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Recently, HostGator began our transition into a new building in Houston.  Presently, we occupy two floors while the remaining floors continue to be built out.  Our Houston buildings are only a short distance apart, in fact you can see each from the other.  The geography makes it convenient to dispatch teams from one building to the other, as needed.  Though we’ve been executing practice drills of this nature for many years, some of us veterans had grown complacent, thinking there would never be any true need to exercise our finely-honed emergency-response skills.

As explained in the recent Internet Speak post, one of the primary means of inter-office communication is via instant message and conference rooms.  The story told here will be best conveyed via excerpts from these conference rooms, for historical accuracy.

Saturday April 21st, 2012 was a day not unlike any other. Until the late afternoon brought with it a distress call received from HTX2:

(04:59:18 PM) Sundeep: we have a situation at the new building.

The years of training immediately roused the team from their aforementioned complacency and they began gathering the necessary data in order to spring into action, like a… spring… that goes… into action!  The situation was explained further:

(05:00:18 PM) Sundeep: My windows programmer is working out of there, programming, minding his own business and a possum just walked into his office and is chilling in the corner…

It was now clear that an intruder had successfully breached our security perimeter, gained entry into HTX2 and was now on the hunt for our Windows Development Team.  We had heard stories, but never believed them to be true, of this type of industrial espionage in the early days of web hosting, but we thought our parents were just trying to scare us with those tales.  This was actually happening!  The initial fear experienced by the team was quickly replaced with resolve; they’ve been trained, they could handle this!

(06:44:07 PM) Steve: soooooo
(06:44:25 PM) Steve: what do we do if we need to remove an opossum from the new building?
(06:44:37 PM) Steve: anyone have the number for animal control?
(06:44:46 PM) Steve: should I call Farrar?

Fortunately, we have several former members of the United States military on staff. Brendan, one of our Migrations Supervisors, quickly assembled a strike force of fearless warriors who were mentally and physically prepared to meet this threat head-on and save not only HTX2, but likely even the entire world, from certain destruction.  As the strike force mounted up at the designated staging area at HTX1, tensions were understandably running quite high in anticipation of the five-minute trip to HTX2.  This is what all those years of training were leading up to; this was the time to shine!

The ride to HTX2 was sprinkled with nervous laughter as the team prepared themselves for what would prove to be an undeniably epic battle.  The Band of Brothers pulled into the HTX2 parking lot amidst screams of fear emanating from the building.  Grown men were sobbing uncontrollably, it was utter bedlam!

The team entered the building to the tune of “Lose Yourself” by Eminem, or maybe it was the Theme from Rocky… either way, their senses heightened in preparation for the battle.  Upon exiting the elevator, they transformed into the warriors they had been trained to be.  The actual battle was brief, though glorious!  Unfortunately, the mere English language does not contain the necessary words to accurately describe the briefness and gloriousness of this particular battle, so we simply cannot appropriately describe it herein.  Trust us, though, brief and glorious it was!  The briefest and most glorious of any battle ever fought since the dawn of time, pretty much.

When the dust settled, HostGator’s strike force was declared victorious; the beast was sated and peace restored to HTX2 and the surrounding countryside.

(07:36:44 PM) Steve: Brendan has returned victorious from animal control detail
(07:37:39 PM) Brendan: I should win the HG medal of valor though
(07:51:23 PM) Jon: Brendan, on behalf of HostGator, I award you one whole internet

It was a triumphant return to HTX1 for our heroes.  Three separate ticker-tape parades, sailors kissing ladies, like in that famous old picture of a sailor kissing a lady.  Special colored wristbands were immediately procured to celebrate the remembrance of this spectacular event.

As the sun set on this most momentous of days, our warriors faded back into their more traditional roles.  However, not only did they gain One Whole Internet today, but also the knowledge that no task was too large, no creature too vicious and no battle too insurmountable for the team at HostGator.

It should go without saying, but we still want to make it known for the record, that the little guy was captured and released back into the wild unharmed and that no animals shall ever be harmed in the making of this blog.

Once upon a time, people communicated with each other in complete sentences.  Or at least, I assume people used to communicate with each other in complete sentences.  Then along came the technology that spawned the phenomenon of communicating via text.  This effectively butchered the English language.  At least we thought so, at the time.  Then along came IRC and Instant Messaging which thus took language into depths of fail that were never before imaginable.  OMG, LOL!

Instant Messaging is one of the primary means of communication within, and between, HostGator offices.  This leads to much butchering of the English language internally, whilst (hopefully) maintaining proper grammar within the LiveChats with Customers; this occurs simultaneously, behind the scenes.  I’m not going to reveal too much of the inter-office shenanigans, but there are various conference rooms utilized by various departments to effectively communicate as a group with one another.  This is a snippet of a conversation that took place in one of these conference rooms:

(05:38:01 AM) Preston: bacon are desireable
(05:38:06 AM) Preston: i want some bacon
(05:38:43 AM) Adam: proper spelling is desirable.
(05:38:49 AM) Adam: i want some proper spelling.
(05:38:53 AM) Adam: wrapped in bacon.
(05:38:56 AM) Preston: then read a book
(05:38:58 AM) Preston: this is the internet
(05:39:07 AM) Adam: I WANT THE INTERNET WRAPPED IN BACON

It was the above exchange specifically that prompted the creation of this blog post.  It got me thinking about how we have truncated our language to make it far more immediate, far more bite-sized… far more streamlined, or far more primitive?  TLAs, or “Three-Letter Acronyms” have become the norm.  The aforementioned OMG and LOL, also: SMH, BRB, BRT, BFF, AFK… even the dreaded twosome of WTF and FML.  This is clearly by no means an exhaustive list of TLAs.

There is no way to know the manner in which language will evolve in the future, but if Future Man looks back at the HostGator conference room logs and compares them with the LiveChat logs of the same people having Customer interactions, he may very well think that two completely separate languages are being spoken… and perhaps that is relatively true.  What’s interesting is the two gentlemen quoted above are both highly intelligent and articulate individuals, which you may not necessarily be able to infer based on the snippet presented.

This all begs the question, should we consciously continue down this path of effectively disassembling language down to it’s most basic and minimally-communicative parts, or do we purposely not do that in order to maintain the present arc of lingual evolution, so to speak?  As always, when the future becomes the present, the victors will have written the history, amirite?  ZOMG, fosho!  LOL.