THE SUNFUN VIRTUAL DICTIONARY

ADVERTISERS

Car salesman's term for the cheap, stripped- down, featureless cars in the Sunday newspaper ads. The advertised price is low enough to get you into the dealership, where maybe they can talk you into a car that actually has four wheels and, with a little luck, might be able to move under it's own power.

ADVERTORIAL

An advertisement designed and placed to look like a news story - the newspaper and magazine version of an infomercial. You have to look closely to see the small type on the edge of the page where it says "Advertisement."

ANGRY FRUIT SALAD

A web site or screen design that uses too many colors. Flashy and attention-getting, but irritating when you have to stare at the screen while using it.

ATTOPARSEC

A humorous - and silly - unit of measurement used by engineers and other tech types in joking. An attoparsec is 3.26 light-years x 10 to the -18th power. This microscopic fraction of a monster measure works out to about 3.1 CM - just over an inch.

AUTOMAGICALLY

Something that happens automatically, but in an extremely complex or poorly understood way, like the way the ATM system updates your bank balance.

ARACHNOLEPTIC FIT

The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

BATMOBILING

Putting up emotional shields (from the retracting armor that covers the batmobile, as in "she started talking marriage and he started batmobiling")

BEEPILEPSY

Afflion of those with vibrating pagers. Characterized by sudden spasms, goofy facial expressions and loss of speech.

BETAMAXED

When a technology is overtaken in the market by inferior but better marketed competition, as in "Microsoft betamaxed Apple right out of the market"

BIT ROT

Computer disease that affects rarely used programs. Users often find that older programs that once worked perfectly stop working when they haven't been used for a while.

BLOWING YOUR BUFFER

Losing your train of thought

BOTT'S DOTS

Those glued-on reflectors placed as lane markers on modern superhighways. Named after their inventor, Dr. Elbert Bott. Also known as "idiot buttons."

BOZONE

The invisible substance that surrounds stupid people and stops good, sensible ideas from penetrating. Unlike the ozone layer, the bozone layer shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

CATERPALLOR

The pale color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

CHROME

Product features that serve no useful purpose, but sound wonderful in the description on the box. ("Gee, this computer program even has moving, 3D icons!")

COBWEB

A WWW site that never changes.

COPCYCLES

Bicycle police. In the past few years, many American cities have experimented with police riding bicycles, and they've proved surprisingly successful. Of course - no self-respecting criminal wants to be arrested by cops wearing Speedo shorts.

COUCH COMMANDO

A person who always wrestles away the TV remote control to watch their own programs.

CREATIONISM

A nearly religious belief among company managers that innovative programs or computer systems can be designed and specified completely at the start of a project. Good programs and systems really come into being through slow and organic growth, but that doesn't fit into the scheduling models that management loves so much.

DAU

A useful term from German computer programmers, abbreviated from "Dummster Anzunehmender User" meaning the stupidest possible user. Useful in programming for the very worst case. (Thanks to German FidoNet.)

DOPE SLAP

Smacking your hand against your forehead when you do something REALLY stupid.

DOPELAR EFFECT

The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when you approach them quickly enough.

DOT COMMUNISTS

Merchants trying to corner a particular part of web commerce while shutting out competition. Sometimes used for companies that refuse to be listed on other's web links. (Thanks to David Zach)

EMAIL

Electronic mail. May be spelled email, Email, E-mail or e-mail. Curiously, the Oxford English Dictionary also defines 'emailed' as "embossed (with a raised pattern) or perhaps arranged in a net or open work". Citations of this usage exist from as early as 1480.

ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY

The same old products, except in a green container and priced a little higher.

EXTRATERRESTAURANT

An overly exotic eating place with really strange dishes. Makes you feel like your eating in the McDonald's on Rigel 5.

FEATURE SHOCK

A high tech device with so many features that the user's eyes glaze over. Usually has an all-inclusive, three-page instruction manual that shows all 728 possible modes in printing that has to be read with a microscope (See Flyspeck 3).

FIELD CIRCUS

Derogatory term for field service technicians, especially those who lack training and imagination ("service droids").
Q: How can you recognize a DEC field circus engineer with a flat tire?
A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat.

Q: How can you recognize a DEC field circus engineer who is out of gas?
A: He's changing one tire at a time to see which one is flat.

FLYSPECK 3

Standard name for any font that is so tiny as to be unreadable. Often used in legal descriptions and software licenses.

GONE CATATONIC

A computer that has stopped responding to the user. It may be just momentarily confused, but more likely it has crashed and gone stupid.

GORILLA ARM EFFECT

An unexpected problem that prevents a promising technology from becoming popular. Named after the problems people had using touch-screen technology. In the early 1980's, it seemed likely that touch screens would show up everywhere. The promoters of touch screen systems ignored the fact that humans aren't able to hold their arms out at eye level while making small motions all day. Only the banana-eating part of the population could use these systems without cramped arm muscles.

