provocative maintenance: n. [common ironic mutation of
`preventive maintenance'] Actions performed upon a machine at
regularly scheduled intervals to ensure that the system remains in a
usable state. So called because it is all too often performed by a
field servoid who doesn't know what he is doing; such
`maintenance' often _induces_ problems, or otherwise results in the
machine's remaining in an _un_usable state for an indeterminate
amount of time. See also scratch monkey.
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