I used to do Ham Radio when I was a kid.  Ham Radio was very much a
Guy Thing back then, with young pups, dads, middle-aged hobbyists,
O.F.'s and so on, plus the occasional woman who did her best to be One
Of The Guys.  The Guys always talked about their YLs (Young Ladies)
and XYLs (Ex-Young Ladies - i.e., wives) in just the way you just did.

I was just a kid, and this aspect of Ham Radio always bugged me.  For
one thing, I would have liked it if there were girls my age with whom
I could chat about Ham Radio, because that would significantly
increase my chances of getting laid, which was a very important thing
for me at the time, and I had no idea what else to talk to girls
about.   But it also bugged me because there was this underlying
implication that the men who talked about their wives this way didn't
take them very seriously, and sometimes barely tolerated them.

I'm older and wiser now, and I can understand to some extent why those
men felt that way - I sometimes find Vicki exasperating too.  Oddly,
though, that sort of talk still bugs me - I guess I think that if you
choose to share your life with somebody, you ought to take that a bit
more seriously.

I really hope that the NetBSD crowd doesn't, over time, turn into a
bunch of fat Old Farts who sit around talking about nothing much and
making stupid, vaguely misogynistic jokes about their wives.

			       _MelloN_