[TUHS] Bringing a Chainsaw

John Cowan cowan at ccil.org
Mon Dec 12 08:47:20 AEST 2022


Thanks again!  I'll pass this on to Eric Raymond, current maintainer of the
Jargon File.

On Sun, Dec 11, 2022 at 5:24 PM Marc Donner <marc.donner at gmail.com> wrote:

> I heard from Mike Cowlishaw about the IBM jargon items "branch to
> Fishkill" and "branch to Owego"
>
> They reflect a set of site pairs within IBM in which one site designed and
> made hardware (Fishkill, Owego) and another site designs and builds
> software (Kingston, Endicott).  To the software folks the hardware world
> was esoteric and weird, hence the branch targets for weirdness were the
> hardware sites.
> =====
> nygeek.net
> mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 10, 2022 at 12:15 PM Marc Donner <marc.donner at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Mike is an old friend ... I will send him a copy of "Bringing a Chainsaw"
>> and ask ... I don't think he was in Yorktown at the time but I probably
>> told him about the work while it was happening.
>> =====
>> nygeek.net
>> mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Dec 10, 2022 at 11:56 AM Adam Sampson <ats at offog.org> wrote:
>>
>>> John Cowan <cowan at ccil.org> writes:
>>>
>>> > Some editions of the Jargon File contain an entry for _branch to
>>> > Fishkill_, defined as "Any unexpected jump in a program that produces
>>> > catastrophic or just plain weird results" and attributed to IBM.
>>>
>>> Mike Cowlishaw's IBM Jargon and General Computing Dictionary, Tenth
>>> Edition <http://www.comlay.net/ibmjarg.pdf> was probably the source for
>>> this -- it includes both "branch to Fishkill" and "branch to Owego" with
>>> exactly this definition.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Adam Sampson <ats at offog.org>                         <http://offog.org/>
>>>
>>
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