A scratch is a mark of abrasion on a surface.

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Scratch, also known as Scratch II (foaled 1947) was a French Thoroughbred racehorse and sire best known for winning the Prix du Jockey Club and the classic St Leger Stakes in 1950. Scratch won the Solario Stakes in England as a two-year-old and emerged as one of the best of a very strong generation of French-trained colts in the following year. He won the Prix de Guiche and Prix Greffulhe in the early part of the year and then defeated the year's outstanding three-year-old colt Tantieme in the Prix du Jockey Club. In the autumn of 1950 he won the St Leger by defeating Vieux Manoir, who had beaten him in the Grand Prix de Paris. He won the Prix Jean Prat as a four-year-old before being retired to stud where he had an unremarkable record as a sire of winners in Europe and South America.

Background

Scratch was a chestnut horse with a white star and a white sock on his right hind leg bred by his owner Marcel Boussac. He was sired by Pharis, the undefeated winner of the 1939 Grand Prix de Paris. Scratch's dam Orlamonde was an unsuccessful racehorse but produced several other winners including Damno, who won the Prix d'Arenberg. Orlamonde's dam Naic was a half sister of the Prix du Jockey Club winner Ramus and also produced the Grand Prix de Deauville winner Jock. Scratch was sent into training with Charles Semblat at Chantilly.

Scratch monkey is a term used in hacker jargon, as in "Before testing or reconfiguring, always mount a scratch monkey", a proverb used to advise caution when dealing with irreplaceable data or devices. It is used to refer to any temporary configuration changes to a computer during any risky operation, which include a replacement for some precious resource or data that might otherwise be destroyed.

The meaning is based upon the use in the 1970s of a scratch tape or other storage device, which was available for temporary use, to temporarily store a copy of valuable data or provide extra storage space in case a program required that space. If a problem occurred, the valuable data could be recovered from its sole remaining copy.

The phrase "always mount a scratch monkey" originated from two tales by technicians about maintenance that was performed on computer equipment. The technicians were unaware that the computer was connected to five laboratory monkeys, and the routine maintenance procedures caused the death of three of the monkeys.

Allister is an American pop punk band from Chicago, Illinois. The four-piece formed in 1994 and were one of the first bands to sign to Drive-Thru Records. Besides releasing five studio albums – 1999's Dead Ends and Girlfriends, 2002's Last Stop Suburbia, 2005's Before the Blackout, 2010's Countdown to Nowhere, and 2012's "Life Behind Machines — Allister made a cameo appearance in the 2004 film Sleepover. On March 6, 2007, the band announced their intention to go on hiatus. In 2010, Allister reunited after a three-year break, and have been touring and recording since.

History

Early years (1994–2002)

Allister was formed in Chicago, Illinois in 1994 under their original name Phineas Gage by James B. Conant High School classmates Tim Rogner (vocals, drums) and John "Johnny" Hamada (guitar, vocals), with Eric "Skippy" Mueller (bass) joining in 1996. The following year, they changed their name to Allister, paying homage to Alasdair Gillis from the Canadian TV show You Can't Do That on Television. Upon being submitted a short demo tape, Drive-Thru Records decided to put out their debut release: a 7-inch vinyl record containing four songs, titled You Can't Do that on Vinyl (1998). Before the end of the year, Allister added another guitarist to the band, so Mueller took over guitar duties while Scott Murphy joined on bass.

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People with the name Allister