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- 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.
---ooOoo---
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- Alpha Geek
- The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in an office or work group. "Ask Larry, he's the alpha geek around here."
- Assmosis
- The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard.
---ooOoo---
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- Beepilepsy
- The brief seizure people sometimes have when their beeper goes off (especially in vibrator mode). Characterized by physical spasms, goofy facial expressions and interruption of speech in mid-sentence.
- Blamestorming
- Sitting around in a group discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.
- Brains on a Stick
- Highly intelligent experts brought in to work on special projects for which expertise is more important than social skills.3
- Bubba-lock
- Gridlock traffic jams created whenerver president Clinton's motorcade comes to town.2
- Busy Signalling
- Rapid hand movements indicating that what the person on the phone is saying is more important than whatever coworkers are trying to distract you with.5
- Butt-to-ground Adapter
- An impromptu stool fashioned out of an audio/video equipment box set on end. Overheard on the set of MTV's Austin Stories.1
---ooOoo---
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- Chainsaw Consultant
- An outside expert brought in to reduce the employee headcount, leaving the top brass with clean hands.
- Chips and Salsa
- Chips = hardware, salsa = software. "Well, first we gotta figure out if the problem's in your chips or your salsa."
- Churning
- The constant moving, reorganising, and purging of office documents to keep the critical information from being swallowed up by less important information.5
- Coin-Operated Employee
- An employee brought in for a particular project or set time period.5
- Cradle Cams
- The increasingly popular Web cams installed in day-care centers and grade schools that allow parents to monitor their children from worksite desktops. AKA 'Kiddie-Cams'.2
- Crapplet
- A badly written or profoundly useless Java applet. "I just wasted 30 minutes downloading this stinkin' crapplet!"
- Cube Farm
- An office filled with cubicles.
---ooOoo---
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- Dancing Baloney
- Little animated GIFs and other Web F/X that are useless and serve simply to impress clients. "This page is kinda dull. Maybe a little dancing baloney will help."
- Depotphobia
- Fear associated with entering a Home Depot because of how much money one might spend. Electronics geeks experience Shackophobia.
---ooOoo---
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- 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."
---ooOoo---
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- Flies
- Venture capitalist jargon for Internet start-ups: you give them some money, they buzz around for a while, and then splat!, the market swats them into a greasy little stain.3
- Flight Risk
- Used to describe employees who are suspected of planning to leave a company or department soon.
- Forklift Upgrade
- What you need when the only option left is a newer, more powerful system. "Only a forklift upgrade will let this database get any bigger."4
---ooOoo---
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- Generica
- Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is. "We were so lost in generica, I actually forgot what city we were in."
- GIFSCII
- ASCII art that has been converted to a GIF file to preserve the original formatting and typeface.1
- 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.
- GOOD 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.
- Gutenberg
- A person who insists on printing out everything available on screen. "Keith is such a gutenberg. He printed out a 150-page manual just to read a few sections of it."4
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- Idea Hamsters
- People who always seem to have their idea generators running.
- Irritainment
- Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying, but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The O.J. trials were a prime example.
---ooOoo---
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---ooOoo---
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- Keyboard Plaque
- The disgusting buildup of dirt and crud found on computer keyboards.
---ooOoo---
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- Laggot
- A person with a poky Net connection who uses an online gaming service. Laggots are the focus of much frustration and hatred because they slow the pace of gameplay for other participants.3
- LANLord
- The alpha geek responsible for an office's local-area network.4
- Leveraged Flyout
- When a consultant gets a client to pay for a trip so that he or she can visit another pet project that's not as well funded.5
---ooOoo---
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- Metoobies
- Participants in online conferences and chats who seem incapable of posting anything other than "Mee too!", "Ditto", "What she said" et cetera.5
- Microstar
- A person who becomes well-known and well-loved, but only within a small media universe such as the Web, the zine scene, or cable access television.3
- Midair Passenger Exchange
- Grim air-traffic-controller-speak for a head-on collision. Midair passenger exchanges are quickly followed by "aluminum rain."
- Mouse Potato
- The online, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.
---ooOoo---
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- Nyetscape
- Nickname for AOL's less-than-full-featured Web browser.
---ooOoo---
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- Ohnosecond
- That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a big mistake.
---ooOoo---
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- PEBCAK
- Tech support shorthand for "Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard." (Techies are a frustrated, often arrogant lot. They've submitted numerous acronyms and terms that poke fun at the clueless users who call them up with frighteningly stupid questions. Another variation on the above is ID10T: "This guy has an ID-Ten-T on his system.")
- Percussive Maintenance
- The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.
- 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.
---ooOoo---
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- Rep Surfing
- To repeatedly call a toll-free customer-service line until you get a representative who will do what you want, such as cancel a bill or authorise a refund.1
---ooOoo---
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- Scribe Tribes
- Netizens who publish their journals, diaries, and daily ramblings on the Web and organise them into journal webrings and link lists.5
- Script Kiddies
- Wannabe hackers who use ready-made exploit scripts written by more experienced hackers to break into online sites.2
- Seagull Manager
- A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps over everything and then leaves.
- Security Dots
- The asterisks or bullets that appear onscreen as you enter a password.2
- 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.
- Spiralling Death Syndrome
- A modem problem in which the connection progressively slows as the device drops in speed to negotiate noise, but never bumps back up again.1
- Square-headed Girlfriend
- Another word for a computer. The victim of a square-headed girlfriend is a "computer widow."
- Squirt the Bird
- To transmit a signal to a satellite.
- Starter Marriage
- A short-lived first marriage that ends in a divorce with no kids, no property and no regrets.
- Stay-or-Bail Moment
- The precious few seconds that elapse after loading the front page of a Web site, during which one decides to either stay or leave. Used by David Siegel in his book 'Creating Killer Web Sites'.2
- 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.
---ooOoo---
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- Telephone-Number Salary
- A salary (or project budget) that has seven digits.
- 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.
---ooOoo---
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- Umfriend
- A sexual relation of dubious standing. "This is uh..Dale, my...um...friend..."
- Uninstalled
- Euphemism for being fired. Heard on the voicemail of a vice president at a downsizing computer firm: "You have reached the number of an uninstalled vice president. Please dial our main number and ask the operator for assistance." See also Decruitment.
---ooOoo---
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- Vulcan Nerve Pinch
- The taxing hand position required to reach all of the appropriate keys for certain commands. For instance, the warm boot.
---ooOoo---
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- Warm Props
- Television jargon for newsroom employees who buzz around in the background of "live" news programmes. - "OK, for this next shot of the studio, we need a lot of warm props on the floor."1
---ooOoo---
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- Xerox Subsidy
- Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's workplace.
---ooOoo---
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- 1 Jargon Watch, Wired 5.12
- 2 Jargon Watch, Wired 5.10
- 3 Jargon Watch, Wired 5.09
- 4 Jargon Watch, Wired 5.11
- 5 Jargon Watch, Wired 6.04
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