The other day at work, we had a problem where a customer couldn’t pull a report because there was a backslash in their data. I went to the area that owned the data to ask if they had any way change the data so the customer could pull the report.

"You can’t change history," was the reply I got.

I was curious how my co-worker knew this was a history report and not a current day report since I hadn’t told him. But he had made a point of saying that the historical data can’t be changed. "So, if the data was for current day, you would have been able to change it?" I asked.

"No," he replied. "You can’t change current day data either."

Now I was really puzzled. "Then why did you say, ‘You can’t change history’? That makes it sound like you can change current day."

He replied, "I just like the way it sounds: ‘You can’t change history.’"

Actually, I like the sound of it also.