Once upon a time I was trying to explain how Internet Explorer was integrated with Windows. The perfect analogy came to me: Star Trek - the episode where the alien creatures that looked like a flying version of that fake vomit they made when I was a kid attacked Spock and wrapped themselves around his nervous system. They couldn't get rid of the creature because it had become so integrated with Spock. I figured that's what IE did with Windows.

 

Note: I am not calling Internet Explorer flying vomit :-D

 

For years I used this analogy without knowing the name of the episode or the official taxonomy of the creatures.

 

Google to the rescue: http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/TOS/episode/68718.html

 

Episode: "Operation: Annihilate!"

Creature: "large, amoeba-like aliens that attack humans and intertwine their tentacles with the body's nervous system" from Deneva.

 

Now, the fact that these parasites are described as using "excruciating pain as a means of controlling their victims" has nothing to do with my analogy, really....

 

:-D

Obviously November became a busy month! I'm trying to catch up on posting all these nifty snippets I'm keeping in my Firefox SessionSaver log. Hopefully I will be all up to date by the end of the month.

Now that my whirlwind of travel is done for the summer I will be back to blogging more regularly...

 

(cheering, shouting, frenzied waving...)

I have to share a fond memory of youth, prompted by a recent New York Times Circuits column by David Pogue wherein folks were grousing about technology names:

"Engineers are responsible for most of these weird names. Smart, hard-working, and not particularly people-oriented, engineers honestly believe that a well-defined naming structure provides valuable information to people who should, even if they don't, care. Engineering-dominated companies do this all the time. If HP were selling sushi, they would describe it as cold dead fish - accurate and unappetizing."

When I was a senior in high school our school band was raising money for a trip to Orlando, Florida. One of the bright fundraising ideas was to sell frozen shrimp, lobster, crab, cod, etc. door to door. (Remember: Nebraska is land-locked - frozen seafood is as good as it gets).

My standard spiel was something along the lines of "Hi, I'm Karla Carter from the Holdrege High School Band and we're raising money for our band trip to Orlando next June. Would you like to buy some fish?"

At one house: "Great! like neon tetras and angelfish?"

Me: "nonono - *dead* fish"

My parents suggested I make use of the word "frozen" for clarification purposes thereafter.

I think this means at 17 I could have predicted a career in IT...