Some Stuff I Simply Don’t “Get”
October 23, 2012 by Patricia Sund
I’m about as puzzled as Pebbles looks…
Well, I don’t! There are many things out there that I simply don’t understand and sometimes I don’t think I ever will. For instance, I tweet. I don’t quite understand Twitter. It seems like you have to be on it 24/7 in order to keep up with everything. So I somehow miss the point half the time. And of course there are other things. While I use my Laptop and I’m fairly proficient with it, don’t ask me how it works, or why. I’ve read book after book about the computer age, Apple, Inc and how this amazing revolution came about. But I just don’t know how the magic happens.
Good Onion Rings? I totally get it…
Take iCloud for instance. I “have” it. I just don’t know how to use it yet. I mean, where is the stuff I put on it? Where does it go? I realize I sounds fairly ridiculous. I know it’s online storage, but is it stashed in a server somewhere in Des Moines? And the thing that bothers me about online storage is the fact that I can’t get to it if I’m not online. And half of the time I need to get to something, I’m 30,000 feet in the air flying over a body of water with no access to the Net. So it simply doesn’t do me much good in the big scheme of things.
I did manage to find this very cool website called “How Stuff Works.” And it has all kinds of very nice explanations about exactly that. Anything from “Wrong ways to use a comma,” “Accidental Inventions,” and “How Social Security Numbers Work.” Hopefully, this will help my woefully inadequate comprehension about that precise subject.
Another subject I’m not to well acquainted with is “Net Lingo.” I had no idea that FATM meant, “Foaming at the Mouth.” And “GROK” means, “To understand or comprehend something.” A Seagull Manager is “A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps over everything, and then leaves.” I kind of like that one.
Maybe Ziffle knows He’s got a tough week coming up.
“Sleep Camels” is kind of interesting. These are, “Ultraworkaholics who go for days on end and then power-sleep most of the weekend in an attempt to store up rest for the week ahead.” And a “Meatbot?” That is also called a warm blooded machine or slang for a human being.
And “Prairie Dogging?” In geek speak it is slang for when someone yells or drops something loudly in a “cube farm” or office and everyone’s heads pop up over the walls to see what’s going on. There’s a lot of stuff I don’t know. But I’m really trying. And when it gets to be too much, I’ll just go back and take solace in the stuff I do understand:
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Posted in essays and articles, Writing | Tagged Bird Blogs, blogging about parrots, computer culture, How stuff works, Internet slang, Parrot Blog, Parrot Blogs, Parrot Nation, Patricia Sund | 5 Comments
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Patricia Sund
Lol! I have to say that I agree with you about Twitter. It’s constant chaos with no direction.
And iCloud, in my mind, is fairly similar to MobileMe, which ended up being a flop. I don’t find iCloud to be all that useful EXCEPT that it automatically syncs your stuff on all of your devices without plugging in. Cool, huh?
I love Twitter. It saves endless flame wars because they say it in 160 characters or not at all. It’s no different from a quick scan of your Google Reader headlines (or old-fashioned newspaper headlines, for that matter) and you quickly pick out the information you need. It’s just different from the Reader in that you can also follow people you know, like your Mom or whoever, and get their quick news updates too without all the noise, yelling, and likes/unlikes/high school cruelty of Facebook. Also, you can pick and choose who to follow as far as your own deals and ads…as an FA you don’t really need this, but for me, the quick updates on sales/miles deals saves me a ton of money. If you remember newspapers, we used to scan the headlines and read a whole newspaper, except maybe the comic strips, in 10 minutes…Twitter brings you back to those days. Except with quick updates from people you know as well…so it’s better.
“Grok” is not net lingo, nor is it an acronym. It has been standard English for most of our lifetimes in my crowd, so maybe we’re just dweebs, I dunno. I would say that “grok” first became common parlance in the 1960s among the hippie readers of Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. However, the word is useful to any English speaker because it connotes sort of a gut level understanding of something, not just an intellectual knowing. So “grok” is actually a real word, while I doubt “Prairie dogging” or “Seagull manager” ever appears in real speech, as opposed to marketing blogs and sales seminar-speak. “Meatbot” is also just jargon, probably only used in the singularity movement, as far as I know, so don’t worry too much about that one.
Fitting. My husband & I tried to figure out iCloud this past weekend & after watching a zillion video’s, reading tutorials & trying it out first hand. I can now say with authority that I now know even less than I did before. Clear as mud.
I do use DropBox & have a kinda-ok good grip on that one, maybe. Err, at least I think I do. Or not. Tough to say. It seems to do the stuff I seem to need it to do.
Twitter. I tried to “get” Twitter. Honestly I did try. But general population of the world…be not offended when I say this…but yall really ain’t got shit to say but yall do love saying a lot of it …err well as much as one can in 140 characters or less.
I know folks say that with Twitter they are one of the first to know of breaking news, which is handy in case of tornado yes, but of Kim & Kanye – hrmmm, not so much.
I swear I’m not becoming the crotchety old bat who shuns modern technology, but I’m also not inclined to follow the herd either without having a good reason.
Thus far, I haven’t seen or recognized a good reason to be wrapped tight with Twitter or iCloud.
lol Patricia, I am with you on this one;). Thanks for the smiles and the re-assurance that I do not stand alone;)
Blessed Be
As crazy as this will sound: I give seminars on how to use these things (twitter, blogs, facebook, Pinterest, google+) for business growth (marketing). You want to get labeled and targeted by advertisers? Use Foursquare. (Although, you can also get great deals on stuff…so…it’s a toss-up.)
But to respond to the real post: LOVE it. It takes an insane amount of time to stay caught up with all the crap out there. If you take a month off–like say a month in isolation at Moffitt being germ-free and kinda not totally lucid with fever–you really lose track of stuff that’s going on! I love the fact that I don’t have to “prairie dog” anymore. I work from home and there are no cubicles here! Hooray! Although…when I drop something or make a loud noise, the parrots pop up from cozy huts or treat dishes or what-have-you. Maybe I’ll make up a term…hawk-spotting…instead of prairie-dogging…for my house.