wave a dead chicken

jargon To perform a ritual in the direction of crashed

software or hardware that one believes to be futile but is

nevertheless necessary so that others are satisfied that an

appropriate degree of effort has been expended. "I'll wave a

dead chicken over the source code, but I really think we've

run into an OS bug".

Compare voodoo programming, rain dance.

[Jargon File]

(1996-09-08)