Category: computers

by Scott Adams

I work in tech support. An end-user called and reported, “My computer is making a strange noise.” We visited the site and identified the problem: a pager (set on vibrate) in his drawer. [Editor’s note: Later that day he called the Men’s Wearhouse 800 number to report that his pants were making a strange noise.]

I work on the help desk here, and have just gotten off the phone with a customer who was asking us about her network connection. She insisted that the 3com card in her PC was not powerful enough for her needs and that she had “looked into it” and had decided she wanted a 4com card instead as they were obviously better.

Our soda machine had an out-of-order sign taped over the money slot. The Induhvidual walked up, lifted the piece of paper, and inserted his dollar. He was still cursing the machine for stealing his money as I walked back to my office.

This one’s a double sighting: I stopped off at the gas station to fill up my car. I pumped in $18.50 worth of gas and went to pay. In front of me in line was a guy (obviously from out of town) asking for directions and signing a VISA slip. When that guy left, the fun began:

CLERK: “Can I help you?”

ME: “I’m the $18.50 charge.”

CLERK (confused): “Sorry, there’s no charges on the computer. But I just charged that last guy $18.50.”

ME (very pleased): “You mean that guy paid for my gas?”

CLERK: “No, he was just in here asking for directions.”

ME: “Then why did you charge him $18.50.”

CLERK: “Ummmm… excuse me!”

Then he ran out of the booth, but alas the other Induhvidual had left. I wonder if the other Induhvidual thinks people in my city always charge $18.50 for directions. [Editor’s Note: The lesson here is that if someone asks you for directions, ask for their credit card and charge them. You might get lucky. In fact, it’s a safe bet that the Induhvidual in the story is still lost, and that’s easy money for whoever runs into that person next.]

I am at a fast order restaurant at one of our local universities. I order a BLT. The Induhvidual behind the counter asked if I would like lettuce and tomato with that. I suppose I could have just wanted a B.

My wife was reading your latest newsletter and said, “individual” is spelled wrong all over this document. [Editor’s Note: It’s okay to marry Induhviduals as long as you’re only doing it for the laughs.]

The sign on the front of the Taco Bell in my town says: “We have tacos.” I went in to verify this fact for myself. It turns out that they do sell tacos, never bells. The sign was very helpful.

Here’s a true story: The receptionist’s intercom buzzes, and an Induhvidual’s voice comes through, calling out, “hello, hello?” But the receptionist had stepped away from her desk. Two seconds later, the buzzer sounds again, and it’s the same guy, calling “hello, hello?” Still no answer. Next thing you know, the guy comes all the way down the hall from his office, bumps into the receptionist, and tells her her intercom doesn’t work. He runs back to his office to prove it to her. “Hello, hello?” She responds, and he excitedly comes all the way back down the hall to her desk to tell her it works now, it must be fixed! She looks at him funny, and he goes all the way back to his office, then buzzes her again, “Hello, hello?” “Yes?” she replies. “Can you bring me that file from your desk?”

Just when you think the educational system is in decay, along comes an inspirational story like this one: Dear Scott, Just a quick report about the success of the joke I played on the faculty of Los Gatos High School (SF Bay Area). The idea came from your newsletter which suggested “converting” a copier to voice activation. The faculty copiers already have electronic boxes which require a password to be entered. I decided to convert one to voice activation. On 4/1/97 I attached to the copier in the faculty workroom a cheap microphone and a label with the following instructions: This copier control is now voice activated. Please state your name and department in a loud, clear voice into the microphone. Almost every teacher that used the copier fell for it. Some even returned later in the day to see if it was working yet. It will be hard to top this one in the future, thanks for the great idea.

A man goes into a pet shop to buy a parrot. The shop owner points to three identical looking parrots on a perch and says: “The parrot on the left costs 500 dollars”.
“Why, does the parrot cost so much?” asks the man. The owner says, “Well the parrot knows how to use a computer”.

The man then asks about the next parrot and is told that this one costs 1,000 dollars because it can do everything the first parrot can do plus it knows how to use the UNIX operating system.

Naturally, the increasingly startled man asks about the third parrot and

is told that it costs 2,000 dollars. Needless to say this begs the question, “What can it do?”

To which the owner replies, “To be honest I have never seen it do a thing but the other two call him boss!”

