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Google-surprising
Dec. 4th, 2008 03:06 pmI had an unusual experience booking a meeting room today. No, don't fall asleep. The rooms in the building I work in aren't reserved by the medium of a pencil on a bit of string and a clipboard like in most normal human places - instead we have little monitors outside each one that are all networked to the RoomWizard system, so you can book rooms without leaving your desk. For a meeting about decoding some new requirements today, I saw that there was one room I'd never heard of mysteriously free all day by the name of Panmunjeom (all the rooms on that floor are named after places in Asia), but saw that it had space for two people and took it anyway.
Through the glass panelling, it did look unusually comfortable compared to the other conference rooms when we got down there - more like a very small living room with curtains and a couple of comfy chairs than the desk and projector I'd been expecting. But it wasn't until we were inside and I closed the door that the first warning sign appeared - a literal one, in this case, saying "Remember to lock before you pump!" just above the inside handle. I had absolutely no idea what this could possibly mean, but when further examination of the room revealed a cube fridge and a sign providing welcome instructions to mothers, it was pretty clear that we were in a dedicated private room for breast pumping. Not that I really have any understanding of the process behind that, or really knew that it was needed until today - a curious check of the fridge by the consultant revealed it to be empty, and we sat there anyway in the very health-centre-smelling space talking about requirements for a while and trying not to feel awkward. (The room booking system doesn't mention this at all - it just says it's "great for interviews". Presumably this is true "if you don't want your candidate to come back".)
Moving on, I don't normally read the XKCD blag (mostly because it's updated about twice a year) but the entry a couple of days ago caught my eye - with the list of Google experiments he's posted, he seems to have unwittingly started a challenge of sorts in the comments that's similar to Googlewhacking but involves typing in increasingly removed-from-the-wall variants of the same phrase to see what, if anything, will eventually push it over the edge and return zero results. And reading down the comments it's surprising just what doesn't fail to come up. Searching for "buttered" things, one user even got down to trying "buttered submarine" with results still coming up, but then foiled it with the obvious variant of "buttered u-boat". Another one just gave up on his list and replaced the entire phrase with "i’m glad i watched Caligula", which nobody was. And once you start trying these it's very difficult to stop.
I'm sure I was meant to be doing something...
Through the glass panelling, it did look unusually comfortable compared to the other conference rooms when we got down there - more like a very small living room with curtains and a couple of comfy chairs than the desk and projector I'd been expecting. But it wasn't until we were inside and I closed the door that the first warning sign appeared - a literal one, in this case, saying "Remember to lock before you pump!" just above the inside handle. I had absolutely no idea what this could possibly mean, but when further examination of the room revealed a cube fridge and a sign providing welcome instructions to mothers, it was pretty clear that we were in a dedicated private room for breast pumping. Not that I really have any understanding of the process behind that, or really knew that it was needed until today - a curious check of the fridge by the consultant revealed it to be empty, and we sat there anyway in the very health-centre-smelling space talking about requirements for a while and trying not to feel awkward. (The room booking system doesn't mention this at all - it just says it's "great for interviews". Presumably this is true "if you don't want your candidate to come back".)
Moving on, I don't normally read the XKCD blag (mostly because it's updated about twice a year) but the entry a couple of days ago caught my eye - with the list of Google experiments he's posted, he seems to have unwittingly started a challenge of sorts in the comments that's similar to Googlewhacking but involves typing in increasingly removed-from-the-wall variants of the same phrase to see what, if anything, will eventually push it over the edge and return zero results. And reading down the comments it's surprising just what doesn't fail to come up. Searching for "buttered" things, one user even got down to trying "buttered submarine" with results still coming up, but then foiled it with the obvious variant of "buttered u-boat". Another one just gave up on his list and replaced the entire phrase with "i’m glad i watched Caligula", which nobody was. And once you start trying these it's very difficult to stop.
"Tony Blair is the greatest" - 791 "David Cameron is the greatest" - 2 "Charles Kennedy is the greatest" - 0 "Gordon Ramsay is the greatest" - 4 "mutant horses" - 229 "mutant telephones" - 165 "mutant pianos" - 4 "mutant trombones" - 9 "mutant harpsichords" - 1 "mutant wheelbarrows" - 0 "idiot-proof language" - 479 "idiot-proof syntax" - 4 "idiot-proof vehicle" - 1,260 "idiot-proof shotgun" - 1 "idiot-proof chainsaw" - 0 "i like raisins" - 4,960 (why?) "i like sultanas" - 389 "i like pencils" - 4,450 "i like your elbows" - 258 "i like your yoghurt" - 220 "i like crunchy nut corn flakes" - 10 "i like temazepam" - 8 "i like levothyroxine" - 4 "i like liquorice" - 4 "i like tofu" - 9,820 "i like tofu nut balls" - 0
I'm sure I was meant to be doing something...
