Categories > Original > Humor
Forty-Two!
3 reviewsExplanation of my choice in a pen name. I have a problem with authority figures (bosses, teachers, etc.) who demand respect rather than earn it. To those people I say: Forty-Two!
3Funny
Author’s Note:
This short explanation of my choice in a moniker serves as a trial posting to make sure I can deal with the reformatting issues that seem to plague some authors. I’ve never posted anything to any fanfiction site before, so this is a test. I have a Harry Potter story completed (in MS Word) and I’d like for that to be posted and formatted up correctly.
As for the pen name, I have a problem with authority figures (bosses, teachers, etc.) who demand respect rather than earn it. To those people I say:
Forty-Two!
Many people who are “in the know” will guess that “42” refers to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy stories, but alas, no. Although “42” might actually be (and probably is, as we will discover below) the answer to the ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, its origin pre-dates Hitchhiker’s Guide and almost pre-dates Douglas Adams, himself, may he rest in peace.
Long ago, in the ancient days of Middle Earth, a group of brave men and women banded together to write an Operating System. They called themselves “IBM” (Interesting But Meaningless, as there were no computers in the days of Middle Earth), and the Operating System they created was christened “OS/360” as the brave men and women claimed it was a third-generation operating system for the ’60s.
Now, many centuries passed and as each ’60s came and went, the elders consulted their seers in search of a computer on which to run this fabled OS/360. Millennia dragged on and as century after century ticked off on the grandfather clock of time, the elders began to despair. Then in the twentieth century, CE, the descendants of the brave men and women (who still called themselves “IBM” – although, due to some heavy-handed relocation policies, the letters now stood for something else, entirely: I’ve Been Moved), built the required computer and they IPL-ed (Initial Program Loaded) OS/360 and all was right in the world.
For over six hundred milliseconds, OS/360 ruled the Earth. Then it crashed.
The brave men and women of IBM scratched their heads and looked at each other in perplexion as the pages of the core dumps stacked themselves neatly in the line-printer’s hopper. They nodded their heads as one and proclaimed, “We need documentation!” and they groaned (also as one) and sat down to write PLMs (Program Logic Manuals) by the score. And then by the hundreds.
When the library of PLMs reached such a magnitude that required three alpha characters and four numeric digits to distinguish them one from another, the brave men and women smiled and dug into the core dumps with gusto, for they had defined and labeled all of the possible bits and given them each a number and the numbers were from “31” to “0” for in the beginning there were of course only 32 bits. (Nowadays there are more, but the extras are largely ignored as they are merely duplicates of the original 32.)
But lo! the brave men and women had but eight fingers on which to display the 32 bits (thumbs were asked to join in the effort but they were opposed) and so the 32 bits were divided into four bytes and each byte received eight bits and each hand of four fingers could display one nybble (which is, of course, half a byte).
The brave men and women of IBM read the PLMs thoroughly. As they pored over the core dumps they signaled to one another with the fingers of both hands to convey the contents of the bytes they discussed (talker’s palms facing the talker with the uncooperative thumbs tucked neatly out of the way).
The documenters used little glyphs in their PLMs to represent the nybbles as they would be displayed when holding up fingers. The little glyphs used a period (dot) for a zero-bit (lowered finger) and a one (1) for a one-bit (raised finger) and they were depicted as in this example:
LCT - Linkage Control Table
1111 1111 LCTINTSW INITIATOR INTERNAL SWITCH
1... .... LCTINPPT PGM. NAME IS IN PROGRAM PROPERTIES TABLE
.1.. .... LCTPRIV PROGRAM IS PRIVILEGED
..1. .... LCTPPAA ISSUE MESSAGE FOR 'PROBLEM PROGRAM ATTRIBURES ASSIGNED'
...1 .... LCTMINRG JOB FLUSH - USE MINIMUM REGION SIZE
.... 1... LCTSTART TASKNAME NOT FOUNND ON COMMAND
.... .1.. LCTSTOP INITIATOR INTERNAL STOP
.... ..1. LCTABEND EXECUTED PGM ABENDED
.... ...1 LCTNDSI MUST VERIFY TASKLIB BEFORE ASSIGNING ‘NO DATA SET INTEGRITY'
It was soon discovered that these same glyphs could also be used to represent the bits of binary numbers:
Glyph - - Hex value (see explanation of “hex” below)
.... .... “zero-zero” in hex
..1. ..1. “twenty-two” in hex
.1.. .1.. “forty-four” in hex
1... ..1. “eighty-two” in hex
1..1 1..1 “ninety-nine” in hex
1.1. .111 “able-seven” in hex
1111 1.1. “fox-able” in hex
(Please note that a mono-spaced font must be used to properly display these glyphs, as the men and women of IBM all had mono-spaced knuckles.)
