~ To this day, if I'm not getting too far working on the car my father will
~ comment "You've been faffing about with that for half a day and you're no
~ farther ahead"
~
~ So, I'd like to suggest that while we use noddling, tinkering and such
~ for PRODUCTIVE light work that when real derision and lack of progress is
~ the messanger's intent that we reclaim this FAFFING term as a good choice.
Well, of course, anyone who's been around high-tech for sufficiently
long has probably heard the computer equivalent: frobbing. The
original Hacker's Dictionary defines it in context with tweak and
twiddle, where tweak is a coarse adjustment and twiddle is a fine
adjustment, while frob is a more aimless manipulation.
On LBCs, for instance, you tweak the timing by grabbing the distributor
and turning it till you hear pinging. You twiddle it by hooking up a
timing light and watching the marks in the strobe. And of course, you
frob it by turning the little vernier knob, which has never actually
made a difference on any LBC I've ever owned.
Faffing sounds like a good term to represent a superset of various
different frobbing operations. And actually, swork, noddle and faffle
are good verbs to represent the equivalent of tweak, twiddle and frob
when working on LBCs. (Though I have to say that Swork, Noddle and
Faffle sounds like a Latvian law firm to me...)
--Scott
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