--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Throughout history, Artsy types and Techie types have always been in
conflict. This is most probably caused by "Right Brain" and "Left
Brain" dominance of the respective professions.
I am sure there was conflict even when the wheel was designed, "Make
it perfectly round to reduce friction," said the wheel technician.
"No, perfectly round is so boring and generic," argued the wheel
designer.
Well in today's modern age, the Internet has created one of the most
glaring and continuous confrontations between the two. Here is a
recent conversation overheard between a web designer and an engineer:
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
DESIGNER: Hi, I don't think we've met yet. I'm the designer. I just
started, and I have a bit of a technical question.
ENGINEER: That's what I'm here for. What's the problem?
D: Well, I was wondering how you set the font in HTML? How do I make
sure that our audience gets their text in Myriad MM light norm 12
point?
E: Oh, that's an easy one!
D: Great! What is it?
E: You can't. Cheers!
D: That doesn't make sense.
E: Sure it does. You see, HTML is designed to work on all computers
and all displays. You don't know what fonts people are going to
have installed on their machines or even if they have monitors.
They may be visually impaired, you know. So trying to set the font
is a useless endeavor.
D: So I'm stuck designing with the default fonts set by the Web
browser?
E: Well, unless readers set their own fonts.
D: What?
E: Yeah, check it out. I've set up my fonts and display just the way
I like it: black background, orange text, and the fonts are all
Courier.
D: AAAHHHHH!!!!! My designs! My beautiful designs! All ruined! What
a world.....what a world....
E: Well that's what you get when you try to control visual
presentation on a multiplatform environment.
.......SOME TIME LATER.........
D: I figured it out!
E: What? What did you figure out?
D: Fonts on the Web. I got them to work.
E: WOW! It's....It's beautiful!! Elegant, refined, readable. I don't
understand. This shouldn't be possible. How'd you do this?
D: Oh, it was easy. I made our entire site into a background GIF,
flattened the text down into the bitmap, and then just made an
image map around all the linkable items.
E: But that's monstrous! It's unstructured! it's unsearchable! It's
unindexable! It's .... It's....
D: It's got the font control that I need.
E: (looks at file size) IT'S 450 KILOBYTES!!!
AAHHHHH!!!!! My server! My poor server! What a world! What a
world.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+ What Would You Like On Your Tombstone ?
These epitaphs, taken from actual tombstones.
_______________________________
On the grave of Ezekial Aikle in East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia:
Here lies
Ezekial Aikle
Age 102
The Good
Die Young.
In a London, England cemetery:
Ann Mann
Here lies Ann Mann,
Who lived an old maid
But died an old Mann.
Dec. 8, 1767
In a Ribbesford, England, cemetery:
Anna Wallace
The children of Israel wanted bread
And the Lord sent them manna,
Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife,
And the Devil sent him Anna.
Playing with names in a Ruidoso, New Mexico, cemetery:
Here lies
Johnny Yeast
Pardon me
For not rising.
Memory of an accident in a Uniontown, Pennsylvania cemetery:
Here lies the body
of Jonathan Blake
Stepped on the gas
Instead of the brake.
In a Silver City, Nevada, cemetery:
Here lays Butch,
We planted him raw.
He was quick on the trigger,
But slow on the draw.
A widow wrote this epitaph in a Vermont cemetery:
Sacred to the memory of
my husband John Barnes
who died January 3, 1803
His comely young widow, aged 23, has
many qualifications of a good wife, and
yearns to be comforted.
A lawyer's epitaph in England:
Sir John Strange
Here lies an honest lawyer,
And that is Strange.
Someone determined to be anonymous in Stowe, Vermont:
I was somebody.
Who, is no business
Of yours.
Lester Moore was a Wells, Fargo Co. station agent for Naco, Arizona in
the cowboy days of the 1880's. He's buried in the Boot Hill Cemetery in
Tombstone, Arizona:
Here lies Lester Moore
Four slugs from a .44
No Les No More.
In a Georgia cemetery:
"I told you I was sick!"
John Penny's epitaph in the Wimborne, England, cemetery:
Reader if cash thou art
In want of any
Dig 4 feet deep
And thou wilt find a Penny.
