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SYSTEM CRASH
(to the tune of "The Monster Mash")

I was working in the lab, late one night
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight,
Some smoke from our VAX began to rise
And suddenly, to my surprise...

[chorus]
(There was a crash) There was a system crash
(A mighty crash) I heard the disk heads smash
(A system crash) It came down in a flash

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London)

Dear Sir,

I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or to the office, We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in public places. They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn will cause massive unemployment in the already severely depressed agricultural industry.

11th-hour tweaks for Windows '98 by Microsoft

10. Included subliminal "Impeach Janet Reno" messages in start-up screen.
11. New Internet Explorer feature: whenever you visit a Web site ending in ".gov," a message first appears reminding you that Microsoft is not a monopoly.
12. Source code no longer ones and zeros--try 666s and zeros. Windows start-up theme, played backward, says, "Here's to my sweet Satan."
13. Comes with check for $50 that, if cashed, puts your name on an Internet petition telling the DOJ to buzz off and changes your long distance carrier to AT&T.
14. New desktop icon--click once, and $1 will go directly from your checking account into the Microsoft Legal Defense Fund.

From "Machine Design" Magazine......

Byte Bat

All too often, computers aren't up when you need them, or some sort of system error costs you a lot of time and effort. Hitting a computer or terminal with anything substantial can be satisfying, but expensive. That's where the Byte Bat comes in.

It is a foam rubber baseball bat, 17 in. long, that may give you a harmless but satisfying way in which to "strike back" at computers.

Specially designed to serve as a frustration shunt, the Byte Bat is compatible with all computers and operating systems, making it the first universally compatible foamware. Each Byte Bat comes with a complete user's manual, one genuine "Byte Bat User Button," one…

The checkout line at the hardware store was getting longer and longer as the clerk labored to get the new cash register to cooperate.

At one point she wailed:

- Oh no, NOW what do I do ? It just rang up sixty-four thousand, five hundered seventy four dollars in sales tax on a ten-dollar sale !

Suprisingly, the customers in front of me didn't seem too upset by the delay.

Some even chuckled sympathetically. It wasn't until I got near the front of the line that I saw the neatly hand-lettered sign in front of the register: WE ARE CURRENTLY DOING BATTLE WITH OUR NEW COMPUTER FOR CONTROL OF THE STORE---WE APPRECIATE YOUR PATIENCE.

Newsflash

Microsoft today announced that it will be changing its name to "Moft" -- which will clear up space on user's hard disks. It is estimated that a typical Windows 95 installation contains about 2,800,000 copies of the word "Microsoft", in copyright notices, end-user licence agreements, 'About' screens, etc. So, after the change, a user will have about 14 MBytes more disk space. Stock prices of hard-disk manufacturers dipped slightly after the announcement.

"Well, the programs will take up less space on the user's disk," said Bill Gates, CEO of Moft. "But we have never cared about that. The change will allow us to ship Windows 95 on 13 disks instead of 14, thus saving about $50 million…

If Microsoft Ran The IRS

"Government should be run like a business." We've all heard that chestnut. Here is how the Internal Revenue Service (nobody's favorite government agency) would be like, if only it were run like Microsoft Corp. (a successful private enterprise).

- The IRS, as always, announces new tax forms will be mailed the week before the new year. However it will follow Microsoft's example and actually ship them the following May.

- Responding to pressure from some large corporations and a users' group, some early copies of the tax forms will actually be released in March. The recipients must sign non-disclosure agreements.

- In June, the forms will be recalled because the IRS loses…

For the first bug of Christmas, my manager said to me
See if they can do it again.

For the second bug of Christmas, my manager said to me
Ask them how they did it and
See if they can do it again.

For the third bug of Christmas, my manager said to me
Try to reproduce it
Ask them how they did it and
See if they can do it again.

For the fourth bug of Christmas, my manager said to me

Costello calls Abbott with some questions about UNIX.

- Costello: What is the command that will tell me the revision code of a program?

- Abbott: Yes, that's correct.

- Costello: No, what is it?

- Abbott: Yes.