HEISENBUG

A problem that changes or disappears as soon as you try to test for it. An explanation of why your car quits making that funny noise just when you take it to a garage. From 'Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle' in quantum physics, which states that looking at a process changes it enough that you can never see what's really happening.

INTAXICATION

Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

KICKING DEAD WHALES DOWN THE BEACH

Any slow, difficult and disgusting process, such as when you are the one who has to announce to management that there is a serious problem with some newly-introduced product.

KINSTIRPATION

A painful inability to move relatives who come to visit.

LASER CHICKEN

A standard, computer programmer's late-night meal. This is most commonly 'Kung Pao' Chicken, a common Chinese dish containing chicken, peanuts and hot red peppers in a pepper-oil sauce. Provides enough indigestion to keep the programmer awake for days at a stretch.

LULLABUOY

An idea that keeps floating into your head and prevents you from falling asleep.

MAXIMUM MAYTAG MODE

A device that is thrashing and moving by itself, like an out-of-balance washing machine. Some old-time computer operators discovered they could write programs to make the huge, early computer disk drives move across the floor by using certain read patterns.

MEGO FACTOR

[`My Eyes Glaze Over'] Used to describe what happens at business meetings when the sales people start talking numbers or the technical people start talking obscure specifications.

MONGOLIAN HORDES TECHNIQUE

Management's favorite method of solving problems. Managers always seem to believe that a large number of inexperienced, minimum wage people can replace a few expensive and experienced ones.

MR. SMARMY

That game-show-host voice that says, "You've got mail!" in AOL's 'Nyetscape' web browser.

MUGGLE

Someone who lacks the magic. A person who can never get things to work right. From the children's book Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling.

PAPERWEIGHT

A car salesperson's term for an unpopular model that is nearly impossible to sell.

PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE

The fine art of whacking a device to get it working.

PRAIRIE DOGGING

In companies where everyone has a cubicle --something happens and everyone pops up to look

PRIESTHOOD

The select group of computer specialists who are allowed to work in a computer room. Less common now, in the old days these were the all-powerful systems operators who would take your program on punched cards and deliver back the results days (sometimes weeks) later - the computer version of playing chess by mail.

PROGRAMMER'S CHEER

An old joke based on computer instructions: "Shift to the left! Shift to the right! Pop up, push down! Byte! Byte! Byte!"

RAIN DANCE

A purely ceremonial action taken by a service person in fixing a broken piece of equipment. These are done just for customer relations purposes, when all hope of ever making the device work has been lost. They involve randomly pushing or pulling on things, adjusting connections, or repeatedly reloading software.

RIDING THE TURTLES

Truck driver's slang for driving on the corrugated "chatter-strip" edge markers along the highway to stay awake.

SAGGING

Teenage male fashion fad of the early 1990's, where young males wear extremely loose-fitting pants so their underwear shows. Further proof of one of the great laws of the universe: no one will take you seriously when you underwear is showing.

SEATTLE TUXEDO

A clean flannel shirt; because the residents of Seattle are so comfortably casual.

SCRAM SWITCH

An emergency power-off switch. This term comes from the original research on atomic energy, where a graduate student was stationed on top of the reactor with an ax, ready to cut the cables to stop the reaction in case the reactor ran wild. Thus: _S_afety _C_ontrol _R_od _A_x _M_an.

SORCERER'S APPRENTICE MODE

When every problem you solve causes two more problems to appear.

TENURED GRADUATE STUDENT

A long-term graduate student, usually one who has been there for more than ten years - longer than many of the professors. Stay out of the way of these people; they know where all of the bodies are buried.

THINKO

A momentary mental slip equivalent to a printed "typo." Also called a "brain fart."

VIRTUAL FRIDAY

The last working day before an extended weekend, that is, a holiday that falls on a Friday. There are also Virtual Mondays, for example, when a holiday falls on a Monday and the first working day is actually Tuesday.

WALL FOLLOWER

An uncreative person that simulates intelligence by following a set of very simple rules, even if the rules are ultimately stupid. Named after the famous "Harvey Wallbanger," winning robot in an early contest of artificial intelligence machines. While the other, more intelligent robots used complex mapping and simulation programming to map and solve a maze problem, Harvey won by simply moving along one wall of the maze. In the same way, uncreative and foolish people can sometimes look smart in the short run.

WOK-ON-THE-WALL

A small microwave dish, commonly used for satellite TV or local building-to-building communications. Named after the amazing resemblance of these small dishes to Chinese cooking pots.

WRAPS

A pre-millennium food fad where burrito-like flat breads are used to wrap some fairly unlikely meat or vegetable fillings. Further proof that Americans will eat nearly anything if it's wrapped in bread.