The brave men and women of IBM had all learned to count on their fingers in binary, but one day a particularly bright IBM-er discovered hexadecimal (literally “six and ten” – base-16) or “hex” in everyday parlance. The values after 9 were given names of Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog, Easy and Fox and were abbreviated as A through F. Now the brave men and women could speak the values to each other instead of having to display the values on their fingers, (which made telephone consultation SO much simpler), but the PLMs had already been printed by the millions with the little glyphs depicting hands holding up fingers and nothing much could be done about that. The glyphs would live on in perpetuity.
As has happened over the centuries, younger brave men and women replaced the silver-haired ones, and there was a gradual eroding of civility to one another. Phrases such as, “You, good sir (or madam) must surely have misspoken, methinks,” fell into disuse, being replaced by utterances like, “You idiot! You totally screwed up!” and later by the more concise and time-efficient, “Fool!”
Alas, four letters is hardly sufficient to fully express oneself when caught up in the throes of righteous anger, and so it came to pass that when one brave young man or woman was sorely displeased with another brave young man or woman and wished to convey their utter contempt, instead of making the glyphs with their fingers, they would merely shout, “Forty-two!” and having studied the PLMs, everyone knew what was intended.
Even those on the other end of the telephone.
This short explanation of my choice in a moniker serves as a trial posting to make sure I can deal with the reformatting issues that seem to plague some authors. I’ve never posted anything to any fanfiction site before, so this is a test. I have a Harry Potter story completed (in MS Word) and I’d like for that to be posted and formatted up correctly.
As for the pen name, I have a problem with authority figures (bosses, teachers, etc.) who demand respect rather than earn it. To those people I say:
Forty-Two!
Many people who are “in the know” will guess that “42” refers to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy stories, but alas, no. Although “42” might actually be (and probably is, as we will discover below) the answer to the ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, its origin pre-dates Hitchhiker’s Guide and almost pre-dates Douglas Adams, himself, may he rest in peace.
Long ago, in the ancient days of Middle Earth, a group of brave men and women banded together to write an Operating System. They called themselves “IBM” (Interesting But Meaningless, as there were no computers in the days of Middle Earth), and the Operating System they created was christened “OS/360” as the brave men and women claimed it was a third-generation operating system for the ’60s.
Now, many centuries passed and as each ’60s came and went, the elders consulted their seers in search of a computer on which to run this fabled OS/360. Millennia dragged on and as century after century ticked off on the grandfather clock of time, the elders began to despair. Then in the twentieth century, CE, the descendants of the brave men and women (who still called themselves “IBM” – although, due to some heavy-handed relocation policies, the letters now stood for something else, entirely: I’ve Been Moved), built the required computer and they IPL-ed (Initial Program Loaded) OS/360 and all was right in the world.
For over six hundred milliseconds, OS/360 ruled the Earth. Then it crashed.
The brave men and women of IBM scratched their heads and looked at each other in perplexion as the pages of the core dumps stacked themselves neatly in the line-printer’s hopper. They nodded their heads as one and proclaimed, “We need documentation!” and they groaned (also as one) and sat down to write PLMs (Program Logic Manuals) by the score. And then by the hundreds.
