EARLY MILLENNIUM VOCABULARY

  SITCOMs: What yuppies turn into when they have children and one
   of them stops working to stay home with the kids. Stands for:
   Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage.

  SQUIRT THE BIRD: To transmit a signal to a satellite.

  STARTER MARRIAGE: A short-lived first marriage that ends in
   divorce with no kids, no property and no regrets.

  STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out
   and whiny.

  SWIPED OUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless
   because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.

  TOURISTS: People who take training classes just to get a vacation
   from their jobs. Example: "We had three serious students in the
   class; the rest were just tourists."

  TREEWARE: Hacker slang for documentation or other printed
   material.

  XEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's
   workplace.

  GOING POSTAL: Euphemism for being totally stressed out, for
   losing it. Makes reference to the unfortunate track record of
   postal employees who have snapped and gone on shooting rampages.

  ALPHA GEEK: The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person
   in an office or work group.

  CHIPS AND SALSA - Chips = hardware, salsa = software. i.e.:
   "Well, first we gotta figure out if the problem's in your chips
   or your salsa."

  G.O.O.D. 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.

  IRRITAINMENT - Entertainment and media spectacles that are
   annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them.
   The O.J. trials, Ally McBeal, Monica Lewinsky, Elian! etc.

  DEINSTALLED - Euphemism for being fired. Heard on the voice mail
   of a Vice President at a downsizing computer firm: "You have
   reached the number of a deinstalled vice president. Please dial
   our main number and ask the operator for assistance. (See also,
   "Decruitment.") **See also, "Decommissioned"

  VULCAN NERVE PINCH - The taxing hand position required to reach
   all the appropriate keys for certain commands. For instance, the
   warm re-boot for a Mac II computer involves simultaneously
   pressing the Control key, the Command key, the Return key and the
   Power On key. Sometimes referred to as the "THREE-FINGERED
   SALUTE."

  YUPPIE FOOD STAMPS - The ubiquitous $20 bills spewed out of ATMs
   everywhere. Often used when trying to split the bill after a
   meal: "We owe $8 each, but all anybody's got are yuppie food
   stamps."

  ASSMOSIS - The process by which some people seem to absorb
   success and advancement by kissing up to the boss.

  BLAMESTORMING - Sitting around in a group discussing why a
   deadline was missed or a project failed and who is responsible.

  SEAGULL MANAGER - A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise,
   craps over everything and then leaves.

  SALMON DAY - The experience of spending an entire day swimming
   upstream, only to get screwed and die in the end.

  CHAINSAW CONSULTANT - An outside expert brought in to reduce the
   employee head count, leaving the brass with clean hands.

  CLM - Career Limiting Move - Used among microserfs to describe
   ill-advised activity. Trashing your boss while he or she is
   within earshot is a huge CLM.

  ADMINISPHERE - The rarefied organizational layers beginning just
   above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the
   adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to
   the problems they were designed to solve.

  DILBERTED - To be exploited and oppressed by your boss. Derived
   from the experiences of Dilbert, the geek-in-hell comic strip
   character. "I've been dilberted again. The old man revised the
   specs for the fourth time this week."

  FLIGHT RISK - Used to describe employees who are suspected of
   planning to leave the company or department soon.

  404 - Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error
   message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested document
   could not be located. Used as in: "Don't bother asking him ...
   he's 404, man."

  GENERICA - Features of the American landscape that are exactly
   the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip
   malls, subdivisions. Used as in: "We were so lost in generica
   that I forgot what city we were in."

  OHNO-SECOND - That minuscule fraction of time in which you
   realize that you've just made a BIG mistake.

  PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE - The fine art of whacking the crap out of
   an electronic device to get it to work again.

  UMFRIEND - A sexual relation of dubious standing or a concealed
   intimate relationship, as in "This is Bridget, my ... um
   ...friend."

  BODY NAZIS: Hard-core exercise and weightlifting fanatics who
   look down on anyone who doesn't work out obsessively.

  CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.

  IDEA HAMSTERS: People who always seem to have their idea
   generators running.

  MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the Couch
   Potato.

  PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in
   a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see
   what's going on.