A man was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said: “if you kiss me, i’ll turn into a beautifull princess”.

He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said: ” If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautifull princess I will be your loving compnion for an entire week !!.”

The man took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it in to his pocket. The frog then cried out: “If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, i’ll stay with you for a year and do ANYTHING you want”.

Again the man took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket. Finally the frog asked: “What is the matter ? I’ve told you I’m a beautifull princess, i’ll stay with you for a year and do anything you want. Why won’t you kiss me ?”

The man said: “Look, I’m an internet consultant. I don’t have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog is cool.”

“The Day The Service Died” Sung to the tune of “American Pie”

A long, long time ago,

I can still remember when I dialed up their help desk lines.

And I knew if I had the chance,

they could make my modem dance

with chats and GIFs and silly pick-up lines.

But, Help Desk phone calls made me shiver

with every busy they’d deliver.

Bad news on the front page,

A 19-hour outrage.

I can’t remember if I cried

when I realized that Steve Case had lied.

But something touched me deep inside,

The day, the ser-vice died.

So, Bye-Bye to Amer’ca Online,

Drove my modem to a domain

and it’s working just fine.

And good old geeks are cheering users offline.

Saying this’ll be the day that they die.

This’ll be the day that they die.

Did you write the book of TOS,

Will you send your password to PWD-BOSS

if an IM tells you so.

And will you believe the Motley Fool

when he tells you that the service rules,

And, can you teach me how to web real slow?

Well, I know you sold the service short,

‘Cause I saw your quarterly report.

Steve Case sold off his stock,

It fell just like a rock.

It was a crazy, costly high-tech play,

as they slashed away at what subscribers pay,

And half their users went away,

the day the service died.

So, Bye-Bye to Amer’ca Online,

Drove my modem to a domain

and it’s working just fine.

And good old geeks are cheering users offline.

Saying this’ll be the day that they die.

This’ll be the day that they die.

Well for two days we’ve been on our own

And dial-ins click on a rolling phone

But that’s not how it used to be,

When the mogul came to Virginia court,

With an OS icon and a browser port,

And a desktop that looked like Apple III.

And while Jim Clark was looking down,

The mogul stole his thorny crown,

The browser war was turned,

Mozilla,… was spurned.

And while Steve left users out to bond,

With hosts unable to respond,

6 million newbies all were conned,

The day the service died.

So, Bye-Bye to Amer’ca Online,

Drove my modem to a domain

and it’s working just fine.

And good old geeks are cheering users offline.

Saying this’ll be the day that they die.

This’ll be the day that they die.

Da Chronic ducked their software guards,

And stole a million credit cards,

to use accounts he’d gotten free.

And so Steve Case went to the FBI,

and he told Boardwatch* a little lie,

That hackers wanted child pornography

But while Steve Case was looking down,

The hackers pulled his e-mail down,

They put it on the net,

He can’t be trusted, yet!

And while user cynicism climbs,

At sign-on ads and welcome rhymes,

they scan their e-mail for, “Good Times,”

The day the ser-vice died.

So, Bye-Bye to Amer’ca Online,

Drove my modem to a domain

and it’s working just fine.

And good old geeks are cheering users offline.

Saying this’ll be the day that they die.

This’ll be the day that they die.

Helter-skelter billing needs a melter,

The lawyers filed a class-action shelter,

Eight million in lawyer’s fees.

But it looks like some attorney jibe,

an hour if they resubscribe,

To a service marketed for free.

Well, I know you’re raking in the bucks,

‘Cause I’m reading alt.aol-sucks.

“Until we bless the suit,

The settlement is moot.”

“If AOL treats you like the Borg,

Then visit aolsucks.org,

Before some router pulls the cord,…”

The day the ser-vice died.

So, Bye-Bye to Amer’ca Online,

Drove my modem to a domain

and it’s working just fine.

And good old geeks are cheering users offline.

Saying this’ll be the day that they die.

This’ll be the day that they die.

Bill Razzouk, the head-to-be,

sold off his home in Tennessee,

And headed for a 4-month end.

Was he sad or just incensed

when Case offered him his thirty cents.

Billing is the devil’s only friend.

But as I read him on the page,

My hands were clenched in fists of rage,

No, “Welcome” born in hell,

could ring that chatroom bell.

