From my experience, it is not WHAT you write, but what PERIOD can you cover. Blogs and and .bash_logout-what-have-you-done scripts are very useful of that staff. Seriosly, whatever you put in your .bash_logout gets executed when you close the shell. That is pretty good time to ask yourself what have you done while that shell has been open. Use your imagination.

Secondly, BOFH excuses are really working! You can skip about 20% as being a rough joke, but the rest of them are pretty good for whatever text you send to the management. If you search Google, you might even find them in fortune format (otherwise it's easy to convert).

There are also random phrases generators, which take a list of words for each part of the phrase and make a lot of reasons to get paid for whatever is that you do. Check Freshmeat.net to find those.

General rule that I like to follow is that: there are plenty of words that can take several meanings - use them all when talking to people that pay. If you are asked, you can provide whatever explanation that fits both you and the cash-guy. Most of the times you will not be asked anyways. :)

Now, from all that theoretical talk to practical examples.

• Real thing:

           #!/usr/bin/perl -w
           use strict;
           use CGI;
  [download]

• Explanations:

           Web interface development with standard               
           specification complient environment for HTTP and          
           FTP web protocols, including self-debugging and 
           software bug prevention technologies.
  [download]

• Real thing:

             use DBI;
  [download]

• Explanations:

             Cross-platform database development with current 
             software integration and abstraction layer 
             incapsulation.
  [download]

• Real thing:

              =head1 NAME
              My::Module
              =cut
  [download]

• Explanations:

            Object Oriented Programming (from now on OOP) with
            technical documentation scripting and generation 
            using cross-platform, self-generating techniques.
  [download]

You've got the idea... :)

P.S.: I hope my boss is not reading this, since I do provide real life examples. :)

P.P.S.: If you still have difficulties and need customized versions - /msg me :)

Leonid Mamtchenkov

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