I found this video hilarious. For those of you who are “slow,” it is how comment systems work on blogs.

I found this one just as funny, but for a different reason…

I’m just trying to figure out how a GUI interface can track an ip address – let alone something written in VB.

If men and women had control panels, this is what they might look like…

I have read my fair share of documentation outlining standards and specifications. I am no genius, but 95% of the time they make no sense to me. Perhaps this is why.

The US standard railroad gauge (width between the two rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?

Because that’s the way they built them in England, and the U.S. railroads were built by English expatriates.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

Why did they use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots first formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse’s ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

I certainly did not write this because I do not abhor cellphones. In fact it is a rare occasion you see me without one. While all the examples do not reflect myself, I am definitively a selective Luddite! Are you?

I have been called a nerd, a geek, a guru, and any other number of names that labeled me as a purveyor of computer technology. I’ll bet the majority of you reading this have been called something of the same sort here and there. If you have been given these monikers from time to time, let me ask you a question. Because you understand and enjoy one form of computer technology, is it simply assumed that you know and enjoy all forms of computer technology? It is with me, but I fear that it is simply not the case. For I am a, a…Selective Luddite! Yes, a Selective Luddite. It’s a term I just made up, but it fits perfectly. Maybe you don’t know what makes a person a Luddite. If that’s the case, they you certainly cannot understand why I am a selective Luddite, now can you? Here’s the story as I understand it. Of course, facts often change from one telling of the history to the next.

Around the 1800s, a guy names Ned Lud (I’ve also seen it “Ludd”), broke into a Leicestershire, England, hosiery factory and destroyed a couple of machines. Why? Well, the best reason I read was that it was a “fit of insane rage.” The name Lud became a catch phrase for when something became broken. When the expensive machines were sabotaged, people would blame it on poor Ned Lud and say he must have been there. In the early 1800s (specifically 1811-1816), a group of weavers named themselves Luddites and set to destroying the machinery, mainly textile, which was ushering in the industrial age. You see, the introduction of the machines was putting them out of work, and they wanted to prevent that. Apparently they got their point across. The government did more than simply jail them for their actions. They hanged fourteen of the Luddites. The term Luddite has now become synonymous with a person who shuns technology and the changes new technology may bring.

So, join me! Join me in my new and most interesting group of people, the Selective Luddites. We’ll have meetings every Wednesday. Everybody bring a covered dish. What? Oh. You want to know what a Selective Luddite actually believes in. As a Selective Luddite, I reserve the right to love and adore some forms of technological advancement while at the same time berating people for embracing other forms of technological advancements.

Case in point number one: Cellular phones. I abhor cellular phones. I don’t own one. I dislike using them myself and I cringe every time I am attempting to eat a nice meal and I hear Mozart’s Moonlight Sonata played out of rhythm, by a tiny, tinny speaker. I always hope that my hatred of the cellular phone will be allayed when the person answers the phone. If, just once, I could hear something like, The kidney is in? I’ll be right in to perform the transplant, my faith in cellular phone humanity would be reborn. It’s never happened yet. Usually I get, Hello? Yeah. Uh-huh. Eating dinner. Yeah. OK. Uh-huh. He did? When? Ugh! OK. Gotta go. Gotta go? Why? What at the specific point did that person have to go? Was the food on her plate going to make a break for it? I sat next to a woman once that received three calls before I received my desert. On the third call, I put my fork down and turned towards her, staring as her conversation regarding the price of Nutri-bars dragged on. She noticed me, placed her hand over the speaker, and said, “Do you mind?” Bingo! It was at that point I became a Selective Luddite!

Case in point number two: personal digital assistants (PDAs). I have a good friend who used to lug around a Day-Timer. Now he got this little PDA that’s too small for his fingers to manipulate. Every time I give him a new piece of information, he pulls this small screen out of his hip leatherette belt-clip case and flips it open like a Star Trek tricorder. He then pulls a small stick out of the side and uses that to touch the screen, again, because his fingers are too big for the display. I could probably bring this guy’s world to its knees simply by taking that little stick. Forget the Palm Pilot itself. All I would need to grab is that stick. I’d see him rooting around the campus looking for a stick to replace it. I don’t know why, but there just seemed to be something more civilized about a Daytimer.

Case in point number three: PowerPoint Presentations Just allow me to state that the “ooooo” and “aaaah” factor has pretty much worn off of PowerPoint. It’s not that I don’t like PowerPoint. On the contrary, if used correctly, it is a great assistant to the speaker. What bugs me is when the speaker attempts to incorporate every trick of the PowerPoint trade. Every new letter flies in from a different corner, spins twice, explodes, rebuilds, gets married, has a couple of kids, and finally settles down. Then, right in the middle of the 26-letter firestorm, the author will attempt to spark an emotion by having a panel with one word, like courage or unity. Also – if I see the graphic where the man in a suit is leaning over and looking through a magnifying glass one more time I’m going to scream. The same goes for the numerous stick-figure people who are either snapping their fingers, clicking their heels, or looking pensive while a question mark appears over their heads.

Now that I’ve laid out my three-point plan, join me. Become a Selective Luddite! We’ll all chip in and get t-shirts or those shiny coats all the radio DJs wear. You can still love HTML, drool over the latest release of Internet Explorer, use emoticons, e-mail the world, and generally live in front of a computer. That’s OK, as long as you make a point of drawing boundaries where your Luddite yard begins and ends. The few, the proud…The Selective Luddites.

Ships are commonly referred to as females, but what about computers? To answer that question, a study was set up with two groups of computer experts. The first was comprised of women, and the second of men. Each group was asked to recommend whether computers should be referred to in the feminine gender or the masculine gender. They were asked to give 4 reasons for their recommendation.

The group of women reported that the computers should be referred to in the masculine gender because:

1. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on.
2. They have a lot of data, but are still clueless.
3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they are the problem.
4. As soon as you commit to one, you realise that, if you had waited a little longer, you could have had a better model.

The men, on the other hand concluded that computers should be referred to in the feminine gender because:

1. No one but the Creator understands their internal logic.
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else.
3. Even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval.
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.