I am on my way to work, just
minding my own business... really (and so it begins). I walk into
Coffee People
to get my
double iced black tiger mocha with whipped cream. As I am waiting in line I pick up the
Willamette Week, a weekly news paper here in Portland. In the cover is a picture of a
blonde haired girl with
CAT-5 plugged into her
forehead. The picture is captioned:
Diary of a Dot-Commer
My adventures in the new economy gold rush
By Elizabeth Dye
I would like to say that I am normally a big fan of the
Willamette Week, but as I flipped to this article, I almost heaved. At the beginning of the article it said this:
Word of the day: download
(doun'lod) v. To transfer
information digitally
from one data source to another
"I've got to run to a meeting. Can we
download at lunch so I can tell you why
I have been ignoring you?"
I have to say I was almost ill right there all over the lady in line in front of me, to my horror, I flipped the page and there was a second
definition awaiting me...
Word of the day: bandwidth
(band'width) n. the range
of frequencies within a radi-
ation band required to
transmit a signal.
"Jane just doesn't have the band-
width to do database administration
and have a meaningful relationship
with her loved ones".
As I kept flipping, I realized that she had gone as far as making up her own terms, I swear! This whole "
Internet lingo" in the real world bugs the crap out of me. My roommate learned how to use
mIRC 4 months ago and now instead of saying that he is going to "kick my ass", he says, "eye am going to leet
haxor joo" or, "eye will
ownzor joo". This is a guy that not 4 months ago had
Juno and a 486.
If we are going to use internet terms in real life, here are some of my suggestions:
Word of the day: finger
(fin'ger) v. Displays information about
a systems user.
"Hey man, see that girl in accounting?
I am gonna finger her".
Word of the day: mount
(mount) v. Mounts a little file system
to the bigger file tree.
"Gee it was nice of your sister
to send us cookies; I think we
should mount her and let her into
our club".