With the approachment of September 9, 2009, this would be a good time to post something remotely relevant.
As you know, this date translates into 09.09.09 or if you like, 09/09/09. Since it's symmetric, we en-USers cannot fuck it up for the rest of you!
Anyway, the story revolves around the English word "nine" (9) and the German word "nein" (no), which are obviously homophones.
We were using "nein" a bunch, and confusing people, since they couldn't figure out why were were nine-ing, when we were actually nein-ing! We even found ourselves 9-ball ("nein" ball) key chains, What Luck!!
To add to the fun, I constructed a command line application that checked for unread mail, and played the indicated audio file if there was any. I had this on a scheduled task, at the bottom of the hour, mostly because I hated having Outlook running all-the-time (this was the 1990s).
I didn't have a microphone, but my lab-mate "Al" did, and he recorded one of our favorite phrases at-the-time:
Nein! Nein! Nein!
That was the punchline, wasn't it....
