Singular vs. Plural Changes Meaning

[BJCooperIT]

Computerworld has an article that I thought this readership might appreciate. It seems to me that when you are griping about communication that you might want your description of the problem to be a bit clearer.

More fun with mice
One of my colleagues wanted to fool around with me, so she removed the mouse-balls from my mouse at work. I was not at my desk when she did that.

Later I came to my desk and my manager was with me. He wanted an important file from my computer. I tried to use the mouse but found that the cursor did not move as someone has removed the mouse-ball. I showed my frustation and then used the keyboard to locate the file and email it to my manager.

The manager returned to his desk. Five minutes later, everyone in the office started laughing at me and told me to check my email. I was shocked to see an email from my manager to all employees that read: "Office is not a place to fool around. Whoever stole Ganesh's balls, please return it.

I nearly fell off my chair!

[sup]Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.[/sup][sup] ~George Bernard Shaw[/sup]
Consultant Developer/Analyst Oracle, Forms, Reports & PL/SQL (Windows)
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[KornGeek]

That's one of the funniest things I've read in a long time! I had to struggle to prevent bursting out in laughter, which might upset some coworkers.

 

[Gooser]

There's no differences between ball and balls. These hackery of the English languages are discomforting to those of I who care about such thing.

Thank you,
Gooser

 

[4theU]

There's no differences between ball and balls. These hackery of the English languages are discomforting to those of I who care about such thing.

Thank you,
Gooser

You speaka good engrish

 

[Gooser]

It's no tape over the contacts on the RJ-45, but it'll do for some office levity.

--Gooser

 

[Lunatic]

That reminds me of one of the many pranks an afternoon Freshman English class pulled on the semester-long substitute teacher (I was in a morning class) in high school.

Aside from stealing her bagels and sticking them to the overhead using her cream cheese (apparently without her knowledge), climbing out the windows (about 7-8' high) during class and during pictures she would take of the class, flipping her off in those said pictures, and rewinding and rewatching the 1/2 a second of bare flesh in the 1970-something version of Romeo and Juliet on VHS they did the following:

Remove the roller ball from the mouse attached to the only computer in the classroom.

Which prompted this response from the crazy (as attested to by other teachers at the school) substitute (slightly paraphrased as it was a number of years ago):

[Standing in front of the classroom holding the mouse]
Give me back my mice balls! I want my mice's balls back now!

***

Needless to say at that point any semblence of order for that class period was lost...

Thats why I always call them roller balls... not much better but harder to place into inuendo or double entendre.

 

[SamBones]

My favorite variation on this is when someone is having trouble mousing. The cursor is jumping and sticking. This is usually from built up finger oil, hair, dust, lint and other effluvia that tends to collect and clog the rollers. If the mouse is sticking, the first thing I do is remove the mouse ball and check. If that's it, I tell them loudly, "Your balls are dirty! You gotta keep 'em clean or you'll have all kinds of problems."

Then I usually tell them that they can get a mouse with no balls, and that should help because all they have to do is keep it's little hole clean.

(This is where I should stop, huh?)

 

[Welshbird]

We once (well, nto ME obviously - some other people in my office) swapped the boss's mouse-ball for some rolled up wax of a mini babybel cheese.

It worked for a while, but as it got warmer it got worse and worse...

We had to pay for the new mouse that was required, but it was easily worth it.

Actually, that was the same office where a colleague of mine wrote a wee VB program that would simply shut down the computer. He then put it in to his colleagues start-up menu.

That took a LONG time to sort out!

Fee

The question should be [red]Is it worth trying to do?[/red] not [blue] Can it be done?[/blue]

 

[flapeyre]

Here is the famous IBM service bulletin.

(I used to work at IBM, and I can tell you that it looks like a genuine RETAIN bulletin. A guy I know who still works there told me it really was on RETAIN.)

Feles mala! Cur cista non uteris? Stramentum novum in ea posui!

 

[mjldba]

I attended a PeopleSoft Data Administration class years ago and this thread brought back a memory.

PC's were lined-up on both sides of long, narrow rectangular tables in the classroom, similar to the tables you'd use at a banquet. I'll refer to the PC's on one side of the tables as A, B, C, D and the other side of the table as 1,2,3,4. Everyone was performing the same tasks, therefore making the same mouse movements, as directed by the instructor. See where I'm going with this???

All mice (mouses??) were left connected to their respective PC's but, while everyone was at lunch, we moved the A,B,C, and D mice to the 1,2,3 and 4 mouse pads. The 1,2,3 and 4 mice were placed on the A,B,C and D mouse pads.

After lunch, the instructor told everyone to navigate to some folder and it started happening. Because everyone is either a bit slower or faster than the next person, some people were getting "slow" response to their mouse movements while others were getting accelerated mouse movement just prior to actually moving the mouse.

Worth a laugh at any training session.

 

[SantaMufasa]

'Singular versus Plural' Changes Meaning" reminds me of when polygamist Warren Jeffs's son told his parents that he was gay. He sat them down and began, "Dad, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom..."

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[I provide low-cost, remote Database Administration services: www.dasages.com]