Geeky Graffiti

[jamesq]

There are white boards all over the office. Some of them are idle due to being in bad locations (i.e. behind a desk). I occasionally write things on them in an attempt to be funny. On one board I wrote the following:

Why do programmers confuse Halloween and Christmas?
Because 31OCT = 25DEC

I just noticed that someone gave it a slight edit to the following:

31OCT == 25DEC

Yes, the mystery editor changed my joke so that it would be a test for equivalence instead of an assignment operation in the "C" programming language (which is more technically correct in the context of the joke).

So I'm not the biggest geek at work. I'm not sure if that fact makes me happy or sad.

Comments

[catalytic.livejournal.com]

My geek is waning. Took me a while to understand why 31OCT == 25DEC.

[ladyerwyn.livejournal.com]

And I don't get it at all...

[jamesq]

When you explain a joke, it's not funny. Of course, some would argue the initial joke wasn't funny regardless of explanations - philistines, say I.

It's a pun on different numbering systems. 31 in Octal (base 8) is equivalent to 25 in Decimal (base 10).

[teilani.livejournal.com]

Despite being one of those utter Philistines who hadn’t the slightest hope of getting that joke without the explanation (which I don’t think ruins the pun at all) I forwarded a copy of this post to a few geeks I know through other circles. It has elicited at least a smirk from each of them (and a bit of surprise at where I found it from). Thanks for sharing that.