in reply to What's your favourite non-word?

I've always used Fred. Because it's the punchline to my favorite joke.

This grasshopper walks into a bar and orders a margarita.
The bartender looks at him and says "You know, we have a drink named after you."
The grasshopper replies, "You have a drink named Fred?"

Thank you, I'll be here all week. Try the veal.

-pete
"Pain heals. Chicks dig scars. Glory lasts forever."

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Re: Re: What's your favourite non-word?
by laughingboy (Monk) on Jul 10, 2002 at 17:36 UTC
    Fred is also my favorite. This comes from my first job as a firmware developer many moons ago; I copied the practice of the somewhat curmudgeonly senior programmer on the team. He explained that Fred was an acronym for "F'in' Ridiculous Electronic Device."

    Interesingly (?) this came up in the context of picking a good bit pattern for use as a signature for a data structure. "Fred" was exactly two bytes long and easy to spot in hex dumps. (He used a 4 for the r.)

    laughingboy