I was asked to be in a focus group for HP. When they went around the table, they discovered I was a ‘techy’ and probably more savvy than they wanted for the group, but decided to keep me there, since I’d taken time off and travelled to the event.
One of the things I mentioned was how illogical it was to place a page in the manual paper feed, then press ‘On Line’ to get the printer to print.
Very soon thereafter, they incorporated a big green ‘Go’ button on their printers. It’s morphed into a green checkmark or ‘OK’ button.
But I invented it.
Or at least I’d like to think I did.
So, what do YOU take credit for? (I call BS on you inventing Pasteurization…unless your name is Pasteur.)
In the late 70s when I was just a kid my aunt was doing market research for Kellogs. She needed a kid for a focus group and asked me. I was about 9 at the time. I tried their version of shredded wheat (mini-wheats) and was asked a whole ton of questions.
My responses were that I mostly liked the texture, crunchiness, and flavor but they were still too bland. I said they needed something like sugar “on” them.
They asked me “You mean sugar ‘in’ them?” And I distinctly said “No, sugar ‘on’ them.”
A few years later I see on the store shelves Kellog’s Frosted Mini-Wheats.
So in my adolescent mind I decided I was solely responsible for this.
And I still like to think I was ;).
You know that new spa treatment where they stick your feet in a tank of little fishies who nibble the dead skin off your feet?
Yeah, I totally invented that, about 10 years ago, sitting in a stream with a bunch of friends, when we noticed that the little fish in the stream were “tickling” our feet. “Oh, my gosh! Rich people would pay good money for this at a spa!” I said, I did.
Of course, They must have been listening in, because They actually marketed it successfully, which I did not. But the idea was totally mine.
More seriously, one which I do wonder if I did start (with some friends, of course) was the term “safety meeting” to refer to smoking weed. It started for us, oh, 11 years ago, when we were working in a large project while camping, and we’d have a “safety meeting” when we wanted a break. Then it morphed into “Safety First!” as a slogan. Now I’m hearing it from entirely unrelated quarters, and it’s listed on wikipedia’s list of marijuana slang. So did we make it up? The earliest Urban Dictionary entry is from 2004. Unless someone can find me a citation from pre-1999, I’m going to claim it.
In mac lore, a DogCow says ‘moof!’, my family uses it as a locational radar and emotional barometer all at the same time.
Someone in the far end of the house will yell “MOOF!” and the other members will reply. And you can roughly where it comes from, and if it’s a happy, sad, or sleepy moof.
In the late 80’s-early 90’s, my mom told a joke about a farmer, his chicken, and a movie theater. It was an ok joke but she told us that when she told it to a friend, she messed up the joke by leaving out all references to a chicken. So I said, “You left the chicken out.” This became our phrase for whenever mom messed up a joke, which was quite often.
Years later, sis was watching TV when a character messed up a joke and another character said, “You left the chicken out.” It really blew us away since the joke had nothing to do with chickens and the phrase was used as if it was common knowledge.
I take full credit for this phrase and expect royalties.
Although it wasn’t my job role, I made some critical decisions early in the design of the reservoir quantity indication system for the 737-600 that resulted in it being vastly more reliable than its predecessor.
It ain’t much, but it is a small way in which I made the world a better place.
Back in the mid-80’s I had a job in mail order. A co-worker and I would have daily discussions about customers that made you want to bang your head against the wall. So one day I took piece of cardboard, cut it into a circle, wrote “Bang Head Here” on it and stuck it on the wall.
Fast forward about twenty years and several jobs later, I’m walking past a co-worker’s cubicle when I see he has the exact same thing tacked up on his cubicle wall. Well, it wasn’t cardboard, it was a sheet of paper with a circle drawn on it and looked like one of those things that was photocopied about a million times (back before office glurge was all done by email). I stopped and said “Hey, I invented that!”
Last night at Rafe, Jr.'s baseball game (8 y.o.) they were on defense and there were runners on 1st & 2nd with no outs. I yelled, “Perfect chance for a triple play, guys.” The people in the stands just laughed. Next pitch, the batter pops up to shortstop. Tyler catches it, but both runners were running. He stepped on 2nd, but the runner from 1st was already at 2nd, so he ran the ball over to 1st and stepped on the bag, completing the unassisted triple play.
