Sunday, October 18, 2009

Craig's Acronym

A pedant would say that an acronym requires that the abbreviated combination of letters be pronounced as a word. SCUBA. RADAR. FUBAR. U.N.C.L.E. And so on. I am not that pedantic, as I feel common usage has changed the meaning of the word to include things like IRS, WKRP, and TLA. Luckily, my submission works either way.

I work at a place that goes by the unfortunate three letter moniker of "ANL". Unfortunate, because even if you don't pronounce it like a word, you're still pretty much saying "anal".

This amuses me to no end.

That's the type of guy I am.

A former division of this ANL place was the Pulsed Neutron Source. PNS.

The ANL PNS.

Again, this amuses me to no end. Yes, I know. This is why I don't have children.

In an attempt to make the name less embarrassing, they called it the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source. This leads people who think like I do to go down one of two roads.

1) The Intense PNS.

2) The iPNS. New from Apple.

Regardless, I'm giggling all the way down either road.

I'm not sure what a sweating cylinder has to do with intense pulsed neutrons, but this is the logo found on a ruler that was some shwag from the now defunct division.

The ANL iPNS ruler. For measuring... something.

I'm sorry.

4 comments:

Michael said...

I always work mine out with a K&E Slide Rule.. ;o)

Gads, I worked on a project at SITEL called SITELonline or SOL. My wife is always talking about POS, but she says it means Point of Sale... hmm.

My favorite is W.A.G.

cluening said...

Man, I worked in that building for almost two years and didn't even think of that acronym!

Stace said...

Seriously?

cluening said...

Didn't even cross my mind!

Loren is going to be so disappointed.