Quote of the Day
When I was 30, 35 years old, I knew, in a deep sense, every line of code I ever wrote. I’d write a program during the day, and at night I’d sit there and walk through it line by line and find bugs. I’d go back the next day and, sure enough, it would be wrong.
— Ken Thompson
Figure 1: Wikipedia Photo of "Seven of Nine". (Source)
I work for a small company that has 13 employees named "Mark", which is my first name. It is common for me to be in meetings with three "Marks" present. I have had as many as six "Marks" in a meeting. This makes using our first names difficult, and I usually go by my last name. This system works, but does sound a bit gruff to people from outside the company who here our meetings.
Most engineers are familiar with Star Trek and one of the managers at our company has proposed that we use the Borg naming convention for engineers named “Mark”. The Borg would give their individuals names like “Seven of Nine” (Figure 1).
The proposal at my company is to assign “Marks” their Borg name based on their placement in the company email list, which is alphabetical. Because I am the first "Mark" in the list, my Borg name is "1 of 13". The "Mark" sitting next to me is "9 of 13". The "Mark" a few cubes down from me is "13 of 13".
Not all Borg characters used this naming convention, like Locutus (Figure 1).
Figure 2: Wikipedia Photo of Locutus of Borg.
We do occasionally use these names in meetings, but just for fun. It is amazing that we have so many "Marks". However, we have quite a few engineers who are in the 50 to 60 year age group and "Mark" must have been a very popular name back in the 1950s.