This is a short post, but it had to be posted since I can’t find the damn quote anywhere on the interweb through google at least.

I’ve been having a rather rough time at work, involved in new work and people use terminology and assumed knowledge that reminds me of an article from Coding Horror which has the hilarious example of a complicated dialog box a user would have no idea what to do with: If you want to tech the tech, you need to tech the tech with the teching tech tech. Tech the tech? Yes / No
The article also includes that Far Side cartoon analog of what dogs hear versus what we say.

For me, I best represent it with one of the funniest simpsons quotes ever (in my opinion at least), even though I don’t know really what it means, or even until recently, what the words were. Google was no help finding the quote, oh yes, I found the episode alright, but not the actual quote I wanted. I eventually managed to figure out, given the context of the quote, what things it was referring to and find the words given my vague phonetic memory of them. I put it in my MSN tagline anyway, even in case it was wrong. Later that night I went home, and popped in the DVD of that episode with subtitles on, and I was so close, got one word wrong, but it wasn’t even one of the weird ones, alas.

The quote itself reflects how I can read an email from someone at work about the stuff I’m working on, and still have no idea what’s going on, who I should reply to, and so on. The season is 4, the episode is 7, the title is Marge Gets a Job. The house is sinking, the foundation needs repairing, so Homer trying to save money buys the cassette tape of The Half Assed Approach to Foundation Repair. Actor Troy McClure goes too fast for him, and utters the phrase that captures my current mindset:

“If you can’t find metal stucco lath, use carbon-fibre stucco lath. Now parge the lath!”