[Cialug] OT: grins and nostalgia (was Re: USB sensors)

[Sean McClanahan]

Oh yes, I remember <g> being used regularly.  I jumped into the BBS
phase full feet in the late 80's, and kept a BBS running for a few years
in the process.  Used RBBS and TriBBS.  I also remember the first time I
saw a smiley; it was in a UseNet newsgroup (back when there was less
noise and more substance).  It looked like this:  (:  and I wondered
what it was at first.  Didn't dawn on me until after a little bit what
exactly I was looking at.

Then there were the ROTFL type of abbreviations...  for a while, there
were only a handful being used.  Today, my kids are just like the cell
phone commercial where the participants talk in "OMG" format.  They
occasionally find themselves talking like they text - which irritates
me.  Looking at their text messages (the few times I'm actually allowed
to), I'm surprised that they can actually understand what is being said.

But I think the best was a resume I received one time, where the
candidate actually used a couple of text shorthands in his work history.
For example, he used "2" instead of "to".

His resume didn't make it past the first phase of review.

Sean


-----Original Message-----
From: cialug-bounces at cialug.org [mailto:cialug-bounces at cialug.org] On
Behalf Of Nathan Stien
Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 12:43 PM
To: Central Iowa Linux Users Group
Subject: [Cialug] OT: grins and nostalgia (was Re: USB sensors)

On Jan 18, 2008 10:17 AM, Morris Dovey <mrdovey at iedu.com> wrote:
> I think you may be reading my mind. <vbg>

It seems like the mass market internet kind of killed "<g>" notation.
I picked it up from BBS culture in the 90's, but my computing
experience only really began in the mid 90's.  Emoticons, LOL, and
other such pleb constructs took over via America Online (as far as I
can tell).  I held out for a while in those days, but eventually I had
to explain "<g>" to too many people and I caved.

It also took a while to stop trying to use ctrl-g to make someone's
console beep.  <g>

I also seem to remember saying that things were "k-rad" or "|<-rad".

Wonderfully, the ICQ instant messenger software (smells like 1997 to
me) used to support ^g as a throwback for old-timers, in those heady
days of downloading poorly transcribed .mid files from animated
GIF-laden geocities pages...  But maybe that was just me.  <g>

Does anyone else here remember "<g>" fondly?  Is there perhaps some
previous construct a relative whippersnapper like me wouldn't even
know about?
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