Alan's Humor Archive : Computers & Internet

11. Those who have it would be devastated if it were ever cut off.

10. Those who have it think that those who don't are somehow inferior.

 9. Those who don't have it may agree that it's neat, but think it's not worth the fuss
    that those who have it make about it.

 8. Many of those who don't have it would like to try it, a phenomenon psychologists 
    call *E-Mail Envy.*

 7. It's more fun when it's up, but this makes it hard to get any real work done.

 6. In the distant past, its only purpose was to transmit information vital to the survival 
    of the species. Some people still think that's the only thing it should be used for, 
    but most folks today use it mostly for fun.

 5. If you don't take proper precautions, it can spread viruses.

 4. If you use it too much, you'll find it becomes more and more difficult to think coherently.

 3. We attach an importance to it that is far greater than its actual size and influence 
    warrant.

 2. If you're not careful what you do with it, it can get you into a lot of trouble.

 And the number one reason Why E-Mail is Like a Male Reproductive Organ:
 
... If you play with it too much, you go blind ...

Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bed sheets, still I sat there doing spreadsheets.
Having reached the bottom line I took a floppy from the drawer,
I then invoked the SAVE command and waited for the disk to store,
Only this and nothing more.

Deep into the monitor peering, long I sat there wond'ring, fearing,
Doubting, while the disk kept churning, turning yet to churn some more.
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token.
"Save!" I said, "You cursed mother!  Save my data from before!"
One thing did the phosphors answer, only this and nothing more,
Just, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

Was this some occult illusion, some maniacal intrusion?
These were choices undesired, ones I'd never faced before.
Carefully I weighed the choices as the disk made impish noises.
The cursor flashed, insistent, waiting, baiting me to type some more.
Clearly I must press a key, choosing one and nothing more,
From "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

With fingers pale and trembling, slowly toward the keyboard bending,
Longing for a happy ending, hoping all would be restored,
Praying for some guarantee, timidly, I pressed a key.
But on the screen there still persisted words appearing as before.
Ghastly grim they blinked and taunted, haunted, as my patience wore,
Saying "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

I tried to catch the chips off guard, and pressed again, but twice as hard.
I pleaded with the cursed machine: I begged and cried and then I swore.
Now in mighty desperation, trying random combinations,
Still there came the incantation, just as senseless as before.
Cursor blinking, angrily winking, blinking nonsense as before.
Reading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

There I sat, distraught, exhausted, by my own machine accosted.
Getting up I turned away and paced across the office floor.
And then I saw a dreadful sight: a lightning bolt cut through the night.
A gasp of horror overtook me, shook me to my very core.
The lightning zapped my previous data, lost and gone forevermore.
Not even, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

To this day I do not know the place to which lost data go.
What demonic nether world us wrought where lost data will be stored,
Beyond the reach of mortal souls, beyond the ether, into black holes?
But sure as there's C, Pascal, Lotus, Ashton-Tate and more,
You will be one day be left to wander, lost on some Plutonian shore,
Pleading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

We all know those cute little computer symbols called "emoticons,"where 
:)  means a smile and :( is a frown.   Sometimes these are represented by
:-) and  :-( respectively.  Well, how about some "ass icons"?

 (_!_)      a regular ass

 (__!__)    a fat ass

 (!)        a tight ass

 (_._)      a flat ass

 (_^^_)     a bubble ass

 (_*_)      a sore ass

 (_!__)     a lop-sided ass

 {_!_}      a swishy ass

 (_o_)      an ass that's been around

 (_O_)      an ass that's been around even more

 (_x_)      kiss my ass

 (_X_)      leave my ass alone

 (_zzz_)    a tired ass

 (_o^^o_)   a wise ass

 (_E=mc2_)  a smart ass

 (_13_)     an unlucky ass

 (_$_)      Money coming out of his ass

 (_?_)      Dumb Ass

    How many people does it take to change a light bulb in cyberspace?

  1 to successfully change the light bulb and to post to the mail list that the 
    light bulb has been changed.

 14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb 
    could have been changed differently.

  7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs.

 27 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs.

 53 to flame the spell checkers.

156 to write to the list administrator complaining about the light bulb discussion 
    and its inappropriateness to this mail list.

 41 to correct spelling in the spelling/grammar flames.

109 to post that this list is not about light bulbs and to please take this email 
    exchange to alt.lite.bulb.

203 to demand that cross posting to alt.grammar, alt.spelling and alt.punctuation 
    about changing light bulbs be stopped.

111 to defend the posting to this list, saying that, "We are all using light bulbs 
    and therefore the posts **are** relevant to this mail list."

306 to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior, where to buy the best 
    light bulbs, what brands of light bulb work best for this technique, and what brands 
    are faulty.

 27 to post URLs where one can see examples of different light bulbs.

 14 to post that the URLs were posted incorrectly and to post corrected URLs.

  3 to post about links they found from the URLs that are relevant to this list, 
    which makes light bulbs relevant to this list.

 33 to collate all posts to date, then quote them including all headers and footers, 
    and then add "Me Too."

 12 to post to the list that they are unsubscribing because they cannot handle the 
    light bulb controversy.

 19 to quote the "Me Too's" to say, "Me Three."

  4 to suggest that posters request the light bulb FAQ.

  1 to propose new alt.change.lite.bulb newsgroup.

 47 to say that this is just what this list was meant for, leave it here.

143 votes for a new list alt.lite.bulb.

