- Hi Tech
A guy walks into a bar and sits down. He starts dialing numbers... like a telephone... on his hand, then talking into his hand. The bartender walks over and tells him this is a very tough neighborhood and he doesn't need any trouble here.
The guy says, "You don't understand. I'm very hi-tech. I had a phone installed in my hand because I was tired of carrying the cellular." The bartender says "Prove it." The guy dials up a number and hands his hand to the bartender. The bartender talks into the hand and carries on a conversation.
"That's incredible", says the bartender... "I would never have believed it!"
"Yeah", said the guy, "I can keep in touch with my broker, my wife, you name it. By the way, where is the men's room?" The bartender directs him to the men's room.
The guy goes in and 5, 10, 20 minutes go by and he doesn't return. Fearing the worst given the neighborhood, the bartender goes into the men's room. There is the guy spread-eagle on the wall. His pants are pulled down and he has a roll of toilet paper up his butt. "Oh my god!" said the bartender. "Did they rob you? Are you hurt?" The guy turns to him and says: "No, I'm ok..... I'm just waiting for a fax."
Chris, January 12, 1998
- The Techno Terms Dictionary
- 486
- The average IQ needed to understand a PC.
- State-of-the-art
- Any computer you can't afford.
- Obsolete
- Any computer you own.
- Microsecond
- The time it takes for your state-of-the-art computer to become obsolete.
- G3
- Apple's new Macs that make you say "Gee, three times faster than the computer I bought for the same price a Microsecond ago."
- Syntax Error
- Walking into a computer store and saying "Hi, I want to buy a computer and money is no object."
- Hard Drive
- The sales technique employed by computer salesmen, esp. after a Syntax Error.
- GUI
- What your computer becomes after spilling your coffee on it. (pronounced "gooey")
- Keyboard
- The standard way to generate computer errors.
- Mouse
- An advanced input device to make computer errors easier to generate.
- Floppy
- The state of your wallet after purchasing a computer.
- Portable Computer
- A device invented to force businessmen to work at home, on vacation, and on business trips.
- Disk Crash
- A typical computer response to any critical deadline.
- Power User
- Anyone who can format a disk from DOS.
- System Update
- A quick method of trashing ALL of your software.
Chris, December 6, 1997
- Signs That Technology Has Taken Over Your Life
- Your stationery is more cluttered than Warren Beatty's address
book. The letterhead lists a fax number, e-mail addresses for two on-line
services, and your Internet address, which spreads across the breadth of
the letterhead and continues to the back. In essence, you have conceded
that the first page of any letter you write *is* letterhead.
- You have never sat through an entire movie without having at least
one device on your body beep or buzz.
- You need to fill out a form that must be typewritten, but you
can't because there isn't one typewriter in your house-only computers with
laser printers.
- You think of the gadgets in your office as "friends," but you
forget to send your father a birthday card.
- You disdain those poor souls that use low baud rates.
- When you go into a computer store, you eavesdrop on a salesperson
talking with customers-and you butt in to correct him and spend the next
twenty minutes answering the customers' questions, while the salesperson
stands by silently, nodding his head.
- You use the phrase "digital compression" in a conversation without
thinking how strange your mouth feels when you say it.
- You constantly find yourself in groups of people to whom you say
the phrase "digital compression." Everyone understands what you mean, and
you are not surprised or disappointed that you don't have to explain it.
- You know Bill Gates' e-mail address, but you have to look up your
own social security number.
- You stop saying "phone number" and replace it with "voice
number", since we all know the majority of phone lines in any house are
plugged into contraptions that talk to other contraptions.
- You sign Christmas cards by putting :-) next to your signature.
- Off the top of your head, you can think of nineteen keystroke
symbols that are far more clever than :-).
- You back up your data every day.
- Your wife asks you to pick up some minipads for her at the store and
you return with a rest for your mouse.
- You think jokes about being unable to program a VCR are stupid.
- On vacation, you are reading a computer manual and turning the
pages faster than everyone else who is reading John Grisham novels.
- The thought that a CD could refer to finance or music rarely
enters your mind.
- You are able to argue persuasively the Ross Perot's phrase
"electronic town hall" makes more sense than the term "information
superhighway," but you don't because, after all, the man still uses
hand-drawn pie charts.
- You go to computer trade shows and map out your path of the
exhibit hall in advance. But you cannot give someone directions to your
house without looking up the street names.
- You become upset when a person calls you on the phone to sell
you something, but you think it's okay for a computer to call and demand
that you start pushing buttons on your telephone to receive more
information about the product it is selling.