On Margaret Daniels grave at Hollywood Cemetery Richmond, Virginia:
She always said her feet were killing her
but nobody believed her.
In a cemetery in Hartscombe, England:
On the 22nd of June
- Jonathan Fiddle -
Went out of tune.
Anna Hopewell's grave in Enosburg Falls, Vermont has an epitaph that
sounds like something from a Three Stooges movie:
Here lies the body of our Anna
Done to death by a banana
It wasn't the fruit that laid her low
But the skin of the thing that made her go.
More fun with names with Owen Moore in Battersea, London, England:
Gone away
Owin' more
Than he could pay.
Someone in Winslow, Maine didn't like Mr. Wood:
In Memory of Beza Wood
Departed this life
Nov. 2, 1837
Aged 45 yrs.
Here lies one Wood
Enclosed in wood
One Wood
Within another.
The outer wood
Is very good:
We cannot praise
The other.
On a grave from the 1880's in Nantucket, Massachusetts:
Under the sod and under the trees
Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.
He is not here, there's only the pod:
Pease shelled out and went to God.
The grave of Ellen Shannon in Girard, Pennsylvania is almost a consumer
tip:
Who was fatally burned
March 21, 1870
by the explosion of a lamp
filled with "R.E. Danforth's
Non-Explosive Burning Fluid"
Oops! Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York:
Born 1903--Died 1942
Looked up the elevator shaft to see if
the car was on the way down. It was.
In a Thurmont, Maryland, cemetery:
Here lies an Atheist
All dressed up
And no place to go.
But does he make house calls? Dr. Fred Roberts, Brookland, Arkansas:
Office now upstairs
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW YORK (AP) -- Big Bird, the famed friendly muppet of Sesame
Street, has apparently gone on a rampage. Several muppets are known
to be dead: including Bert -- long time friend, room-mate and
occasional lover of Ernie. The bird is now reportedly holding Maria
hostage in a five floor tenement near Hooper's store. New York city
SWAT teams have surrounded the building.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Big Bird, Sesame Street muppet, is reported dead at
this hour after a 1.5 hour hostage stand-off with New York police.
Kermit the Frog, Sesame Street muppet on the scene, reports that as
police stormed the five story tenement where the bird was holding
Maria, Big Bird flew out an upper story window at them in a Kamikaze
like attack. Police SWAT units brought the bird down in a hail of
automatic weapons fire.
NEW YORK (AP) -- The professor and his assistant, Beaker, muppet
chemists, have reportedly found angel dust in Big Bird's feed. Big
Bird was killed by police early this morning after the bird went on a
killing spree on Sesame Street. Maria, taken hostage during the
ordeal has survived unharmed. Three muppets were killed by the bird:
Prairie Dawn (a friendly, pigtailed muppet girl-child), Oscar the
Grouch (a green garbage-dwelling grumpy muppet) and Bert (the famous
paper clip collector and pigeon friend) . Authorities say that the bad
seed was purchased at the local Hooper's.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Police are asking motorists to stay away from Sesame
Street today as tensions are running high among the muppets. Many
reportedly are outraged at the tainted food supply and at how the
police handled the situation. According to bystanders on the scene at
the time, Mr Snuffalapagus pleaded the police to be allowed to talk
Big Bird. Instead the police stormed the building with deadly
results.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Violence erupted again today on Sesame Street as
thousands of humans driving home enraged muppets. In at least one
case, ten muppets pulled a motorist from his car and beat him with
large styrofoam letters.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Police and fire units have been called to Sesame
Street. Reporters on the scene describe a nightmarish
atmosphere. Furry muppets ranging in size from only inches to seven
feet in height are looting Hooper's store and firebombing the entire
neighborhood. Orange and blue firelight is rising over many
buildings. Cardboard backdrops and storehouses full of numbers and
letters are burning to the ground. Muppets are taunting fireman and
police from windowsills above the street with counting and alphabet
songs.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Morning light has brought an eerie calm to Sesame
Street after a night of rioting. Smoke rises from most buildings. On
the street, lifeless crumpled fur lies in mute testament of the night
of wild outrage. Unknown numbers of muppets have died or been shot to
death by police in full riot gear. The Count was reported running down
the street crying and yelling "Ten, Ten lifeless Muppet bodies". No
humans were hurt in the rioting although several people reported rug
burns.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Ernie, gay friend and roommate of the murdered muppet
Bert, broke his two day silence today with a eulogy address at a mass
muppet funeral. The following is a complete transcript of his address:
"I come here today to honor a man I loved.. A man who was loved by
millions around the world. Bert was a giant among muppets. His paper
clip collection was viewed with awe by many of the world's
leaders. Just one year ago, as President Clinton campaigned on Sesame
Street for the muppet vote, it was Bert who told us all 'anyone who
can hang as many paperclips together as Bill Clinton, can certainly
run the country.' I also came here today to honor Big Bird. Bird was
such a loving creature. His large size and color alarmed many who
first met him, but it was his innocent and curious nature which taught
us all to love him. Bird wouldn't have wanted us to remember him or
memorialize him with violence. All he ever wanted was for all
creatures to 'just get along' with each other. Big Bird has come to a
bad end, friends, but it wasn't his fault. It was just some bad
seed."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Time is a plaything for children and fools.
