Tuesday, September 26, 2006
You know you've worked in IT for too long when ...
You know you've worked in IT for far too long when you tell a joke about rewinding the paper-tapes from data-prep, notice the blank looks, and have to explain "data-prep", "paper-tapes" and "rewinding".
Data-prep, short for "data preparation", serried ranks of, usually, ladies typing away copying information from, example, cheques, i.e. the account numbers, amount, bank etc. and creating paper-tapes with all this information.
Paper-tapes, are a largely obsolete form of data storage, consisting of a long strip of paper in which holes are punched to store data.
Rewinding, as the paper is punched the beginning of the tape ends up on the inside of the reel, so to get the tape into the correct order for feeding into the computer it has to be rewound, such that the end, ends up on the inside.
And the joke was: Talking about penny-pinching: I worked at a firm once that was so budget-concious they would not buy a paper-tape rewinder for the data-prep department. We resorted to grabbing the centre and throwing the rest out of the window. OK as long as it wasn't raining...
Data-prep, short for "data preparation", serried ranks of, usually, ladies typing away copying information from, example, cheques, i.e. the account numbers, amount, bank etc. and creating paper-tapes with all this information.
Paper-tapes, are a largely obsolete form of data storage, consisting of a long strip of paper in which holes are punched to store data.
Rewinding, as the paper is punched the beginning of the tape ends up on the inside of the reel, so to get the tape into the correct order for feeding into the computer it has to be rewound, such that the end, ends up on the inside.
And the joke was: Talking about penny-pinching: I worked at a firm once that was so budget-concious they would not buy a paper-tape rewinder for the data-prep department. We resorted to grabbing the centre and throwing the rest out of the window. OK as long as it wasn't raining...
Labels: work
# posted by threaded @ 9/26/2006 10:11:00 am 
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