| Hypothesize a spherical chicken |
[Mar. 19th, 2008|04:38 pm] |
Many years ago, when I worked for AOL Member Services as a call center programmer, they sent me to Aspect training in San Jose. Aspect was a call center system that tied together agents on phones, incoming phone lines, and the computers that ran a call center. I was getting some rather basic training, and it was obvious on the first day of class that a lot of people showed up without minimal requirements. So I got bored.
One of the "features" of the software was that you could program an LED banner for your call center. AOL didn't have one in their call centers, but many other companies did. They usually scrolled call center statistics (average call time, number of calls per hour, and so on), inspirational messages, announcements, or whatever you wanted scrolling by on red dots. The classroom had one, so I sent it a test message:
"Hypothesize a spherical chicken."
This was based on a button I saw once that joked the problem with applying scientific abstracts on realities is that nature is messy. In the case of determining how many chickens you could put in an enclosed space, you just assumed chickens were perfectly round.
I don't know why I chose that phrase, but when I sent it to the banner's IP address, it still showed, "Welcome to Aspect: Training room 12" I fooled with it some more, until I found the right IP and command to change it. The class noticed it after about 20 minutes, and giggled. I sent it other messages, too. Finally, the teacher noticed, and asked whomever was doing that to stop. I texted, "Okay..." and then "Welcome to Aspect: Home of the whopper." He decided that was fine (he was a good sport).
Later in the day, he asked who was responsible. I said I was. He said, "Were you aware that you sent it to the lobby?" I was not.
For several hours, the banner in the main lobby of their headquarters and visitor's center had been displaying, "Hypothesize a spherical chicken," to everyone. They finally traced the command to our training room. It must have happened when I was testing it out, and had the wrong IP, but the right command.
Oops. |
|
|
| Comments: |
...the printer here at work now reads "HYPOTHESIZE A SPHERICAL CHIKIN" :D
"I started a joke, that started the whole world lobby crying 'WTF??' " (apologies to the Bee Gees)
From: (Anonymous)
2008-03-20 12:40 pm (UTC)
| (Link)
|
From RawCode:
Hahaha That is great.
Nothing to do with your post, but I have to tell you about this...
I had the weirdest dream about you and your lovely wife. I dreamt there were two sets of Punkie and Takaylas. One set lived where you are now, one set lived near me (I will call them the Dopplegangers). The Dopplegangers looked pretty much exactly the way you did when I first met you both ten years ago (has it been that long?).
I had convinced The Dopplegangers to travel down to your area with me to meet you because you were celebrating your wedding anniversary. The Dopplegangers were hesitant because it wasn't their anniversary, but it was Doppleganger Takayla's Birthday (but not the real Takayla's birthday). Confused yet?
When we got there, I couldn't find you guys. The Dopplegangers had no interest in meeting you, and became very aloof and uninterested in being at a party. They went to the basement and watched TV. You never spoke the whole dream.
When I finally found the "real" Punkie and Takayla, it was very strange. I hugged Takayla and realized, it looked as if she had lost over 200 pounds (I'm guessing, I'm bad with weights). She talked at length with me about how she was concerned that her skin was hanging and she might have to have surgery for it, she seemed really quite distressed. This version of you also never spoke.
What do you think it means?
You are an evil, evil man. This phrase has stuck with me for the last week, becoming such an earworm that it's manifested itself in many places. For instance, I mentioned the printer here at work - it's an HP LaserJet 8150DN, with the JetDirect built-in. Which means that I can use the HP JetDirect API to play with that printer's 'READY' message...
Also, I acquired a scrolling LED badge at a train show recently... can you guess what Message1 reads?
I'm thinking that I'm going to change the issue file for one of the external servers here, and append 'Hypothesize a Spherical Chicken' to it. In addition, I'm thinking that just became one of my new away messages here at the office. And maybe the motd on all the internal Linux servers.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/2832096/743032) | From: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) wy
2008-05-14 08:55 pm (UTC)
| (Link)
|
There's a book taught in berkeley called "consider a spherical cow" | |
