Scott Hanselman works with me on random crap at work, and over the course of time I’ve gotten to know a little more about how he works and stuff he says all the time, and I have to call BS on him every once in a while, so to speak. We all have our catch phrases or whatever, I just find there’s a whole dialect forming solely based on Hanselisms. We’ll call this “Hanselingo” - The Language of the Hanselman.

Hanselminutes: A unit of time in a continuum unique to Scott. Started when I asked him if I could get a feature enhancement on a bit of code he was working on. “Sure, gimme 10 minutes,” he said. Two weeks later, I’m still waiting the 10 minutes. (Yes, it did eventually get done.) That was “10 Hanselminutes.”

Thanks For Your Patience: This is a classic phrase that you’ll usually get in a reasonably patronizing tone when you’re being slow to pick something up… or Scott perceives you’re being slow to pick it up. A “nice” way of turning the situation around and not only making you feel stupid but guilty for eating up time as well.

Cakemail or cmail: An email sent with a non sequitur answer. Derives from a random phrase that one might interject into a conversation (“Hey, Scott, what exactly is this method doing?” “I like cake!”). Typically the result of the fact he’s got 10 things to do and time enough for five of them.

“I’m not sayin’…, I’m just sayin’…: An easy way out when you’re telling someone something they don’t want to hear. “You know, this could really be improved if you held to any sort of quality standards whatsoever.” “What?!” “I’m not sayin’… I’m just sayin’…” Usually accompanied by hand gestures: the “I’m not sayin’” gets the hands raised in the air, like a small, defensive “hands up” maneuver; the “I’m just sayin’” gets the hands pushed forward, palms up, like an offering.

Scott’s the man, but I just gotta give him crap. It makes my world go ‘round. :)