v36.0: Terrible TLAs

Good morning folks,

-slurp-

It has been awhile since I last posted.  I'm not exactly sure what the issue is but I can never seem to find the right time to post.  My mornings have been super busy and since I started training my replacement for my old team, I'm finding I'm busy from the moment I walk in the door until I get a chance to leave for home.  Lately I've been putting in close to 10hr days; it is starting to burn me out.

-slurp-

I'm sure you've all heard about TLAs.  If not, I'm almost certain you've seen them before because they are everywhere we look.  What does TLA mean you ask?  It simply stands for Three Letter Acronyms.  We use TLAs a lot at work and sometimes one TLA can mean more than one thing which can be quite confusing when talking between different groups or teams.  I'd like to try a little experiment with you.  I will list off a bunch of TLAs I use here at work and I'd like to see your comments on what they mean to you.  I will make every effort to post the results early next week (provided I have any results to post then) and let you know what these TLAs mean to me.

-slurp-

So here we go, in no particular order:

1. RPM


2. LFG


3. WTB


4. WPI


5. ISP


6. LOL


7. OPS

Now, when you've completed reading the rest of this musing, reply with a comment listing your answers to the TLAs above.  Should be an interesting exercise and I'm very curious to see what people think of when they see these.

-slurp-

We see acronyms everywhere these days, especially on the Internet through social media sites and Internet chat.  Let's face it, some of these acronyms are being used as real words and have been somewhat adopted by our culture.  I've heard people saying LOL before, rather than laughing out loud, they say LOL to convey laughter.  Seriously!?  The whole reason we have LOL is because people couldn't express laughter in online chat so they created an acronym for it.  Now that acronym has done a full circle and has been adopted in our daily language.  There are many other examples out there and I could probably go on all day about it but I have work to do.  Next time you're talking to someone or are listening in on a nearby conversation, take a mental note to listen to the acronyms being used.  Some may not make any sense because you're missing the context, but others you'll pick up on and know exactly what they're saying.  For those of us who spend quite a bit of time online chatting or posting, we don't immediately pick up on these things because they are part of us, but imagine how someone who doesn't know the commonly used acronyms (WTF, LOL, ROFL, etc.) must feel?

-slurp-

To put it simply, we've grown lazy (in my opinion).  It is actually quite funny when you think about it.  We spend so much time and effort to shorten things all the time and the rest of the time we try to find ways to extend our lives as much as possible.  Perhaps the reason we use acronyms is because life is too short to waste spelling it all out?  I'm curious to see what the next 10 years will bring; what will our language evolve into if this continues.  Maybe it is my North American naiveness (is that even a word), but I can see the Internet lingo becoming a common global language that everyone will know and be able to read and write.  It is actually quite interesting if you look at it that way.

-slurp-

Anyway folks, the time has come for me to get to work and try to accomplish something today.  If you're in Canada this weekend, I hope you have a great long weekend.  To my friends to the south, you're long weekend is next weekend.

-slurp-

Cheers,

Al