The Asterisk of Complete Negation

“Back Stage Tour*”

How exciting!  A back stage tour!  I wonder what that little star refers to.

“* for insurance reasons the tour does not go back stage.”

Wait, I’m sorry, what?

I’m certain there’s a Simpsons line to this effect, but I can’t think of the precise wording.

See You Later, Alligator

Dear Frontier Airlines,

I do not believe you are using the word “lowest” correctly.

$219.00  
lowest fare
5 seats left
at this price
$189.00  
 
1 seat left
at this price

Don’t worry. All elementary school students have difficulty with this concept at first.  One of my own elementary school teachers – I vaguely recall it being Mrs. Magliolo in the fifth grade – taught us a helpful mnemonic device.  The little alligator is very hungry and always wants to eat the bigger number, so 219 > 189 because 219 is a bigger number than 189 is.

With a little practice I’m confident you’ll be able to master this.  Don’t give up!

Sincerely,
Your Most (or is it Least?) Loyal Customer

What Does rm -rf ~/* Do Again?

The following command reports the number of files in the 2006 directory, including files in all subdirectories:

find 2006 -type f | wc -l

The following command deletes all the files in the 2006 directory, including files in all subdirectories:

find 2006 -type f | xargs rm

When both commands are in your bash history (left over from when you moved the 2005 directory), you should probably be careful before hastily executing one.