Abbreviated Coded Rendition of Name Yielding Meaning

[Bob]

The camps are split, and the shoes are coming off. It’s indeed time to start a battle of biblical proportions. I really wish that this wasn’t something that needed to be said, but wow is it difficult to take part in development of the interwebs and not be bombarded by this craziness that some call pronunciation. Do you say SQL as ESS-QUE-EL or do you say SeQuilL or SeQueL? Should you say Lahl or just those hippies say that and laugh on your insides? Do you actually take the time to say WWW at all? I suggest that you take a step back from this ‘debate’ and take some time to actually think before you speak.

IRC – (EYE ARR SEE)
This debate came up first back in early high school when I used to take part in EFnet back before it became a cess pool. One guy would tell another guy, note that this is what we talked about in school, that he was going to change his irk channel and a riot would ensue. Fur would fly and folks would get heated and overly energetic, until they realized that the person who had said it was actually out of his mind and had never realized that IRC was an ACRONYM. What’s that I said?

Acronym - a word formed from the initials or other parts of several words.

What does this mean to you? Well, for what its worth, there are quite a few acronyms that lend themselves to be pronounced, i.e. NATO, but at the same time they are also more than one word, and for that matter they are technically written differently, as period separated letters to denote that they are infact acronyms – N.A.T.O. These periods are there for a reason, to remind you that they are not a word. Keeping that in mind it doesn’t take much of a step of logic to be able to realize that NATO is actually supposed to be En Aye Tee Owe.

Now I can hear your blood starting to boil. OMG WTF! Please don’t make me laugh at you. I assure you that I won’t be forcing you to stop looking like fools. IT, pronounced EYE TEE, is an industry that is peppered with long and loosely named tools and features and it is definitely easier to say Sequel than it is to say Standard Query Language. The issue arises when someone says Sequel referring SQL when they are actually referring to an application of the same name, and mistaking it for the pronunciation of SQL, which is actually pronounced as its spelled (ESS QUE EL), unlike many CIO’s have been bred into believing. Microshaft has done its part with its marketing department actually instructing people to refer to its SQL server as Sequel server. What a joke. It is only a larger shame because of the lack of any traction and the perpetual circle of uninformed folks making the mistake of trying to sound smart. May the lord smite him, if he would take the time out of making folks think it’s alright to say LAWL at parties, instead of actually taking the time to laugh.

I doubt many of you would argue that saying something stupid as STUHFOO at a party would constitute being a loser, but I have been at parties (LAN & the ones girls actually show up to) and heard folks say LAWL or OWE EMM GEE in the company of complete strangers. For one reason or another, these people usually stand out like sore thumbs, especially if you get them a shot of Jagermeister. Just think about yourself being this fool as he spouts off this garbage he picked up through AIM chat thinking he was hip with the latest lingo. He finds out far too late that he has actually crossed the line, and made this party, as all the others he has attempted to step into, into another festival of making nerds look like losers.

Gamers United.
A few days back one of my colleagues took the time to utter something that… to this day is completely unexplainable and I hope that I will never be able to forgive him for it. After a meeting that I did exceptionally well in he tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention. I took my headphones off, listening to the floyd of all things, and he looks at me in the eye. For a moment I thought I saw a spark of intelligence in that miserable excuse for a brain that he has been blessed to have. Without stammering in the slightest he nodded his head and said GEE GEE. My heart skipped a beat; had I just heard that?! Yes, my god there is nothing left for me to do on this planet. He has left the building.

For those of you without mothers to steer you in the right direction, and give you that pat on your back to let you know you are making acceptable decisions, I suggest that you don’t get your panties in a bunch too much over this. FTW, for the win, and FTL, for the lose, are not going to cause too much hooplah with me, although FTL is definitely the wrong way to say something sucks. There is definitely some grey area here, of course. But please keep in mind that your actions impact the way the worlds young see all nerds. We never got to have a football team to stick together, hell its hard enough to find a group of five guys/gals to actually co exist and socialize with, let alone actually do something productive with them. We are a group of unimaginatively large size that are all impacting each others lives. It is terrible when a manager turns to an employee and says “You know what we need?! You should move us to the new Microshaft Sequel Server,” but it’s a travesty when a fellow developer turns to you and says GEE GEE.