It’s Friday again (we should have more of these) and I’m in the mood for a contest. I have some mystery prizes, more than just swag, to give away. But I’m not saying what it is until the contest is over. Let’s just say it will have data stuff, space stuff, and for certain one of those secret Canadian keychain bottler openers. The value of the prize will be approximately $100… CANADIAN!!!!…which I think now is close to $100 million dollars USD.
How Many TLAs can you fit in a sentence?
Your challenge is to make a grammatically-correct sentence that is dominated with TLAs. What’s a TLA? Why it’s a Three Letter Acronym, of course. But we’re going to be flexible. You can use acronyms or initialisms and you aren’t limited to three letter ones. You can also tack on verb endings and such. So things like RBARing, LOSed and SSDTed are fine. We’ll have a group of prestigious fun judges to evaluate your submissions based on these guidelines:
- Length of sentence
- Length of TLAs
- Higher ratio of TLAs to “real” words – in fact, I want to see very few real words
- Higher weight given to non-product TLAs
- Originality is a real plus
- Higher weight given to a good mix of TLA “domains”. If you can work in textspeak, space, tech, music, literature, arts and crafts, cycling and knitting, then you’re golden.
- The more snark the better.
Your TLAs should be commonly known or easily to lookup. If we can’t figure out what it means, you’ll lose points.
Examples
I REd a CRM DB to get the DDL for the CASE tool, FTW.
OK, my C4ISTAR PM FUBBARed* my PLoA due to a SNAFU* with a SME's PEBCAK bug.
NASA SCUBA SMEs are NEEMO FTEs, AFAIK.
The Rules
Entries accepted from locations where these sorts of contests are legal. Check with local authorities. If you are unable to accept the prize for a corporate or government restriction, just let us know. We’d still love to honour your work. Canadian residents must solve a particularly silly mathematical question. Study up on square roots and factorials. But they won’t be in the question.
Decisions of the judges are final.
You must be 13 years of age or older to enter.
You agree to let us publish your entries, but you get to keep ownership of them. We are nice like that.
Your sentence must be an original creation, by you.
No explicit, illegal or shameful content. Yes, I know some of you are disappointed.
Contest closes on 29 October 2012, 2 November 2012 at midnight my time, wherever I am at that time.
* UPDATE * I’ve just received some new swag from vendors, so I’m extending the deadline for this contest. We will now have 3 prizes to give away. *
Taxes, customs, duties and any other silly mandated stuff that makes it less fun to win are the responsibility of the recipient.
*The TLA example above has alternate, family-friendly definitions. I looked them up. Trust me.
How to Enter
Leave your entry here as a comment. Yes, you can enter more than once…let’s say no more than 4 entries per person. Yes, you’ll have to use a method to post that allows us to contact you to arrange for the major award. You can submit anonymously, but no prize for you.
The Judges
Denny Cherry (@mrdenny | blog ) Unofficial SQL PASS Party Planner and Trouble Maker
Joey D’Antoni (@jdanton | blog ) Biker, but not that kind, who architects on the side
Marco Frissen (@mfrissen | blog ) Opinionated space and tech geek. Token foreigner on this panel
Thomas LaRock (@sqlrockstar |blog ) DBA, Happymaker, and bacon lover
Shannon Moore (@ageekmom | blog ) SpaceTweep Wrangler and cyclist extraordinaire
Karen Lopez (@datachick) Loves Space and Data. Almost the same. But Space Data is best. Another foreigner, sort of.