Try enjoying yourself. Everyone else has.
I've always maintained that one should never tangle with anything that
has more teeth than the Osmond family.
As the Euclideans would have it, irrationality is the square root of
all evil.
Nice computers don't go down.
All men have the right to dig their own graves, and I have the right
to sell them the shovels.
Evolution doesn't take prisoners.
The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and three hundred
sixty-two admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God
doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more
supervision.
When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep like my father did,
not screaming in terror like his passengers.
What rolls down T3s, boosts connect fees, and makes your throughput
drag? Makes it tough to hack, won't get off your back, it's lag lag
lag!
If infinite rednecks fired infinite shotguns at an infinite number of
road signs, they'd eventually create all the great literary works of
the world in braille.
The Delta-United Ring Formation Theory states that the rings of Saturn
are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.
A good man has few enemies. A ruthless man has none.
Proletarian revolutions are notably ineffective when the ruling class
is composed of gods.
Only the lavender prairie dogs know the key to unlock the secret of
the tumble-weeds.
For every new foolproof invention there is a new and improved fool.
How many times do I have to tell you that drilling holes in your head
will not relieve stress?
Life is sometimes like a pizza: round, hot, greasy, and delivered by a
guy named 'Tony'.
Time is a great teacher, but it kills all its pupils.
Coitus ergo sum
You know it's a bad morning when you get up out of bed and miss the
floor.
Any given program, when running, needs debugging. Any debugged program
is obsolete.
The most useful tool for dealing with management types is, of course,
an automatic weapon.
Do not call up that which you cannot put on hold
It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion. It is by the
Coca-Cola that the thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains,
the stains become a warning. It is by caffeine alone that I set my
mind in motion.
His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics,
the Stoics and the Epicureans - and summed up all three of them in his
famous phrase, "You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw
him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink."
Horniness is a quintessential example of hope.
The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The
pessimist is afraid that it is.
The quickest way to a man's heart is through his ribcage.
You DON'T want me to translate that. No, really you don't.
They are a puckish band of rapscallions
Acting without thinking can be awfully entertaining.
A little madness now and then is relished by the wisest men.
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley; LSD and BSD
Unix. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
Okay, everybody in this room who's telekinetic, raise my hand.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
Hey, go buy a plane ticket to another state of mind, okay?
Death is just the ultimate expression of radical solipsism.
If it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, and quacks like a duck it
is probably just a tool of the conspiracy.
History: an account (mostly false), of events (mostly unimportant),
brought about by rulers (mostly knaves) and soldiers (mostly fools).
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum: I think I think, therefore I think I
am.
It would have worked, too, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids
and their fucking dog!
Liberals don't believe they deserve anything they own; conservatives
think they're entitled to everything they've stolen.
I intend to live forever or die trying.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's
too dark to read
Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth.
We find the defendant innocent by reason of being generally clueless.
I'll heal your wounds, I'll set you free; I'm Jesus Christ on ecstasy
Humans: Bet you can't eat just one.
Sarcasm helps you avoid telling people what you really think of them
The problem with troubleshooting is that real trouble shoots back.
