13. Original programmer, having cashed his royalty check, is nowhere to be found.

14. Newly-assembled programming team fixes almost all of the 137 bugs, but introduce 456 new ones.

15. Original programmer sends underpaid testing department a postcard from Fiji. Entire testing department quits.

16. Company is bought in a hostile takeover by competitor using profits from their latest release, which had 783 bugs.

17. New CEO is brought in by board of directors. He hires programmer to redo program from scratch.

18. Programmer produces code he believes is bug-free...

Computer Virus Types...

Adam and Eve virus: Takes a couple of bytes out of your Apple.
Airline virus: You're in Dallas, but your data is in Singapore.
Arnold Schwarzenegger virus: Terminates and stays resident. It'll be back.
AT&T virus: Every three minutes it tells you what great service you are getting.
The MCI virus: Every three minutes it reminds you that you're paying too much for the AT&T virus.
Congressional Virus: The computer locks up, screen splits erratically with a message appearing on each half blaming the other side for the problem.
Elvis virus: Your computer gets fat, slow, and lazy and then self destructs, only to resurface at shopping malls and service stations across rural America.
Federal bureaucrat virus: Divides your hard disk into hundreds of little units, each of which do practically nothing, but all of which claim to be the most important part of the computer.
Freudian virus: Your computer becomes obsessed with marrying its own motherboard.
Gallup virus: Sixty percent of the PCs infected will lose 38 percent of their data 14 percent of the time (plus or minus a 3.5 percent margin of error).
New World Order virus: probably harmless, but it makes a lot of people really mad just thinking about it.
Nike virus: Just Does It!
Oprah Winfrey virus: Your 200MB hard drive suddenly shrinks to 80MB, and then slowly expands back to 200MB.
Paul Revere virus: This revolutionary virus does not horse around. It warns you of impending hard disk attack---once if by LAN, twice if by C:.
PBS virus: Your PC stops every few minutes to ask for money.
Politically correct virus: Never calls itself a "virus", but instead refers to itself as an "electronic micro-organism".
Right To Life virus: Won't allow you to delete a file, regardless of how old it is. If you attempt to erase a file, it requires you to first see a counselor about possible alternatives.
Ted Kennedy virus: Crashes your computer but denies it ever happened.
Texas virus: Makes sure that it's bigger than any other file.

What Your Computer Is Trying To Tell You

It says: "Press Any Key"
It means: "Press any key you like but I'm not moving."

It says: "Fatal Error. Please contact technical support quoting error no.1A4-2546512430E"
It means: "... where you will be kept on hold for 30 minutes, only to be told that it's a hardware problem."

It says: "Installing program to C:\...."
It means: "... And I'll also be writing a few files into c:\windows and c:\windows\system where you'll NEVER find them."

It says: "Please insert disk 11"
It means: "Because I know darn well there are only 10 disks."

It says: "Not enough memory"
It means: "I don't CARE if you've got 64MB of RAM, I want to use the bit below 640K."

It says: "Cannot read from drive D:...."
It means: "... However, if you put the CD in right side up..."

It says: "Please Wait...."
It means: "... Indefinitely."

It says: "Directory does not exist...."
It means: ".... any more. Whoops."

It says: "The application caused an error. Choose Ignore or Close."
It means: "....Makes no difference to me, you're still not getting your work back. Kiss your afternoon goodbye..."

Computer Humor in honor or our department:

An ABX Air programmer/analyst died and went to heaven. There were thousands of people ahead of him in line to see St. Peter. To his surprise, St. Peter left his desk at the gate and came down the long line to where he was, and greeted him warmly. St. Peter took him up to the front of the line, and into a comfortable chair by his desk.

The programmer/analyst said, "I like all this attention, but what makes me so special?"

St. Peter replied, "Well, I've added up all the hours for which you entered into TimeMaint, and by my calculation you're 193 years old!"

Is that you Moses?

"Excuse me, Sir."

"Is that you, Moses?"

"I'm afraid it is, Sir."

"What is it this time, Moses; more computer problems?"

"How did you guess?"

"I don't have to guess, Moses.  Remember ?"

"Oh, yes; I forgot."

"Tell me what you want, Moses."

"But you already know, Sir. Remember?"

"Moses!"

"Sorry, Sir."

"Well, go ahead, Moses; spit it out."

