Like the Dickens

I try SO hard not to write about work. Everyone who reads this here blog pretty much can tell I'm in some sort of computer industry job, but for those of you who don't know the specifics, well, so much the better. That I mention on occasion that I work on [expletive deleted]'s, or that some nights I'm out til all hours - let your mind run free.

I'm getting better at it - at least I think I am - but from time to time we think all we need do is get the nasty, dirty thing running and...

We pause a moment for the witticism of the day: this blog post's title has nothing to do with Charles Dickens; rather, "the dickens" predates Charles by at least 200 years, as this explanation shows from an online edition of an Australian newspaper:

"Dickens is a euphemism for the Devil. The expression has been in the language for centuries and predates the birth of Charles Dickens by at least 200 years. Mistress Page utters it in Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor (Act 3, Scene 2): 'I cannot tell what the dickens his name is my husband had him of'."

So if we apply the historical fact that "dickens" means the devil, and thus alliterates to "hell", then "running like the dickens" therefore means "running like hell".

And that's just what we do when we're pretty sure we've completed the impossible repair job.

"Run Like Hell" = R L H