June 8, 2018
Dear Everyone:
Whenever I see an
acronym, particularly one that I’m not familiar with,
I’m tempted to try and figure out what it means.
I recently received an email from our sister, “Alice”, about her
daughter, “Ramsey”, who was "up at RPI for her
summer REU in Astrophysics."
RPI? Whatever could that
mean? It sounded like a
place, but not necessarily.
It could be a company that “Ramsey” would be working for during her
summer break from college.
“Really Peculiar Innovators”?
Software companies are always trying to come up with cute names
that haven’t already been taken.
“Revolutions Per Instant”?
After all, we could be talking about hardware instead of software.
“Ron
Paul Institute”?
Seriously?
“Richmond
Professional Institute”?
A definite possibility, except that The Minister of Information
(“Jeannie”) had told me that “Ramsey” would be spending her summer
somewhere in
New York. As this
particular “RPI” is now part of Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU),
it wouldn’t qualify.
“Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute”, a university in
Troy, New
York, wins the prize.
As for “her summer REU in Astrophysics”…
“Really Exuberant Umbrellas” doesn’t seem likely.
“Research
Experiences for Undergraduates” is a better fit.
We are constantly surrounded by acronyms that we don’t even notice.
That laser
printer down the hall.
Ever wonder what “laser”
actually means? It’s an
acronym for “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation”.
Our brother, “Marshall”, took lessons in
scuba diving in
Monterey Bay,
California, quite some years ago.
That’s scuba, as in “Self-Contained
Underwater Breathing Apparatus”.
How many people know that “IBM”
has stood for “International Business Machines” since 1924?
And when you use one of those ubiquitous “sticky notes” made by
3M, have you ever
wondered what “3M” really means?**
Some years ago, the Company’s HR (Human Resources) group announced a new
something they called “CHDS”.
The presentation went on for over an hour.
It wasn’t until slide 27 that they finally admitted that “CHDS”
stood for “Company History and Development System”.
By that time, I had already dubbed it “Cheese Head Deficiency
Syndrome”. After all, the
Bay Area
is sadly lacking in authentic
Cheeseheads.
It turns out it was a method for employees to record and track their
education and experiences.
So when I provided training, I had to make sure to go into the system
and mark all the employees who actually showed up for a class.
It was colloquially referred to as “putting it into Cheese Head”.
However, one of my most favorite acronyms came from the late 1980’s when
I was working in the Company’s
Records and
Information Management (RIM) group.
I happened to overhear one of my co-workers on the phone with one
of her clients, the Medical Group.
They had decided to start a database to contain information about all
Company employees. They
wanted to do trend analyses, like finding out if more people in
California came down with colds, or if more people in Houston got into
automobile accidents.
After deciding just what information to capture, they considered what to
call their new invention.
That’s when the programmer objected to starting with the Company name.
After all, he informed them, it was an inhouse database.
No one outside the Company would ever see any of it.
They conceded that he had a point and told him to give it a
“temporary” name until their next meeting, when they would debate what
the best name would be.
It was at about this point that my co-worker was talking with her
client. Very carefully, she
repeated what her client told her was the “temporary” name the
programmer had decided upon.
As I listened to “Safety Health Information Tracking System”, the
acronym spelled itself out in my mind.
And I naturally thought, “WTF?!!!”
Love, as always,
Pete
**3M = Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing
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