- Costello: So, which is the one?

- Abbott: No. 'which' is used to find the program.

- Costello: Stop this. Who are you?

- Abbott: Use 'who am i' not 'who r yoo'. You can also 'finger yoo' to get information about 'yoo'.

- Costello: All I want to know is what finds the revision code?

10. New seats would require everyone to have the same body size.
11. We'd all have to switch to Microsoft Gas.
12. The U.S. government would get subsidies from an automaker--a first.
13. The oil, alternator, gas, and engine warning lights would be replaced by a single "General Car Fault" warning light.
14. Sun Motorsystems would make a car that was solar-powered, twice as reliable, five times as fast, but ran on only 5% of the roads.
15. You would be constantly pressured to upgrade your car.
16. You could have only one person in the car at a time, unless you bought Car 95 or CarNT - but then you would have to buy more seats.
17. Occasionally your car would die for no apparent reason and you would have to…

CORPORATE DIRECTIVE NUMBER 88-570471

In order to increase the security of all company computing facilities, and to avoid the possibility of unauthorized use of these facilities, new rules are being put into effect concerning the selection of passwords. All users of computing facilities are instructed to change their passwords to conform to these rules immediately.

RULES FOR THE SELECTION OF PASSWORDS:

1. A password must be at least six characters long, and must not contain two occurrences of a character in a row, or a sequence of two or more characters from the alphabet in forward or reverse order. Example: HGQQXP is an invalid password. GFEDCB is an invalid password.

10. The monitor is up on blocks.
11. Outgoing faxes have tobacco stains on them.
12. The six front keys have rotted out.
13. The extra RAM slots have truck parts installed in them.
14. The numeric keypad only goes up to six.
15. The password is "Huntin".
16. The CPU has a gun rack mount.
17. There is a Skoal can in the CD-ROM drive.
18. The keyboard is camouflaged.
19. The mouse is referred to as a "critter".

ORIGAMI
Art of paper folding. In order to obtain a nice and effectiveness result, put the floppy in the disk drive after folding it several times in different directions. With a little luck, you should be able to get it jammed. Now, ask yourself. How can your disk get damaged if you can't even get it out of the drive?

SMOKE
Use cigarettes or anything that could be burnt. When you are smoking, blow directly to your disk. In that way, you will be able to destroy it soon, and if you are lucky, damage the drive as well.

PIRANHAS
If you don't have any at home, you can use a stapler, a clip, or simply write down on the disk label with a hard point pencil or pen. This wonderful method of…

Are you a tehcnical geek?

Do you have a problem with overdoing your technical activities? Many do. Take the following test to see if you are compulsive. If you can relate to 2 of the items, you may have a problem with Techno-Dweeb. If you relate to 3 or more, you are definitely a Techno-Dweeb. Do not despair! There is help! You are not alone! Whenever you feel the urge to code in Assembler, call the number in the white pages of your phone book, and we will send somebody right over to cut out paper dolls with you until the feeling passes.

You know you are a tehcnical geek when . . .

- When your friend tells you all about his Cressida V6 and you reply "Yeah, I had V5, and it was full of bugs!"

- Backup - What you do when you sight a skunk in the woods.

- Bar code - Them's the fight'n rules down da local tavern.

- Bug - The reason you is a giv'n for calling in sick.

- Byte - What yer pit bull dun to cusin Jethro.

- Cache - Needed when you go to da store.

- Chip - Yer cusin's uncle's mother's boyfriend's name.

- Terminal - Time to call da undertaker.

- Crash - When you go to Junior's party uninvited.

- Digital - The art of counting on your fingers.

- Diskette - A female Disco dancer.

An application was for employment
A program was a TV show
A cursor used profanity
A keyboard was a piano!

Memory was something that you lost with age
A CD was a bank account!
And if you had a broken disk,
It would hurt when you found out!

Compress was something you did to garbage
Not something you did to a file

You must first remove the plastic cover. By doing so you agree to accept and honor Microsoft rights to all TV dinners. You may not give anyone else a bite of your dinner (which would constitute an infringement of Microsoft's rights). You may, however, let others smell and look at your dinner and are encouraged to tell them how good it is.

