An important term to know of in the software development industry is yak shaving. The term is properly defined in Wiktionary, but Wiktionary's etymology section for the term is odd, and it doesn't really convey why hairy cattle is being referred to.
On the web, there are many different anecdotes illustrating yak shaving. In my opinion, the following is the best one. It was posted by the late Bill Gaiennie in 2009 on a website which now only exists in the WayBackMachine. I think it deserves to exist on a live website, so here it is:
I simply wanted to snap some pictures of my dogs running around the park last weekend. As I was about to round up the dogs to head to the park, I went to grab my camera, but then realized that I had left it at work.
So I jumped in the car to run by my office to grab the camera, but realized that I didn’t have a key to get into the building. I knew that a co-worker always had a key, so I started to drive to his house, but then realized that the last time I borrowed something from him, an exotic suit, I never returned it because I had accidentally ripped a pretty big hole in the jacket. I knew that my co-worker wouldn’t trust me with the office key if I didn’t return the suit, sans hole, but I had not been able to get it repaired because it was made out of yak hair, something I wasn’t even sure I could get.
I contacted a tailor who would be able to repair the suit, but wouldn’t be able to do it unless I was able to provide a supply of yak hair so that she could weave it into a fabric, and then from there use the yak fabric to repair the yak suit jacket….
So there I was at the zoo, shaving a yak, all so I could take a few pictures of my dogs at the park.
