Backhoe days

[Gareth Branwyn]

Thought some folks here might find the following email exchange of interest. We've gotten a number of backhoe-related terms submitted to Jargon Watch over the years and as many questions about the meaning of this usage.



Mike,

Thanks for your email. Backhoe-related terms have actually been around for awhile. A "backhoe day" is a day when a network is down (think: the digital world equivalent of a snow day). "Backhoe-induced deep fade" is another way of saying a network is down. There are several other variations on the theme that I can't recall at the moment. These terms are obviously derived from stories of network outages caused by over-zealous backhoe operators cutting through network cables.

Regards,
Gareth Branwyn
Jargon Watch Editor
Wired


-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Hicks <xxxx at umn.edu>
To: jargon at wired.com <jargon at wired.com>
Date: Monday, October 18, 1999 12:10 PM
Subject: I'll give this a shot..


>Browsing around today, I came across this statement, made by Alan Cox
>(basically the second-in-command of Linux development):
>
>"Someone backhoed the network for the morning."
>
>I'm not sure what the _exact_ meaning of that was (whether is Net
>connection was just bogged down, or if a backhoe somewhere actually did
>cut him off.
>
>Anyway, just to be nice about citing my sources, The URL is here:
>http://www.linux.org.uk/diary/ and he wrote that sentence on October
>11th.
>
>I suppose you've probably seen something like this before, but I figured
>sending it in couldn't hurt..

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