A few months ago, I would not have even known what internet “cookies” were, let alone how to delete them from my system. I have to wonder, have internet cookies always been there or are they a recent developement? If they’ve always existed, then why did it take so long to name them? As most of us are very much aware, the internet, in some form or another, has been around since the 1980’s, so if the internet has existed that long, I wonder how long it took for that very first person to delete their “cookies”? Ten years and counting? You know, if those cookies hung on our hips that long, we’d all look like sofas.

Recently I tried out one of those computer surveys, and the outcome of that contest of wills is well-documented, usually resulting in 600 new unwanted emails in your in-box, and several phone calls from people telling you you’ve “requested” information on health insurance. In order to remove the spam from my computer diet, I have had to periodically go through them and tell each one to take me off their mailing list. I love doing that, even though it’s time consuming and they act absolutely broken-hearted when you break off “relations”. I have not met a spam mailer yet who could not take “no” for an answer.

As far as computer chips are concerned, I’ve always wondered which varieties are the most filling and which are the most fattening. There are micro-chips, memory chips, and various other forms of computer chips. At least the microchips sound slimming, and the memory chips seem to have a health-improvement function, but as for the rest of the chip diet, I think I’d better just leave the recipe book alone. I’m liable to end up with a high ram diet and a charge card at Radio Shack. It’s best to “just say no”.

We have always known that bytes are memory and bits are pieces of that memory, or maybe the bits are only crumbs of memory, I don’t know. Perhaps bytes are something less benign than that, maybe they are things we really need to watch out for like something out of those old monster movies. ” The Creature that Ate Silicon Valley”, now playing at DVD- rom drives near you. If you walk out of the theater grumbling, “wow, that movie really bytes,” then your lap top will know enough not to go see it the next time it is showing online.

I can’t help but wonder just how much memory a computer actually needs to begin with. Most of it appears to be superficial at best, adding only a bit or two of ram here and there. I love to read the “ingredients” on a box of new software, to see what the memory requirements are before I actually purchase that software. Sometimes a new game will say that it requires a Pentium I processor and then it will give that processor a number definition that reeks of mediocrity, when all along it sounds so much more impressive to just say Pentium I. Take my lap top for example. It is probably the slowest computer on planet Earth, yet it still brags that it contains a Pentium Processor. Big deal, it does not have the nerve to advertise how much of a processor it actually uses, so if Pentium 4 is good, what I probably have is a Pentium 1/2.

Someday I may actually even learn what all these weird computer words mean, but in the meantime, I’ll be satisfied being an ignorant computer clod with a machine that occasionally actually does what I ask it to, hopefully without having to sacrifice more of my already overworked brain cells to the demons of the religion of computer higher function. I know a couple of them by name: Pentium of the Mystery Number, and Intell-inside, the demon of Internal Miscellanious Parts and Pieces. Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll go take an aspirin and lie down, and call my internet provider in the morning.