Don't speak geek to your family

In planning my recent vacation an email thread was started about who would be picking up the groceries.  Most importantly, who would be picking up the drinks.  My brother was quick to volunteer.  I said in no uncertain terms I didn't want any of drinkA [1].  In the past my brother was known to buy large quantities of drinkA. 

Or at least I thought I said it in no uncertain terms.  As we arrived I opened the fridge to find a large quantity of drinkA.  I stared in disbelief and confronted my brother.  He responded with "yeah, I thought it was weird that your email said to buy that but since you clearly wanted it ..."  After several other family members said the same, I placed the blame on a busy week at work and a simple typo. 

Luckily my wife brought up the email in question as proof of my mistake.  The line read

"Jason we want beer.  For the purpose of the beach beer != drinkA"

To most people reading this entry the meaning is as clear as it can be.  Don't buy drinkA.  Unfortunately the rest of my family are not programmers and read this as an emphatic equals sign. 

Lesson learned.

[1] The particular drink in question is not important.

Comments

• Anonymous
  August 20, 2008
  PingBack from http://hoursfunnywallpaper.cn/?p=2240

• Anonymous
  August 20, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  August 20, 2008
  != is the "not equal" operator (and so the opposite of "==" ) in some programming languages, so "beach beer != drinkA" should mean "any beer but not drinkA"

• Anonymous
  August 21, 2008
  Ahhh... It's hard to make jokes in a different language :)

• Anonymous
  August 25, 2008
  Perhaps the VB <> would have worked better? At least it will make the uneducated reader go "huh?" and ask for clarification.

• Anonymous
  August 25, 2008
  @Jason M Unfortunately I was in the middle of a C++ marathon at the time and != was the first tool that came to mind.  

• Anonymous
  August 27, 2008
  Miller Lite is not beer. Pliney the Elder - THAT's beer.