Random things from Telophase again

[telophase]

1) The word is "meme." One syllable, rhymes with "cream," refers to a unit of information passed like a gene ("virus" is more appropriate in many cases, it seems). From the Oxford English Dictionary:

A cultural element or behavioural trait whose transmission and consequent persistence in a population, although occurring by non-genetic means (esp. imitation), is considered as analogous to the inheritance of a gene.

1976 R. DAWKINS Selfish Gene xi. 206 The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun which conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. ‘Mimeme’ comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme... It should be pronounced to rhyme with ‘cream’. Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.

2) If you're going to lick, fondle, molest, rape, or otherwise sexually harass my artwork, you should at least buy me a drink first.

3) When most people are members of both communities, you do not need to crosspost. And stop saying you crossposted. If we read both, we know already, and if we don't, we don't give a damn.

4) Stop sending me requests for software configuration less than 24 hours before you need it up, when I think you've had several days notice beforehand. I have a good mind to get a migraine and not show up to work tomorrow. P.S. It doesn't require Speshul Computer Knowledge to download software and click two buttons.

5) "Adobe" is not a software program. It is the name of a company. Even though I know damn well you're talking about Photoshop when you refer to "Adobe v 7.0," I'm going to force you to say the actual name of the software before I help you by professing ignorance as to whether you're talking about Photoshop, Illustrator, Elements, Acrobat, or ImageReady.

6) Things could always be worse. You could be this guy.

Comments

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

I had flashbacks over #6. My ex-wife used to unplug the laptop and hide it under the bed whenever she'd get a "404" error, mostly because she was certain that she'd broken the computer. (Please don't ask me why she had to hide it under the bed.)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Good lord. I've got the user of the malware-riddled computer here phoning me in terror every time the antivirus software pops up a message about finding and quarantining or deleting something, but frankly I prefer that to the previous state of "Gosh, my computer's acting funny! Why on earth would I tell anyone about it?" And it's temporary - we're expecting delivery of the new computers sometime in the next couple of weeks.

[literaticat.livejournal.com]

#6 = farking hilarious.

[pzb.livejournal.com]

*headdesk to #6* I had a friend in tech support for a small ISP in Central California for a while...had been down here visiting, but was on call and over the course of 6 hours had tried to help this guy figure out why he couldn't get onto the server... After she couldn't find anything wrong with the server, she asked him for at least the third time if he had rebooted (each time, he said yes) then asked him if he'd turned the computer off then back on....he said he hadn't tried that yet.....


I love #2....

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yah. I just don't get the "I don't understand what this word means so I'll just say yes or nod and hope that's the right response" thing.

[wyrdness.livejournal.com]

In regards to number 1. I write "me-me" because of something one of my friends posted about a long time ago. Since it was considered online tests were not true meme's but are typically about the person in question and often used as an attention grabber it was decided "me-me" was appropriately fitting. However in bit of a twist it was also decided to see if a meme could be created by getting people to write "me-me" instead of "meme" for all of their testings. It doesn't seem to have really taken off though, or not in my circle of friends at least. I keep it up anyway because it amuses me, doubly so when no one else gets it :)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I've run across it before when someone really didn't know it was "meme". :)

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

My first exposure to "meme" was an article in "Popular Science" and I still mispronounce it in my head. Short e is just easier to say.

3) I like it when people crosspost, though! The other community is often much closer to what I want than the community I'm in; and if it wasn't for crossposter I would never have known about it!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

You just need to start putting the accent grave over the first e. XD

But when you get sixty million posts a day on the comm that notify you that they're being crossposted? the occasional one I can deal with; it's when every other one is duplicated three times on the friendslist with a helpful note that it was crossposted in case I hadn't noticed that it begins to get a wee bit annoying.

[fourthage.livejournal.com]

I frequently use Adobe to mean Adobe Acrobat. Bad me.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

:D See Bink's rant a little further down the comments about Acrobat vs Reader. XD

[(Anonymous)]

5a) Adobe Acrobat is indeed a program. So is Adobe Acrobat Reader. They are, in fact, two different, programs. This is a fine distinction, and not one I would force the typical User to recognize, but, dammit, if you ARE the Tech Support person, you bloody well ought to know the difference!

As a Trainer, I've had tech reps come to me for help on this. "Their Acrobat isn't working, and I've reinstalled it twice!" 'Reinstalled which?' I ask. "Acrobat Reader 7" 'And is it the Reader they're having trouble with?' "Ermmmmmm"

Every time, it's been an issue with the full version. To their credit, Adobe recognized long ago that Acrobat and Acrobat Reader needed to install as two seperate programs, and not two halves of one program, and you're really bored by this now, aren't you? I'm rather surprised you're still reading this far. You can see, can't you, why they made me a trainer? I'll just babble on about this sort of thing all day long, until you're sick of it, or you know the difference. I think I should go now.

-bink

[telophase.livejournal.com]

No, no. I understand. I'm dealing with tech-translation issues right now at work which since this is an unlocked post I won't go into. :)

[emtigereyes.livejournal.com]

It's still funny that there are people who, as Telophase was referring to, will call any Adobe product simply "Adobe". I would ask people when they brought me a disk what kind of file it was or what program was it made in, so I knew what computers I needed to take the disk to. I often got the answer "Adobe" for .pdf files, but occasionally got it for .jpg files (which, yes, can be opened in Photoshop).

My favorite is still when I ask that and they answer "Windows XP".

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Over on techsupport, they often complain about the "What OS are you using?" "Office." people. Among many other strange and completely inaccurate responses.

I think Mom finally got my grandfather off saying "Communicator" when he means "Netscape." By showing him how to donwload and install Safari on his Mac. :)