"Well, I have a question, Sir. You know those ten 'things' you sent me via e-mail?"

"You mean the Ten Commandments, Moses?"

"That's it.  I was wondering if they are important."

"What do you mean 'if they are important,' Moses? Of course, they are important. Otherwise, I would not have sent them to you."

"Well, sorry, Sir, but I lost them. I could say the dog ate them; but, of course, you would see right through that."

"What do you mean you 'lost them'?  Are you trying to tell me you didn't save them, Moses?"

"No, Sir; I forgot."

"You should always save, Moses."

"Yes, I know. You told me that before.   I was going to save them, but I forgot. I did forward them to some people before I lost them though."

"And did you hear back from any of them?"

"You already know I did.   There was the one guy who said he never uses 'shalt not.' May he change the words a little bit?"

"Yes, Moses, as long as he does not change the meaning."

"And what about the guy who thought your stance was a little harsh, and recommended calling them the 'Ten Suggestions,' or letting people pick one or two to try for a while?"

"Moses, I will act as if I did not hear that."

"I think that means 'no.' Well, what about the guy who said I was scamming him?"

"I think the term is 'spamming,' Moses."

"Oh, yes.  I. E-mailed him back and told him I don't even eat that stuff, and I have no idea how you can send it to someone through a computer."

"And what did he say?"

"You know what he said.  He used Your name in vain. You don't think he might have sent me one of those -- err -- plagues, and that's the reason I lost those ten 'things', do you?"

"They are not plagues; they are called 'viruses,' Moses."

"Whatever!  This computer stuff is just too much for me.  Can we go back to those stone tablets?  It was hard on my back taking them out and reading them each day, but at least I never lost them."

"We will do it the new way, Moses; using computers!!"

"I was afraid you would say that, Sir."

"Moses, what did I tell you to do if you messed up?"

"You told me to hold up this rat and point it toward the computer."

"It's a mouse, Moses, not a rat.  Mouse!  Mouse! And did you do that?"

"No, I decided to try calling technical support first.   After all, who knows more about this stuff than you? And I really like your hours. By the way, Sir, did Noah have two of these mice on the ark?"

"No, Moses."

"One other thing. Why did you not name them 'frogs' instead of 'mice,' because did you not tell me the thing they sit on is a pad?"

"I did not name them, Moses.  Man did, and you can call yours a frog if you want to."

"Oh, that explains it. I bet some woman told Adam to call it a mouse. After all, was it not a woman who named one of the computers 'Apple?'"

"Say good night, Moses."

"Wait a minute, Sir. I am pointing the mouse, and it seems to be working. Yes, a couple of the ten 'things' have come back."

"Which ones are they, Moses?"

"Let me see. 'Thou shalt not steal from any grave an image' and 'Thou shalt not uncover Thy neighbor's wife.'"

"Turn the computer off, Moses. I'm sending you another set of stone tablets."

 

A Computer User's Problem

Judy, the editor of a trivia publication, was having trouble with her computer. So she called Dave, the computer guy, over to her desk. Dave clicked a couple buttons and solved the problem. As he was walking away, Judy called after him, "So, what was wrong?"

And he replied, "It was an ID ten T error."

A puzzled expression ran over Judy's face. "An ID ten T error? What's that, in case I need to fix it again??"

He gave her a grin, "Haven't you heard of an ID ten T error before."

"No," replied Judy.

"Write it down," he said, "and I think you'll figure it out."

She wrote: ID10T

New Computer Virus

Just got this in from a reliable source. It seems that there is a virus out there called the "Senile Virus" that even the most advanced programs from Norton cannot take care of, so be warned, it appears to affect anyone born before 1958!

Symptoms of Senile Virus

1. Causes you to send same e-mail twice.

2. Causes you to send blank e-mail.

3. Causes you to send to wrong person.

4. Causes you to send back to person who sent it to you.

5. Causes you to forget to attach the attachment.

6. Causes you to hit "SEND" before you've finished the.........

Daily Thoughts About Computers

"From then on, when anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it." Grace Murray Hopper on the removal of a 2-inch-long moth from an experimental computer at Harvard in 1945

"Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons." Popular Mechanics, March 1949

If you take a laptop computer for a run you could jog your memory.

