Save a slap for the dude who invented slaps!

Only tangentially related, but: I’m a school bus driver and a very popular name for kids these days is “Rhys”. I really enjoy asking them why they’re named after chocolate-covered peanut butter as it drives them crazy.

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Put money in your 401k! Nothing else really matters as much.

c-suite

CEO, CTO, CFO etc. In a '90s Internet startup like the company I worked for, the “C” really stood for “clueless”.

giant printouts of insanely over-normalized databases

Over-normalization is a database thing - a simple example of normalization would be a “People” table where instead of having the “Salutation” field just contain text like Mr, Mrs. etc., you have a separate “Salutations” table with all the possibilities listed and keyed with an ID (usually just a sequential number), and then the “People” table stores a Salutation ID for each entry instead of the actual text. It’s a valid and standard thing to do with database design, but it can be taken to extremes where absolutely every possible trivial thing that can be normalized is, producing an overcomplicated mess that is extremely difficult to work with programmatically.

Printing out this over-normalized mess of a database on multiple sheets of paper which are then taped to the wall is utterly useless.

How is a database a trick?

The printout is the trick - it fools the bosses into thinking you’re doing something amazing and productive when you’re really just fucking around. It only works on the technically incompetent, of which there was no shortage in '90s Internet startups (or today).

Its pretty similar

No, that was the sequel.

Plot twist: Richard Gere was actually George Washington!

Yeah, BeOS was awesome. I remember a coworker showing it to me in 1996 - he also taught me how to wow the c-suite with giant printouts of insanely over-normalized databases, a parlor trick that has served me well over the years.

As I recall, Gasse was offered something like $440 million for BeOS by Apple and he turned them down. Not sure it would have made any difference in anything by this point, but at least Objective-C wouldn’t have been littered with classes with the “NS” prefix.

Is BeOS still floating around?

They have the close, minimize and full screen buttons in the upper left corner instead of the upper right.

/s just in case.

They get taken over by sales & marketing types

Like Steve Jobs lol.

My memory is all fucked up too and I have to look this shit up. I could have sworn Security came out in 1984, and it was probably my favorite album of the 80s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKGY2ABHP7c&ab_channel=FoundationINTERVIEWS

Nirvana always gets credit for putting the nail in the coffin of hair metal, but I think it was more Beavis and Butthead’s shtick of mocking 80s videos that did it.

Kids in The Hall

My favorite sketch show of all time, believe it or not. I’m squishing your head.

The Real World

Even the first Real World was a lot better than later years of MTV. I think one thing that MTV never gets credit for is helping to normalize homosexuality in US culture, which they did by always having a gay cast member in the show.

My family didn’t have cable TV growing up, so I had to watch MV3 which was a half-hour syndicated MTV knockoff out of Los Angeles where the videos always had a studio full of kids dancing superimposed over them. I was always self-conscious about dancing back then, but if you watch videos of 80s kids dancing you’ll realize that everybody danced like shit back then.

Back in spring of 1982

I think your memories are off a little date-wise. Bowie’s Let’s Dance was released in 1983 and Peter Gabriel’s Security was released in late 1982.

Martha Quinn

I’m still in love with her.

Pat’s

Lol you get assaulted just for going to Pat’s.