I used to correct my teachers' spelling mistakes when they were writing on the blackboard. Must have been great for them to have a Grade Four kid telling them they spelled 'sovereign' incorrectly. Not sure I would have taken on a Hell's Angle, though--math wasn't my best subject.

Hard to believe I wasn't a more of a teacher's pet, really...

aghhhh. I fixed it to read "you're" not "your"....REALLY!

Today in class ( I teach), a bright kid was at first eager to put his answer on the board, but then hesitated.
I asked why, and he expressed a fear of being incorrect and being thought stupid. I comforted him, saying "Relax, they already think your stupid.<wink> How much worse can it get?"
To which "Johnny" shouted out ,"Yeah! You're stupid!"
I smiled, and offered, "Yes Johnny, I know you think that, but nobody really cares what you think, right class?"<wink>
Of course, as I expected, the answer given was perfect.
We have so much fun. I feel bad for people who hate their job.

We visited Universal Studios recently. They had shirts on clearance, so my son bought one to show his friends at school that he was in Hollywood. The T-Shirt made a solid point about the cleanliness of the area as it proudly proclaimed - "My friend went to Hollywood and all he bought me was this lousey T-Shirt".

Obviously this was on clearance because it did not live up to its promise. Not one of use has had lice recently.

We have a BIG section where I work and the IT people also had BIG IT mugs, although ours separated the BIG and IT by a fair amount of space, maybe they were paying attention. However, our BIG section was recently dissolved as it was deemed to be just another useless layer of management. That is not how the memo read, the euphemism streamlining was used.

It seems you walked a thin line in confronting the bully and cornering him about the Hell's Angles jacket. Had he suffered acute anguish from the incident, it could have become a protracted situation which would have been difficult to terminate, almost infinite, considering the obtusity of the subject.

Are you sure we wasn't in the geometry club?

I think I spotted a minor typo...

You wrote: [Unfortnately for him, there was no way to correct it without ruining the jacket. And he couldn't afford a new leather jacket, so he lived with it.]

I think you meant: [Unfortnately for him, there was no way to correct it without ruining the jacket. And he couldn't afford a new leather jacket, so he beat the crap out of me at recess.]

There was an old-fashioned Shell gas station in my hometown years ago. I used to laugh everytime I drove by it. The large "S" on the front of the building had fallen off and over the garage bays was supposed to be the phrase, "Service is our business." But someone had stolen the "ser" from service. The lettering on the building now said, "hell" and "vice is our business."

I've misspelled 'angles' to 'angels', 'which' to 'witch' and 'otherwise' to 'other vise' and 'other vice'.
And these are only the ones I know I often misspell.

Maybe my subconscious is trying to tell me I should move from engineering to writing fantasy.

When Canada's two right of centre political parties were attempting their first merger a couple of years ago, they originally announced the new party name would be the Conservative-Reform Alliance Party. By the time official naming day came however they went in a slightly different direction, presumably because they realised that some people might feel uneasy about voting for C.R.A.P.

A similar story. My brother saw a graffiti laden sign in LA one time where the artist was trying to say that Satan Rules. As we have seen, education and graffiti rarely go hand in hand. Instead he had sprayed up there "Satin Rules" Then again...maybe he was a clothing designer and really liked the way satin feels.

Scott,

I used to work for a large tech company who would have a "code" name for the latest software release. Sometimes things would go in themes, like "Copeland" with "Strauss", etc...

The best one was a new version that was called, "Bunker Hill."

It was a big meeting when I asked the question, didn't we lose the battle of Bunker Hill? I thought it was funny. But you could have heard a pin drop.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bunker_Hill

Now granted, it showed the colonists could actually have a "real" fight against the unstoppable British troops and the British suffered huge casualties in the battle. The value (to the American) side was showing that we actually had a chance, and it pissed people off which can be useful for gaining support for war.

But the end of the battle of Bunker Hill ended in the colonists running, screaming, and getting shot. Probably not your best metaphor for a successful product launch.

My rant on the economy recently has been about Chrysler. In my area they (no kidding) ran a "special" deal where you buy one car - and get another car for $1.

Great deal. The only problem is that at the end of it, you give them money and they give you two POS Chryslers.

Buy one steaming pile of crap - get another one free!

this was an internal (non-customer facing) system and was caught/changed before it launched but when I worked for the wireless division of a larGeTElecom (long since merged away) I attented a meeting in Houston for the launch of a new product called "Tele-Go" which was a short-lived attempt at hybrid landline/cellular service (don't ask/it flopped/we wrote off a bunch of $). the name of the system for tracking the (leased) customer base stations was changed at the last minute to "RITS" (pronounced "ritz" as in crackers), or "rental inventory tracking system" after someone realized what the actual "Tele-Go" version of that acronym was. again, caught before launched but injected a good laugh into an otherwise mind-numbingly boring meeting...

True story: I worked for a company that one day announced that its name had been officially changed to "Transcore Intelligent Transportation Systems." We all appreciated the new acronym.

I used to work for a multi-national, who had a civil engineering subsidiary Genrec (They built Dubai's Burj el Arab BTW). I worked with a lady who started out on reception there - she had to answer the phone "General !$%*!$%* Company, how may I help you."

She said after the hundredth snide comment, she didn't find it funny any more.

BTW I just forgot my password (my Firefox password backup add-on didn't work). The email text made my day! Y'all have to try it.

I used to work for a company called Strachan & Henshaw in the Information Systems department.

While it was never explicitly said, i think there was a good reason we weren't known as the Strachan & Henshaw Information Technology department.

Chris

Someone at my friend's school one wrote "GHENT" in large letters on the back of my friend's coat. He was never satisfactorally able to explain why "GHENT".