TWTPMTBB

3 thoughts on “TWTPMTBB”

1. Ahhh…

   The joys of Management and office politics in a time of reog’s.

   Good times…good times…

   I do not miss this at all!

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2. And a decade later, I receive an email (sender names redacted):

   This is a slightly unusual question from a few complete strangers: We’re three oceanographers who found the letters “TWTPMTBB” written in the margins of an oceanography textbook on an ongoing research cruise. None of us had any idea what they may mean, so we googled it. It turns out that your blog post from almost exactly 10 years ago has the exact same combination of letters, but unfortunately we couldn’t find a definition anywhere. We figure that the chances of a “random” match of 8 letters is vanishingly small, so we were wondering if you could remember what those letters meant (or still mean) to you.

   With best unbeknownst regards from the Research Vessel Endeavor (which is currently in the middle of the Atlantic, http://techserv.gso.uri.edu/EndeavorNow.asp )

   And, to be honest, I was stumped (embarrassingly so) for several minutes. Until I figured out it was:

   That’s Why They Pay Me The Big Bucks

   So I thought I’d record that here, for posterity and future puzzled oceanographic researchers (though why it’s in an oceanography text I have, myself, no idea).

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3. And, let me just say, the idea of getting an email missive from an oceanographic vessel, mid-Atlantic, over something I wrote a decade ago is, frankly, too cool for words.

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