How To Tell If You're A High-Tech Redneck
When you're counting objects, you go 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D..."
If you did an error-free installation of Windows 95.
1. Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.
1. 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.
If your e-mail address ends in .overyonder.com.
If you connect to the World Wide Web via a Down Home Page.
If the bumper sticker on your truck says My other computer is a laptop.
If your laptop has a sticker that says Protected by Smith and Wesson.
If you've ever doubled the value of your truck by installing a cellular phone.
If your baseball cap read DEC instead of CAT.
If your computer is worth more than all your cars combined.
If your wife said either her or the computer had to go, and you still don't miss her.
If you've ever used a CD-ROM as a coaster to set your beer on.
If you ever refer to your computer as Ole Bessy.
If your screen saver is a bitmap image of your favorite truck, tractor, or farm animal.
If you start all your e-mails with the words Howdy y'all.
10. Back off Barney, I've got a piece.
9. Wanna race to the station, Sparky?
8. I know I was weaving, but I can't find the Honeycomb Hideout!
7. On the way to the station let's get a twelve pack.
6. You'll never get those cuffs on me...you wuss!
5. Come on, write the damn ticket, the bars close in 20 minutes!
4. Hey wasn't your daughter a porn queen?
3. How long is this going to take? Your wife is expecting me.
2. Hey officer, is that your nightstick or are you just glad to see me?
1. I'm surprised you stopped me, Dunkin' Donuts has a 3 for 1 special!
When asked about a bus schedule, you wonder if it's 16 or 32 bits.
When your wife says If you don't turn off that darn machine and come to bed,
I'm going to divorce you!, and you chastise her for omitting the else clause.
When you're reading a book and look for the space bar to get to the next page.
When you look for your car keys using: grep keys /dev/pockets.
When, after fooling around all day with routers etc, you pick up the phone
and start dialing an IP number.
When you get in the elevator and double-press the button for the floor you want.
When not only do you check your email more often than your paper mail,
but you remember your email address faster than your postal one.
When you go to balance your checkbook and discover that you're doing the math in octal.
When you dream in 256 pallettes of 256 colors.
When you're writing a letter and get to the end of the line in the middle
of a sentence, tack on a '\', and continue writing on the next line.
When your modem starts smoking.
If no one can reach you by phone since your computer is always online.
If you log-off your system because it's time to go to work.
If you call in sick because you found a great new WWW site.
If you can type the URLs of your top 10 favorite Web sites from memory.
If you can locate a particular home page without using a search engine.
If you can write your own html page.
If you download more than 20Mb from a binary newsgroup in one session.
If while reading a magazine, you look for the Zoom icon for a better look at a photograph.
You comment, while watching a sunset, that the image would be enhanced with 10% more magenta and a higher resolution.
If while driving down the street, you are confused by the numbers on the houses - they do not appear to be legitimate WWW addresses.
When someone tells you to remember something, and you look for File/Save command.
When you discover there is no little car icon with a forward arrow on the dashboard of your car, to make it go.
When you think the File/Kill command should apply to your system administrator.
When you find it easier to dial-up the National Weather Service/Weather/your_town/now.html than to simply look out the window.
When you start using phrases like: Hungry.must-eat.food.now@home.
If you have a heart attack when you forgot to pay your phone bill and receive a pending disconnection of service notice.
When you order most of what you buy... online.
If your fingers quit moving because you've been online for 36 hours.
When you find yourself engaged to someone you've never actually met; except through e-mail.
When you log-off from a session in your favorite newsgroup... and your log reads: Online time: 56 hours 24 minutes.
If your net provider suggests you try a competitor, because you're exceeding 300 hours a month connect time.
When you add your third modem and dedicated phone line.
You access Microsoft's Web page every Sunday morning for Brother Bill's sermon.
When that 112Gb hard drive is full.
If 133 Mhz is simply too slow.
When your desk collapses under the weight of your computer peripherals.
If you have an online light installed on your car to tell you when the engine is running.
When you discover that in order to drive your car somewhere, you do not enter an http:// or ftp:// address.
If you can actually talk to the computers in your new car - and understand what they say.
When you modify the programming of your car's computers and actually get better mileage.
When you can access the Net - via your laptop and cellular phone.
If on the way home from work, you use your laptop and cellular phone in your car to reprogram a Tomahawk missile in flight, and redirect it to take out the joker in the Cadillac who cut you off.
If you try to press Alt-F4 to close your car window.
When you put a CD-ROM in your car's player.
When someone tells you about a great new program and you're very disappointed to find it's on TV.
If every sentence you utter begins with, On the Net...
If you put your e-mail address in the upper left-hand corner of envelopes.
If you have your e-mail address printed on your stationary.
When you insist on seeing the movie The Net - for the 63rd time.
If magazines like InternetWorld are of greater interest than Playboy or Playgirl.
If you maintain more than 6 e-mail addresses.
If you use more than 20 passwords.
If you set up your own Web page.
If you set up a Web page for each of your kids... and your pets.
If, instead of a phone number, you ask someone for their e-mail address.
If you don't know anyone who DOESN'T have an e-mail addresses.
If you convince your mom that she HAS to get online because e-mail is so much cheaper than long distance phone charges.
If you can write a list like this.
If you can relate to a list like this.
2. COFFEE.EXE Missing - Insert Cup and Press Any Key
3. Buy a Pentium 586/90 so you can reboot faster.
4. 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
5. Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes.
6. Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.
