Jargon

Too bad the great American poet Dr. Seuss didn't live to see the Big Bang of cyberspace, with the Internet going from geek retreat to nationwide playground in just a few years. The creator of the lorax, the sneedle and the wumpus would be at home with the gigabyte, Unix, Spam, RAM and ROM.The world of computers has long been full of elaborate and arcane jargon, seemingly designed to separate the newbie -- novice -- from the pro. But the soaring popularity of the Net has spread that jargon far and wide, and it seems like you can't open a package of gum without seeing something like http: //bubbles.

Memo to Associates:In benchmarking our company's performance against a peer group since our recent re-engineering, we realize that further rightsizing is in order to achieve the efficiencies needed to return to our core competencies. To ensure that this continues to be a high- performance workplace, we will begin outsourcing our human resources functions and convert other departments into cross-functional teams. A paradigm shift is necessary if we are to remain a learning organization in an era of discontinuous change.

On two Sunday afternoons since late August, nearly 30 strangers have roamed through Fred and Mary Tillman's bedroom.In the week ahead -- if the Tillmans are lucky -- more potential buyers will wander through their two-story residence in Hampstead, and maybe, just maybe, bite on the $168,500 price tag.That means the Tillmans have to keep everything looking mint no pans in the country kitchen's sink, no tiny fingerprints on the walls.4 "It's getting to me," Mary Tillman acknowledges.But for the Tillmans and many of the more than 14,000 Baltimore-area families trying to sell their homes, holding an open house is viewed as a must.

Q: My son told me I should put my stock certificates in a brokerage account.He said a new regulation will reduce the settlement period and could create problems for me.I'm happy keeping my stock in a bank safety-deposit box and collecting the dividends myself. What is this new law? When does it go into effect? Will it hurt me? What do you recommend I do?A: I've always been in favor of keeping stocks in a brokerage account, preferably at a discount brokerage firm that does not charge an annual fee or an "inactive" account fee.The new rule your son mentioned -- called "T-Plus-Three" in Wall Street jargon -- tightens the current five-day settlement period for trades to three days and takes effect June 7, 1995.

Thomas Edison is the only scientist ever to have been portrayed by two different Hollywood stars, Mickey Rooney and Spencer Tracy. You don't make it to the silver screen even once unless there's something about your life that strikes a chord in the hearts of the plain people, and Edison definitely filled the bill. The idea of an all-American boy who skipped college to work as a telegraph operator, taught himself science after hours and invented the light bulb and phonograph was (and is) irresistibly appealing to the average middle-class American.

Mary Sue Welcome did not come to talk, as the psychiatrists did, about borderline personality disorders, suicidal ideation or therapeutic alliances.Instead, she spoke in personal terms of "My Jackie," the best friend whose public facade of stylish self-assurance obscured a private life marked by loneliness and fear of failure.As comptroller of Baltimore, Jacqueline F. McLean could be so impatient and sharp-tongued that many gave her wide berth. But Ms. Welcome's Jackie was a social misfit who pined for a better marriage and kept a bottle of vodka in her refrigerator to numb her despair.

Most long-lived software products engender a degree of commitment among users, but some, like dBase, come to inspire an almost religious devotion.So when Borland International Inc. set out to convert this venerable product to the Windows format, it took on a considerable task. Nearly three years later, dBase for Windows is scheduled to ship at the end of June.Along with the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet and the old Word Star word processor, dBase was one of the software products that drove the early success of the personal computer a decade ago.But although it was packaged in shrink-wrapped boxes and sold alongside those products, dBase was never a ready-to-run application.

John Madden, it turns out, has a philosophy. And it can be summed up neatly, as most things in life can, in the words of a pop song:Sha la la la la la, live for today.Sha la la la la la, live for today.And don't worry 'bout tomorrow, hey.As Madden approaches his last NFL game with CBS for the foreseeable future, he says he hasn't been looking much past doing Sunday's NFC championship between the Cowboys and 49ers with his partner of 13 years, Pat Summerall. After that, there is the matter of where football's best analyst will be employed next season, but Madden said he really hasn't been thinking about it."

A parent group has written and produced a 17-minute video that members hope will generate more support for outcomes-based education.PROBE, which stands for Parents Responding to Outcomes-Based Education, so far includes seven members, said co-chairwoman M. Lynn Earp, who lives on Boxwood Avenue in Westminster with her husband and two children."

Atlanta -- Language update: It is no longer hip to refer to taxpayers as ''taxpayers.'' Now they're ''customers.'' Government provides its customers with ''services,'' and what it has lacked up to now is a system of ''quality management.''No one has as yet suggested that an IRS auditor be referred to as a customer service representative, but you get the drift.This new jargon was much in evidence last week when Vice President Al Gore met with a hundred or so Atlanta-based federal workers for a town-meeting-style session on government waste and inefficiency.