The failure of yesterday’s article to actually show up and look like it hadn’t published (maybe it did, maybe it didn’t – wait for it…) had me thinking about some of the appropriate slag and acronyms that we use in such situations, often to make our response somewhat more socially acceptable in polite company.
FUBAR is a military term, meaning “Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition.” I’ll leave it to the rocket scientists in the group to figure out that most military term used a word other than “fouled.” You may make the same assumption pretty much anyplace you see an “F” in these examples. Which in and of itself is…
SNAFU! “Situation Normal, All Fouled Up!” I remember learning this one from my dad at a young age, probably six or seven, and it serves as an excellent benchmark for just how naive, sheltered, and Catholic schooled I was. (I’ve gotten better, thanks!) First of all, it was high school before I finally figured out that thing about “fouled.” Secondly, it took years for me to figure out that it was satire – how could things be “normal” when they were “all fouled up?” That’s not how things are normally.
Now I’ve learned that “normally” we have a “Charlie Foxtrot” situation. For the uninitiated, that’s a “ClusterFork,”, sort of. (Nudge, nudge, wink wink, say no more! I’m trying to keep this site halfway PG, saving all of the outraged vulgarity for the other site when I write there.) I’m not sure this one makes any grammatical sense, but it does roll off the tongue with a certain panache.
Given my lack of sleep and overabundance of stress these days, my first leanings on the root cause of last night’s error went to PEBKAC, an all-time favorite having done some time in tech support. “Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair” is a good way of describing at least 70% of the computer problems I get to diagnose – and many of them that I get to diagnose I’m troubleshooting on my own behalf.
Until someone pointed out (thanks, Barney!) on the Facebook post for that article that the link in the FaceBook post was was broken. Which brought out a strangled, “Dafuq!!” The spelling is socially acceptable, the pronunciation pretty much what it looks like and thus socially unacceptable.
Troubleshooting it, I found that the URL posted to FaceBook and Twitter (and Google+ and Linkedin and Tumblr – wait, I forgot to post to Ello?) contains the string “2017/07/19” while the post on WordPress has “2017/07/18.” Furthermore, I can’t change the URL on WordPress, only post a (manually) corrected URL on social media. All of which makes me think that the article did in some way post yesterday.
But no one in this dimension saw it. I’m going to believe that it was front page news in the Twilight Zone Times-Picayune!
Now, quick, before something else goes wrong, where’s that “Publish” button?
