One of The Autopian’s core goals is to provide you, our lovely readers, with content that is both enlightening and entertaining. Anyone can regurgitate a press release, but only we can obsess over taillights or horrifically unreliable cars nobody’s ever heard of. A lot of us slide pop culture references into our works, some more obscure than others. Here are a few of them.
If you read something from me, you’re liable to see terminology used by Derek Bieri of Vice Grip Garage like “lightning cube” (battery) or “because the way that it is.” I occasionally slide in references to the popular Pitch Meeting series by Screen Rant such as “super easy, barely an inconvenience,” which, surprisingly, applies to a lot of car stuff.
Matt, Jason, Thomas, and Pete get perhaps more obscure in their references. Honestly, it took me way too long to realize that I didn’t actually know what former Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares looked like and that I had sort of accepted Jon Lovitz from SNL as canon. Matt’s also once done a Short Circuit reference, and then Pete tried doing a Scarface reference on a topshot. We’ve even done music references, such as me referencing Mannie Fresh track ‘Real Big‘ and Matt referencing the Shock G Humpty Dance.
Anyway, today Pete dropped a very subtle reference into the topshot of the Morning Dump, and thankfully it wasn’t too obscure. Root and at least 11 others got it:
OMG, that “PC LOAD LETTER” topshot (is that what you call it?) made me snort coffee out of my nose.
Got coffee all over my TPS reports!
A. Barth took it a level deeper:
“PC LOAD LETTER”?
WTF does that mean?!?!
I highly recommend a watch of Office Space. If you don’t have the time, just watch this:
Put any number of car enthusiasts together and you’re bound to hear some bragging about how fast someone has commanded a vehicle. There’s always something so cool about going fast, and as Thomas wrote, there’s a “200 MPH Driveway” in America that’s rotting away. I think Canopysaurus has the coolest speed story in the comments:
Fun story. Tales like this are the icing on the Autopian cake.
In an aside, I once sped from 0 to 165 mph in less than 900 feet. It was in an F-4 Phantom during a carrier launch. Heck of a speed run.
Mark Tucker has decided to theme a series of Shitbox Showdowns after the alphabet and the cars have been great. Also amazing is the alliteration you’ll find in the comments. Today was ‘H,’ and Huja Shaw had a great response:
The Hillman is Handsome. The Hyundai is Homely. The prices are both Horrific. I’m taking my money and going Home.
Finally, the Autopian community has figured out what the Hyundai Santa Fe’s taillights really look like. David Handy:
It’s obviously the Satellite of Love, from MST3K.
Have a great evening, everyone!
(Topshot: 20th Century Fox)
Office Space, Idiocracy, and Beavis and Butthead. Mike Judge is a visionary.
The thing that I find hilarious is that “PC Load Letter” is the world’s simplest printer error message: it’s out of Letter (8 1/2″x11″) paper.
I swear that the real joke is that characters couldn’t figure it out.
Right, it’s not like it’s an Error 500 Internal Server Error message.
It’s not that’s it’s indecipherable, it’s that it’s unnecessarily obscure, just one more little thing making office life worse for no reason.
What purpose does “PC” serve in the message other than obfuscation? “Paper tray empty”, “Letter tray empty”, or “Load 8 1/2×11 paper” is what a normal person would write for that message.
Paper Cassette(PC) just my guess…..
“PC” means “paper cassette,” aka the removable peice that you put paper in. A “paper tray,” however, is non-removable.
The software that these machines, ESPECIALLY mid-90’s office equipment, was designed around three things:
Expandability/adaptability – the same software should be able to operate most or all of the product range. No writing individual programs for each model
Limited computation resources –
Devices like this did not have lots of processing power or memory. And what they DID have was prioritized towards the tasks of, you know, printing. Programming in complicated error messages takes away from that.
Limited display resources – Hardware in the 90’s didn’t have the high-DPI LCD’s that we have now. Messages *had* to be short and compressed in order to fit on the displays
And quite frankly, the characters are mid/late 90’s software engineers themselves. They would have doing this exact kind of programming themselves.
