I found this from an interview with Norm about his hearing loss:
But yes - my favorite was a time with Johnny Carson, millions and millions of viewers, and Johnny asked me, "Norm, how are the new hearing aids?" And I said, "Oh they're fantastic, they have high decibel-low income radiated frequency response and they have positive and negative diodes and they're really fantastic." And then Johnny would ask, "What kind are they?" I answered, "It's a quarter to nine."
My former boss and I were discussing a hand-held vibration data collector warranty issue. At the company, we often used shorthand jargon when discussing our products: hand-held meters were called "boxes"; cables, sensors, etc. were referred to as "accessories" or "externals." The problem was definitely on the control PCB in the data collector. We had not determined whether it was a design flaw, component defect, or a manufacturing process error. My boss said, "We need to think outside the box on this one." I replied, "But boss, the problem is inside the box. We'll never find a root cause if we look outside the box." What followed was 90 seconds of silence while he mulled that over. I eventually got up and left so I could "look inside the box."