Welcome to Borger King. Your way will be assimilated.
I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs, and insanity for everyone, but
they've always worked for me.
"Here's what I know," said the physicist. "If we lived in a
microscopic world, trucks would crash into walls, fly apart, and then
reassemble perfectly on the other side of the wall. This has been
proven."
A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction
to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.
A hundred thousand lemmings can't be wrong.
For him to get a clue would require heroic implant surgery.
Love is in the offing, said the homicidal maniac.
Beware of a tall dark man with a spoon up his nose.
Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive.
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is the most fatal.
I'm sorry, did I assassinate your penguin?
Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.
Quack!
The world is coming to an end. Please log off.
Drive defensively; buy a tank.
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
Spacetime isn't curved; it's positively bent.
Mommy's all right, Daddy's all right, they just seem a little weird.
You killed Ted, you medieval dickweed!
A thousand lips, a thousand tongues, a thousand throats, a thousand
lungs... a thousand ways to make it true, I want to do terrible things
to you.
It would seem that no matter how you slice it, it still comes up
Velveeta.
No man is an island, but then no man is a potato salad, either.
You can't lick the system, but you can certainly give it a damn good
fondling...
Don't worry. Baldrick has a cunning plan.
Well, it looks like blind, screaming hedonism won out.
Christopher Kalley
Network Technician - Verio Texas
ckalley@verio.net
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nuns are admitted to Heaven through a special gate and are expected to
make one last confession before they become angels. Several nuns are
lined up at this gate waiting to be absolved of their last sins before
they are made holy.
"And so," says St. Peter, "have you ever had any contact with a penis?"
"Well," says the first nun in line, "I did once just touch the tip of
one with the tip of my finger."
"OK" says St. Peter, "Dip your finger in the holy water and pass on
into heaven."
The next nun admits that "Well, yes, I did once get carried away and
I, you know, sort of massaged one a bit."
"OK" says St. Peter, "Rinse your hand in the holy water and pass on
into heaven."
Suddenly there is some jostling in the line and one of the nuns is trying to cut in front.
"Well now, what's going on here?" says St. Peter.
"Well, your excellency," says the nun who is trying to improve her
position in line. "If I'm going to have to gargle that stuff, I want
to do it before Sister Mary sticks her butt in it!"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A gynecologist decides that he no longer wants to be a doctor. As he's
thinking about what he wants to do with his life, he decides that he
wants to work on cars. So he goes to an automotive institute and
takes all the necessary classes. The final exam requires him to take
apart an engine, put it back together, and explain in writing his
method.
He completes the assignment and gives it to the instructor. When he
gets the paper back, he has 150 percent. He was very excited, but
curious about how he got 150 percent grade. He contacted the
instructor for an answer.
The instructor explained that he got 50% for taking the engine apart,
50% for putting it back together, and 50% for doing everything through
the muffler.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft Technical Support vs. The Psychic Friends Network :
Which Provides Better Support for Microsoft Products?
by Michael Patrick Ellard and Daniel Albert Wright
>From BMUG newsletter, without permission.
In the course of a recent Microsoft Access programming project, we had
three difficult technical problems where we decided to call a support
hotline for advice. This article compares the two support numbers we
tried: Microsoft Technical Support and the Psychic Friends Network. As
a result of this research, we have come to the following conclusions:
1) that Microsoft Technical Support and the Psychic Friends Network
are about equal in their ability to provide technical assistance for
Microsoft products over the phone; 2) that the Psychic Friends Net
work has a distinct edge over Microsoft in the areas of courtesy,
response time, and cost of support; but 3) that Microsoft has a
generally better refund policy if they fail to solve your problem.
In the paragraphs that follow, we will detail the support calls we
made and the responses we received from each support provider. We will
follow this with a discussion of the features provided by each support
provider so that readers can do their own rankings of the two
services.
