for Tuesday, June 30, 1998



Generation X Office Lingo

Blamestorming: Sitting around in a group discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

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.

Ego Surfing: Scanning the Net, databases, print media and so on, looking for references to one's own name.

Elvis Year: The peak year of something's or someone's popularity. "Barney the Dinosaur's Elvis year was 1993."

404: Someone who's clueless. "Don't bother asking him; he's 404."
(From the WWW error message "404 Not Found", meaning the requested document couldn't be located)

Idea Hamsters: People who seem to have their idea generators running constantly.

Keyboard Plaque: The disgusting buildup of dirt and crud found on computer keyboards.

Mouse Potato: The online, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.

Ohnosecond: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a big mistake.

Perot: To quit unexpectedly, as in "My cellular phone just perot'ed."

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.

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. "We had three serious students in the class; the rest were just tourists."

Treeware: Hacker slang for documentation or other printed material.

Uninstalled: Euphemism for being fired.

Xerox Subsidy: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's workplace.

- JoelT ([email protected])


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