02-VI-1992.: Office dictionary

This is the date of dict.dbf, one of the versions, which I have compiled over the last couple of years in DBA. Composing such lists was fashionable and it seems it became a hobby of mine, later. I do have this archival streak.

Here are some more interesting entries (translated, of course)

ah te (AT actually) - 286

amsterdam - Amstrad (mispronounced by someone on the radio)

antiks - a character from Asterix (actually a soviet made game, which was impossible to play as it counted the cycles, XT-style, and was too fast even on a 16MHz 286)

application - analogously to the definition of algorithm, "the intuitive definition is identical to the real one" (everyone thinks they know what it is")

automatika - a routine which transfers errors from one app into another (we did a lot of those, data entered in one app would wind up in general ledger or accounts xxxable.

dragon - a 386 at at least 25MHz and at least 200M of disk, let's not be inserious

bug - domestic animal from the flea family, inhabits apps; there is always one more sitting silently until the app is announced fully tested; if there is a tavern of that name, that's where one runs out of gas

buffer - nobody saw it, every imagines it to the best of their ability; someone's may be full

bašić - popular name for basic ("selling two times spectrum and manual Bašić programming") (which is how an ad appeared in the local newspaper, zx was thought to be 2x, i.e. twice, and Basic seemed like Bašić, a regular surname, but the guy didn't write the diacriticals, we'll fix that)

bejzik - (phonetic transcription of basic) - 1) yes, but which dialect, 2) noooo... but if nothing else is at hand...

white bird - but it is not a swan (internal gag - the words "operator", i.e. data entry clerk, and "goose" were used with swapped meanings)

burek - 1. the legendary breakfast which never happens, we get two contracts instead (true, happened several times, someone went out to buy it, ran into some people, brought them in and they left with a software contract - we were very popular); 2. unit of measure of contract's weight, 3kg of burek equals about 800 thousand dinars; 3. some like it hot (that would be Grgi, he bit into a really hot one and scalded his tongue)

boot - start a rešo (one plate stove, for coffee), washer, TV, bicycle, car or perhaps a computer too

centronix - character from Asterix (aka Fred Astairix)

red - 1. reason to sell a color printer to an accountant; 2. reason for an honest man to meet the court; 3. reason to check whether there are any gas bons in the car (prepaid tokens, for gasoline only), 4. the color of a storno invoice; 5) morning eye color

read - the disk, a floppy, a database, text or, if nothing else works, the manual

member (also, article in law or contract) - 1. a contractual thing, the user is best confused if in an eight article contract, fifth mentions nineteenth; 2. of The Party

turkey - data entry clerk who passed the typing course by having a connection

director's key - hangs on the hatstand (it was the euphemism for the key to the staff toilet; it was locked so all the students visiting their cooperative, which occupied the rest of the building, would use only their own)

director's paper - if you need the key, you may need that too

divan - modem connection log, chat log (most frequently divan.txt, unfortunately coldn't recover any of these)

drajver - 1. who last passed exam (that would be Rade); 2. program of *.drv type; 3. he doesn't drink, he drives, pay no attention to him

debt of honor - a gallon of whiskey is OK

the long one - said "I'll kill Sale first, then you, then that guy of mine, then myself" - "but why, oh man, why in that order?"

enter - the operaters never know whether it's required; phone has none (that happened to me, I started dialing and realized there's no enter key, sat paralyzed for a minute)

fax - amount of paper inversely proportionate to importance of content; the key line is blurry and smudged; the most obnoxious users send longest report samples; written instructions sent by fax will be misunderstood, even if the sender remembers the last year when he had a legible handwriting; printed instructions sent will be wrong instructions; whoever sends the longest fax will try to sell you fax paper (that's Rile)

formatting the cheese - doesn't work, cheese is about 3" instead of 3,5" (we tried that, and generally refused to eat unformatted cheese)

hardware - knife, beer opener, scissors, rings, corks, toothpicks, earrings, walkpersons, car, screwdrivers, keys, printers, computers, spit, axe, šivanol (sewing machine oil, one drop of it solves everything on a dot matrix printer, as per Carp)

identity - easily lost here (because we all could sign Fefi, his signature was almost a simple wave line; when Gradek got married to Rade, someone said "will she now also sign the matricular book as Fefi?"; OTOH, Fefi himself once responded to a phone call with "Vanji speaking")

iskejp - last resort when talking to an operator, "hey, try press escape"

get out - of the knack, of the routine, the form, a loop, menu, into dos, to the dos prompt, into the command window, to the dot [prompt, i.e. the command line in FoxPlus or dBase), into the WC, through the window (which happened a lot the last year or two)(one guy got famous at erc for asking "how does one get out of cd Đ" (in juski), i.e. from C:\>)

