The original computer bug was a cockroach that fried in some capacitors or something (too lazy to look details up right now), so she wouldn’t be the first.
Oh, my wife has a terrible time with moths on the 3.5 meter telescope that she managers. They measure them in kilomoths. Thus far, this year hasn’t been too bad. [appendages crossed]
One of the yuckier things is having to wipe down the rotators for the azimuth and altitude (where the motors grip to move the telescope). It can get pretty disgusting and the dead moth accumulation can cause serious slippage. In a bad year, they might have to clean those twice a night.
Perhaps somebody keeps pointing the telescope towards the moths’ homeworld. To avoid tipping off where exactly that is, the moths may have found it necessary to attack the telescope no matter where it points. The sentence “There are some things Man was not meant to know” should usually be interpreted much more literally than most people think.
IIRC it wasn’t even as advanced as a Univac, which used “valves” eg vacuum tubes. The moth was crushed in an actual relay switch, a derivative of telephone switching technology. I believe this was technology developed by the Navy to calculate ballistics tables.
As Suzanne, says, it was a moth. In a relay. And it wasn’t the original bug, it was the “First actual case of a bug being found”, because “bug” was jargon for “problem” before the moth was found.
Although the phrase “fly in the ointment” has been in use for over 500 years, Thomas Edison is credited with first using the word “bug” to describe a technical problem. He first used the term in 1873 when he was developing the quadruplex telegraph system. (Much like Suzanne, I learned that back in my computer programming classes back in the 1980s, though I will admit to having to look up the details.)
Wikipedia gives it to Edison, but from a letter from 1878. Further research takes it back to 1873 but puts its first appearance in his notebooks to 1876. Print appearances followed in electrical dictionaries and then regular ones.
(The research makes me wonder whether the “Thomas Sloane” cited as standardizing usages in 1892 is the “T[homas] O’Connor Sloane” who edited Amazing Stories back in the twenties and thirties—the age is right.)
I live fairly close to the Edison Winter Home, enough to say it’s a cottage industry like the Roosevelt Home in Hyde Park, New York. (I lived close to that, too.) For what it’s worth, the Edison Winter Home still gets the occasional piece of mail addressed to Thomas Edison.
There I was completely wasted, out of work and down
All inside it’s so frustrating as I drift from town to town
Feel as though nobody cares if I live or die
So I might as well begin to put some action in my life
Covered in bees! Covered in bees!
Covered in bees! Covered in bees!
Covered in bees! Covered in bees!
Covered in bees! Covered in bees!
attack bees
Did she literally emerge out of the computers? They’re really taking this ‘bug in the system’ thing way too literally.
The original computer bug was a cockroach that fried in some capacitors or something (too lazy to look details up right now), so she wouldn’t be the first.
A moth, actually, in one of the early UNIVAC computers. I remember it from my early tech classes.
Oh, my wife has a terrible time with moths on the 3.5 meter telescope that she managers. They measure them in kilomoths. Thus far, this year hasn’t been too bad. [appendages crossed]
One of the yuckier things is having to wipe down the rotators for the azimuth and altitude (where the motors grip to move the telescope). It can get pretty disgusting and the dead moth accumulation can cause serious slippage. In a bad year, they might have to clean those twice a night.
Perhaps somebody keeps pointing the telescope towards the moths’ homeworld. To avoid tipping off where exactly that is, the moths may have found it necessary to attack the telescope no matter where it points. The sentence “There are some things Man was not meant to know” should usually be interpreted much more literally than most people think.
IIRC it wasn’t even as advanced as a Univac, which used “valves” eg vacuum tubes. The moth was crushed in an actual relay switch, a derivative of telephone switching technology. I believe this was technology developed by the Navy to calculate ballistics tables.
I heard moths used to knock out diodes by running into them because early diodes were literal lightbulbs
As Suzanne, says, it was a moth. In a relay. And it wasn’t the original bug, it was the “First actual case of a bug being found”, because “bug” was jargon for “problem” before the moth was found.
Wikipedia, Grace Hopper, Photo of “first computer bug”
Although the phrase “fly in the ointment” has been in use for over 500 years, Thomas Edison is credited with first using the word “bug” to describe a technical problem. He first used the term in 1873 when he was developing the quadruplex telegraph system. (Much like Suzanne, I learned that back in my computer programming classes back in the 1980s, though I will admit to having to look up the details.)
Knowing Edison, it was almost certainly one of the engineers in his lab who used it first, and he just took credit.
Wow! You knew Edison!
Wikipedia gives it to Edison, but from a letter from 1878. Further research takes it back to 1873 but puts its first appearance in his notebooks to 1876. Print appearances followed in electrical dictionaries and then regular ones.
(The research makes me wonder whether the “Thomas Sloane” cited as standardizing usages in 1892 is the “T[homas] O’Connor Sloane” who edited Amazing Stories back in the twenties and thirties—the age is right.)
I live fairly close to the Edison Winter Home, enough to say it’s a cottage industry like the Roosevelt Home in Hyde Park, New York. (I lived close to that, too.) For what it’s worth, the Edison Winter Home still gets the occasional piece of mail addressed to Thomas Edison.
Covered in Bees
Obligatory Last Days of Foxhound reference.
http://www.doctorshrugs.com/foxhound/comic.php?id=289
https://media.giphy.com/media/dcubXtnbck0RG/giphy.gif
I like my extirpation like I like my coffee…Covered In Bees!
Dr. Lee’s chances of getting out of the with Nick and Gavotte has just multiplied by 500%!
Hooray!
GAVOTTE! <3
MAN it feels like forever since we’ve heard from her. How nice – now things will start happening!
coveredinbees coveredinbees
There I was completely wasted, out of work and down
All inside it’s so frustrating as I drift from town to town
Feel as though nobody cares if I live or die
So I might as well begin to put some action in my life
Covered in bees! Covered in bees!
Covered in bees! Covered in bees!
Covered in bees! Covered in bees!
Covered in bees! Covered in bees!
Tea!
With or without honey?
I like my tea the way I like my sinister brain extractors…
Not in close proximity to yourself?
Sharp, green and boiling hot?
Hot, yet tasteless?
You provide the tea, she’ll bring the honey – as fresh as you could ask for.
There is *zero* chance that they won’t assume she’s Mad
There’s only a slightly greater chance that they’d be right.
Just how gross are her toenails, now? ‘Cause I’m sure I can match that easy.
Perhaps marginally more gross than her pre-extirpation toenails?
I’ll go out on a limb, here, and guess that Ira (Mr. Green) is going to get coveredinbees, but one of them is going to sting him in the jugular.
Say what you will about Gavotte, but she does know how to make an entrance.
No. Not the bees?
Glad to see they went with plan bee.
Well. That’ll give you bees.
A stinging rebuke!
Well, this is proof of it.
She is Sweet Virginia.