware of the importance of towels in interstellar travel by answering my question by a firm “Don’t Panic!”

The following true (?) story can probably be found many times on the internet, but I just have to record it here so that I can find it again when my son gets to that age and I need to jug my memory.

A father passing by his son’s bedroom was astonished to see that his bed was nicely made and everything was picked up. Then he saw an envelope, propped up prominently on the pillow that was addressed to ‘Dad.’

With the worst premonition he opened the envelope with trembling hands and read the letter.

Dear Dad,

It is with great regret and sorrow that I’m writing you. I had to elope with my new girlfriend because I wanted to avoid a scene with Mom and you.

I have been finding real passion with Stacy and she is so nice.

But I knew you would not approve of her because of all her piercing, tattoos, tight motorcycle clothes and the fact that she is much older than I am. But it’ s not only the passion… Dad, she’s pregnant.

Stacy said that we will be very happy.

She owns a trailer in the woods and has a stack of firewood for the whole winter.  We share a dream of having many more children.

Stacy has opened my eyes to the fact that marijuana doesn’t really hurt anyone. We’ll be growing it for ourselves and trading it with the other people that live nearby for cocaine and ecstasy.

In the meantime we will pray that science will find a cure for AIDS so Stacy can get better. She deserves it.

Don’t worry Dad. I’m 15 and I know how to take care of myself.

Someday I’m sure that we will be back to visit so that you can get to know your
grandchildren.

Love,
Your Son John

PS. Dad, none of the above is true. I’m over at Tommy’s house.

I Just wanted to remind you that there are worse things in life than a Report card that’s in my center desk drawer.

I love you. – Call me when it’s safe to come home.

Cory Doctorow of boing-boing introduced me, and I believe a whole bunch of the boing-boing readers to the BBC comedy series “The IT Crowd” from which I learned the most important lesson for all IT work: “IT – - have you tried to turn it off and on again?”

Up to the beginning Cory had been very good in reminding us all to check the torrents whenever a new show had aired. Poor people outside the UK had to resort to that sort of piracy as the BBC online viewing was confined to the UK.

After quite a bit of a hiatus after the end of the second season I was ready for my third season and I immediately find the first show of season 3 and enjoyed it immensely.

But, Cory, either I did not read boing boing with enough attention or you slacked off because I did not learn of the following show.

Finally I remembered the other day, went ISO hunting and found out that the third season was already over. Sad in a way, but good in another because there was a torrent with all six episodes in one file.

Believe it or not – I had an IT Crowd marathon that night and it was so good that now I am revisiting the first two seasons again. For all of you, to save you the searching, here are all three season in one place…

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Season 3

Each of the files is about one Gig, so be prepared for some download time – but it’s so worth it.

Sarah Jones, in her TED talk,  gives a great demonstration on switching identities. When held a (funny) mirror we get a chance to reflect (that’s what a mirror helps to do, right?) on what we do in real life.

Mostly we switch identities without consciously controlling it. When the cop stops us we might go into the little-innocent-boy identity, or when the kid is annoying too much, we play the big nasty bully. Sarah Jones reminded me that this switching of identities can indeed be controlled. I had an early experience with this when a well knows show host and comedian went over a map of Germany and gave a weather report for all the different areas in the appropriate dialect for the area – and there are quite a few for such a small country.

This impressed me so much that I was able to mimic some of the dialects and mannerisms. By doing this for myself I learned that I had to become a person from that area and then it was actually very simple to be credible. I did not get all the dialect-specific words right and probably missed some of the nuances of the dialects but as long as I was a person from that area it worked.

Sarah Jones is definitely a master at that – here she is…

Here is finally somebody explaining the unilateral phase detractor and  explains how cardinal grammeters can be synchronized – something all of you engineers are capable of enjoying. Is there somebody who could transcribe this whole training session so that I can add it to this article in order for others to read along and not miss the tiniest nugget of engineering wisdom.

Before this video did you ever fully understand modio interaction of magneto reluctance and capacitance directives -  now you do!

We all have heard, and hopefully understand, that men and women do not speak the same language, even though they might use the same words and passed the same SAT.

A good treatize is to be found in the book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray, Ph.D. – but sometimes you need some quick crash course and this is where this article comes in.

Once you know these nine essential female words you are all set – - – mostly…

1. Fine: This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.
2. Five Minutes: If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.
3. Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.
4. Go Ahead: This is a dare, not permission. Don’t Do It!
5. Loud Sigh: This is actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing. (Refer back to # 3 for the meaning of nothing.)
6. That’s Okay: This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. That’s okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.
7. Thanks: A woman is thanking you, do not question, or faint. Just say you’re welcome. (I want to add in a clause here – This is true, unless she says ‘Thanks a lot’ – that is PURE sarcasm and she is not thanking you at all. DO NOT say ‘you’re welcome’. that will bring on a ‘whatever’).
8. Whatever: Is a woman’s way of saying F— YOU!
9. Don’t worry about it, I got it: Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking ‘What’s wrong?’ For the woman’s response refer to # 3.

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