I once worked for a German company’s office in Montreal.
There was a cheap inkjet printer and the team from Germany switched the display to German. The printer wasn’t happy one day and the display was a constant scrolling of letters.
Whatever was wrong involved one of the German words that was made up from a bunch of other words, just stuck together. Something like “PAPERCASSETTEISEMPTY PLEASECOMPLETEFORMANDPRINTIT THEN PERFOEM LOADPAPERCASETTE OPERATION”
If it’s anything like the printers in my lab in the late ’90s, it will say that when there is paper in the tray, only be satisfied if you opened and closed the tray. It also wouldn’t print unless the 11×17 tray had paper even though we didn’t use that size. It was still better than the fancy printer in the office area next door.
I learned that about 20 years ago when I had my first teaching job. The printer we had there would flash that message when it ran out of paper, and it was all I could do to stop from shouting to my class each time, “PC Load Letter! What the fuck does that mean!?!”
It still confused me for a long time until I found out that the Americans have their own system of paper sizes (of course), and that one size is called ‘letter’.
For the rest of us, that’s about the same size as A4.
Exactly – Here in Australia we use A series sheet sizes but common printers often default to US ‘letter’ and get angry when you use common A4 sized. pain in the ass.
There’s a difference between obscure references and references that are universal but only if you meet the age requirement.
The sad part I know what PC load letter is referring to.
Office Space is the greatest movie ever made about software engineers.
Made COTD! Time to update my LinkedIn profile.
Nice call on the Satellite of Love. Love MST3000.
Hmph.
I’m just here to remind everyone that I had to correct Torch on the name of the free game cartridge that came with the Atari 2600. It’s not called Tank, it’s Combat.
Do better. LOL
Well done! You’d think an organization this big could pay for proper fact checking of these articles! 😀
I forget, were the similar airplane combat games on the same cartridge or was that a different one?
Same.
Only a sucker chose the big ass bomber instead of the triple fighter wing.
That big bomber was the “little brother” plane. In that I made my little brother use it when we played Combat.
If you enjoy the “Pitch Meeting” videos, Ryan George has a whole separate channel for his other bits.
I like Ryan George from the thing I just watched. Sadly a lot of movies/shows nowadays I just watch the pitch meeting as it’s better quality.
Office Space was a very important movie in my life, a time when I was working in a cubicle in a lifeless job. I didn’t need to see a shrink, but I quit that job not too long after and found better pastures elsewhere!
I called it a cubic hell when I worked in one of those. Now it’s open concept. Not sure which is worse. Fortunately I only go into the office once a month or so.
Woohoo! COTD! Thanks, Mercedes.
Now, has anyone seen my stapler?
Was it red?
Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler.
I also find it funny that Milton was played by Stephen Root and your username is Root. Maybe it really is your stapler?
I have my very own red Swingline stapler. Some people get the joke. Some don’t.
Oh god. Someone mentioned MST3K.
Now I’ll be singing the theme song and its variations (melody and backing vocals simultaneously) for the next week or so.
Crrrrrrrooooooowwwwwwww!
Want to add this gem to that play list?
Gamera is really neat!
Gamera is filled with meat!
We’ve been eating Gamera!
That’s what runs through my head every time MST3K comes up. Gamera! Gamera!
Repeat to yourself “it’s just a show”.
You should really just relax. 😀
I currently have “Idiot Control Now” stuck in my head.
PC LOAD LETTER goes much deeper for those of us from peak copier era of the late 90s.
Honestly, I didn’t comment on it because I thought we all knew it intimately. Those early days of network printers were worse than the ninth circle of Hell.
I made a Hogan’ Heroes reference in the Morning Dump comments this morning. Not sure very many (if any) people got it.
I (and my pop culture references) are getting old.
Loved the Office Space/TPS report references though.
Say it like Hochstetter- “Kleeeenk”
These kids today, they know nothing. NOTHING!
Michael Beranek and Balloondoggle, you’ve made my day.
My work here is done.
I watched so many Hogan’s Heroes reruns when I had mono and was stuck at home on the couch for basically a month straight.