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Jiffy
This nOde last updated June 11th, 2001 and is permanently morphing...
(5 Muluc (Water)/5 Toj (Thunder) - 109/260 - 12.19.8.5.9)

• Jiffy Lube oil
• Jiffy Peanut Butter
• track _Jiffy Boy_ by Wax off of _13 Unlucky Numbers_ CD on Interscope (1995)

• A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time.  It is 1/100 of a second.
• A "jiffy" is a unit of time: 3.3357 times 10 raised to the -11 (3.3357x10^-11) seconds. So named for the length of time it takes light to travel a cm in a vacuum.

1. The duration of one tick of the system clock on your computer (see tick). Often one AC cycle time (1/60 second in the U.S. and Canada, 1/50 most other places), but more recently 1/100 sec has become common. "The swapper runs every 6 jiffies" means that the virtual memory management routine is executed once for every 6 ticks of the clock, or about ten times a second. 2. Confusingly, the term is sometimes also used for a 1-millisecond wall time interval. 3. Even more confusingly, physicists semi-jokingly use `jiffy' to mean the time required for light to travel one foot in a vacuum, which turns out to be close to one nanosecond. 4. Indeterminate time from a few seconds to forever. "I'll do it in a jiffy" means certainly not now and possibly never. This is a bit contrary to the more widespread use of the word. Oppose nano. See also Real Soon Now.

- _The New Hacker's Dictionary_ by Eric S. Raymond 

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