Symptoms that you're addicted to the Internet:

01. You kiss your girlfriend's home page.
02. Your bookmark menu takes 15 minutes to scroll from top to bottom.
03. Your eyeglasses have a web site burned in on them.
04. You find yourself brainstorming for new subjects to search.
05. You refuse to go to a vacation spot with no electricity and no phone lines.
06. You finally do take that vacation, but only after buying a cellular modem and a laptop.
07. You spend half of the plane trip with your laptop on your lap...and your child in the overhead compartment.
08. All your daydreaming is preoccupied with getting a faster connection to the net: ...ISDN...cable modem...T1...T3.
09. You dream in HTML.
10. You refer to going to the bathroom as downloading.
11. Your heart races faster and beats irregularly each time you see a new WWW site address in print or on TV, even though you've never had heart problems before.
12. You step out of your room and realize that your parents have moved and you don't have a clue when it happened.
13. You turn on your intercom when leaving the room so you can hear if new e-mail arrives.
14. You refer to all of your friends with an @ in their names.
15. When looking at a pageful of someone else's links, you notice all of them are already highlighted in purple.
16. Your dog has his own home page.
17. You can't call your mother...she doesn't have a modem.
18. You check your mail. It says "no new messages." So you check it again.
19. You have commandeered your teenager's phone line for the net and even his friends know not to call on his line anymore.
20. Your phone bill comes to your doorstep in a box.
21. You code your homework in HTML and give your instructor the URL.
22. Your husband tells you he's had the beard for 2 months.
23. You move into a new house and decide to Netscape before you landscape.
24. You tell the cab driver you live at http://123.elm.street/house/bluetrim.html
25. You actually just now tried that 123.elm.street address.
26. You buy a Captain Kirk chair with a built-in keyboard and mouse.
27. Your wife makes a new rule: "The computer cannot come to bed."
28. You start tilting your head sideways to smile.
29. You leave the modem speaker on after connecting because you think it sounds like the ocean wind...the perfect soundtrack for "surfing the net."
30. Your wife says communication is important in a marriage...so you buy another computer and install a second phone line so the two of you can chat.
31. As your car crashes through the guardrail on a mountain road, your first instinct is to search for the "back" button.

Bill Gates and GM:

At a COMDEX computer expo a few years back, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, "If GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating:

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Only one person at a time could use the car unless you bought "CarNT," but then you would have to buy more seats.

6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive- but would run on only five percent of the roads.

7. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "General Protection Fault" warning light.

8. New seats would force everyone to have the same sized butt.

9. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.

10. Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

11. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50% or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Dept.

12. Every time GM introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate the same as in the old car.

13. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.

God as a Computer Programmer:

Some important theological questions are answered if we think of God as a computer programmer.

Q: Does God control everything that happens in my life?
A: He could if he used the debugger, but it's tedious to step through all those variables.

Q: Why does God allow evil to happen?
A: God thought he eliminated all evil in an earlier rev.

Q: Does God know everything?
A: He likes to think so, but he is often amazed to find out what goes on in OPS overnight.

Q: What causes God to intervene in earthly affairs?
A: If a critical error occurs, the universe pages him automatically and he logs on from home to try to bring it up. If that doesn't work, he lets it wait until tomorrow.

Q: Did God really create the world in seven days?
A: He actually did it in six days and nights while living on cola and candy bars. On the seventh day he went home and found out his girlfriend had left him.

Q: How come the Age of Miracles Ended?
A: That was the development phase of the project, now we are in the maintenance phase.

Q: Will there be another Universe after the Big Bang ends?
A: A lot of people are drawing things on the white board, but doubt that it will ever be implemented.

Q: Who is Satan?
A: Satan is an IS director who takes credit for more powers than he actually possesses, so people who aren't programmers are scared of him. God thinks of him as irritating but irrelevant.

Q: What is the role of sinners?
A: Sinners are the people who find new and imaginative ways to mess up the system when God has made it idiot-proof.

Q: Where will I go after I die?
A: Onto a backup tape.

Q: Will I be reincarnated?
A: Not unless there is a special need to recreate you. And searching backup files is a major hassle, so if there is a request for you, God will probably just say that the tape has been lost.

Q: Am I unique and special in the universe?
A: There are over 10,000 major university and corporate sites running exact duplicates of you in the present release version.

