Delta InFlight Entertainment

in

---Note: This was typed onboard the Delta flight from SEA to SLC---So I'm flying from Seattle to Vegas through Salt Lake, and it seems Delta has upgraded their inflight entertainment. Each seat, even coach, has a little video display, with free music (poor choices, if I do say so myself), flight status info, certain sattelite TV channels including CNN for free. All the good stuff is for charge, of course.

  • Movies: $5
  • HBO TV (Soprano's, etc): $2 an episode

While all of this is nice and well, input on the screens is spotty. The NTN-like inflight trivia has you enter a name on an OSK, and I had an extremely hard time not doubling my name (nniicckk). I think playing zuma would be near impossible, as even the iPod version requires dextrous fingers to launch the balls in the right direction.Delta seems to be trying to attract a new, hipper crowd, and by the entranced look of the majority of the passengers, they're doing well.Now if only they weren't blatantly obvious about monetizing their new toy... They strolled down the aisles selling headsets for 5 bucks the second we were level in the air, and before we got snacks or beverages. Let's hope this Lincoln/Washingtoning doesn't get in the way of actual, y'know, customer service.

Gah, about to land here. I really should see how much a flight with Wi-fi on board would go for. Can't be pretty :(

Lingo, Slang, Vernacular, Symbols, Language

in

I'm going to go defrag my desk area.

A simple, succinct sentence that expresses the idea that I am going to reorganize or clean my desk area with the intention of speeding up access to important and oft-used papers and things. Of course, the utterance of the phrase caught the other two people in the room by surprise. After some humor and jeering for my nerdiness, I ambled off noting that they both understood exactly what I was saying.

This is not an uncommon occurrence here at school. I discuss with my roommate about classifying games through the most efficient way we both know: set theory. There's the set of all games, then proper subsets PC and Console, then subsets of those. We try to define in a mathematical sense the requirements for set membership, etc. It's a tone and language of discussion most people find unnerving.

However, I feel it is important to use lingo and slang among friends and colleagues who (and this is important) understand the lingo. Our entire language system is based on simplifications like this. Who goes out and says "I would like to obtain and consume one pile of beef, lettuce, salsa, various sundry vegetables as appropriate for local customs all wrapped in a thin, flat piece of starchy foodstuff"? We simply reduce this complex sentence into "I want a burrito".

We define new words and phrases for the indescribable, or the otherwise hard-to-describe, events, feelings, things, or ideas we wish to communicate. Every language has them, so why can't we as technical people use our own mutually-understood terms to describe something? Is it really that bad to be 'nerdy' about it, especially if it's a more effective means of communication?