Fata fucked herself - the FAT table, that is

jogurt - 1. can't drink that without formatted cheese (aka "twenty yogurts more and they are signing off on the app")

ju chars - 1. new graphical app has its own fonts without our characters; 2. the new printer is cheaper when we import it but comes more expensive when it learns šđčćž

kafa - 1. first morning [coffee]; 2. now even coffee won't help; 3. poisonous (Fefi, too much sugar for anyone sane); 4. cold (Fefi again, he starts sipping #1 only when #2 arrives), 5. wait, haven't finished this one yet (me); 6. who said coffee? ; 7. rheumer, talker, repeater, sikteruša (turk. sikter - marš!, i.e. "get lost", the one signaling to guests they should leave); 8. skip the saucers, hit the vein

slaughter each other - two apps in memory can do that, e.g. pee see shell 5.0 with the network, or deebase and kjuemem 5.12; can be done with cabbage (that was one of our users, who was cutting out roots from cabbage heads and hit his hand; came with fresh stitches to us for a drink and some mocking)

compatibility - if someone said that something is compatible with something else, that is correct: he did say that. No more, no less.

user - "only a good user is a good user... huh? I didn't say that, you did."

cosmetics - creative work of making a report, rarely a form, look nicer

linija [line] - 1. one command in code; 2. one row of print; 3. modem connection; 4. network cable; 5. some get punctured because of its curvature ("to hold a line" means to try to stay trim; Grgi underwent some accupuncture sessions for that, (... 3 words...)

majonez - the morning atmospheric phenomenon on the beard and carpet; who misses the shirt won't miss the sweater (that's because the caffeteria, where we bought sandwiches, used frozen/thawed mayo, which then drips)

Murphy's screw - the last screw on the housing which just won't unscrew (because Taho's guy gave it an extra kick with his power screw)

the long guy's IT boss - when talking, doesn't breathe, when typing, stutters

nj and Njujork - the klaanca and their chief accountant, long story

student's cooperative - any door but this

pisi kreš (PC crash) - PC Cache 6.0

half an hour - equally funny as "tomorrow right early in the morning straight at your place"

doorman - 1. nuisance which one should sidestep swiftly and with style ("it's us", as Fefi would say to Cerberuses at LebarProm); 2. nuisance which should not be sidestepped ("he went to your place but the doorman wouldn't let him in" - "we're sending a car" - I did that at least twice); 3) a nuisance with his own orders ("if I knew he was YOUR man I'd let him in right away, but how do I know...")

cross (v.) - a phenomenon with the so-called orthodox computers, which take three fingers to reset (and the orthodox christian crossing is done with three fingers, not with the whole palm)

window - 1. i/o operation with hardware, takes a windows environment and two intellectuals, one for input and output each (that's us loading the computers from the truck parked right under our windows); 2. jumping through it to go get cigarettes; 3. emergency entrance; 3.1. I got to get a few kilos off

to work - 1. they sit and drink ("you see that we're working"); 2. well, now it should work as it should; 3. this program does some work, but what is it... 4. this now works and don't ask how; 5. on it (until 0:30 - as Grgi said and got "when I was your age I worked on it until 4:00").

result - 1:1 (happened once when a colleague came and, btw, asked "what's the result" - Blaža said "dunno until this finishes", while two others said "I'm not running anything" - literally nobody took the question to mean "what's the score", for nobody cared about spectator sports)

routine - 1. written; 2. acquired

skrol - the tendency of text on screen to go up and then doesn't know how to return

usereš gajde - well written manual which contains everything except the solution of your problem, perfect example of the "a nil of everything" approach (and the way we pronounced it actually means "you crap in the bagpipes")

see - 1. can see the disk through the network; 2. variable is maybe seen or not, depending on where you look from (who gets this, will understand); 3. can see it from an airplane - a phrase meaning that anyone will see it but the one who should

hook (v) - 1. join by cables; 2. ~ a virus; 2.1 a computer virus; 2.2 take a guess; 3. via modem

get tangled - the genius wrote an original endless loop

minutes - 1. document of a meeting we didn't hold; 2. a nonexistent documents from which excerpts are provided; 3. art of getting the customer to sign off on what you did but without realizing that it's beyond contract and billable; 4. hard to do without a minutes generator (all of which actually happened at least once; the generator wasn't too smart but was helpful anyway)

RAM disk gone - dead drunk

ekstremni - intentionally mispronounced "eksterni" (so we got extreme intstead of external)

phone - 1. should be 1.1 shot at; 1.2 passed through the window (happened a lot, cars were parked there and it took several minutes to walk in, so phone was handed out); 2. has no enter; 3. indicator of success ("I saw they were no big company, I sat there two hours and the phones rang only once")


Mentions: 25-V-1990., november 1991., Aleksandar Raskov (Sale), Atila Gereg (Grgi), Blagoje Vrbović (Blaža), DBA, erc, Ferenc Farkaš (Fefi), Gradinka Peretić (Gradek), juski, klaanca, LebarProm, Njujork, Rade Peretić, rešo, Rista Stančulov (Rile), Tanasije Rijepić (Taho), Tasa Radenkov (Carp), Vilmoš Baranji (Vanji), in serbian