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Early 00's Vocabulary
SITCOMs: What yuppies turn into when they have children and
one of them stops working to stay home with the kids. Stands
for: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage.
SQUIRT THE BIRD: To transmit a signal to a satellite.
STARTER MARRIAGE: A short-lived first marriage that ends in
divorce with no kids, no property and no regrets.
STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed
out and whiny.
SWIPED OUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless
because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.
TOURISTS: People who take training classes just to get a vacation
from their jobs. Example: "We had three serious students in
the class; the rest were just tourists."
TREEWARE: Hacker slang for documentation or other printed material.
XEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from
one's workplace.
GOING POSTAL: Euphemism for being totally stressed out, for
losing it. Makes reference to the unfortunate track record of
postal employees who have snapped and gone on shooting rampages.
ALPHA GEEK: The most knowledgeable, technically proficient
person in an office or work group.
CHIPS AND SALSA - Chips = hardware, salsa = software. i.e.:
"Well, first we gotta figure out if the problem's in your chips
or your salsa."
G.O.O.D. Job - A "Get-Out-Of-Debt" job. A well-paying job people
take in order to pay off their debts, one that they will quit
as soon as they are solvent again.
IRRITAINMENT - Entertainment and media spectacles that are
annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them.
The O.J. trials, Ally McBeal, Monica Lewinsky, etc.
DEINSTALLED - Euphemism for being fired. Heard on the voice
mail of a Vice President at a downsizing computer firm: "You
have reached the number of a deinstalled vice president. Please
dial our main number and ask the operator for assistance. (*See
also, "Decruitment." - **See also, "Decommissioned")
VULCAN NERVE PINCH - The taxing hand position required to reach
all the appropriate keys for certain commands. For instance,
the warm re-boot for a Mac II computer involves simultaneously
pressing the Control key, the Command key, the Return key and
the Power On key. Sometimes referred to as the "THREE-FINGERED
SALUTE."
YUPPIE FOOD STAMPS - The ubiquitous $20 bills spewed out of
ATMs everywhere. Often used when trying to split the bill after
a meal: "We owe $8 each, but all anybody's got are yuppie food
stamps."
BLAMESTORMING - Sitting around in a group discussing why a
deadline was missed or a project failed and who is responsible.
SEAGULL MANAGER - A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise,
craps over everything and then leaves.
CHAINSAW CONSULTANT - An outside expert brought in to reduce
the employee head count, leaving the brass with clean hands.
CLM - Career Limiting Move - Used among microserfs to describe
ill-advised activity. Trashing your boss while he or she is
within earshot is a huge CLM.
ADMINISPHERE - The rarefied organizational layers beginning
just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere
are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems
they were designed to solve.
DILBERTED - To be exploited and oppressed by your boss. Derived
from the experiences of Dilbert, the geek-in-hell comic strip
character. "I've been dilberted again. The old man revised the
specs for the fourth time this week."
FLIGHT RISK - Used to describe employees who are suspected
of planning to leave the company or department soon.
404 - Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error
message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested document
could not be located. Used as in: "Don't bother asking him ...
he's 404, man."
GENERICA - Features of the American landscapes that are exactly
the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip
malls, subdivisions. Used as in: "We were so lost in generica
that I forgot what city we were in."
OHNO-SECOND - That minuscule fraction of time in which you
realize that you've just made a BIG mistake.
PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE - The fine art of whacking the crap
out of an electronic device to get it to work again.
UMFRIEND - A relation of dubious standing or a concealed relationship,
as in "This is Bridget, my ... um ...friend."
BODY NAZIS: Hard-core exercise and weightlifting fanatics who
look down on anyone who doesn't work out obsessively.
CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.
IDEA HAMSTERS: People who always seem to have their idea generators
running.
MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the
Couch Potato.
PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly
in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to
see what's going on.
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