When the library of PLMs reached such a magnitude that required three alpha characters and four numeric digits to distinguish them one from another, the brave men and women smiled and dug into the core dumps with gusto, for they had defined and labeled all of the possible bits and given them each a number and the numbers were from “31” to “0” for in the beginning there were of course only 32 bits. (Nowadays there are more, but the extras are largely ignored as they are merely duplicates of the original 32.)
But lo! the brave men and women had but eight fingers on which to display the 32 bits (thumbs were asked to join in the effort but they were opposed) and so the 32 bits were divided into four bytes and each byte received eight bits and each hand of four fingers could display one nybble (which is, of course, half a byte).
The brave men and women of IBM read the PLMs thoroughly. As they pored over the core dumps they signaled to one another with the fingers of both hands to convey the contents of the bytes they discussed (talker’s palms facing the talker with the uncooperative thumbs tucked neatly out of the way).
The documenters used little glyphs in their PLMs to represent the nybbles as they would be displayed when holding up fingers. The little glyphs used a period (dot) for a zero-bit (lowered finger) and a one (1) for a one-bit (raised finger) and they were depicted as in this example:
LCT - Linkage Control Table
1111 1111 LCTINTSW INITIATOR INTERNAL SWITCH
1... .... LCTINPPT PGM. NAME IS IN PROGRAM PROPERTIES TABLE
.1.. .... LCTPRIV PROGRAM IS PRIVILEGED
..1. .... LCTPPAA ISSUE MESSAGE FOR 'PROBLEM PROGRAM ATTRIBURES ASSIGNED'
...1 .... LCTMINRG JOB FLUSH - USE MINIMUM REGION SIZE
.... 1... LCTSTART TASKNAME NOT FOUNND ON COMMAND
.... .1.. LCTSTOP INITIATOR INTERNAL STOP
.... ..1. LCTABEND EXECUTED PGM ABENDED
.... ...1 LCTNDSI MUST VERIFY TASKLIB BEFORE ASSIGNING ‘NO DATA SET INTEGRITY'
It was soon discovered that these same glyphs could also be used to represent the bits of binary numbers:
Glyph - - Hex value (see explanation of “hex” below)
.... .... “zero-zero” in hex
..1. ..1. “twenty-two” in hex
.1.. .1.. “forty-four” in hex
1... ..1. “eighty-two” in hex
1..1 1..1 “ninety-nine” in hex
1.1. .111 “able-seven” in hex
1111 1.1. “fox-able” in hex
(Please note that a mono-spaced font must be used to properly display these glyphs, as the men and women of IBM all had mono-spaced knuckles.)
The brave men and women of IBM had all learned to count on their fingers in binary, but one day a particularly bright IBM-er discovered hexadecimal (literally “six and ten” – base-16) or “hex” in everyday parlance. The values after 9 were given names of Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog, Easy and Fox and were abbreviated as A through F. Now the brave men and women could speak the values to each other instead of having to display the values on their fingers, (which made telephone consultation SO much simpler), but the PLMs had already been printed by the millions with the little glyphs depicting hands holding up fingers and nothing much could be done about that. The glyphs would live on in perpetuity.
As has happened over the centuries, younger brave men and women replaced the silver-haired ones, and there was a gradual eroding of civility to one another. Phrases such as, “You, good sir (or madam) must surely have misspoken, methinks,” fell into disuse, being replaced by utterances like, “You idiot! You totally screwed up!” and later by the more concise and time-efficient, “Fool!”
Alas, four letters is hardly sufficient to fully express oneself when caught up in the throes of righteous anger, and so it came to pass that when one brave young man or woman was sorely displeased with another brave young man or woman and wished to convey their utter contempt, instead of making the glyphs with their fingers, they would merely shout, “Forty-two!” and having studied the PLMs, everyone knew what was intended.
Even those on the other end of the telephone.
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