#I stole this still from a blue check mark account on twitter

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Ghost World (2001) dir. Terry Zwigoff

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Yes, SPAM is an acronym and Silicon Valley doesn't even know what it stands for!

In 1994 I was in the Marine Corps. One day I found myself standing in front of my Company First Seargent answering a question that would forever change my life. I will never forget the events of that evening and the weekend that followed.

I can’t tell you what day it was exactly, except it was a Thursday afternoon and we were all getting ready for a four-day weekend. We called them ninety-sixes, for the 96 hours we would be off duty.

My primary MOS, or job was to blow sh*t up. I was 0351 Anti-Tank Assaultman so we spent a lot of time shooting Anti-Tank weapons and blowing things up on the explosives range. We had just returned from the range and my Platoon Commander told me I needed to report to the First Seargent.

I remember the look on the First Seargents face and I can even recall the fear that struck me at my core when he looks me square in the eye and said:

“Dillingham, I hear you know how to type!”

I responded:

“Yes, First Seargent, I took typing classes in High School. I can type 20 words a minute.”

He said:

“DAMN! That sucks! We are going to be here all weekend, sit your aSS down, we have work to do. By the way, you are the new Company clerk. From now on you will check in with me every morning before formation and I will let you know if you are training with your platoon or typing my s**t. Now, grab those boxes and put them over here.”

Then he pulled out four file boxes full of handwritten rifle range and pistol range records that went back ten years.

I spent my four day weekend neatly typing up those reports as he read them off to me, line by line.

From that day forward I would get up half an hour earlier than everyone else to run over to the office and find out what was next. One morning I showed up and he said:

“Take your ass upstairs, the Seargent Major wants to see you.”

I went upstairs, reported in and learned that I would be on the phone with some technology people. Apparently, we were having issues with the Banyan VINES server. Banyan VINES was used by the military long before Microsoft ever stole the mouse and Windows-based operating system idea from Xerox.

Novell Networks and Banyan VINES were leading the way in computer networking back then.

Over the course of my last two years in the Marine Corps, I would rebuild several Banyan VINES servers. Some ran on top of Novell servers, and other on top of SCO-UNIX. Then Microsoft joined the grownups and I installed a few Microsoft Windows NT 3.51 servers.

All of the work I did on computers back in the day was done right along side of my primary job, which was still to blow sh*t up.

That is how I got into the technology business.

In 1996 I was married with a child and didn’t make enough money to support myself, much less my family. So, I got out. My first job was changing oil at a dealership. That lasted a week before I decided I needed to make more money if I was going to support my family.

Then my second job was upgrading PCs from Windows for Workgroups to Windows 95. I worked there for 30 days, then I decided I needed to learn a lot and fast, so I became a contractor and never looked back.

Over the last 20 years, I have worked on just about every single kind of information technology system that exists, from Banyan VINES, to Novell, to SCO-Unix, to Windows, to Linux, to Android, and I am ashamed to admit, even Apple.

I have consulted for oil and gas companies as large Exxon Mobil, and mom and pop shops as small as a two-door auto repair shop. If it runs on silicon and electrons there is a very good chance I know how it works.

That is why I get so frustrated when no one, and I mean no one knows that SPAM is actually an acronym. The problem is there are so many kids in the business that are College Indoctrinated that no one, not one of them understand how we got here.

SPAM stands for “Soliciting Products with Automated Messages.” It has its origins in the old days when PA systems were used to announce sales. The original SPAM, without the automation, was the famous K-Mart Blue light specials.

A person would get flip on a blue flashing strobe light to gain attention and then announce a special deal that lasted only a few minutes.

Then someone got smart a decided to make it automated. If you are old enough you may remember walking through a M.E. Moses store and hearing a recorded message that would tell you an item that was on sale that week. That was the first time I ever saw, or should I say heard SPAM.

Then Fax Machines came along. To this day fax machines all other the world get those special lunch menus, ladies, and gentlemen that is NOT SPAM.

At least it wasn’t called “SPAM” back in the day, it was called an Unsolicited Commerical Fax. It didn’t take long for the politicians to screw it up from there. It wasn’t long before SPAM was considered a bad thing, instead of a good thing shared between business and patron. SPAM has morphed into messages that people get from organizations they don’t know. If you know them, it isn’t SPAM, just something you don’t want to see!

So, if I have an existing business relationship with you and I send you an email, it isn’t SPAM. If you follow me on Facebook and you see my post but disagree with it, it isn’t SPAM. If you follow my Twitter account and you don’t like what I Tweet it isn’t SPAM.

SPAM is a message you didn’t ask for, from someone you don’t know! So, why is Facebook and Twitter fighting SPAM? If you don’t want to see what someone posts, stop following them instead of marking it SPAM. Oh, WAIT! That is how the Liberals target Conservatives. It justifies controlling what you see on Social Media!!!

Someday, maybe, just maybe all the twenty-something-year-old College Indoctrinated Silicon Valley kiddos will realize just how much horse crap their college professors fed them! …but that will probably take another twenty years…