Date:  Tue, 11 Nov 1997 03:09:09 -0500
From:  Jim Crotty <Monkmag[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Ping of Death

In a message dated 11/10/97 12:19:55 PM, you wrote:

<<And one
of my all-time favorites: "wave a dead chicken," which is to perform a number
of ritualistic procedures in the vain hope of reviving ailing or broken
hardware or software. Years ago, I had a computer whose hard drive was very
sick and often wouldn't show up on the monitor when I started the machine. I
found myself putting my hand on the CPU every time I started it, hoping, I
guess, to comfort and encourage it. This is waving a dead chicken.>>

In How To Talk American I define "wave a dead chicken" this way: "to perform
a useless and irrelevant repair on a severely damaged computer to prove to
the customer you at least tried to fix it." Gareth, have you noticed this
expression used in this context?

James Marshall Crotty
Author, How To Talk American (Houghton Mifflin)
Co-author, The USA Phrasebook (Lonely Planet), Mad Monks On the Road (Simon
and Schuster), Monk's Guide to California (Simon and Schuster)
Publisher-Editor, Monk: The Mobile Magazine, Monk.com (the soon-to-be-famous
web site)