Friday, April 17, 2009

Cursing the Cursor

Always I had the frightening feeling within myself that I did'nt know anything about computers. My dread was to an extent that I used to get nightmares on that idiot box.

Having come from a First Group Biology Background in my higher secondary, I was blindfolded to computers. When people say some computer jargons, I tend to stay away from them. My computer illiteracy was so famous in my college, whenever my friends come across any jargons or any tech stories they tend to turn and look at me. I felt awkward when they did so

It was my first day on computer lab. No wonder I was sweating my palms and face when I heard the first task. It was a basic FORTAN LAB. We had the code written in the theory class. We just need to write it on the computer and execute it .There were not many computers for all. So each computer is occupied by 2 people. I was the odd man out and I ended up in using without sharing. Someone switched on my monitor, someone switched on the CPU and some one navigated to the portion where we write the code.

I was busy typing the code and got stuck up with something (I guess I needed some compilation help) .so I called my computer lab instructor to help me out .He asked all my other class mates to come to my place so that he can demonstrate to everybody using my computer. I called everyone and asked them to assemble at my place. I was typing some changes to code and came to an end of the line. At that time, the instructor asked me to “MOVE THE CURSOR” .All of my friends knew that I did not know that word .So they kept quite. I was so frightened and was sweating a lot

The instructor again said “MOVE THE CURSOR” .Not knowing what to do, I just looked at my friends assembled near my place for some clues .Everyone was keeping mum in a planned manner and was giggling.

Again the instructor frightened me in his rough voice “MOVE THE CURSOR”. As soon as I heard his voice I moved the MONITOR hastily (just gave a shake).All my friends giggle busted in to an uproarious howling. The tumult was so louder that the neighboring classes also came to our class thinking something fishy had happened.The cursor was the first computer jargon to get my CURSE


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For people who don’t know what’s cursor?
Cursor stands for [CURrent Screen Oriented Region]. It is a moving placement or pointer that indicates a position in a computer

12 comments:

G U R U said...

hahaha!!! LOL!! Brilliant narration dude - hilarious, it certainly was! I think your instructor was the real CURSO('E')R here - I bet he would've 'cursed' himself for having chosen you and your computer as the prototype :-D

G U R U said...

...and by the way, am an IT professional and honestly speaking, am hearing that acronym for the first time! What a shame! Anyway, thanks for the humorous education :)

Titan said...

@Guru: Thanks much for checking and also commenting in.Yes the instructor started like cursing , but after that he could not control the laughing.

Titan said...

@GURU. Guru , No need to feel ashamed of , for not knowing the acronym.Even I found it now only.
I thought most of us wouldnt know that, so I added that at last.

Arun Sankaranarayanan said...

Nice post, Rajesh. Well written. I came to realize early in my career that knowing the technical terms or even awareness of software tools was much less important than having clarity of thought/logic for problem-solving.

Titan said...

@Arun: I'm so honored to receive your comments.Thanks a lot.Yeah I concur with you that clarity of thought/logic is very much important than actual tool knowledge.Because with clarity of thought you can master any tool concept in no time. But I feel, not knowing cursor at my initial days is really a sin. ;-)

Be said...

Title was really catchy....

Titan said...

@Bennet:
Thanks for checking and commenting

Mani said...

Nice one !!!!

Titan said...

thanks mani for checking out!!!

Harish said...

Hey Raj, that's funny !
btw, i am friend of Ram (aka) Ramasamy.

Harish

Titan said...

Thanks Harish for sneaking in to my woods and commenting.