Q: What is the purpose of the universe?
A: God created it because he values elegance and simplicity, but then the users and managers demanded he tack senseless features onto it and now everything is more complicated and expensive than ever.

Q: If I pray to God, will he listen?
A: You can waste his time telling him what to do and when the deadline is, or you can just get off his back and let him program.

Q: What is the one true religion?
A: All design methodologies have their advantages and disadvantages, so just pick the one that best suits your needs and don't let anyone put you down.

Q: How can I protect myself from evil?
A: Change your password every month and don't make it a name, a common word, or a date like your birthday.

Q: Some people claim they hear the voice of God. Is this true?
A: I'm not sure, but they are much more likely to receive e-mail.

Q: Some people say God is Love.
A: That is not a question. Please restate your query in the form of a question. Abort, Retry, Fail?

Jesus and Satan as Computer Programmers:

Jesus and Satan have an argument as to who is the better programmer. This goes on for a few hours until they come to an agreement to hold a contest, with God the Father as the judge.

They set themselves before their computers and begin. They are given the task, and began to type furiously, lines of code streaming up the screen for several hours straight. Seconds before the end of the competition, a bolt of lightning strikes, taking out the electricity. Moments later, the power is restored, and God announces that the contest is over.

He asks Satan to show what he has come up with. Satan indignantly protests, "I have nothing! I lost it all when the power went out."

"Very well, then," says God, "let us see if Jesus fared any better." Jesus enters a command and the screen comes to life with a vivid display, the voices of an angelic choir pour forth from the speakers. Satan is astonished.

He stutters, "B-b-but how? I lost everything, yet Jesus' program is intact! How did he do it?"

God chuckles, "Satan, when are you going to learn ...Jesus saves!"

Ways to Freak Out People in the OPS Lab:

1. Log on, wait a sec, then get a frightened look on your face and scream, "Oh my God! They've found me!" and run like hell.

2. Laugh uncontrollably for about 3 minutes and then suddenly stop and look suspiciously at everyone who looks at you.

3. When your computer is turned off, complain to the Ops tech on duty that you can't get the damn thing to work. After he/she's turned it on, wait 5 minutes, turn it off again, and repeat the process for at least an hour.

4. Type frantically, often stopping to look at the person next to you evilly.

5. Before anyone else is in the lab, connect each computer to different screen than the one it's set up with.

6. Write a program that plays the "Smurfs" theme song, and play it at the highest volume possible, over and over again.

7. Work normally for a while. Suddenly look startled by something on the screen, and crawl underneath the desk.

8. Ask the person next to you if they know how to tap into top-secret Pentagon files.

9. Use Netware Messages to make passes at people you don't know.

10. Make a small ritual sacrifice to the computer before you turn it on.

11. Bring a chainsaw, but don't use it. If anyone asks why you have it, say "Just in case..." mysteriously.

12. Type for a while. Suddenly start cursing for 3 minutes at everything bad about your life. Then stop and continue typing.

13. Enter the lab, undress, and start staring at other people as if they're crazy while typing.

14. Light candles in a pentagram around your terminal before starting.

15. Ask around for a spare disk. Offer $3. Keep asking until someone agrees. Then, pull a disk out of your fly and say, "Oops, I forgot I had one!"

16. Every time you press Return and there is processing time required, pray "Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease," and scream "YES!" when it finishes.

17. "DISK FIGHT!!!"

18. Start making out with the person at the terminal next to you. It helps if you know them, but it can also just be a great way to make new friends.

25. Sit and stare at the screen, biting your nails noisily. After doing this for a while, spit them out at the feet of the person next to you.

26. Stare at the screen, grind your teeth, stop, look at the person next to you. Grind some more. Repeat procedure, making sure you never provoke the person enough to let them blow up because this releases tension, and it is far more effective to let them linger.

27. If you have long hair, take a typing break, look for split ends, cut them and deposit them on your neighbor's keyboard as you leave.

28. Put a large, gold-framed portrait of the British Royal Family on your desk and loudly proclaim that it inspires you.

29. Come to the lab wearing several layers of socks. Remove shoes and place them of top of the monitor. Remove socks layer by layer and drape them around the monitor. Exclaim sudden haiku about the aesthetic beauty of cotton on plastic.

30. Take the keyboard and sit under the computer. Type like this. Then go to the supervisor and complain about the bad working conditions.

