Seven years bad luck?

[graculus]

I've come to the conclusion that I'm the least superstitious person I know. I rarely cavill at walking under ladders (unless there's someone up them with a bucket!), don't throw salt over my shoulder if I spill it and generally give little credence to the idea that our destinies are controlled by such arbitrary actions.

So I was amused to discover that I work with a bunch of people a couple of whom salute magpies if they see them, and one of them even says "Good morning Mr Magpie, how's your wife today?" if she sees one. To the extent that, on a car journey with me when she didn't know how I'd react to her behaviour, she admitted later to actually sitting on her hands so she wouldn't do it when she saw a magpie.

This must be local to where I live, because I'd never heard of it where I was before, and one of my co-workers is Hindu so she's obviously absorbed it from locality, rather than ethnic background.

Anyone else got superstitious associates or is it just me? ;)

Comments

[innocent-lex.livejournal.com]

I've heard both the magpie ones - people used to do it at school, but nobody ever seemed to be able to explain why.

As to ladders, I'll walk under them unless someone's up the ladder, because, y'know, it seems awfully silly to assume the're not going to drop something. On my way to work one morning there was a ladder with a bloke up it. Sensibly, I walked around it, and as I was level with the ladder, the bloke dropped a pair of scissors. Yum. Would have been really nice to have those buried in my head.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

I can only assume I was oblivious, since (apart from the rhyme) I'd never really come across any superstitions related to magpies...

[lexin.livejournal.com]

A single magpie is bad luck where I'm from, too. You're supposed to spit. And it's one superstition I've never quite managed to shake off, though I try very hard to do so.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

Poor magpies. Sometimes they get respect, sometimes they get spat at... ;)

[xochiquetzl]

The only real superstition in IT is one that I sometimes subscribe to, kindasorta:

Do not name your computer something really negative.

That one has a basis in user/admin perception. "I don't want an account on Sauron, I want an account on Galadriel!" "Oh, look, Voldemort is acting up again. Apparently he ate his own spool queue. Figures." "Gah! Drusilla has gone insane and cannibalized her own operating system in a fit of RAID malfunction!" And, of course, the most ill-behaved server I've ever managed is the one that was renamed "CF_Poopyhead" after my fit of pique, but that simply because the name was appropriate. ;)

Whether the machine adopts a personality suitable to its name or whether the admin unconsciously takes less care of a machine with an unharmonious name is, of course, an exercise for the believer/nonbeliever.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

And all of those would make such cool names too... I might call my computer Drusilla. ;)

[xochiquetzl]

I think this is where I'm supposed to warn you not to blame me if she goes insane and starts having bizarre technical problems. ;)

Don't name her "Fred." ;)