Saturday, September 13, 2008

Linux and Unix Humour - Wisdom For The Ages

Hey There,

Where does the time go? It seems like just 6 or 7 days ago I was sitting in much the same place I'm sitting now, doing the exact same thing I'm doing right now. It's moments like these that make you realize that life is, indeed, fleeting. Speeding along at halcyon pace, savagely hurtling toward the finish line; before you know it, 59 or 60 minutes have gone by and you're once again faced with the stark realization that yet another hour of your life has passed you by. And the only real and true questions you can ask of yourself are "Did I LIVE those 50 minutes or so? Did I stop to smell the roses? Did I breathe in the intoxicating aroma of nature's bountiful harvest and reap the benefits which I’ve most surely sown? Or did I just spend a lot of time reminiscing about "a little while ago?" ;)

This Saturday's Linux/Unix/Computer Humor collection is pulled from multicians.org which has a lot of other funny stuff you can check out. The jokes and sayings I have attached to this post don't actually represent their entire page, so head over to the multician's site if this brief read leaves you thirsting for more.

Hope you enjoy these and can manage to find at least one laugh in all of this goofiness. It's my motto to try and keep it light from time to time. Lord knows (if you're anything like me), in another 6 or 7 days, you'll be wondering what in the Hell you're doing with your life (much like I am now since it's been a week since last Saturday and I still haven't completed writing the outline of the rough draft of the list of things I absolutely “must” do before I die...) I'm going to go ponder, for hours upon hours, why it is that a productive life seems to pass me by like quicksilver. I try to be positive as often as I can, given the hopeless deadline the Almighty has lain at my feet (which I'd highly recommend for you, as well, if you're feeling the exact opposite).

Who knows? This could be the week that I have a revealing insight before the clock strikes 12 on a Saturday night. It’s either that or another Cheap Trick ;)

BTW, the name of the picture below is "Building A Tower From The Top Down"

Enjoy your Saturday :)

cartoon, building tower from top down

Drawn by Angus Macdonald






A clever person solves a problem.

A wise person avoids it.



-- Einstein






No matter what the problem is,

it's always a people problem.






"There's no time to stop for gas, we're already late"



-- Karin Donker






Deming's 14 points




  1. Create constancy of purpose.


  2. Adopt the new philosophy.


  3. Cease dependence on mass inspection to achieve quality.


  4. Minimize total cost, not initial price of supplies.


  5. Improve constantly the system of production and service.


  6. Institute training on the job.


  7. Institute leadership.


  8. Drive out fear.


  9. Break down barriers between departments.


  10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and numerical targets.


  11. Eliminate work standards (quotas) and management by objective.


  12. Remove barriers that rob workers, engineers, and managers of their right to pride of workmanship.


  13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.


  14. Put everyone in the company to work to accomplish the transformation.






We know about as much about software quality problems
as they knew about the Black Plague in the 1600s.
We've seen the victims' agonies and helped burn the corpses.
We don't know what causes it;
we don't really know if there is only one disease.
We just suffer -- and keep pouring our sewage into our water supply.



-- Tom Van Vleck






Everybody Knows:




  • If you don't understand it, you can't program it.


  • If you didn't measure it, you didn't do it.






Your problem is another's solution;

Your solution will be his problem.






Everybody Knows:




  • If you've found 3 bugs in a program, best estimate is that there are 3 more.


  • 60% of product cost comes after initial shipment.






The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.



-- Albert Einstein






when the cart stops

do you whip the cart

or whip the ox?






Q: How many QA testers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: QA testers don't change anything. They just report that it's dark.



 Kerry Zallar






Q: How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Just one. But the house falls down.



Andrew Siwko






One test is worth a thousand opinions.






... while we all know that unmastered complexity is at the root of the misery, we do not know what degree of simplicity can be obtained, nor to what extent the intrinsic complexity of the whole design has to show up in the interfaces. We simply do not know yet the limits of disentanglement. We do not know yet whether intrinsic intricacy can be distinguished from accidental intricacy.


-- E. W. Dijkstra, Communications of the ACM, Mar 2001, Vol. 44, No. 3






You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.


-- Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) " The Man who was Orthodox", via Paul Black






Here is a  great page about some kinds of management actually observed, and some insights on quality processes, by Joseph Koshy, via Robert Watson



, Mike




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