fine whine

I have once again ascended to the very top of the list of search results for "whine" on Google. Tomorrow I turn 25. I assign equal significance to both.

Make of that what you will.

As I idly chatted today in the Last.FM chat room I though back to my early days of chatting in #efnet and #undernet IRC channels (and others I can but hope to remember) and even before that, BBS party lines.

Ah, those were the days.

Anyway, today I was struck with a memory of sorts. When I (and the rest of the cyber denizens of these seedy establishments) would return to a chat room after an absence (AFK) or having been logged off, everybody would respond with "re codger" or whatever nick I was using at the time. We'd all do this, and in heavily-trafficked chat rooms a good third of the 'conversation' could well just be "re"s.

Re-entering a particularly quiet room, particularly for me, would prompt a "re me" to spur some sort of response. If I recall correctly (IIRC), it didn't work very well.

I hope you weren't expecting a point from any of this. I'm merely struck by the fact that I remembered something, albeit something so trivial and pointless.

Microsoft PowerPoint is a program for creating slideshows and presentations. It is not, as apparently some think, a program for creating one page documents and posters. That is what Word and Publisher (and their better competitors) are intended to do.

Thank you for you time.

I'm sure by now you've been forwarded an email containing a link to a web page or Flash applet in which you are told to look at the differences or find what looks wrong or pay attention to this or that. I've even seen an mpeg of a TV commercial that works much the same way. Whatever it is, all of a sudden the window is filled with the head of a gruesome or horrifying creature, and a good third of suckers are caught off guard. They yelp, and everyone around them in the office looks at what is going on. At least, that's what happens in my office, as there are at least two people particularly susceptible to this little trick.

I'm sorry Eun Hee, by the way. I didn't know he'd forward that to you.

Anyway, what I'd like to see is one of these stupid things, but with a twist. Instead of a monster, have a baby cooing or some flowers or something. You know, a pleasant image. Would that be as jarring? Would the person still yelp? So, somebody try it.

It's times like this that I wish I knew how to use Flash. Or at least that I'd do something with those Flash books I keep getting out of the library beyond stacking my CDs on them.

Not that I was looking, but I think I might have found the first example of the use of capitalization to indicate shouting online in a movie, in the 1997 intellectual drama Contact, based on Carl Sagan's book of the same name. I have not read the book, but I highly doubt that Carl was thinking about IM systems and 'netiquette back when he wrote it.

Anyway, in the film, Jodie Foster's character Ellie Arroway is having a real-time chat session with the cryptic billionaire John Hadden, currently floating around on Mir. She doesn't know it's him, though, and asks "Who are you?" He replies cryptically with a classified document to which he probably shouldn't have access. Confused and probably enraged, she then asks "WHO ARE YOU?"

I've been so conditioned as to immediately see the emphasis there; I can't not see it anymore. My suspicions are that this is deliberate, from somebody in the know and not just the flippant decisions of a production designer.

I am, naturally, seeking prior art, or some sort of confirmation.

Does anybody out there want a free Gmail account? I've got a couple invites left over and nobody wants them. There's a guy on Craigslist selling them for seven bucks and whatnot, but nobody can really say how much business he's really getting.

It would be a pretty easy seven bucks, I have to say.

Anyway, I remember the days that people were trading mp3 and DVD players for these (before I got invited, naturally). Back then they were cool. Now, I can't seem to get rid of mine, and Google just gave me another batch of them.

Seven bucks, though, hmmm...