Company Policy

To get new hardware, large company:

Search through company website to find the online request for service application. Request the hardware be bought.
Include: Name, office number, cubicle number, department, name of computer, type of hardware needed (general), specific hardware needed, reason for request, name of project manager, name of functional manager.
Wait two months for approval of hardware to shunt back and forth through departments and red tape.

Search through company website to find the online request for service application (again). Request the official IT person come install the hardware.
Include: Name, office number, cubicle number, department, name of computer, type of hardware to be installed (general), specific hardware to be installed, reason for request, name of project manager, name of functional manager.
Wait one week for IT person to be free.
Discover that the company-sanctioned version of the hardware you need doesn't fit in your computer.

Search through company website to find the online request for service application (third time). Request a new computer, that will hold the new hardware.
Include: Name, office number, cubicle number, department, name of computer, type of hardware needed (general), specific hardware needed, reason for request, name of project manager, name of functional manager.
Screw up some piece of information. Become informed that they can't give you what you requested, and they think there's something fishy about your request in the first place. Spend several hours on the phone calling from one department to another until you find the one person who understands what you need and dictates to you how to fill out the RFS form correctly. If you're lucky, this guy will take pity on you and tell you to just call him when you need the hardware installed and he'll come by and do it.

Wait one week for new computer. Call the nice guy you finally found. Cross fingers until whole operation is complete.

Go tell boss happy news that you can finally do that piece of the project you've been unable to do. Find out that said project has lost funding.

To get new hardware, small company:

Boss: "Go on ebay and see if you can find what you need. We'll reimburse you once you've got it."

Spend half an hour on ebay, find what you need, confirm it has all the parts with seller, place bid.

Snap, Crackle, & Pop

A little background:

If you're trying to describe the motion of something, the first thing you need is its position. If you measure the rate of change of its position, that's called velocity. The rate of change of velocity is acceleration.

I'd always wondered what the rate of change of acceleration was, until one day in college one of my professors mentioned in passing that this quantity does in fact have a name; the rate of change of acceleration is called "jerk."

So, naturally, I had to start wondering what the rate of change of jerk is. But I wonder no more! Thanks to this post in Cosmic Variance, I now know that the rate of change of jerk is snap.

But wait! There's more! The rate of change (derivative) of snap is crackle, and the derivative of crackle is pop.

Snap, crackle, pop. Never let it be said that scientists have no sense of humor.