Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!wuarchive!emory!hubcap!ncrcae!ncrlnk!ncrstp!npdiss1!mercer
From: mercer@npdiss1.StPaul.NCR.COM (Dan Mercer)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: expression "on the rag"
Message-ID: <807@npdiss1.StPaul.NCR.COM>
Date: 28 Dec 90 22:55:19 GMT
Reply-To: mercer@npdiss1.StPaul.NCR.COM (Dan Mercer)
Organization: StPaul
Lines: 23


Looked through the jargon file for my favorite expression "on the
rag",  meaning the computer is having problems staying up.  Anyone
else familiar with it?  First heard it in 1987 at RPI.  We had an IBM
360/50 - then state of the art.  Averaged 50% downtime (real nightmare
- 4000 students sharing 4 keypunches - systems personnel had 2 more,
but frequently commandeered the students keypunches.  We also had
these weird plastic doohickies where you turned a dial to get the
right code and handpunched (usually very inaccurately) the codes.

Anyway,  whenever the system was down,  they hung a red flag on the
flagpole outside the center (probably not the current center).
Anybody have an earlier provenance?

'Tute sucks.

Albany is the asshole of the nation,  and Troy is six mile up.

-- 
Dan Mercer
NCR Network Products Division      -        Network Integration Services
Reply-To: mercer@npdiss1.StPaul.NCR.COM (Dan Mercer)
"MAN - the only one word oxymoron in the English Language"