Our research began when we called Microsoft regarding a bug that we
had detected when executing queries which pulled data from a Sybase
Server into Microsoft Access. If we used the same Access database to
query two databases on the same server, we found that all of the
queries aimed at the second database that we queried were sent to the
first database that we had queried. This problem existed no matter
which database we queried first. Dan called Microsoft's Technical
Solutions Line, gave them $55, and was connected with an official
Microsoft Access technical support person. As Dan began to explain the
problem, the support person interrupted him, and told him that since
it was clear that it was not just a problem with Access but with the
two programs together, Microsoft would not try to help us. They
did,however, have a consultant referral service with which he would be
glad to connect us. Dan then asked if we could have our $55 refunded,
since Microsoft was not going to try to answer to our question. The
tech support person responded by forwarding Dan to the person in
charge of giving refunds. The person officially in charge of giving
refunds took Dan's credit card info again, after which Dan asked about
the referral service. It was too late, however - the refund folks
could not reconnect Dan with the tech support guy he'd been talking
with, nor could he put Dan in touch with the referral service
hotline. End of Call One.
Our second call came when Dan was creating some line graphs in
Microsoft Access. Microsoft Access actually uses a program called
Microsoft Graph to create its graphs, and this program has a "feature"
that makes the automatic axis scale always start the scale at zero. If
all of your data are between 9,800 and 10,000 and you get a scale of 0
to 10,000, your data will appear as a flat line at the top of your
graph-not a very interesting chart. Since Dan was writing Visual Basic
code to create the graphs, he wanted to be able to use Visual Basic
code to change the graph scaling, but he could not find anything in
the help files that would tell him how to do this. After working with
Microsoft Graph for a while, Dan concluded that it probably didn't
have the capability that he needed, but he decided to call Microsoft
just to make sure. Dan described his problem to the technical support
person, whom we'll call Microsoft Bob. Microsoft Bob said he'd never
gotten a call about Microsoft Graph before. He then left Dan on hold
while he went to ask another support person how to use Microsoft
Graph. Microsoft Bob came back with the suggestion that Dan use the
online help. Dan, however, had already used the online help, and
didn't feel that this was an appropriate answer for a $55 support
call. Microsoft Bob didn't give up, though. He consulted the help
files and learned to change the graph scale by hand and then began
looking for a way to do this via code. After Microsoft Bob had spent
about an hour on the phone with Dan learning how to use Microsoft
Graph, Dan asked for a refund since he had no more time to spend on
the problem. Microsoft Bob refused the refund, however. He said he
wouldn't give up, and told Dan that he would call back the next week.
Microsoft Bob did call back the following week to admit failure. He
could not help us. However, he couldn't give us a refund
either. Microsoft Bob's supervisor confirmed Microsoft Bob's
position. While Microsoft Technical Support hadn't solved our problem,
they felt that a refund was inappropriate since Microsoft Technical
Support had spent a lot of time not solving our problem. Dan
persisted, however, explaining that if Microsoft Bob actually knew the
program, he would have been able to give Dan a response much
sooner. The supervisor made no guarantees, but he instructed Dan to
check his credit card bill at the end of the month. The supervisor
explained that if Dan saw that the charge was still there at the end
of the month,then he would know that he hadn't gotten a refund. End of
Call Two.
Our third call to Microsoft involved using the standard file save
dialog from within Microsoft Access to get a file name and directory
string from a user in order to save an exported file. The
documentation didn't make it clear how to do this using Visual Basic
code within Microsoft Access, and Dan decided to call Microsoft to ask
if and how a programmer could do this. The technical support person he
reached told him he was asking about a pretty heavy programming
task. He cheerily informed Dan that he'd called the wrong number and
advised Dan to call help for Visual Basic, not Access ($195 instead of
$ 55 ). This technical support person was extraordinarily helpful in
getting Dan his refund. End of Call Three.
Stymied by our responses from Microsoft, we decided to try another
service provider, the Psychic Friends Network. There are several
noticeable differences between Microsoft and the Psychic Friends
Network. Microsoft charges a flat rate per "solution," which is a
single problem and can be handled in multiple phone calls. As
described above, Microsoft may or may not issue a refund of their fee
if they fail to provide a solution for your problem. The Psychic
Friends Network charges a per minute fee. They do not offer a refund
if they cannot solve your problem. However, unlike Microsoft, they
will not charge you extra if they provide more than one solution per
call.