All my idea. Totally my responsibility. You’re welcome.
When the Richland County Public Library was drawing up plans for the new Main Library in downtown Columbia, SC, around 1991, they had their outside book drop located very conveniently along the edge of the side-street.
“Convenient,” that is, if you had a passenger in your car, because the book drop was at the curb. Because we drive on the right side of the road but sit on the left side of the car, the book drop was all but inaccessible for anyone who was in their car alone. It might as well have been up by the building.
I suggested putting in a driveway and turning the book drop around so that people could pull off the side street and have access to the book drop from the driver’s side.
And if you look closely, you’ll see that’s exactly what they did.
I got a traffic ticket from the Chatsworth courthouse and decided to contest it by going with the “trial by written declaration” option. I followed the directions and sent in my statement, then monitored the status of the ticket through their online system for a few weeks until it said that I had a “Court Appearance” on an upcoming date.
Confused, since I hadn’t received a decision through the mail yet and calling them only gave the standard labyrinthine robot menu mired down in irrelevant information - I decided to show up at the courthouse on that day. After all, better to be safe and show up rather than not and become a fugitive from the law. On that day I had to make arrangements with my workplace, drive down there, and wait in line at the traffic clerk’s window. And when I finally got up to the window, she told me “Oh, all you have to do is keep waiting for a decision in the mail - that date on the system just means it’s the deadline for the judge to render a verdict”.
“But… then why does it say ‘Court Appearance’?” I protest.
“Yeah, I know it’s confusing but… you know, hold on a minute. That isn’t right” she says as she disappears behind a partition for a few minutes. Finally she returns and says, “you know what, you just changed the entire rule of the court. We won’t be marking those as ‘Court Appearance’ anymore but ‘All Other’ instead.”
So, I got to leave at least feeling like my morning hadn’t been wasted, and that there’s a bureaucracy out there that doesn’t completely suck.
A few years ago my parents were getting bombarded with junk faxes. I spent a lot of time tracking down (through a maze of misleading call-back numbers, obscured sender names, etc) who was responsible (it was an outfit called fax.com) and then called them up and read them the riot act (they were in direct violation of federal law many times over). I filled out all the forms to complain to the FTC.
Shortly thereafter, they were hit with a $5.4M fine and I think they may have gone out of business. I’m sure I wasn’t the only complainer but given the amount of legwork required and the timing of the fine, I think I was one of few.
Related vein, I personally got the telemarketers behind “Dorothy from the Mortgage Company!” kicked to the curb - they were a national problem. We were getting streams of autodialed telemarketing messages from them to large blocks of numbers at work. I had to sort through the forged Caller ID numbers to get actual phone numbers, track down what telecom “owns” those numbers (it was a small telco in LA) and then started making phone calls. I wound up talking to that telco’s legal counsel who promised to look into it. A few days later he notified me that (scummy telemarketing company) was in direct violation of their terms of service and that the telco had terminated their contract. Calls stopped.
The moral of the story is “Do Not Mess With Valgard Over The Phone.” You cannot run. You cannot hide. I will track you down, come for you in the dark of the night and stick forks in your eyeballs.
Decades ago, I had a guinea pig named Magenta who was, without question, the best guinea pig on the planet. Lots of people met him (yeah, so I got his gender wrong) during his 7 year lifespan.
Imagine my surprise when I sit down to watch the movie “Sky High” and find out that there’s a character named “Magenta” whose superpower is the ability to turn into a guinea pig! Not only that, Magenta eventually saves the day!
Someone involved with the movie got the character idea from my guinea pig.
Fascinating; in online chats (loosely affiliated with Microsoft, I think) in the late 1990s, “moof” was used to refer to an involuntary disconnection due to some glitch or other. I wonder if there’s any etymological connection?
Personally, I’ve been trying to popularize the word “grunk” for that gross black stuff that accumulates on keyboards and mice. But I don’t think it’s caught on yet.
