:gumby: /guhm'bee/ /n./ [from a class of Monty Python
characters, poss. with some influence from the 1960s claymation
character] An act of minor but conspicuous stupidity, often in
`gumby maneuver' or `pull a gumby'. 2. [NRL] /n./ A bureaucrat,
or other technical incompetent who impedes the progress of real
work. 3. /adj./ Relating to things typically associated with
people
in sense 2. (e.g. "Ran would be writing code, but Richard gave
him gumby work that's due on Friday", or, "Dammit! Travel
screwed up my plane tickets. I have to go out on gumby patrol.")
:gun: /vt./ [ITS: from the `:GUN' command] To forcibly terminate a program or job (computer, not career). "Some idiot left a background process running soaking up half the cycles, so I gunned it." Usage: now rare. Compare {can}, {blammo}.
:gunch: /guhnch/ /vt./ [TMRC] To push, prod, or poke at a
device that has almost (but not quite) produced the desired result.
Implies a threat to {mung}.
:gurfle: /ger'fl/ /interj./ An expression of shocked
disbelief. "He said we have to recode this thing in FORTRAN by
next week. Gurfle!" Compare {weeble}.
:guru: /n./ [Unix] An expert. Implies not only {wizard} skill but also a history of being a knowledge resource for others. Less often, used (with a qualifier) for other experts on other systems, as in `VMS guru'. See {source of all good bits}.
:guru meditation: /n./ Amiga equivalent of `panic' in Unix (sometimes just called a `guru' or `guru event'). When the system crashes, a cryptic message of the form "GURU MEDITATION #XXXXXXXX.YYYYYYYY" may appear, indicating what the problem was. An Amiga guru can figure things out from the numbers. Sometimes a {guru} event must be followed by a {Vulcan nerve pinch}.
This term is (no surprise) an in-joke from the earliest days of the Amiga. There used to be a device called a `Joyboard' which was basically a plastic board built onto a joystick-like device; it was sold with a skiing game cartridge for the Atari game machine. It is said that whenever the prototype OS crashed, the system programmer responsible would calm down by concentrating on a solution while sitting cross-legged on a Joyboard trying to keep the board in balance. This position resembled that of a meditating guru. Sadly, the joke was removed in AmigaOS 2.04 (actually in 2.00, a buggy post-2.0 release on the A3000 only).
:gweep: /gweep/ [WPI] 1. /v./ To {hack}, usually at night. At WPI, from 1975 onwards, one who gweeped could often be found at the College Computing Center punching cards or crashing the {PDP-10} or, later, the DEC-20. A correspondent who was there at the time opines that the term was originally onomatopoetic, describing the keyclick sound of the Datapoint terminals long connected to the PDP-10. The term has survived the demise of those technologies, however, and was still alive in late 1991. "I'm going to go gweep for a while. See you in the morning." "I gweep from 8 PM till 3 AM during the week." 2. /n./ One who habitually gweeps in sense 1; a {hacker}. "He's a hard-core gweep, mumbles code in his sleep."
= H = =====
:h: [from SF fandom] A method of `marking' common words, i.e., calling attention to the fact that they are being used in a nonstandard, ironic, or humorous way. Originated in the fannish catchphrase "Bheer is the One True Ghod!" from decades ago. H-infix marking of `Ghod' and other words spread into the 1960s counterculture via underground comix, and into early hackerdom either from the counterculture or from SF fandom (the three overlapped heavily at the time). More recently, the h infix has become an expected feature of benchmark names (Dhrystone, Rhealstone, etc.); this is probably patterning on the original Whetstone (the name of a laboratory) but influenced by the fannish/counterculture h infix.