We decided to test the Psychic Friends Network by asking them the same
questions that we had asked Microsoft Technical Support. We called
them and were quickly connected with Ray, who was very courteous and
helpful. Like Microsoft Bob, Ray quickly informed us that he wasn't
fully up to date on the programs that we were working with, but he was
willing to help us anyway. We started off with our first problem :
making a connection from Microsoft Access to two different Sybase
Servers. Ray worked hard on this problem for us. He sensed that there
was a problem with something connecting, that something wasn't being
fulfilled either in a sexual, spiritual, or emotional way. Ray also
identified that there was some sort of physical failure going on that
was causing the problem." Do you mean that there's some sort of bug?"
we asked. Ray denied that he knew about any sort of bug in the
software. "Are you sure there's not a bug?" we asked. Ray insisted
that he did not know of any bug in the software, although he left open
the possibility that there could be some bug in the software that he
did not know about. All in all, Ray did not do much to distinguish
himself from Microsoft Technical Support. He wasn't able to solve our
problem for us, and he wasn't able to confirm or deny that a bug in
Microsoft Access was causing the problem. We then asked Ray our
question about using Visual Basic to set the axes of a chart. Ray
thought hard about this one. Once again he had the sense that
something just wasn't connecting, that there was some sort of physical
failure that was causing our problem. "Could it be that it's your
computer that's the problem?" he asked. "Is this something that
happens just on your computer, or have you had the same problem when
you've tried to do the same thing on other computers?" We assured Ray
that we had the same problem on other computers, then asked again,
"This physical failure that you're talking about, do you mean that
there's some sort of bug? "Once again he assured us that there wasn't
a bug, but that he didn't know how to solve our problem. "I sense
there's some sort of sickness here, and you're just going to have to
sweat it out. If you'd like, you can call back tomorrow. We have a
couple of guys here, Steve and Paul, and they 're much better with
computer stuff than I am." To conclude our research, we asked Ray
about our problem with the standard file dialog box." It's the same
thing as the last one," he told us. "There's some sort of sickness
here, and you're just going to have to sweat it out. There is a
solution,though,and you're just going to have to work at it until you
get it."
C o n c l u s i o n s
In terms of technical expertise, we found that a Microsoft technician
using Knowledge Base was about as helpful as a Psychic Friends reader
using Tarot Cards. All in all, however, the Psychic Friends Net work
proved to be a much friendlier organization than Microsoft Technical
Support. While neither group was actually able to answer any of our
technical questions, the Psychic Friends Network was much faster than
Microsoft and much more courteous. Which organization is more
affordable is open to question. If Microsoft does refund all three
"solutions" fees, then they will be the far more affordable solution
provider, having charged us no money for having given us no
assistance. However, if Microsoft does not refund the fees for our
call regarding Microsoft Graph, then they will have charged us more
than 120% of what the Psychic Friends charged, but without providing
the same fast and courteous service that Psychic Friends provided.
Microsoft Tech Support (800) 939-5700
The Psychic Friends Network (900)-407-6611
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two guys are driving through Texas when they get pulled over by a
state trooper. The trooper walks up, taps on the window with his
nightstick, the driver rolls down the window, and the trooper smacks
him in the head with the stick.
The driver says, "Why'd you do that?
The trooper says, "You're in Texas, son. When I pull you over, you'll
have your window down and your license ready."
Driver says, "I'm sorry, officer, I'm not from around here."
The trooper runs a check on the guy's license, and he's clean.
He gives the guy his license back and walks around to the passenger
side and taps on the window. The passenger rolls his window down, and
the trooper smacks him with the nightstick.
The passenger says, "What'd you do that for?"
The cop says,"Just making your wishes come true."
The passenger says, "Huh?"
The cop says, "I know that two miles down the road you're gonna say,
'I wish that sucker would've tried that shit with me!'"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The skydiving instructor was going through the question and answer
period with his new students when one of them asked the usual question
always asked: "If our chute doesn't open, and the reserve doesn't
open, how long do we have until we hit the ground?"
The jump master looked at him and in perfect deadpan answered:
"The rest of your life."
=======
Q: Why do drivers education classes in Redneck schools use the car
only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays?
A: Because on Tuesday and Thursday, the Sex Ed class uses it.
Q: What's the difference between a southern zoo and a northern zoo?
A: In addition to the description of the animal in front of the cage,
a southern zoo provides a recipe.
