D'ya know what's irritating? People who assume anything you might happen to be doing on a computer is by default playing. I get this a lot and I suppose it's because most of the people I know and work with aren't involved with computers professionally other than what they are required to be by their jobs. You know, reading interdepartmental e-mails, filling out reports and turnovers, etc. That sort of thing. Oh most of them have computers in their homes but for them it is, for all intents and purposes, a toy. They play games on it, get online and chat or look up stuff once in awhile but rarely use it for serious matters beyond perhaps some online banking. So to them, by default, when they see someone on a computer that person must be "playing". Now, I don't deny that I have a game or two installed on my computer and once in a great long while I might in fact be playing but as I've gotten older games are far, far less of interest to me than the big game of life in the real world. That's where you play for keeps. That's where scoring big equals real, tangible bounty from winning or real, tangible hunger for losing for that matter.

So, far more often than not, if I am on my laptop I am either studying something that I think will be of value to me professionally or to make my life better in general, taking care of financial matters or reading news (USA Today, Yahoo! News, etc.), e-mail or, writing a rant in my Blog! Other than perhaps the writing in my Blog bit I really don't consider any of these activities to fall into the realm of play. After all, when someone goes to their mailbox and gets the bills, junk mail and whatever else no one asks them if they are playing with their mail. If I were to sit at the table, drink my coffee and read a printed version of the newspaper or magazine I normally read online I doubt someone would ask if I were playing with my newspaper. And believe me there is nothing playful about paying bills.

To people with this mindset computers are toys and therefore anything anyone might be doing is playing which makes it perfectly acceptable to pester, distract and otherwise annoy them while they are doing it.

Well, now ya know what's what's irritating.

There, I got that off my chest. I feel better now. Whew! ;-)

Oh, BTW, it wasn't someone at work that set me off on this rant, this time at least...