Servo - January 2008

Terms of Endearment

What those familiar terms really mean

by Gerard Fonte

Direct Memory Access — Final exams

Socket — What to do when the TV doesn’t work Bank Switching — Looking for the best interest rate Cellular Communications — Nerve impulses Citizens Band — A block watch group Fax — The only thing Joe Friday wants Oversampled — When there isn’t enough fudge for the guests Equalizer — A . 44 magnum RAM — A male sheep Dynamic RAM — A male sheep in mating season RAM Chips — What’s left in the field after the male sheep leaves Terminator — Arnold Schwartzeneger Hex Inverter — Counteracting a spell Edge Connector — Holding hands Wow and Flutter — Your first kiss C+ — A passing grade Automatic Gain Control — Nutri-System diet Noise Control — Candy Debouncing — Sneaking back into the night club Hertz — A bruise Megahertz — A broken leg Gigihertz — Hitting your funny bone Terahertz — Strip mining ELF — A small mythical human List Processing — Grocery shopping Object Oriented Language — Grounds for a sexual harassment suit Satellite Dish — An attractive groupie Fine Thread — Nice clothes Floppy Disk — The cause of many back pains Cosine — Helping your kids get a loan Priority Interrupt — A TV commercial External Storage — A refrigerator Internal Storage — Fat Discharge Rate — Credit card limit Charge Transfer — Automatic teller machine Non-coherent Radiation — A political speech Degreasing — Low cholesterol cooking Soft Error — Finding out she’s married Hard Error — Meeting her husband Two-part Continuous-roll Forms — Toilet paper Line Error — A football official’s mistake

Direct Address — When she gives it to you Indirect Address — When you have to use the phone book Hard Copy — Your wife’s imitation of your mother’s cookies Inductor — An Army recruiter DIP — A strange person Dual-in-Line — When you split up to find the fastest check-out Flip-flop — Missing the pancake and it lands on the floor Hardware — A suit of armor ASCII — The usual position for novice skiers Stack-pointer — Someone who indicates pretty girls Accumulator — A junk collector or your kids Program — A show on TV Load Immediate — Drinking on the job Listing — Posture after immediate loading Run time — How long it takes to get to the bathroom Terminal Message — The dying man’s last words Keypunch — The knock-out blow Dropping a bit — A small decrease in energy (The temperature is dropping a bit.) Head Crash — A sleeping hippy Parity — What the cage smells like after the bird is removed Parity Error — A bird that says the wrong things Parity Test — Polly want a cracker? Interface — The resting place for a thrown cream pie Reverse Polish Notation — Telling a joke backwards Computer Card — A funny person who works in IT Logical Decision — Deciding not to visit the in-laws Bus Design — Making a vehicle to take kids to school Bidirectional Bus — A bus that services two schools Ohm — Where you go after work Resistor — At one time you couldn’t do this to your wife CPU — The smell of the ocean Source Program — A live TV show Object Program — Charlie’s Angels Anti-Alias — Face recognition software Flow Chart — Insurance documentation of basement flooding Long Wave — Signaling good-bye from a slow ship Sky Wave — Signaling good-bye from an airplane Damping Factor — Amount of water needed for ironing Limiter — A parent e.g., “One more cookie and then it’s bedtime.” Julian date — A fig-like treat made by Julie SV

SERVO 01.2008 75

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