Q: What do they call "Hee Haw" in Oklahoma?
A: A documentary.
Q: What do they call it in Kentucky?
A: "Life Styles of the Rich and Famous."
Bumper sticker on Arkansan car:
If you can read this, you're not from here!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two gas company servicemen, a senior training supervisor and a young
trainee, were out checking meters in a suburban neighborhood. They
parked their truck at the end of the alley and worked their way to the
other end. At the last house an elderly woman was looking out her
kitchen window and watched the two men as they checked her gas meter.
Finishing the meter check, the senior supervisor challenged his
younger coworker to a foot race down the alley back to the truck to
prove that an older guy could outrun a younger one.
As they came running up to the truck, they realized that the elderly
lady from that last house was huffing and puffing running as hard as
she could go and was about to pass them. They stopped and asked her
why she was running?
Gasping for breath, she replied, "When I see two gas men running as
hard as you two were, I figured I'd better run too!"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Packaging Instructions:
ON TESCO'S TIRIMISU DESSERT
Do not turn upside down.
(Printed on the bottom of the box.)
ON MARKS & SPENCER BREAD PUDDING
Product will be hot after heating.
ON PACKAGING FOR A ROWENTA IRON
Do not Iron clothes on body.
ON BOOTS CHILDREN'S COUGH MEDICINE
Do not drive car or operate machinery.
ON NYTOL (A SLEEPING AID)
Warning: may cause drowsiness.
ON A KOREAN KITCHEN KNIFE
Warning: keep out of children.
ON A STRING OF CHINESE MADE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS
For indoor or outdoor use only.
ON THE INSTRUCTIONAL MANUAL FOR A CANON CAMERA (circa 1966)
"Do not rattle playfully at the shutter button."
ON A JAPANESE FOOD PROCESSOR
Not to be used for the other use.
ON SAINSBURY'S PEANUTS
Warning: contains nuts.
ON AN AMERICAN AIRLINES PACKET OF NUTS
Instructions: open packet, eat nuts.
ON A SWEDISH CHAINSAW
Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands.
ON A BAR OF DIAL SOAP
Directions: Use like regular soap.
ON A FROZEN DINNER AT HOME
Serving suggestion: Defrost.
ON A HOTEL-PROVIDED SHOWER CAP IN A BOX
Fits one head.
ON A PACKET OF SUN-MAID RAISINS
Why not try tossing over your favorite breakfast cereal?
ON A HAIRDRYER
Do not use while sleeping.
ON A BAG OF FRITOS
You could be a winner!
No purchase necessary.
(Details inside.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A magazine recently ran a "Dilbert Quotes" contest. They were
looking for people to submit quotes from their real-life Dilbert-type
managers. Here are some of the submissions:
1. As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building
using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next
Wednesday and employees will receive their cards in two weeks.
(This was the winning entry; Fred Dales at Microsoft Corporation in
Redmond, WA)
2. What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will
encounter.
(Lykes Lines Shipping)
3. How long is this Beta guy going to keep testing our stuff?
(Programming intern, Microsoft IIS Development team)
4. E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It
should be used only for company business.
(Accounting Mgr., Electric Boat Company)
5. This project is so important, we can't let things that are more
important interfere with it.
(Advertising/Mktg. Mgr., UPS)
6. Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule. No one
will believe you solved this problem in one day! We've been working
on it for months. Now, go act busy for a few weeks and I'll let you
know when it's time to tell them.
(R&D Supervisor, Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing /3M Corp.)
7. My boss spent the entire weekend retyping a 25-page proposal that
only needed corrections. She claims the disk I gave her was damaged
and she couldn't edit it. The disk I gave her was write-protected.
(CIO of Dell Computers)
8. Quote from the boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what 'I'
say."
(Mktg. executive, Citrix Corporation)
9. My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday.
When I told my boss, he said she died so that I would have to miss
work on the busiest day of the year. He then asked if we could
change her burial to Friday. He said, "That would be better for me."
(Shipping Executive, FTD Florists)
10. We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not
going to discuss it with the employees.
(AT&T Long Lines Division)
11. We recently received a memo from senior management saying, "This
is to inform you that a memo will be issued today regarding the
subject mentioned above."
