The Twelve Days Of A Computerized Christmas

On the 1st day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

Windows Vista for my PC

On the 2nd day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

2 GPFs

and Windows Vista for my PC

On the 3rd day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

3 ports not responding

2 GPFs

and Windows Vista for my PC

On the 4th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

4 sectors bad

3 ports not responding

2 GPFs

and Windows Vista for my PC

On the 5th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

5 eighty six

4 sectors bad

3 ports not responding

2 GPFs

and Windows Vista for my PC

On the 6th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

6 ints conflictin'

5 eighty six

4 sectors bad

3 ports not responding

2 GPFs

and Windows Vista for my PC

On the 7th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

7 files missin'

6 ints conflictin'

5 eighty six

4 sectors bad

3 ports not responding

2 GPFs

and Windows Vista for my PC

On the 8th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

8 Megs overflowin'

7 files missin'

6 ints conflictin'

5 eighty six

4 sectors bad

3 ports not responding

2 GPFs

and Windows Vista for my PC

On the 9th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

9 apps a crashin'

8 Megs overflowin'

7 files missin'

6 ints conflictin'

5 eighty six

4 sectors bad

3 ports not responding

2 GPFs

and Windows Vista for my PC

On the 10th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

10 modes not supported

9 apps a crashin'

8 Megs overflowin'

7 files missin'

6 ints conflictin'

5 eighty six

4 sectors bad

3 ports not responding

2 GPFs

and Windows Vista for my PC

On the 11th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

11 instructions faulty

10 modes not supported

9 apps a crashin'

8 Megs overflowin'

7 files missin'

6 ints conflictin'

5 eighty six

4 sectors bad

3 ports not responding

2 GPFs

and Windows Vista for my PC

On the 12th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

12 sound cards silent

11 instructions faulty

10 modes not supported

9 apps a crashin'

8 Megs overflowin'

7 files missin'

6 ints conflictin'

5 eighty six

4 sectors bad

3 ports not responding

2 GPFs and

Windows Vista for my PC

Alternate Version:

On the 1st day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

A Macintosh instead of a PC

On the 2nd day of Christmas, my true love gave to

...hey, wait a minute, this thing works!

Tech Support

After experiencing difficulties with his computer, a poor, incognizant user called the system maker's technical support line for assistance...

Technician: Hello. How can I help you today?

Customer: There's smoke coming from the power supply on my computer...

Technician: Looks like you need a new power supply...

Customer: No, I don't! I just need to change the startup files...

Technician: Sir, what you described is a faulty power supply. You need to replace it...

Customer: No way! Someone told me that I just had to change the system startup files to fix the problem! All I need is for you to tell me the right command...

For the next ten minutes, in spite of the technician's efforts to explain the problem and its solution, the customer adamantly insisted that he was right. So, in frustration, the technician responded...

Technician: I'm sorry. We don't normally tell our customers this, but there's an undocumented DOS command that will fix the problem...

Customer: I knew it

Technician: Just add the line "LOAD NOSMOKE.COM" at the end of the CONFIG.SYS file and everything should work fine. Let me know how it goes...

About ten minutes later, the technician received a call back from the customer...

Customer: It didn't work. The power supply is still smoking...

Technician: Well, what version of DOS are you using?

Customer: MS-DOS 6.22...

Technician: Well, that's your problem. That version of DOS doesn't include NOSMOKE. You'll need to contact Microsoft and ask them for a patch. Let me know how it all works out...

When nearly an hour had passed, the phone rang again...

Customer: I need a new power supply...

Technician: How did you come to that conclusion?

Customer: Well, I called Microsoft and told the technician what you said, and he started asking me questions about the make of the power supply...

Technician: What did he tell you?

Customer: He said my power supply isn't compatible with NOSMOKE...

Virus

There's a new virus hoax going around. It's called:

Fake.Virus.imadethisup

If activated, it will delete everything in your brain and make you act like a raving lunatic. It doesn't come as an email attachment so be sure not to open it! It's so tricky, there aren't even any misspellings in the warning!

Pass this on to everyone you know and Bill Gates won't pay you $5000.00 per email. I know someone who's brother's uncle's cousin's girlfriend's cocker spaniel passed it on to everyone in his address book and he's already collecting nothing from Bill Gates!

Additionally, once your brain has been totally deleted it replaces it with a seek and invite utility that will automatically download other fake viruses to your computer. Once these other hoaxes are installed you will drool constantly, scratch yourself in embarrassing places, and you'll release gasses that will demagnetize all the floppy disks within 200 feet!

Furthermore, if you don't pass this warning on to everyone you know, you will have 7 years of good luck! I know someone that knows someone else's sister's cat who didn't pass this on, and they're already having nothing unusual happening to them!

You have been warned...

Owed Too A Spell Chequer

Eye halve a spelling chequer, it came with my pea sea. It plainly marques, four my revue, miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word and weight four it two say, Weather eye am wrong oar write it shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid, it nose bee fore two long. And eye can put the error rite it's rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it, I am shore your pleased two no. Its letter perfect awl the weigh, my chequer tolled me sew.

Airlines

DOS AIR

All the passengers go out onto the runway, grab hold of the plane, push it until it gets in the air, hop on, jump off when it hits the ground again. Then they grab the plane again, push it back into the air, hop on, etcetera.

DOS with QEMM Airline

The same thing but with more leg room to push.

Windows 3.x Airlines

The airport terminal is nice and colourful, with friendly stewards and stewardesses, easy access to the plane, and a completely uneventful takeoff... then, once in the air, the plane blows up without any warning whatsoever.

