WIDGETS
(wi-jit) A module on a website, in an application, or in the interface of a device that allows users to access information or perform a function:
If you are anywhere close to my age, a widget is something made by XYZ corporation that you study in Basic Accounting 101. I remember this because that's as far as I got in accounting 101. Now it is not my intention to denigrate accountants. Some of the most outstanding counting ever done had been done by accountants. But at the age of nineteen with the whole world in front of me I could not confine myself to such a droll subject. I tried. Twice. I dropped it (with a B average), never getting beyond those darned widgets. In fact I dropped school altogether to get a job and save some money so I could resume my academic career. Alas it was 1964, I was healthy, and my draft status was 1A. I enlisted just ahead (after, actually) of my notice.
Moving ahead now to 2016 (I won't bore you with all that in-between stuff) I decide to display to my grandchildren my grasp of anything technical. I don't tell them, of course, that the years and physical demands of being a maintenance mechanic require a more sedentary lifestyle. I have a computer and a keyboard and a mouse. As soon as I find out what a Web page is I'll get one. HTML doesn't scare me anything like USAF. So now I'm reading up on all things computerish when lo and behold I run across those damn Widgets.
"Why are you screaming at your computer?" My wife says as she comes rushing in from the kitchen.
"It's the Widgets!"
"What is a Wiget? Are you watching "Twilight Zone" reruns again?"
"I knew it. Those accountants have got into the computer business and they brought along their Widgets... Well I'm not dropping out of this one. I have the time and the resources and I'm going to figure this out if it takes thirty years."
"Ha!" she says, "You haven't got thirty years. If fact if you keep hollering at your computer like that, I doubt you have one."
"Yes maam," Says I in a soft voice. A good woman is far more difficult to come by or understand than a web page.
So if by chance you happen upon a web page (www.saltyoldman.com) and you find that the sidebar has a serious Widget problem please refer to the title theme.
I've been computer literate since 1962, used the world's first word processor for part of my dissertation in 1973, was building powerful database functional programs in 1992, had my own website built in 1997, started editing my own movies in 2001, but I still don't know what a damn widget is except it's one of those thingies that comes with some computers. The way I look at it, the fewer widgets one has to use to go on computing, the better. So there.
And you're right, a good woman is much harder to figure out than a computer and software. But they are much softer and that's what makes them so lovable.
Ron