If you have a PC microwave oven, insert the dinner into the oven. Set the oven using these keystrokes:
\mstv.dinn.//08.5min@@50%heat//
Then enter:
ms//start.cook_dindin/yummy\|/yum~yum:-)gohot#cookme.

If you have a Mac oven, insert the dinner and press start. The oven will set itself and cook the dinner.

Shift to the left, shift to the right!

Pop up, push down, byte, byte, byte!

Compaq is considering changing the command "Press Any Key" because of the flood of calls asking where the "Any" key is. AST technical support had a called complaining that her mouse was hard to control with the dust cover on. The cover turned out to be the plastic bag the mouse was packaged in.

Another Compaq technician recieved a call from a man complaining that the system wouldn't read word processing files from his old diskettes. After trouble-shooting for magnets and heat failed to diagnose the problem, it was found that the customer labeled the diskettes then rolled them into the typewriter to type the labels.

Another AST customer was asked to send a copy of her defective diskettes. A…

Why are there so many, users of Windows?
Don't people have any pride?
Windows is useless, and designed by morons,
and Windows had got DOS inside.

But some don't care and continue to use it.
I know they're wrong, wait and see.
Someday we'll see it, the Windows rejection,
the users, and Bill Gates, and me.

Who said that every bug, would be found but left there?
It seems so strange and bizarre.

- You kiss your girlfriend's home page.

- A VRML virtual walk through a park is your idea of a good date.

- Your bookmark takes 15 minutes to scroll from top to bottom.

- Your eyeglasses have a web site burned in on them.

- All your daydreaming is preoccupied with getting a faster connection to the net: 28.8... ISDN...cable modem... T1... T3.

- And even your night dreams are in HTML.

- You turn off your modem and get this awful empty feeling, like you just pulled the plug on a loved one.

- You refer to going to the bathroom as downloading.

- You start introducing yourself as "Jim at I-I-Net dot net dot au."

- Your heart races faster and beats irregularly each time you see a new WWW site address in…

1. Log on, wait a sec, then get a frightened look on your face and scream "Oh my God! They've found me!" and bolt.
2. Laugh uncontrollably for about 3 minutes & then suddenly stop and look suspiciously at everyone who looks at you.
3. When your computer is turned off, complain to the monitor on duty that you can't get the it to work. After he/she's turned it on, wait 5 minutes, turn it off again, and repeat the process for a good half hour.
4. Type frantically, often stopping to look at the person next to you evily.
5. Before anyone else is in the lab, connect each computer to a different screen than the one it's set up with.
6. Write a program that plays the "Smurfs" theme song and play it at…

10. Lower corner of screen has the words "Etch-a-sketch" on it.
11. It's celebrity spokesman is that "Hey Vern!" guy.
12. In order to start it, you need some jumper cables and a friend's car.
13. It's slogan is "Pentium: redefining mathematics".
14. The "quick reference" manual is 120 pages long.
15. Whenever you turn it on, all the dogs in your neighborhood start howling.
16. The screen often displays the message, "Ain't it break time yet?"
17. The manual contains only one sentence: "Good Luck!"
18. The only chip inside is a Dorito.
19. You've decided that your computer is an excellent addition to your fabulous paperweight collection.

What if Dr. Seuss was a technical writer? Here are several examples of what he may write to help you resolve your computer problems.

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
And your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash,
Then your situation's hopeless, and your system's gonna crash!

If the above doesn't help with your computer troubles, perhaps this will.

• Log on - Adding a log to your wood stove
• Log off - Don't add a log to your wood stove
• Monitor - Keep an eye on the wood stove
• Megahertz - When a big log drops on your bare foot in the morning
• Floppy disk - What you get from piling too much wood into your wood stove
• Ram - The hydraulic machine that makes the woodsplitter work
• Drive - Getting home during most of the winter to your wood stove
• Hard drive - Trying to get home during a heavy snow storm
• Prompt - What you wish the mail was during the snow season
• Enter - Come on in