COMPUTER 101

Boyd has started to take more and more interest in computers lately. Some of our friends have been putting pressure on him to learn computer skills. I would be the first to admit that he is an intelligent man and understands agriculture and animal husbandry exceptionally well. But he is computer illiterate, and that is putting it mildly!

            So I decided to test him on some computer terminology by asking him to define some words. Following are the words and his definitions:

• BOOT: Heavy shoes you put on when working in the corral or around the animals. Used especially in the winter in the snow, spring when things are muddy, and after a summer rain storm. Also used for irrigating all summer long.
• REBOOT: Putting your boots back on after taking them off.

• DOWNLOAD: Maybe another way of saying “unload.” For example, “I need to download this grain at the elevator.”
• FREEZE: What happens to water and plants when the temperature gets below 32 degrees. It’s what we worry about during late spring and early fall when we have crops in the field that are susceptible to frost.
• SPAM: Meat that comes in a can.
• BYTES: Something to eat like “I think I’ll have a bite to eat.”
• MEGABYTES: Lots of bites like Thanksgiving dinner.
• HARDWARE: Tools like wrenches, pliers, screw drivers, drills, screws, nuts, bolts, nails. Things you would have in your toolbox.
• SOFTWARE: Are you sure you don’t mean “soft wire?” That’s this wire that is very flexible and useful for small repairs around the farm and ranch.
• FIREWALL: The insulation and rocks put on the wall behind the free-standing fireplace to keep from burning the house down.
• VIRUS: Something that makes you sick – like the flu.
• DISK: Equipment to work the soil in the fall after harvest and in the spring prior to planting.
• BACKUP: Going backwards, opposite of going forward.
• WEB: Something a spider spins.
• WEB SITE: Where the web is: a window; corner, ceiling; etc.
• WEB ADDRESS: Maybe the room the web site is in. I didn’t know they had addresses. Do they get mail?
• BLOG: Probably a unit of measure used with thick liquids like oil. A “blog” might be a certain number of “glugs.” A “glug” is measured as you pour, for instance oil, and it makes the sound “glug.” You count the “glugs’ to measure, so maybe ten “glugs” equals a “blog.”
• CHAT ROOM: The local coffee shop.
• SEARCH ENGINE:             Would that be like the ATV or helicopter looking for a lost hunter or hiker?
• KEYBOARD: The board next to the kitchen door where all the keys to the vehicles are hung.
• HARD DRIVE: Moving the cattle from one pasture to another when they don’t want to move would be considered a “hard drive.” Another “hard drive” would be driving to the ranch in the early spring when the roads are muddy, and slippery, making it almost impossible to navigate.
• Mouse:  An unwelcome rodent.
• Cut & Paste – We learned to do that in the first grade. Remember the old paste that a lot of the kids ate?
• Crop – That’s what out in the fields all summer that I irrigate, spray weeds out of, and watch closely in the hopes that I’ll get a good harvest.
• Web surfing:  Well, surfing has to do with water, right? So maybe this is what ducks do with their webbed feed.

As you can tell, I have a long way to go before introducing Boyd to computers. But we are both content: he keeps his hands off my computer and I do any computer work he needs done. This sure keeps the anxiety level down at our home.