And as chat freaks cried into the night,

CompuServe read their last rites.

I saw Earthlink laughing with delight,

The day the ser-vice died.

So, Bye-Bye to Amer’ca Online,

Drove my modem to a domain

and it’s working just fine.

And good old geeks are cheering users offline.

Saying this’ll be the day that they die.

This’ll be the day that they die.

I met a girl in Lobby 9,

And I asked her if she’d stay online,

But she just frowned and looked away,

And I went back to the Member Lounge,

To see what loyalty I could scrounge.

But Room Host said the members went away,…

And on the net the modems screamed,

At faster bits and data streams.

And not a tear was spoken,

The hourly fees were broken,

And the three men that I hated most:

Ted, and Steve, and Razzouk’s ghost,

They couldn’t dial up the host,

The day the ser-vice died. So,

Bye-Bye to Amer’ca Online,

Drove my modem to a domain

and it’s working just fine.

And good old geeks are cheering users offline.

Saying this’ll be the day that they die.

This’ll be the day that they die.

Beer and the quotes it has helped create over the years…

I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the
morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.
–Frank Sinatra

The problem with some people is that when they aren’t drunk, they’re sober.
–William Butler Yeats

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.
–Ernest Hemingway

Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
–Ernest Hemingway

You’re not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
–Dean Martin

Drunk is feeling sophisticated when you can’t say it.
–Anonymous

No animal ever invented anything as bad as drunkenness – or as good as drink.
–G.K. Chesterton

Time is never wasted when you’re wasted all the time.
–Catherine Zandonella

Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
–Ambrose Bierce

Reality is an illusion that occurs due to lack of alcohol.
–Anonymous

Drinking provides a beautiful excuse to pursue the one activity that truly gives me pleasure, hooking up with fat hairy girls.
— Ross Levy

A woman drove me to drink and I didn’t even have the decency to
thank her.

What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?
–W.C. Fields

Beauty lies in the hands of the beer holder.
–Anonymous

If God had intended us to drinkbeer, He would have given us stomachs.
–David Daye

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
–Oscar Wilde

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.
–Henny Youngman

Life is a waste of time, time is a waste of life, so get wasted all of the time and have the time of your life.
–Michelle Mastrolacasa

I’d rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.
–Tom Waits

24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence?
–Stephen Wright

When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep.
When we fall asleep, we commit no sin.
When we commit no sin, we go to heaven.
Sooooo, let’s all get drunk, and go to heaven…
–Brian O’Rourke

You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it
helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.
–Frank Zappa

Always remember that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol
has taken out of me.
–Winston Churchill

He was a wise man who invented beer.
–Plato

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
–Benjamin Franklin

If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet it makes beer shoot out your nose.
–Deep Thought, Jack Handy

Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.
–Dave Barry

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.
–Humphrey Bogart

Why is Australian beer served cold?
So you can tell it from urine.
–David Moulton

Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the world.
–Kaiser Wilhelm

I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer.
–Homer Simpson

Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and
oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital
ingredient in beer.

I drink to make other people interesting.
–George Jean Nathan

All right, brain, I don’t like you and you don’t like me – so let’s just do this and I’ll get back to killing you with beer.
–Homer Simpson

The tech support problem dates back to long before the industrial revolution, when primitive tribesmen beat out a rhythm on drums to communicate:
This fire help. Me Groog

Me Lorto. Help. Fire not work.

You have flint and stone?

Ugh

You hit them together?

Ugh

What happen?

Fire not work

(sigh) Make spark?

No spark, no fire, me confused. Fire work yesterday.

*sigh* You change rock?

I change nothing

You sure?

Me make one change. Stone hot so me soak in stream so stone not burn Lorto hand. Small change, shouldn’t keep Lorto from make fire, right?

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: “If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 mi/gal.”

Recently General Motors addressed this comment by releasing the statement:
“Yes, but would you want your car to crash twice a day?”

