Gigabytes, Dr Seuss, 5 1/4" Floppies, And Blossoms

Greeting to all, and welcome those first time visitors to the East Wing.

One of the things that always fascinates me are new words and how they come about. With the beginning of the personal computers in the 1980’s a whole new dictionary was created. Computer talk. Old words took on new meaning. New words were invented to describe things and actions taken.

Mouse is no longer a live creature. Typewriters morphed into keyboards. Lead pencils dried up on the vine when no one picked ‘um. Crayons gave way to color printers. Erasers are rubbed the wrong way as the delete key corrects mistakes of brain and fingers.

As the computer continues to evolve so does the language. With the opening of the internet, again we are introduced to still another set of new words like "htt & WWW" ((How did ya like figuring that one out) Most everyone by now knows that the www means world wide web. I’m not gona embarrass anybody by asking a show of hands on who knows the meaning of http:// While web no longer referrers to spiders and your address no longer referrers to your home.

Megabyte, Gigabyte, Terabyte are all units of measure of storage space. Did ya ever really think about these amounts of storage space available on your computer? Some examples can put these words into a different perspective. (now I don’t want the real technoids out there to get crazy and tell me my numbers are off, I know what you are talking about,, so let it be, it’s not 1000 it’s 1024, for simplicity of understanding the concept, go with me on my numbers)

Let the letter A = 1. One Megabyte would = 1 million A’s . One Gigabyte would = 1 thousand Megabytes (a billion letter A’s) One Terabyte would = 1 thousand Gigabytes (a trillion letter A’s)

I don’t care who ya are, you don’t know that many words to fill that much space in your lifetime. If you saved every word you ever spoke in your lifetime, ya still wouldn’t fill it up. But depending on what ya put into your computer, different stuff takes different amounts of space to store. Just like with all the rest of your stuff, shoes take more space to store that socks. Ya can even store your socks inside your shoes if ya want to save even more space. There are ways that ya can actually store computer stuff kinda like putting your socks inside your shoes, but ya gotta know how to do that just right, cause if ya don’t do it right,,, oh well.

Your need for computer storage is just like your basement or garage, no matter how much space ya got, ya got more junk than space. And so it is inside your computer, just like your other storage spaces ya tend to hold on to the junk too long. I’m sure I have stuff in some my old computers so far back originally made of wood.

I believe it was 1992 or 1993, in any event it was a year or so before Windows 95 came on the market, we were all using Windows 3.5xx or something like that. I decided I needed to get additional storage for my computer system. We were using a system called floppy disks to store our stuff, the reason for the name was simple, a 5 ¼ inch very thin disk made of an organic based material covered with something kinda kin to rust so that when in the presence of electricity electromagnetism was able to produce a standard pattern which could be read over and over and get the same results.

A product had just come on the market that seemed to be the answer to my prayers, a storage device that would fit inside my computer, it would hold all the stuff which could possibly be created in my life time. This would be a truly once in a life time purchase. And so I bought this life changing product that would forever take care of my need to store stuff on my computer. A device called a “hard card” it took up one of the internal slots inside my computer.

And by the way, this storage device, this “hard card” had the capacity of store 3 megabytes, it cost $3,000.00
The cost of storage devices have gone down since then. Now I carry an eight gigabyte pin drive in my shirt pocket most all the time, just in case I run across something somewhere that I want to bring home. Ya just never know when ya’ll see something ya want to keep. (adding to the junk) The pin drive in my shirt pocket, well that cost $19.95 at a one day on line sale at a Staples or Office Max type store.

Not all the new words surrounding the computer world are friendly and fun words to learn. I will never forget one of the very, very early words I had such a problem with, syntax. For those who remember computer before windows, and even before Microsoft, syntax popped up on your screen ever time ya made a mistake in typing. It took me forever to figure out why. I think that was back when I was blond or something.

Another word I had issue with was “blog”. Didn’t like the sound, didn’t like the looks of the word on my screen. Just didn’t like the word at all. It just seemed the more I heard the word, the more I didn’t like it. Don’t know why. That word never really done me any harm. But I could never get used to the word. I decided to find out where the word came from. One thing ya can do with a computer is find out everything about anything. Blog was no different.

Before I started to research the word, I already knew all about a combination of web and log, and all that stuff. Something just told me to keep digging, and so I did, until I found a lesser know story some 56 years old.

In a 1953 story entitled "Scrambled Eggs Super," Dr. Seuss wrote:

I went for the kind that were mellow and sweet
And the world's sweetest eggs are the eggs of the Kweet
Which is due to those very sweet trout which they eat
And those trout ... well, they're sweet 'cause they only eat Blogs
And Blogs, after all, are the world's sweetest frogs
And the reason they're sweet is, whenever they lunch
It's always the world's sweetest bees that they munch
And the reason no bees can be sweeter than these...
They only eat blossoms off Beezlenut Trees
And those Beezlenut Blossoms are sweeter than sweet
And that's why I nabbed several eggs from the Kweet.

In a 2009 story entitled “The Blogs of 1953,” BobbyRay wrote:

Now there’s a word I don’t like wherever I see
It’s a hard to word to say for people like me
I don’t like the sound, it’s not even a cog
The word that I hate is that ugly word blog
When you play with computers you see it all day
Wherever you look it’s just in the way
WWW is the start of the sound
And before you know it the blog comes around
“It’s just part of computers” is what they told me
But I didn’t believe, so I researched to see
Mixed in with blossoms from Beezlenut Trees I found
The number of years that blogs been around
And once I found out I will never turn loose
Of that beautiful word BLOG from my friend Dr. Seuss!

An evening can’t go by without saying something about my girls, 2dogs, 1cat, 1wife, 1 Angel. All are well. The girl dogs are enjoying the Dog Days of Summer. They seldom go outside, just lay on their couches and talk about how hot Dog Days used to be before air-conditioning came to the East Wing. (air-conditioning has always been in the East Wing. Girl dogs have such short memories)

Sophia the Republican Cat is having a field day with the President being unable to pass the health care bill, even though with a filibuster proof senate, he still can’t get the senate to vote. She thinks the real reason is too many people are asking the democrats if they have read the bill and they are ashamed to admit they can’t read. Damn Republican Cat. I just knew it was a mistake when I taught that cat to read. No wonder she turned out republican. But calicos’ do learn to read quick.

The 1wife is enjoying the company of the Angel. There are few thing in life more precious than watching a baby grow. Any kinda baby, from alley cats to zebras, with baby people somewhere in the “P” section on the God’s List of beautiful things to see in your lifetime.

Sixteen friends of mine came home last week. They washed the sand from their hair for the last time. A whole lot of prayers have been answered in West Texas. Sixteen mothers sleep better tonight while way too many continue to pray for the safe return of their child, as do I.

As always your presence has made this Sunday Evening the enjoyable experience it has turned out to be. Thank you for stopping by. The shades of evening are dissolving day light from the East Wing and the battle is almost over.

The nighttime has won.

Stay Safe in Baghdad and Afghanistan.

From the East Wing, when Dr Seuss came to visit
I Wish you well
BobbyRay