Monday, March 31, 2003

I return to you, gentle reader, on the eve of change. Seniors will commiserate with me when I bemoan how little time we have left for drunken debauchery and assorted shenanigans. All gentle readers, seniors and otherwise, should think back to instances when Father Time deserved the SINGLE-FINGER SALUTE. And so, in the spirit of conviviality and efficiency, I will shower you with more interpersonal wisdom.

“How does interpersonal wisdom relate to TIME?” you ask, ruining the no-questions streak I hoped to achieve this quarter.

Two words for you, annoying reader: “Shuuut up!”

Do you have your pen and paper out? Good.

I spent part of my break down in North Carolina. During my stay, I visited my sis at Duke, the bastuhd students of which sit six notches above our hallowed alma mater, but a whole ‘nuther eight notches above our chief competitor. At this point, allow me to add a gloat-gloat-gloat. Anyway, while riding in a campus shuttle, I overheard a guy yammer to another guy–who looked quite bored, I hasten to add–about computers and such. I will suggest to you that the words “Unix,” “superior connectivity,” and “Solaris” should not exist in the same 30-second time span. Yet exist they did, and so I come before you with advice on how to deal with yammerers and prattlers. Recall that these hooligans MISAPPROPRIATE your TIME.

As always, my advice remains simple. Take the hypothetical computer dork, for example. As soon as he–and I’m well aware that female computer dorks exist as well–opens his mouth for three minutes too many, I urge you to employ the following Secondhand Rants exclusive. You see, during break, I coded a brand spanking new operating system.

“OS for short!” snorts the dork.

“Shuuut up!”

This puppy requires absolutely no hardware and almost everyone on earth has access to it. Let’s see it in action.

“So you see,” says the dork, “when you deploy these new routers in tandem with a Unix platform, you establish a kind of data trust between your different servers.”

At this point, you should whip out my new OS.

“Can I install a new OS?” you ask.

“Um, okay,” says the dork rather excitedly, “but we don’t have any laptops handy!”

“That’s okay,” you answer confidently. “How ’bout I install the new OS right here? Right now? Right on your FACE?”

KA-POW! Thump. Groan. Silence. More free time.

There you have it–my new Plug-and-POW OS. I christen it SmackYoFace 98, and it is available for immediate delivery.