31. Laugh hysterically, shout, "You will all perish in flames!!!" and continue working.

32. Bring some dry ice and make it look like your computer is smoking.

33. Assign a musical note to every key (i.e., the Delete key is A Flat, the B key is F sharp, etc.). Whenever you hit a key, hum its note loudly. Write an entire document this way.

34. Attempt to eat your computer's mouse.

35. Borrow someone else's keyboard by reaching over, saying, "Excuse me, mind if I borrow this for a sec?" and unplugging the keyboard and taking it.

36. Bring in a bunch of magnets and have fun!

37. When doing calculations, pull out an abacus and say that sometimes the old ways are best.

38. Play Pong for hours on the most powerful computer in the lab.

39. Make a loud noise of hitting the same key over and over again until you see that your neighbor is noticing (space bar will work). Then look at your neighbor's keyboard. Hit his/her delete key several times, erasing an entire word. While you do this, ask: "Does *your* delete key work?" Shake your head, and resume hitting the space bar on your keyboard. Keep doing this until you've deleted about a page of your neighbor's document. Then, suddenly exclaim: "Well, whaddya know? I've been hitting the space bar this whole time. No wonder it wasn't deleting! Ha!" Print out your document and leave.

40. Remove your disk from the drive and hide it. Go to the Ops tech on duty and complain that your computer ate your disk. For special effects, put some Elmer's Glue on or around the disk drive and claim that the computer is drooling.

41. Stare at the screen of the person next to you, look really puzzled, burst out laughing, and say, "I can't believe you did that!" loudly. Keep laughing, grab your stuff, and leave, howling as you go.

42. Point at the screen. Chant in a made up language while making elaborate hand gestures for a minute or two. Press return and then leap back and yell, "COVEEEEERRRRRR!", dive under the table, then peek up from under the table, look at the computer, and say, "Oh, good. It worked this time," and calmly start to type again.

43. Keep looking at invisible flying bugs and trying to swat them.

44. See who's online. Send a total stranger a talk request. Talk to them like you've known them all your lives. Hang up before they get a chance to figure out you're a total stranger.

45. Bring a small tape player with a tape of really absurd sound effects. Pretend it's the computer and look really lost.

46. Pull out a pencil. Start writing on the screen. Complain that the lead doesn't work.

47. Run into the computer lab, shout, "Armageddon is here!!!!!" and then calmly sit down and begin to type.

48. Quietly walk into the computer lab with a Black and Decker chainsaw, rev that baby up, and then walk up to the nearest person and say, "Give me that computer or you'll be feeding my pet crocodile for the next week."

Imagine if instead of cryptic, geeky text strings, your computer produced error messages in haiku...

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.

The Web site you seek
cannot be located but
endless others exist

Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.

ABORTED effort:
Close all that you have.
You ask way too much.

First snow, then silence.
This thousand dollar screen dies
so beautifully.

With searching comes loss
and the presence of absence:
"My Novel" not found.

The Tao that is seen
Is not the true Tao, until
You bring fresh toner.

Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.

Stay the patient course
Of little worth is your ire
The network is down

A crash reduces
your expensive computer
to a simple stone.

Yesterday it worked
Today it is not working
Windows is like that

Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.

You step in the stream,
but the water has moved on.
This page is not here.

Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.

Having been erased,
The document you're seeking
Must now be retyped.

Rather than a beep
Or a rude error message,
These words: "File not found."

Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.

Here is what we have in mind as a way to survive life's disappointments...

Don't you wish when life is bad
and things just don't compute,
That all we really had to do
was stop and hit reboot?

Things would all turn out ok,
life could be so sweet
If we had those special keys
Ctrl, Alt, and Delete

Your boss is mad, your bills not paid,
your partner, well they are just mute
Just stop and hit those wonderful keys
that make it all reboot

You'd like to have another job
but you fear living in the street?
You solve it all and start a new,
Ctrl, Alt, and Delete.

Confidence in your programming team

At a recent software engineering management course in the US, the participants were given an awkward question to answer. "If you had just boarded an airliner and discovered that your team of programmers had been responsible for the flight control software how many of you would disembark immediately?"

Among the ensuing forest of raised hands, only one man sat motionless. When asked what he would do, he replied that he would be quite content to stay onboard.

With his team's software, he said, the plane was unlikely to even taxi as far as the runway, let alone take off.