Edwin Gustafson

Quotes

  • Cyberthousands

  • All it costs is all your money

  • The permissions are always wrong

  • For an information society, our data are atrocious

  • Unsay that!

  • You can't put a price on money.

  • I hate it when free stuff isn't perfect!

  • Q: "What are you doing?" A: "Advancing my employer's business goals! What are you doing?!"

  • He couldn't even suppress his bad attitude long enough to get through lunch.

  • You may think I'm crazy, but that's not what my psychiatrist says.

  • You want a middle class income, *and* respect?!

  • Bang the rocks together *smarter*, not *harder*.

  • A little masochism never hurt anyone.

  • As sure as God made little Higgs bosons

  • I would like to be the first to wish you a very happy culturally-ambiguous, Northern-hemisphere-winter-solstice-coincident holiday!

  • When I grow up, I want to be a Certified Quantum Mechanic.

  • Everybody's got a story why they're owed.

  • Hold on to your amygdalae!

  • For the love of oxytocin!

  • Duplication is our middle names!

  • "Your call is important to us, though not important enough to have someone standing by to take it."

  • "Communication is the key." "What's *that* supposed to mean?"

  • Eric's law of engineering: Engineering is a religion with no faith. Plenty of ritual, but no faith.

  • Temporary files, aren't.

  • That's the joy of dysthymia!

  • Pray for neurogenesis!

  • Throwaway code, isn't.

  • Somehow, all this insanity adds up to an economy

  • Nothing focuses attention like a busted prototype.

  • What in the *Earth-Moon System* is going on here?!

  • Science versus religion makes as much sense as consonants versus vowels.

  • "Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up cathinones, amphetamines, tryptamines, indanes, phenethylamines, alkaloids, benzodiazepines, piperazines, and terpenoids."

  • If you have to explain why it's not that great, it's that great.

  • We'r' just stones skippin' over th' pond o' Death—skip, skip, skip, an' then we sink.

  • Kaleidospec, n. An ever-changing engineering specification in which patterns form, dissolve and re-form cyclically.

  • It's not a "project", it's just a collective goal with a fixed deadline requiring multiple professionals to complete an interdependent series of non-trivial tasks.

  • Word order not to me important is.

  • The more I hear the word "plan", the less I know what's actually going to happen.

  • Everyone needs just a little more software.

  • I'm one quarter Colombian. Wasn't born that way, but I've drunk so much of their coffee…

  • It's a diabolical curse on the human race to worry about the wrong things.

  • Antimeeting (n): a meeting that leaves attendees less informed and more confused than beforehand.

  • You can always panic *later*.

  • Humility? I wrote the *book* on humility.

  • Desirement, n. An engineering requirement that vanishes once priced.

  • I'm so old, I remember when the internet only had two computers on it, and when you typed "LOL" it crashed after the 'O'.

  • Least Insane Estimate (L.I.E.)

  • As dumb as a sprue

  • I've begun a 0x0c-step program to give up hexadecimal. Oh, darn it!

  • Emotiscope, n. Project scope that shifts with client emotions.

  • Just-In-Time Training, n. Relying on developers to absorb new concepts and develop new skills in the course of project work.

  • Million dollar meeting (n): a business meeting in which the attendees' annual compensation sums to at least one million dollars.

  • Using a technology without using its key feature is like buying a plane ticket and boarding an aircraft, and then it taxies down the highway to your destination. Did you ride in a plane? Yes, you did! But you ignored the key feature of the plane, namely that it can *take off* and *fly over* everything on the ground on the way to the destination.

  • English ain't nothin' but a way to git yer point across.

  • I love coding, but I hate redundant coding.

  • Pointing fingers in a hall of mirrors

  • The first half of your life, you're too quick to believe new things. The second half, too slow.

  • planning == pretending

  • Support free speech! How else will we know who the idiots are?

  • Legalize contraband!

  • Any company with the word "communications" in its name will struggle to communicate.

  • "Surprise Generation Engine"

  • Never begrudge anyone the lessons of their own experience.

  • I can "let it go" at a professional level.

  • What do we want? Instant gratification! When do we want it? Now!

  • The number of press articles speculating the end of Moore's Law doubles every eighteen months.

  • Let's swing into inaction!

  • I heard there's a rumor going around.

  • Not so much data-driven as salary-data-driven.

  • That's terrissuring!

  • May the best analogy win!

  • Big Ten football is a good sport but a bad religion.

  • Paper calendars are so last year.

  • Holy punctuation!

  • Quirkalytics: (n}, the collection and study of counterintuitive data.

  • Anyway that's today's breathless caffeine-fueled burst of language.

  • "Question" authority? First I'd have to *recognize* it.

  • I've given up on defeatism.

  • I can only finish one thing at a time.

  • There are two million deer in the state of Michigan. That's one million on the left hand side of the road trying to cross to the right, and one million on the right hand side of the road trying to cross to left.

  • Everything that's engineered is either over-engineered or under-engineered.

  • There are two kinds of people in this world: people who divide people into two kinds, and people who don't.

  • Zenophobia: (n}, fear of a paradox preventing you from overtaking a tortoise

  • It's as easy as (0, 1, 2)

  • I prefer to avoid conflict, if that's all right with you.

  • I roll dice to mark my ballot. That way I can't be manipulated by the media.

  • There's no future in pessimism.

  • We have a mutual relationship with our customers. They give us the business, we *give* *them* *the* *business*.

  • I consider all life on Earth to be my emotional support biome.

  • I'm the most popular recluse in town!

  • Never bring a sans to serif fight

  • I'll do *anything* not to appear desperate!

  • At least we get paid.

  • Michigan winters are the best six months of the year!

  • Irrational people aren't *rationally* irrational; they're *irrationally* *irrational*.

  • Kid, I've got *passwords* older than you!

  • I'm getting a bust of George Boole for my desk…or not

  • Nothing is anything in computers until there are two ways to pronounce it

  • You can't get a suntan on YouTube

  • Stargazing is the original streaming entertainment

  • The at-will clause has become the at-won't clause!

  • Q: Do you trust Analytics numbers? A: I trust only Direct Deposit numbers!

  • All they want is personal-chef results at fast-food prices

  • Seven OSI layers — and you can't trust any of them

  • You'd think…wrong

  • Post-launch requirements

  • The in-decision process

  • Summer is *no* bummer

  • This is *our* public park!

  • How much money does it take to be "independently *poor*"?

  • The problem with having a brain is telling the inside from the outside

  • Traverse City is Ann Arbor with no homework

©2024 Edwin Gustafson