Log on — Make the wood stove hotter
Log off — Don’t add no more wood

Monitor — Keep an eye on that wood stove

Download — Getting the firewood off the truck

Floppy disk — What you get from trying to carry too much firewood

Ram — The thing that splits the firewood

Hard drive — Getting home in the winter

Prompt — What the mail ain’t in the winter

Window — What to shut when it’s cold outside

Screen — What to shut in black fly season

Byte — What the black flies do

Bit — What the black flies did

Mega Byte — What the BIG black flies do chip Munchies for TV

Micro Chip — What’s left in the bag after you eat the chips

Modem — What you did to the hay fields

Dot matrix — Old Dan Matrix’s wife

Lap top — Where the kitty sleeps

Software — The dumb plastic knives & forks they give you at McDonalds

Hardware — The real stainless steel cutlery.

Mouse — What eats grain in the barn

Main frame — What holds the barn up

Enter — City talk for – “come on in, eh?”

Web — What a spider makes

Web — Site The barn or the attic

Cursor — Someone who swears

Search Engine — What you do when the car dies

Screen Saver — A repair kit for the torn window screen

Home Page — A map you keep in your back pocket just in case you get lost in the field.

Upgrade — Steep hill.

Server — The person at the ABC that brings the food.

Mail Server — The guy at the ABC that brings the food.

MSDOS — Some new disease they discovered.

Sound Card — One of them technological birthday cards that plays music when you open it.

User — The neighbor who keeps borrowing stuff.

Browser — What they call you when your eye brows grow together.

Network — When you have to repair your fishing net.

Internet — Complicated fish net repair method.

Netscape — When a fish maneuvers out of reach.

Online — When you get the laundry hung out on the washline.

Offline — The clothes pins let go and the laundry falls on the ground.

In ancient Israel, it came to pass that a trader by the name of Abraham Com, did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dot. And Dot Com was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg.
Indeed, she had been called Amazon Dot Com.

She said unto Abraham, her husband, “Why doth thou travel far from town to town with thy goods when thou can trade without ever leaving thy tent?” And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddle bags short of a camel load, but simply said, “How, Dear?”

And Dot replied, “I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying what you have for sale and they will reply telling you which hath the best price. And the sale can be made on the drums and delivery made by Uriah’s Pony Stable (UPS).”

Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums. The drums rang out and were an immediate success. Abraham sold all the goods he had at the top price, without ever moving from his tent. But this success did arouse envy.

A man named Maccabia did secret himself inside Abraham’s drum and was accused of insider trading. And the young man did take to Dot Com’s trading as doth the greedy horsefly take to camel dung. They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Siderites, or NERDS for short.

And lo, the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the deafening sound of drums, that no one noticed that the real riches were going to the drum maker, one Brother William of Gates, who bought up every drum company in the land. And indeed did insist on making drums that would work only with Brother Gates’ drumheads and drumsticks.

Dot did say, “Oh, Abraham, what we have started is being taken over by others.” And as Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel, or as it came to be known “eBay” he said, “we need a name that reflects what we are,” and Dot replied, “Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators.”

“YAHOO”, said Abraham. And that is how it all began, It wasn’t Al Gore after all.

Definitely Urban Legend… A businessman from Wisconsin took a business trip to Louisiana. Upon arrival, he immediately plugged his laptop into the hotel room port and sent a short E-mail back home to his wife, Jennifer Johnston, at her address, [email protected]. Unfortunately, in his haste, he mistyped a letter in the e-dress, and the E-mail ended up going to [email protected]. This belonged to a Jean Johnson of Duluth Min., the widow of a preacher who had just passed away and had been buried earlier that day. The preacher’s wife took one look at the E-mail and promptly fainted.It read, ‘Arrived safely, but it sure is hot down here!’

What do miniskirts and hard disks have in common? Access time.

A helicopter was flying around above Seattle yesterday when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft’s electronic navigation and communications equipment. Due to the clouds and haze, the pilot could not determine the helicopter’s position and course to steer to the airport.

The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, drew a handwritten sign, and held it in the helicopter’s window. The pilot’s sign said “WHERE AM I?” in large letters.

People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign, and held it in a building window. Their sign said “YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER OVER SEATTLE.”

The pilot smiled, waved, looked at his map, determined the course to steer to the Seattle airport, and landed safely.

After they were on the ground, the co-pilot asked the pilot how the “YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER” sign helped determine their position?

The pilot responded “I knew that had to be the MICROSOFT building, because similar to their help-lines, they gave me a technically correct but totally useless answer!”