Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 03:09:09 -0500

From: Jim Crotty Monkmag[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM

Subject: Re: Ping of Death



In a message dated 11/10/97 12:19:55 PM, you wrote:



And one

of my all-time favorites: "wave a dead chicken," which is to perform a number

of ritualistic procedures in the vain hope of reviving ailing or broken

hardware or software. Years ago, I had a computer whose hard drive was very

sick and often wouldn't show up on the monitor when I started the machine. I

found myself putting my hand on the CPU every time I started it, hoping, I

guess, to comfort and encourage it. This is waving a dead chicken.



In How To Talk American I define "wave a dead chicken" this way: "to perform

a useless and irrelevant repair on a severely damaged computer to prove to

the customer you at least tried to fix it." Gareth, have you noticed this

expression used in this context?



James Marshall Crotty

Author, How To Talk American (Houghton Mifflin)

Co-author, The USA Phrasebook (Lonely Planet), Mad Monks On the Road (Simon

and Schuster), Monk's Guide to California (Simon and Schuster)

Publisher-Editor, Monk: The Mobile Magazine, Monk.com (the soon-to-be-famous

web site)