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Eye Candy for the Blind

OK, so I’ll admit it. I like using AIM, Instant Messanger, trillian, or whatever they are calling it this week. It’s easy, convenient, reliable, and relatively fast. It beats the crap out of walking down the looong hallway to get up and actually talk face to face with someone. I wasn’t always this way though. There was a time when I HATED instant messanger. I hated the annoyance of the gleeful pop up message and that stupid little yellow man running around my desktop. I mean, I would be all working hard, really into the middle of doing something when, BANG, an IM would pop up. It got so I couldn’t even stand the sight of that little yellow man. Damn him. Damn him and the horse he road in on. I just HATE anything that things it can run around on my desktop, anything that might obscure MY code, and anything that looks even the slightest bit “happy” or eye-candish in the least. Eye candy is for stoopid users who need balloon help.

But then, something happened. I realized that, despite all of it’s privacy invasions, IM actually allows me to talk LESS. Yes, it’s true. I don’t have to answer as many questions, read as many emails, talk to as many people, etc. thanks to that cheery little yellow man. And I’m not talking Jackie Chan here, OK. Sure, he’s a little too chipper and he still reminds me a bit too much of that, GASP, horror of horrors, the dreaded, gosh I can’t even bring myself to type it, PAPERCLIP. UGh. (There I said it.)

The person who invented that silly paperclip should be executed. By order of Carol in Carol’s Little World, I say, “off with their dick! I know they don’t have a head cause, if they did, they wouldn’t need a damned paperclip. So cut off something they actually use! And no, I’m NOT passive aggressive, DAMN YOU!” Sure the paperclip is obscene, nobody can stand it and it’s not even good for a laugh, but I’m starting to like the little yellow man. I mean, he’s growing on me.

There used to be a time when computers had to be unfriendly to work. You expected punchcards, there was no such thing as a “user interface” and the person who wrote the code sure didn’t have any time at all to contemplate the “user experience.” That was a bunch of crap propagated by English majors. They were REAL programmers damn it. Their code worked and they didn’t care if you or anybody else could actually USE it. You were fortunate enough just being in the presence of their code. These people are now all laid off, looking for work, dialed in from India, or in prision. The rest of us embraced, in one form or another, the GUI. As much as I hate it, and try to avoid it, the GUI is here to stay. Even with the little yellow man running around reckelssly though my desktop, I’m proud to say I’m actually starting to embrace eye candy.

Eye candy. It’s not just for stoopid users who need balloon help anymore. Just watch out for the little yellow man. He might throw a brick through one of your windows.

Until next time, this is Carol, the Carol in “Carol’s Little World” signing off.

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