ENGRAM ENTERPRISES MISSION STATEMENT

• What is the purpose of Engram Enterprises?
• What the hell is an engram?
• What, pray tell, is a blivet?

Engram Enterprises is a non-commercial entity conceived as a public representation of the activities and projects of an individual known variously as Rab, Rabbisu, hanuman, or reboots@random. All pages on this site are a product of this person's omni-cognate, egotheistic cerebellum; while everything is written in the first person, the editorial "we" may be used on occasion.

What the hell is an engram?

Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines an engram as "a hypothetical change in neural tissue postulated in order to account for persistence of memory". When defined thusly, and utilized in proper context, the miserable engram could present a rich wellspring of semiotic content. This, however, is not the definition we prefer. Far be it from us to disagree with renowned humanitarian; philosopher; poet; adventurer; musician; science fiction writer Lafayette R. Hubbard...or his protege, David Miscavige.

What, pray tell, is a blivet?

From The Jargon File:

blivet /bliv'et/ [allegedly from a World War II military term meaning "ten pounds of manure in a five-pound bag"] n. 1. An intractable problem. 2. A crucial piece of hardware that can't be fixed or replaced if it breaks. 3. A tool that has been hacked over by so many incompetent programmers that it has become an unmaintainable tissue of hacks. 4. An out-of-control but unkillable development effort. 5. An embarrassing bug that pops up during a customer demo. 6. In the subjargon of computer security specialists, a denial-of-service attack performed by hogging limited resources that have no access controls (for example, shared spool space on a multi-user system).

This term has other meanings in other technical cultures; among experimental physicists and hardware engineers it seems to mean any random object of unknown purpose (similar to hackish use of frob). It has also been used to describe an amusing trick-the-eye drawing resembling a three-pronged fork that appears to depict a three-dimensional object until one realizes that the parts fit together in an impossible way.