 38 votes proclaiming the advantages in using vintage light bulbs.

 1. Home is where you hang your @.                                
 2. The E-mail of the species is more deadly than the mail.       
 3. A journey of a thousand sites begins with a single click.     
 4. You can't teach a new mouse old clicks.                       
 5. Great groups from little icons grow.                          
 6. Speak softly and carry a cellular phone.                      
 7. C:\ is the root of all directories.                           
 8. Don't put all your hypes in one home page.                    
 9. Pentium wise; pen and paper foolish.                          
10. The modem is the message.                                     
11. Too many clicks spoil the browse.                             
12. The geek shall inherit the earth.                             
13. A chat has nine lives.                                        
14. Don't byte off more than you can view.                        
15. Fax is stranger than fiction.                                 
16. What boots up must come down.                                 
17. Windows will never cease.                                     
18. In Gates we trust.                                            
19. Virtual reality is its own reward.                            
20. Modulation in all things.                                     
21. A user and his leisure time are soon parted.                  
22. There's no place like http://www.home.com                     
23. Know what to expect before you connect.                       
24. Oh, what a tangled website we weave when first we practice.   
25. Speed thrills.                                                
26. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to use
    the Net and he won't bother you for weeks.                    

S

P

A

M

Q: How many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None, it's a hardware problem.

Q: How many hardware engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None, you can fix anything with software.

Thou shalt include a clear and specific subject line.

Thou shalt edit any quoted text down to the minimum thou needest.

Thou shalt read thine own message thrice before thou sendest it.

Thou shalt ponder how thy recipient might react to thy message.

Thou shalt check thy spelling and thy grammar.

Thou shalt not curse, flame, spam or USE ALL CAPS.

Thou shalt not forward any chain letter.

Thou shalt not use e-mail for any illegal or unethical purpose.

Thou shalt not rely on the privacy of e-mail, especially from work.

When in doubt, save thy message overnight and reread it in the light of the dawn.

And, here's the "Golden Rule" of E-Mail:

That which thou findest hateful to receive, sendest thou not unto others.

Last year a friend of mine upgraded from GirlFriend 1.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that it's a 
memory hog, leaving very little system resources available for other applications.

He is now noticing that Wife 1.0 is also spawning Child Processes which are further 
consuming valuable resources.

No mention of this particular phenomena was included in the product brochure or the 
documentation, though other users have informed him that this is to be expected due to the 
nature of the application. Not only that, Wife 1.0 installs itself such that it is always 
launched at system initialization, where it can monitor all other system activity. He's 
finding that some applications such as PokerNight 10.3, BeerBash 2.5 and PubNight 7.0 are 
no longer able to run in the system at all, crashing the system when selected (even though 
they always worked fine before).  During installation, Wife 1.0 provides no option as to 
the installation of undesired Plug-Ins such as MotherInLaw 55.8 and BrotherInLaw Beta 
release. Also, system performance seems to diminish with each passing day.

Some features he'd like to see in the upcoming wife 2.0.
- - - A "Don't remind me again" button
- - - Minimize button
- - - An install shield feature that allows Wife 2.0 be installed with the option to 
      uninstall at anytime without  the loss of cache and other system resources.
- - - An option to run the network driver in promiscuous  mode, which would allow the 
      systems hardware probe feature to be much more useful.

I myself decided to avoid the headaches associated with Wife 1.0 by sticking with Girlfriend
2.0. Even here, however, I found many problems.

Apparently you cannot install Girlfriend 2.0 on top of Girlfriend 1.0. You must uninstall 
Girlfriend 1.0 first. Other users say this is a long standing bug that I should have known 
about. Apparently the versions of Girlfriend have conflicts over shared use of the I/O port.
You'd think they would have fixed such a stupid bug by now. To make matters worse, the 
uninstall program for Girlfriend 1.0 doesn't work very well, leaving undesirable traces of 
the application in the system.

Another thing  -- all versions of Girlfriend continually pop up little annoying messages 
about the advantages of upgrading to Wife 1.0

*****  BUG WARNING  ********
Wife 1.0 has an undocumented bug. If you try to install Mistress 1.1 before uninstalling 
Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before doing the uninstall itself. 
Then Mistress 1.1 will refuse to install,  claiming insufficient resources.

(to the tune of "Gilligan's Island," more or less)

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale
Of the doom that is our fate.
That started when programmers used
Two digits for a date.
Two digits for a date.

Main memory was smaller then;
Hard disks were smaller, too.
"Four digits are extravagant,
So let's get by with two.
So let's get by with two."

"This works through 1999,"
The programmers did say.
"Unless we rewrite before that
It all will go away.
It all will go away."

But Management had not a clue:
"It works fine now, you bet.
A rewrite is a straight expense;
We won't do it just yet.
We won't do it just yet."

Now when 2000 rolls around
It all goes straight to hell,
For zero's less than ninety-nine,
As anyone can tell.
As anyone can tell.

The mail won't bring your pension check.
It won't be sent to you
When you're no longer sixty-eight,
But minus thirty-two.
But minus thirty-two.

The problems we're about to face
Are frightening, for sure.
And reading every line of code's
The only certain cure.
The only certain cure.

[key change, big finish!]

There's not much time,
There's too much code.
(And Cobol-coders, few)
When the century is finished with,
We may be finished, too.
We may be finished, too.

Eight thousand years from now I hope
That things weren't left too late,
And people aren't then lamenting
Four digits for a date.
Four digits for a date.