The handwriting is on the wall, it seems. MMM knew two of these — my hat is off to you, fellow engineer — and that’s the best score yet. I am, it would appear, tragically weird.

As Carol has pointed out, these probably have a slight (okay, not so slight) American slant, so I might — MIGHT — be able to take a little comfort from that. Ah, but Anna, who is at least as American as I am*, didn’t know any of them either. So, congratulations everyone! You’re all normal!

Here are the origins of the ten items.

1. CPE 1704 TKS

This is from the movie, “Wargames”. It’s the “launch code” that the computer was searching for during the final sequence of the film.**

2. 704 Houser Street

This is the Queens, New York home address of Archie Bunker and family, from the classic Norman Lear sitcom, “All in the Family”.

3. KMG-365

On the TV series, “Emergency!” (later aired in syndication as “Emergency One”, Captain Stanley would acknowledge each alarm by radio with the call “Station 51 responding, KMG-365.” It is, in real life and on film, the FCC callsign of the Los Angeles county fire dispatch radio system.

4. 601

From the classic movie “The Andromeda Strain”, based on a Michael Crichton book of the same title. This was the code flashed on the computer’s screen, which indicated it had overloaded when it tried to analyze the growth rate of the Andromeda organism.

It’s also, as Stu has pointed out, a professional standard for serial digital video. 🙂

5. 12 02 (and 12 01)

I screwed up here. This isn’t from a movie. I think I was thinking of “Apollo 13” and got confused.

This is from real-life Apollo 11. It’s a program alarm that was displayed by the Eagle’s computer at a very tense moment during the descent to the lunar surface. On that primitive computer, 12-series alarms meant that the computer was in “executive overflow”, in this case because of too much data from the radar. Luckily, even though the computer was dumping some incoming data into the bit bucket, the remaining data sufficed for guidance.

6. LV-426

In the second movie of the “Alien” series, “Aliens”, this is the planet where the alien creatures have invaded a terraforming colony, requring Ripley to make her second, slightly butchier appearance on the scene.

7. 8063

The TV series M*A*S*H centered around events at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Korea. The nearest neighboring MASH unit, mentioned many times during the series, is the 8063rd.

8. 415 Beach Lane

In the John Candy movie, “Summer Rental”, our protagonist drives his family to what he thinks is 415 Beach Road, the house he’s rented for their vacation. It’s not. A very funny scene is born.

9. $847.63

If you watch the opening titles of “The Simpsons”, you’ll notice a sequence with Marge and Maggie at the grocery store. When they check out, the clerk accidentally passes Maggie over the price scanner. If you watch very, very closely you’ll see that she rings up at the bargain price of $847.63. Unlike some other parts of the titles***, this one doesn’t change from episode to episode. I have always wondered if that number had any significance, and I guess that’s why I remember it.

10. 714

Who could forget this one? From the Jack Webb series, “Dragnet”, this is Detective Sergeant Joe Friday’s badge number. His badge was shown full-screen at the end of each episode, behind the credits.

Update: One of Anna’s co-workers also correctly points out that this is the number of home runs hit by baseball legend Babe Ruth, the world record until it was broken by Hank Aaron in the 1970s.

* I mean that in the nicest possible way. She’s far smarter than I am, too. She left Georgia for Virginia years before I stupidly left Virginia and ended up in Georgia!

** Pedants would note that in one shot, the code actually began with “JPE”, except that now I’ve beaten them to it.

*** Bart’s sentence on the chalkboard, the sax riff Lisa plays, and the scene with the couch.