Friday Fun Contest: How Many TLAs Can You Fit In a Sentence?

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.

Thinking This Might Be a Useful Set of Rules for PASS Summit Sessions…

Astronauts Know Everything…

Recently @VenusBarbie visited Europe for the ILATweetup and SpaceUPEU events.  I wasn’t able to go due to other commitments, so Rob had to take over escort duties for our traveling Astronaut Barbie (@venusbarbie | Technical Barbies on Facebook).  The truth of the matter is that we humans officially get the invites, but we know that it’s really the space mascots that are wanted due to their celebrity status.  Rob also took along a 2D version of Commander Chris Hadfield (@cmdr_hadfield), AKA #Chris2D

I have some other photos to share, but the set I found most interesting were those with European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli showing Rob how to ensure that Barbie’s hair is just right before a photo shoot:

I guess all that centrifuge training she did at the DLR comes in handy when she hangs with other astronauts.

Once VenusBarbie was set, then all four (Rob, Paolo, VenusBarbie and Chris2D) were ready to pose.

Good job, men.  And @VenusBarbie.

Einstein on Data

…can you read the formulae?

Nominate your Data Steward for a Stewie Award

Do you work with a fabulous Data Steward?  You should nominate him or her for a Dataflux Stewie Award as part of International Data Steward Day, 11 October 2012.  I’ll be part of a team of elite ninja judges evaluating data stewards for their awesomeness at caring and nurturing good data practices.  Fellow judges Jill Dyché, David Loshin, Jim Harris, Phil Simon, Joyce Norris-Montanari and last year’s winner, Barbara Deemer will be looking to see how well you Love Your Data.  Also, you need to visit that page just to see their yearbook photos, too.

Data Stewards Class of 2012!

It’s that time of year again, when we honor the best and brightest – the experts who not only manage your company’s data, but keep your business running behind the scenes. In other words, your data steward.

From now until September 24, we’re taking nominations for the 2^nd Annual Data Steward of the Year Award, also known as the Stewie. It’s an honor reserved for folks who’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty to get the job done – the true honor students of the data management world.

A special sneak peek of the winner will be revealed at IDEAS 2012 in Las Vegas on October 10. After that, we’ll publicly announce this year’s Stewie Award winner on Data Stewards Day: October 11, 2012. That means the clock is ticking and you have limited time to submit your nomination. Ready?

Nominate a Data Steward Now!

With each nomination you’ll get some rocking buttons – you may have seen me sporting some on my backpack recently.  They have some snark, so they are perfect for experienced data professionals.

What to Do When Your Data’s All Wrong…