Category: engineers

Jack was a COBOL programmer in the mid to late 1990s. After years of being
taken for granted and treated as a technological dinosaur by all the
Client/Server programmers and website developers, he was finally getting some
respect. He’d become a private consultant specializing in Year 2000
conversions.

Several years of this relentless, mind-numbing work had taken
its toll on Jack. He began having anxiety dreams about the Year 2000. All he
could think about was how he could avoid the year 2000 and all that came with
it.

Jack decided to contact a company that specialized in cryogenics. He made
a deal to have him frozen until March 15th, 2000. The next thing he would know
is he’d wake up in the year 2000; after the New Year celebrations and computer
debacles; after the leap day. Nothing else to worry about except getting on with
his life.

He was put into his cryogenic receptacle, the technicians set the revive date,
he was given injections to slow his heartbeat to a bare minimum, and that was
that.

The next thing that Jack saw was an enormous and very modern room
filled with excited people. They were all shouting “I can’t believe it!” and
“It’s a miracle” and “He’s alive!� There were cameras (unlike any he’d ever
seen) and equipment that looked like it came out of a science fiction movie.

Someone who was obviously a spokesperson for the group stepped forward. Jack
couldn’t contain his enthusiasm. “Is it over?” he asked. “Is the year 2000
already here? Are all the millennial parties and promotions and crises all over
and done with?”

The spokesman explained that there had been a problem with the programming of
the timer on Jack’s cryogenic receptacle; it hadn’t been year 2000 compliant. It
was actually eight thousand years later, not the year 2000. Technology had
advanced to such a degree that everyone had virtual reality interfaces which
allowed them to contact anyone else on the planet.

“That sounds terrific,” said Jack. “But I’m curious. Why is everybody so
interested in me?”

“Well,” said the spokesman. “The year 10000 is just around the corner, and it
says in your files that you know COBOL”.

A mechanic was removing a motor from a Harley when a world
famous surgeon walked into the shop. The mechanic yelled across
the floor to the doctor, “Hey Doc, can I ask you something?”

The surgeon was a bit surprised but he walked over to the
mechanic. The mechanic straightened himself up and wiped his
hands with a rag and said, “Look at this engine doc, I can also
open hearts, take out valves, fix ’em, put ’em back in and when
I’m done they’ll work just like new. So how come you get the big
bucks when I barely have enough to get by?”

The doctor leaned in close to the young mechanic and whispered,
“Try doing it with the engine running.”

Two blondes were flying to Miami from Cleveland. Fifteen minutes into the
flight, the captain announced “One of the engines has failed and the flight will
be an hour longer. But don’t worry we have three engines left”.

Thirty minutes later, the captain announced “One more engine has failed and
the flight will be two hours longer. But don’t worry we have two engines left”.

An hour later the capain announced “One more engine has failed and the
flight will be three hours longer. But don’t worry we have one engine left”.

One blonde looked at the other the other blonde and said “If we lose one more
engine, we’ll be up here all day”

A young wildlife biologist got fired from his first real wildlife job. Upon
his return home, his parents asked him what happened.
“You know what a crew boss is?” he asked. “The one who stands around and
watches everyone else work.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” they asked.
“Well, he just got jealous of me,” the young biologist explained. “Everyone
thought I was the crew boss.”

A blonde went to a flight school insisting that she wanted to learn to fly. As
all the planes were currently in use, the owner agreed to instruct her by radio
on how to pilot the solo helicopter. He took her out, showed her how to start it
and gave her the basics, and sent her on her way.

After she climbed 1000 feet, she radioed in. “I’m doing great! I love it! The
view is so beautiful, and I’m starting to get the hang of this.”

After 2000 feet, she radioed again, saying how easy it was to fly. The
instructor watched her climb over 3000 feet, and was beginning to worry that she
hadn’t radioed in.

A few minutes later, he watched in horror as she crashed about half a mile
away. He ran over and pulled her from the wreckage.

When he asked what happened, she said, “I don’t know! Everything was going
fine, but as I got higher, I was starting to get cold. I can barely remember
anything after I turned off the big fan!”

Q: How many graduate students does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Only one, but it may take upwards of five years for him to get it done.
A: It all depends on the size of the grant.
A: Two and a professor to take credit.
A: 1/100. A graduate student needs to change 100 lightbulbs a day.
A: I don’t know, but make my stipend tax-free, give my advisor a 0,000 grant
of the taxpayer’s money, and I’m sure he can tell me how to do the work for him
so he can take the credit for answering this incredibly vital question.

This guy calls in to complain that he gets an “Access Denied” message every
time he logs in. It turned out he was typing his user name and password in
capital letters.
Tech Support: “OK, let’s try once more, but use lower case letters.”
Customer: “Uh, I only have capital letters on my keyboard.” A woman called the
Canon help desk with a problem with her printer. The tech asked her if she was
“running it under Windows.” The woman then responded, “No, my desk is next to
the door. But that is a good point. The man sitting in the cubicle next to me is
under a window, and his is working fine.”

There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in
pineapple. English muffins were not invented in England or French fries in
France. Sweetmeats are candies, while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.
We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that
quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither
from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write, but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce,
and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of
booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So, one moose, 2 meese? One index, two indices?
Is cheese the plural of choose?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats
vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

In what language do people recite at a play, and play at a recital?

Ship by truck, and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that
smell? Park on driveways and drive on parkways? How can a slim chance and a fat
chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? How can the
weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell another?

When a house burns up, it burns down. You fill in a form by filling it out,
and an alarm clock goes off by going on.

When the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they
are invisible. And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up
this essay, I end it.

A customer called a tech support to say her brand new computer wouldn’t work.
She said, she unpacked the unit, plugged it in and sat there for 20 minutes,
waiting for something to happen. When asked what happened when she pressed the
power switch, she asked ‘what power switch? ‘

Two engineering students were walking across campus when one said, “Where did
you get such a great bike?”
The second engineer replied, “Well, I was walking along yesterday minding my
own business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike. She threw the bike to
the ground, took off all her clothes and said, “Take what you want.”
The first engineer nodded approvingly, “Good choice; the clothes probably
wouldn’t have fit.”

F1: …admit that we have no life.

F2: …believe that a Power greater than ourselves can either restore us to
sanity or provide us with unlimited, no-cost Internet dial-up.

F3: …made a decision to turn our lives over to that Great Webmaster In The
Sky (“GWITS”).

F4: …performed a searching moral inventory with the Web search engine of our
choice.

F5: …admitted to GWITS, ourselves and another human being (even if
only by email) the exact nature of our obsession.

F6: …were entirely ready to have GWITS remove our shortcomings and remedy
our lack of knowledge about the latest IRC chat technology.

F7: …humbly asked GWITS to allow us to FTP the file updates.

F8: Made a list of all persons we had neglected, and posted it on our personal
home page.

F9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so
would cut into our scheduled netsurf time.

F10: …continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, blamed
it on our outdated software.

F11: …sought through prayer and meditation to improve our contact with
GWITS, by utilizing higher modem speeds and improved bandwidth.

F12: …had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Keys, tried to carry
the message to other WEBholics, and ended up making complete pests out of
ourselves.

I won’t stop bugging you until I get the address of your home page.
Let’s convert our potential energy to kinetic energy.
Wanna come back to my room and see my 166mhz Pentium?
How about you and I go back to my place and form a covalent bond?
You’re sweeter than glucose.
We’re as compatible as two similar Power Macintoshes.
Wanna see the programs in my HP-48GX?
Your body has the nicest arc length I’ve ever seen.
You’re hotter than a bunsen burner set to full power!
My love for you is like a concave up function because it is always increasing.