situation critical Last Monday when I got back to work after my lightning-quick visit to Calgary, my head was probably still a time zone or two away. My "boss", Reuben, asked me about something that I'd done prior to the weekend and I couldn't remember the result of the task. It's not like me to leave something incomplete, so I wasn't too worried about it, but he was a little, well, distressed, and told me he needed me to follow up on the matter on a "hyper-urgent" basis. This is the conversation froo and I had about it a couple days later:

Chief: I told my friend Mark about the hyper-urgency and he said this:
"Hyper-urgent. I like that. Is there a higher degree of urgency than that? How about mega-hyper-urgent."
froo: good point. We need an urgent alert scale. Urgency level yellow.
Chief: urgency level: hyper
froo: make up a table so you can use it as a reference
Chief: I will. Weekend project.
froo: this will help ["Homeland Security Advisory System"]
Chief: oh, good resource. I should advise Reuben that "hyper" is not one of the generally accepted categories
froo: i think you can have modified scale for urgency. It's different than terror (kinda)
Chief: yeah, you might be right. 'Cause "severely urgent" doesn't really work.
froo: try to make "crazy urgent" one of the levels
Chief: good tip
froo: (more or less than hyper, i do not know...)
Chief: i'll arrange for a focus group. we'll sort it out
froo: yeah, don't make any rash decisions that could lead to elevated urgency without reason
Chief: unjustified urgency would be bad

Using the Homeland security version as a model, here's what I've put together.

  | ¶ 3:31 p.m.