Computers, comPUTERS, cptrs

This entry is devoted to computers. To browsing, to emails, and to people. Mixing the helpful, the proposed and the irritating. Inventing 6 new terms along the way while hopefully entertaining you.

1) ‘The Takeaway’- is when you’re looking at a web page and you click a link and the new web page replaces the old one (no new window opens). Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t. Sort of a ‘Well punk, do you feel lucky?' The Takeaway is like being forced to trade in your old car for a new one. Even if it’s trading in a ’67 Corvette for a Trabant (think East Germany). I always hold down the SHIFT key while clicking a link because it always makes the new link appear in a new window. Just a tip.

2) ‘The Clone’- This is a simple but handy tip. If you’re on a web page and hit ‘Control-N’ it creates a duplicate of your current web page including the browser history. Lots of uses. Like, if you want to keep your current web page but also want to go back to your last one then CLONE the page (Control –N) and hit the back button on the new one. This is my countermeasure when I let my guard down and get screwed by the The Takeaway. Try Cloning this web page right now with Control-N and then close the new page. Was that, like, totally empowering or what?

3) ‘The Boomerang’- This means taking a quick look at a web page link but coming right back for the sake of continuity or interest . It’s most helpful as an expectation/ instruction to give to someone in your email when you want them to visit a web page link for like a minute or less. Like:.

Hey Joe, Boomerang this for a sec: http://www.jokeswarehouse.com/cgi-bin/viewjoke2.cgi?id=20010608

(You can actually boomerang that link now for a good laugh.)

The Boomerang does away with ‘When I have a free day I’ll visit that web link that Bill sent last January. Right now I’m busy with Halloween plans though. ’ Yep, it's next in line after that solo trek across Greenland you're going to do someday.

The boomerang is a good compromise between ignoring your friend’s link (yeah, me too) or, alternatively, bailing on their email to get immersed in their link (often referred to as the porno link effect.)

The directive to Boomerang can be quite important to heed. Else you might get:

‘Dude! I told you to just Boomerang that web link fast and take a quick at that chick’s knockers. Too bad you didn’t get back to my email and read the part about the tickets I got to the 7th game of the World Series. Joe and I had a great time watching the Cubs finally win it!’

4) The ‘IR’ (Injured Reserved) ’. Taken from Baseball this is the status of a player who is too injured to play. And is a great term for explaining why you can’t, won’t and never will look at some web link your friend sent you on, like, The History of Organic Chemistry.

Just write back: ‘Sorry, Joe, I’m on the IR with this one’

If Joe’s feelings are hurt then send him a link to ‘A Detailed Life History of all Presidential Relatives’. Then later, ask him how he liked the story about Garfield’s second cousin and the racehorse. When Joe lies and says it was a great story tell him there was no such story. Then Joe will understand the IR

5) 'The Icicle'- This is an inexact acronym but stands for ‘ICCL’ short for ‘I Couldn’t Care Less’. It’s those people who respond to your earnest, heartfelt, spellchecked, 3 paragraph emails that took 25 minutes to write with clipped, glib responses like:

‘i agree. ya cud be rihgt on this…’

That’s an Icicle.

Ya know, If you can’t bother to even capitalize the letter ‘i’ or write anything even remotely reflective of what I sent to you then let’s just exchange preprinted Christmas Cards and leave it at that. At the very least go on the IR. And, by the way, using shortcuts like cud =could applies either to the practical efficiencies of cell phone texting or to 90 year olds who remember the long gone days of ‘telexes’ when your company was literally charged for each character in your message. In an email it means I’m going to devote the absolute minimum amount of time I can to writing back. My reply to you:

tks a lot. get yur msg. FY too.

Usage for the term: I tried to reach out to Kathy but she was an ‘Icicle’

6) 'GETTING FLOORED'- This is when a web page with 'automatically loading movies' or a program (like McAfee!) suddenly speeds up your computer's processor to 100% CPU. Sorta like sitting in your car idling with the gas pedal stuck to the floor. The most irritating aspect of this is not the degradation in performance but the damn increase in the noise of your computer fan as it desperately tries to cool down the racing processor. It's like listening to a car alarm go off on the street except it's happening right in your living room.

Moreover, it creates this inescapable impression that some poor entity (albeit a silicon one) is being pushed to the edge of exhaustion. Forced with an electric prod to run around the track- and all you can do is watch in angst from the stands, triggered by this natural sense of concern and compassion. Can't the 'Grand Governing Computer Committee of the World ' require a mandatory popup screen for web pages or programs to first ask you: 'May we run the living shit out of your processor now??'

7) 'GETTING CAPPED'- In the ghetto GETTING CAPPED means getting shot {:>0. But on the computer is it that totally irritating phenomena when your CAPS LOCK is accidentally turned on because of its inane position just above the SHIFT key. So if you’ve been too lazy (like me) to ever learn how to touch type, you type by looking down at the keyboard for maybe 20-30 characters at a time. And when you get CAPPED you look up at the screen only to find most of yoUR LAST SENTENCE IS IN UPPER CASE. Yeah yeah, I don’t really give a shit about the ‘history of the keyboard’ and all. Whoever is currently responsible for this ridiculous ergonomic blunder should be CAPPED. And I’m not talking about the computer kind…

On a flimsy segue, there are actually worse fates than being ghetto CAPPED. Check out the below news story about the guy who had his head completely severed by another guy on a bus up in Canada {:>0

Or you can go on the IR for it if you want. It's not a Boomerang either- cause this post is over.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/07/31/international/i082526D97.DTL&tsp=1