Monday 1 December 2008

Rhymes With Punt

It was my first day back at work today (groans of disappointment all round), much of it spent on tedious back-to-work chores such as cleaning the revolting pigsty of a desk I was allocated, and trying to persuade the IT people that yes, I really did need a computer today and not in a week’s time. I was reminded of a job I used to work at with similarly anal IT policies, where everyone was assigned a computer logon, no doubt so the boss could keep track of who was updating their blogs or looking up porn (which amounts to much the same thing for some people).

These logons were, very imaginatively, composed of the first three letters of one’s family name plus the initial of one’s given name. Mine, for example, was POLL, from POLony, Lonie, and random words like that were about the limit of the amusement to be derived from this Big Brother measure. One day, I happened upon a list of new starters who would soon be receiving their shiny new logons which, if they were lucky, might be paired with an actual working computer somewhat younger than the Pleistocene mammoth.

Now, regular readers are apprised of my level of (im)maturity and enjoyment of asinine humour, so you may well imagine my utter delight and boundless glee when I read down the list to one gentleman in particular.

His name was Terrance Cunningham.

8 comments:

Rita said...

...and did young (or old) Terrance ultimately turn out to actually BE one?

Little Snoring said...

And you won an award for noblowmo (or whatever) - congratulations

hazelblackberry said...

SNORT!

Oh, hey, and congrats on the NaNo award!

Lonie Polony said...

Hello Rita - I don't know. I think I left before I met the guy :)

Thanks, Littlesnoring and hb: just so I'm not perpetuating a misunderstanding, everyone who writes 50,000 words gets one of those web badges. It is in no way a reflection of the quality of my novel (because I can tell you, it's bad. Very bad.)

robkroese said...

I've never heard of assigning usernames that way. Google actually lets you pick whatever username you want, which I didn't realize when I started there or I'd be diesel@google.com, which is pretty much the coolest email address ever.

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of the that old advertising(?) slogan . . . "If Tetley's put the T in Tea Bags, who put the rude word in Scunthorpe?"

Lonie Polony said...

Hey there Diesel, long time no see. My former employer was much more conservative than Google, and not very imaginative. It was only a matter of time before a doozy like that turned up.

Hello Old Darter, can't say I remember that slogan. You reminded me of the joke about John Howard wanting a grander title. He was told he couldn't be a king, as he didn't rule a kingdom. He couldn't be a prince, as he didn't preside over a principality. He was in charge of a country, and was therefore a...

Anonymous said...

Or Gough Whitlam, who in response to a ponitificating opposition member's statement which ended "...I'm a Country Member!", calmly retorted - "I remember."