- You know without a doubt that disks come in five-and-a-quarter-
and three-and-a-half-inch sizes.
- Al Gore strikes you as an "intriguing" fellow.
- You own a set of itty-bitty screw-drivers and you actually know
where they are.
- While contemporaries swap stories about their recent hernia
surgeries, you compare mouse-induced index-finger strain with a nine-year-old.
- You are so knowledgeable about technology that you feel secure
enough to say "I don't know" when someone asks you a technology question instead of feeling compelled to make something up.
- You rotate your screen savers more frequently than your automobile tires.
- You have a functioning home copier machine, but every toaster
you own turns bread into charcoal.
- You have ended friendships because of irreconcilably different
opinions about which is better-the track ball or the track *pad*.
- You understand all the jokes in this message. If so, my friend,
technology has taken over your life. We suggest, for your own good, that
you go lie under a tree and write a haiku. And don't use a laptop.
- You email this message to your friends over the net. You'd never
get around to showing it to them in person or reading it to them on the
phone. In fact, you have probably never met most of these people face-to-face.
- You cc this message to your wife.
- You would rather get more dots per inch than miles per gallon.
Sotiris, August 13, 1997
- PC Acronyms
- PCMCIA
- People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
- ISDN
- It Still Does Nothing
- SCSI
- System Can't See It
- DOS
- Defective Operating System
- BASIC
- Bill's Attempt to Seize Industry Control
- IBM
- I Blame Microsoft
- DEC
- Do Expect Cuts
- CD-ROM
- Consumer Device, Rendered Obsolete in Months
- OS/2
- Obsolete Soon, Too
- WWW
- World Wide Wait
- MACINTOSH
- Most Applications Crash; If Not, The Operating
System Hangs
- PENTIUM
- Produces Erroneous Numbers Thru Incorrect
Understanding of Mathematics
- COBOL
- Completely Obsolete Business Oriented Language
- AMIGA
- A Merely Insignificant Game Addiction
- LISP
- Lots of Infuriating & Silly Parentheses
- MIPS
- Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed
- WINDOWS
- Will Install Needless Data On Whole System
- MICROSOFT
- Most Intelligent Customers Realize Our Software Only Fools Teenagers
- RISC
- Reduced Into Silly Code
Sotiris, August 13, 1997
- If Microsoft Built Cars
- Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you'd have to buy a new car.
- Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason and you'd have to restart it. For some strange reason, you'd just accept this,
restart and drive on.
- Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail to restart and you'd have to reinstall the engine. For some reason, you'd just accept this too.
- You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bought "Car95" or a "Car NT." But then you'd have to buy more seats.
- Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was twice as reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive
- but it would only
run on 5 percent of the roads.
- The Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to
their cars, which would make their cars run much slower.
- The oil, engine, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced by
a single "general car default" warning light.
- New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
- The airbag system would say, "Are you sure?" before going off.
- If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened.
Sotiris, August 10, 1997
- You know you're an E-mail Junkie...
- You wake up at 3 a.m. to go to the bathroom and stop to check your e-mail on the way back to bed.
- You get a tatoo that reads "This body best viewed with Netscape Navigator 1.1 or higher."
- You name your children Eudora, Mozillia and Dotcom.
- You turn off your modem and get this awful empty feeling, like you just pulled the plug on a loved one.
- You spend half of the plane trip with your laptop on your lap...and your child in the overhead compartment.
- You decide to stay in college for an additional year or two, just for the free Internet access.
- You laugh at people with 14,400-baud modems.
- You start using smileys in your snail mail.
- Your hard drive crashes. You haven't logged in for two hours. You start to twitch. You pick up the phone and manually dial your ISP's access number. You try to hum to communicate with the modem... And you succeed.
- You find yourself typing "com" after every period when using a word processor.com
- You refer to going to the bathroom as downloading.
- You start introducing yourself as "JohnDoe at AOL dot com."
- All of your friends have an @ in their names.
- Your cat/dog has its own home page.
- You can't call your mother... she doesn't have a modem.
- You check your mail. It says "no new messages." So you check it again.
- Your phone bill comes to your doorstep in a box.
- You don't know what sex three of your closest friends are, because they have
neutral nicknames and you never bothered to ask.
- You move into a new house and decide to Netscape before you landscape.
- You tell the cab driver you live at "http://1000.edison.garden/house/brick.html."
- You start tilting your head sideways to smile
