| | 404: Someone who is clueless. From the Web error message, "404 Not Found," which means the document requested couldn't be located. "Don't bother asking John. He's 404." |
| | Adminisphere: The rarified organizational layers above the rank and file that makes decisions that are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant. |
| | Alpha Geek: The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in an office or work group. "I dunno, ask Rick. He's our alpha geek." |
| | Assmosis: Remember "Osmosis" The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard. |
| | Batmobiling: putting up emotional shields. Refers to the retracting armor that covers the Batmobile as in "she started talking marriage and he started batmobiling" |
| | Beepilepsy: The brief seizure people sometimes suffer when their beepers go off, especially in vibrator mode. Characterized by physical spasms, goofy facial expressions, and stopping speech in mid- sentence. |
| | Betamaxed: When a technology is overtaken in the market by inferior but better marketed competition as in "Microsoft betamaxed Apple right out of the market" |
| | Blamestorming: A group discussion of why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who was responsible. |
| | Blowing Your Buffer: Losing one's train of thought. Occurs when the person you are speaking with won't let you get a word in edgewise or has just said something so astonishing that your train gets derailed. "Damn, I just blew my buffer!" (Synonym: "Head Crash") |
| | Body Nazis: Hard-core exercise and weight-lifting fanatics who look down on anyone who doesn't work out obsessively. |
| | Bookmark: To take note of a person for future reference. "After seeing his cool demo at Siggraph, I bookmarked him." |
| | Brain Fart: A byproduct of a bloated mind producing information effortlessly; a burst of useful information. "I know you're busy on the Microsoft story, but can you give us a brain fart on the Mitnik bust?" Variation of old hacker slang that had more negative connotations. |
| | CGI Joe: A hard-core CGI script programmer with all the social skills and charisma of a plastic action figure. |
| | Chainsaw Consultant: An outside expert brought in to reduce the employee head count, leaving the top brass with clean hands. |
| | Chip Jewelry: Old computers destined to be scrapped or turned into decoration. "I paid three grand for that Mac and now it's nothing but chip jewelry." |
| | Chips and Salsa: Chips = hardware, salsa = software. "First we gotta figure out if the problem's in your chips or your salsa." |
| | CLM (Career Limiting Move)- Used by microserfs to describe an ill- advised activity. "Trashing your boss while he or she is within earshot is a serious CLM." |
| | Cobweb: A WWW site that never changes. |
| | Crapplet: A badly written or profoundly useless Java applet. "I just wasted 30 minutes downloading that crapplet!" |
| | CROP DUSTING: Surreptitiously farting while passing thru a cube farm, then enjoying the sounds of dismay and disgust; leads to PRAIRIE DOGGING..... |
| | Cube Farm: An office filled with cubicles. |
| | Dead Tree Edition: The paper version of a publication available in both paper and electronic forms. |
| | Dilberted: To be exploited and oppressed by your boss, as is Dilbert, the comic strip character. "Damn, I've been dilberted again! The old man revised the specs for the fourth time this week." |
| | Dorito Syndrome: The feeling of emptiness and dissatisfaction triggered by addictive substances that lack nutritional content. "I just spent six hours surfing the Web, and now I've got a bad case of Dorito Syndrome." |
| | Egosurfing: Scanning the Net, databases, etc., for one's own name. |
| | Elvis Year: The peak year of popularity as in "1993 was Barney the dinosaur's Elvis year" |
| | Flight Risk: Used to describe employees who are suspected of planning to leave a company or department soon. |
| | Generica: Fast food joints, strip malls, sub-divisions as in "we were so lost in generica that I couldn't remember what city it was" |
| | Glazing: Corporate-speak for sleeping with your eyes open; a popular pastime at conferences and early-morning meetings. "Didn't he notice that by the second session half the room was glazing?" |
| | Going Postal: Totally stressed out and losing it like postal employees who went 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. |
| | Gray Matter: Older, experienced business people hired by young entrepreneurial firms trying to appear more professional and established. |
| | Graybar Land: The place you go while you're staring at a computer that's processing something very slowly (while you watch the gray bar creep across the screen). "That CAD rendering put me in graybar land for like an hour." |
| | High Dome: Egghead, scientist, PhD |
| | Idea Hamsters: People whose idea generators are always 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. |
| | It's a Feature: From the old adage, "It's not a bug, it's a feature." Used sarcastically to describe an unpleasant problem you wish to gloss over. |
| | Keyboard Plaque: The disgusting buildup of dirt and crud found on some people's computer keyboards. |
| | Link Rot: The process by which web page's links become obsolete as the sites they're connected to change or die. |
| | Meatspace: The physical world (as opposed to the virtual) also "carbon community" "facetime" "F2F" "RL" |
| | Mouse Potato: The online generation's answer to the couch potato. |
| | Ohnosecond: That minuscule fraction of time during which you realize you've just made a terrible error. |
| | Open-Collar Workers: People who work at home or telecommute. |
| | Percussive Maintenance: The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again. |
| | Perot: To quit unexpectedly. "My cellular phone just perot'ed." |
| | Plug-and-Play: A new hire who doesn't require training. "That new guy is totally plug-and-play." |
| | Prairie Dogging: When something loud happens in a cube farm, causing heads to pop up over the walls trying to see what's going on. |
| | Ribs 'N' Dick: A budget with no fat as in "we've got ribs 'n' dick and we're supposed to find 20K for memory upgrades" |
| | Salmon Day: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed in the end. "God, today was a total salmon day!" |
| | Seagull Manager: A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, ****s over everything and then leaves. |
| | Siliwood: The coming convergence of movies, interactive TV and computers; also "Hollywired" |
| | SITCOMs: What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids. "Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage" |
| | Square-Headed Spouse: Computer |
| | Squirt the Bird: To transmit a signal up to a satellite. "Crew and talent are ready...what time do we squirt the bird?" |
| | Starter Marriage: A short-lived first marriage that ends in divorce with no kids, no property and no regrets. |
| | Stress Puppy: A person who thrives on being stressed-out and whiny. |
| | Swiped Out: An ATM or credit card that has been used so much its magnetic strip is worn away. |
| | Tourists: Those who take training classes just to take a vacation from their jobs. "There were only three serious students in the class; the rest were just tourists." |
| | Treeware: Hacker slang for documentation or other printed material. |
| | Umfriend: One with whom one has a sexual relationship; as in, "this is Dale, my...um...friend." |
| | Under Mouse Arrest: Getting busted for violating an online service's rule of conduct. "Sorry I couldn't get back to you. AOL put me under mouse arrest." |
| | Uninstalled: Euphemism for being fired. Also: decruitment. |