(Microsoft, Legal Affairs Division)
12. One day my boss asked me to submit a status report to him
concerning a project I was working on. I asked him if tomorrow would
be soon enough. He said, "If I wanted it tomorrow, I would have
waited until tomorrow to ask for it!"
(New Business Mgr., Hallmark Cards)
13. As director of communications, I was asked to prepare a memo
reviewing our company's training programs and materials. In the body
of the memo one of the sentences mentioned the "pedagogical approach"
used by one of the training manuals. The day after I routed the memo
to the executive committee, I was called into the HR Director's
office, and was told that the executive VP wanted me out of the
building by lunch. When I asked why, I was told that she wouldn't
stand for "perverts" (pedophiles?) working in her company. Finally
he showed me her copy of the memo, with her demand that I be fired,
with the word "pedagogical" circled in red. The H.R. Manager was
fairly reasonable, and once he looked the word up in his dictionary
and made a copy of the definition to send to my boss, he told me not
to worry. He would take care of it. Two days later a memo to the
entire staff came out, directing us that no words which could not be
found in the local Sunday newspaper could be used in company memos.
A month later, I resigned. In accordance with company policy, I
created my resignation letter by pasting words together from the
Sunday paper.
(Taco Bell Corporation)
14. This gem is the closing paragraph of a nationally-circulated memo
from a large communications company: "Lucent Technologies is
endeavouringly determined to promote constant attention on current
procedures of transacting business focusing emphasis on innovative
ways to better, if not supersede, the expectations of quality!"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last week a national ISP had the mis-fortune to have their banner ad
touting "The only thing slowing us down is the speed of light." be
juxtaposed with a New York Times article titled "In a Major
Breakthrough, Danish Physicist Slows the Speed of Light" which
reported on a scientist who had succeeded in slowing light to a paltry
38 miles per hour.
They now have a *new* banner ad out (this is for real):
"The only thing slowing us down....
...is the occasional group of physicists."
Touche!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"THE Y1K CRISIS"
An Article from a London Newspaper (circa 999 A.D.)
Canterbury, England. A.D. 999
An atmosphere close to panic prevails today throughout Europe as the
millennial year 1000 approaches, bringing with it the so-called "Y1K
Bug," a menace which, until recently, hardly anyone had ever heard of.
Prophets of doom are warning that the entire fabric of Western
Civilization, based as it now is upon monastic computations, could
collapse, and that there is simply not enough time left to fix the
problem.
Just how did this disaster-in-the-making ever arise? Why did no one
anticipate that a change from a three-digit to a four-digit year would
throw into total disarray all liturgical chants and all metrical verse
in which any date is mentioned? Every formulaic hymn, prayer,
ceremony, and incantation dealing with dated events will have to be
re-written to accommodate three extra syllables. All tabular
chronologies with three-space year columns, maintained for generations
by scribes using carefully hand-ruled lines on vellum sheets, will now
have to be converted to four-space columns, at enormous cost. In the
meantime, the validity of every official event, from baptisms to
burials, from confirmations to coronations, may be called into
question.
"We should have seen it coming ," says Brother Cedric of St. Michael
Abbey, here in Canterbury. "What worries me most is that THOUSAND
contains the word THOU, which occurs in nearly all our prayers, and of
course always refers to God. Using it now in the name of the year
will seem almost blasphemous, and is bound to cause terrible
confusion. Of course, we could always use Latin, but that might be
even worse -- The Latin word for Thousand is Mille which is the same
as the Latin for mile. We won't know whether we are talking about
time or distance!"
Stonemasons are already reported threatening to demand a proportional
pay increase for having to carve an extra numeral in all dates on
tombstones, cornerstones and monuments. Together with its inevitable
ripple effects, this alone could plunge the hitherto-stable medieval
economy into chaos.
A conference of clerics has been called at Winchester to discuss the
entire issue, but doomsayers are convinced that the matter is now one
of personal survival. Many families, in expectation of the worst, are
stocking up on holy water and indulgences.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Microsoft is a cross between the Borg and the Ferengi. Unfortunately,
they use Borg to do their marketing and Ferengi to do their
programming."
(
geocities.com/timessquare)