7. My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.
8. C:\WINDOWS C:\WINDOWS\GO C:\PC\CRAWL
9. C:\DOS C:\DOS\RUN RUN\DOS\RUN
10. <-------- The information went data way --------
11. Best file compression around: DEL = 100% compression
12. The Definition of an Upgrade: Take old bugs out, put new ones in.
13. BREAKFAST.COM Halted...Cereal Port Not Responding
14. The name is Baud......, James Baud.
15. BUFFERS=20 FILES=15 2nd down, 4th quarter, 5 yards to go!
16. Access denied--nah nah na nah nah!
17. C:\ Bad command or file name! Go stand in the corner.
18. Bad command. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaay..
19. Why doesn't DOS ever say EXCELLENT command or filename!
20. As a computer, I find your faith in technology amusing.
21. Southern DOS: Y'all reckon? (Yep/Nope)
22. Backups? We don' NEED no steenking backups.
23. E Pluribus Modem
24. ... File not found. Should I fake it? (Y/N)
25. Ethernet (noun): something used to catch the Etherbunny
26. A mainframe: The biggest PC peripheral available.
27. An error? Impossible! My modem is error correcting.
28. CONGRESS.SYS Corrupted: Re-boot Washington D.C. (Y/N)?
29. Does fuzzy logic tickle?
30. A computer's attention span is as long as it's power cord.
31. 11th commandment - Covet not thy neighbor's Pentium.
32. 24 hours in a day...24 beers in a case...coincidence?
33. Disinformation is not as good as datinformation.
34. Windows: Just another pane in the glass.
35. SENILE.COM found . . . Out Of Memory . . .
36. Who's General Failure & why is he reading my disk?
37. Ultimate office automation: networked coffee.
38. RAM disk is not an installation procedure.
39. Shell to DOS...Come in DOS, do you copy? Shell to DOS...
40. All computers wait at the same speed.
41. DEFINITION: Computer - A device designed to speed and automate errors.
42. Go ahead, make my data!
43. Smash forehead on keyboard to continue.....
44. Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue...
45. ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI!
46. E-mail returned to sender -- insufficient voltage.
47. Help! I'm modeming... and I can't hang up!!!
48. All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound?
49. Error: Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue.
50. 640K ought to be enough for anybody. - Bill Gates, 1981
51. DOS Tip #17: Add DEVICE=FNGRCROS.SYS to CONFIG.SYS
52. Hidden DOS secret: add BUGS=OFF to your CONFIG.SYS
53. Press any key to continue or any other key to quit...
54. Press any key...... no, No, NO!! Not THAT one!
55. PressCTRL-ALT-DEL to continue ...
If you own more than three shirts with cut-off sleeves.
If you have ever spray painted your girlfriend's name on an overpass.
If you consider a six pack of beer and a bug zapper quality entertainment.
If your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand.
If someone asks to see your I.D. and you show them your belt buckle.
If the primary color of your car is primer.
If your dog and your wallet are both on a chain.
If you owe the taxidermist more than your annual income.
If you've ever lost a tooth opening a beer bottle.
If Jack Daniels makes your list of most admired people.
If your wife's hairdo has ever been ruined by a ceiling fan.
If you prominently display a souvenir you bought at Graceland.
If your house doesn't have curtains but your truck does.
If your front porch collapses and kills more than three dogs.
If you have ever signed a petition to have the national anthem changed to Free Bird.
If you call the boss dude.
If you think Volvo is part of a woman's anatomy.
If you consider your license plate personalized because your father made it.
If you have been fired from a construction job because of your appearance.
If you need one more hole punched in your card before you get a freebie at the House of Tattoos.
If your father encourages you to quit school because Larry has an opening on the lube rack.
If you get an estimate from the barber before he cuts your hair.
-- Joe Mullich, American Way Magazine, Nov. 94
2. You have never sat through an entire movie without having at least one device on your body beep or buzz.
3. 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.
4. You think of the gadgets in your office as "friends," but you forget to send your father a birthday card.
5. You disdain people who use low baud rates.
6. 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.
7. You use the phrase "digital compression" in a conversation without thinking how strange your mouth
feels when you say it.
8. 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.
9. You know Bill Gates' e-mail address, but you have to look up your own social security number.
10. 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.
11. You sign Christmas cards by putting :-) next to your signature.
12. Off the top of your head, you can think of nineteen keystroke symbols that are far more clever than :-)
13. You back up your data every day.
14. Your wife asks you to pick up some minipads for her at the store and you return with a rest for your mouse.
15. You think jokes about being unable to program a VCR are stupid.
16. On vacation, you are reading a computer manual and turning the pages faster than everyone else who
is reading John Grisham novels.
17. The thought that CD could refer to investment finance or music rarely enters your mind.
18. You are able to argue persuasively that 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.
19. You go to computer trade shows and map out your path of the exhibit hall in advance. However, you
cannot give someone directions to your house without looking up the street names.
20. You would rather get more dots per inch than miles per gallon.
21. 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.
22. You know without a doubt that disks come in five-and-a-quarter and three-and-a-half inch sizes.
23. Al Gore strikes you as an "intriguing" fellow.
24. You own a set of itty-bitty screwdrivers and you actually know where they are.
25. While contemporaries swap stories about their recent hernia surgeries, you compare mouse-induced
index-finger strain with a nine-year-old.
26. 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.
27. You rotate your screen savers more frequently than your automobile tires.
28. You have a functioning home copier machine, but every toaster you own turns bread into charcoal.
29. You have ended friendships because of irreconcilabe different opinions about which is better: the
track ball or the track pad.
30. 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.
31. 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.