Crumpet-scramble

Michael Quinion’s recent entry on the origins of the term bun fight reminds me of the only person I know who uses the term in everyday conversation. John introduced a few interesting phrases to the QA department when we worked together, such as the (Newfoundland-based?) term fill your boots. Perhaps his most valued contribution to the language at work, though–certainly the most memorable, as it’s still in use months after his departure for greener pastures–is the jargon term PTFOE, pronounced put-foe. I won’t define it in polite company (giving the population of the web more credit than it’s due, I’m sure) but simply point out that I recently discovered this somewhat similar French version that I’m going to adopt as an alternate definition when asked: protocole de transmission fondue-over-ethernet.

Published by

Peter

4 thoughts on “Crumpet-scramble”

  2. P.S. I have always regretted the fact that I didn’t develop an automated script to carry out the PTFOE portion of the process. I could have called it ptfoe.cmd or ptfoe.exe or whatever and thereby assured it’s permanence.

    Maybe you could get Sami to look into that for me?

  3. “PTFOE” lives indeed with all its deserved glory!
    There are actually scripts in place now that perform the extremely complex and time consuming PTFOE tasks, except they aren’t called “ptfoe”, just because I didn’t want to have to explain what “fondue-over-internet” means 🙂

  4. Sam, do the PTFOE scripts have the audible alert I was hoping for? I know Dave and Chris would appreciate that.

Comments are closed.