Windows 95 Airlines

The terminal is very neat and clean, the attendants are all very attractive and the pilots very capable. The fleet is immense. After your plane arrives 6 months late, you begin to wonder why it has not arrived yet. Your jet takes off without a hitch, pushing above the clouds, and at 20,000 feet it crashes without warning.

Mac Airways

The cashiers, flight attendants, and pilots all look the same, feel the same and act the same. When asked questions about the flight they reply that you don't want to know, don't need to know, and that everything will be done for you without you having to know, so just shut up and please return to your seat and watch the movie.

OS/2 Skyways

It's almost empty, with only a few prospective passengers milling about. Airline personnel walk around, apologising profusely to customers in hushed voices, pointing from time to time to the sleek, powerful jets outside the terminal on the field. They tell each passenger how good the real flight will be on these new jets and how much safer it will be than Windows Airlines, but that they will have to wait a little longer for the technicians to finish the flight systems. To board the plane, you have your ticket stamped ten different times by standing in ten different lines. Then you fill out a form showing where you want to sit and whether the plan should look and feel like an ocean liner, a passenger train, or a bus. If you succeed in getting on board the plane and the plane succeeds in getting off the ground, you have a wonderful trip... except for the times when the rudder and flaps get frozen in position, in which case you have time to say your prayers and get in crash position.

Isn't This The Truth!

A college student at a recent USC football game challenged a senior citizen sitting next to him, saying it was impossible for their generation to understand his. "You grew up in a different world," the student said... loud enough for the whole crowd to hear.

"Today we have television, jet planes, space travel, man has walked on the Moon, our spaceships have visited Mars, we even have nuclear energy, electric cars, portable computers, cell phones, the Internet... and uh..."

Taking advantage of a pause in the student's litany, the geezer said, "You're right. We didn't have those things when we were young; so we invented them you little twit! What the hell are you doing for the next generation?"

Microsoft TV Dinner Product Instructions

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: .

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

Be forewarned that Microsoft dinners may crash, in which case your oven must be restarted. This is a simple procedure. Remove the dinner from the oven and enter . This process may have to be repeated. Try unplugging the microwave and then doing a cold reboot. If this doesn't work, contact your hardware vendor.

Many users have reported that the dinner tray is far too big, larger than the dinner itself, having many useless compartments, most of which are empty. These are for future menu items. If the tray is too large to fit in your oven you will need to upgrade your equipment.

Dinners are only available from registered outlets, and only the chicken variety is currently produced. If you want another variety, call Microsoft Help and they will explain that Microsoft Chicken is all you really need.

Microsoft has disclosed plans to discontinue all smaller versions of their chicken dinners. Future releases will only be in the larger family size.

Excess chicken may be stored for future use, but must be saved only in Microsoft approved packaging or the warranty is invalidated.

Microsoft promises a dessert with every Chicken ME dinner. However, that version has yet to be released.

Microsoft dinners may be incompatible with other dinners in the freezer, causing your freezer to self-defrost. This is a feature, not a bug, as your freezer should be defrosted periodically anyway.

How To Please Your I.T. Deptartment

A quick check list for those who need to make contact with the I.T. Department:

1. When you call us to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and children's art. We don't have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.
2. Don't write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages from here.
3. When an I.T. person says he's coming right over, go for coffee. That way you won't be there when we need your password. It's nothing for us to remember 700 screen saver passwords.
4. When you call the help desk, state what you want, not what's keeping you from getting it. We don't need to know that you can't get into your mail because your computer won't power on at all.
5. When I.T. support sends you an E-Mail with high importance, delete it at once. We're just testing.
6. When an I.T. person is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and spill your guts right out. We exist only to serve.
7. Send urgent email all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.
8. When the photocopier doesn't work, call computer support. There's electronics in it.
9. When you're getting a no dial tone message at home, call computer support. We can fix your telephone line from here.
10. When you have a dozen old computer screens to get rid of, call computer support. We're collectors.
11. When something's wrong with your home PC, dump it on an I.T. person's chair with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem. We love a puzzle.
12. When an I.T. person tells you that computer screens don't have cartridges in them, argue. We love a good argument.
13. When an I.T. person tells you that he'll be there shortly, reply in a scathing tone of voice: "And just how many weeks do you mean by shortly?" That motivates us.
14. When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently get sucked into black holes.
15. When the printer still won't print after 20 tries, send the job to all 68 printers in the company. One of them is bound to work.

Two Priests

Two priests died at the same time and met Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates. St. Peter said, "I'd like to let you guys in now, but our computer's down. You'll have to go back to Earth for about a week, but you can't go back as priests. What'll it be?"

The first priest says, "I've always wanted to be an eagle, soaring above the Rocky Mountains." "So be it," says St. Peter, and off flies the first priest.

The second priest mulls this over for a moment and asks, "Will any of this week 'count,' St. Peter?"

"No, I told you the computer's down. There's no way we can keep track of what you're doing."

"In that case," says the second priest, "I've always wanted to be a stud."

"So be it" says St. Peter, and the second priest disappears.

A week goes by, the computer is fixed, and the Lord tells St. Peter to recall the two priests. "Will you have any trouble locating them?" He asks.

"The first one should be easy," says St. Peter. "He's somewhere over the Rockies, flying with the eagles. But the second one could prove to be more difficult."

"Why?" asked the Lord.

"He's on a snow tire, somewhere in Saskatchewan.

What If Dr. Seuss Wrote Technical Manuals?

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 icons put 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 label on your cable on the gable at your house,

Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,

But your packets want to tunnel to another protocol,

That's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall.

And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,

So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,

Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,

'Cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk,

And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary RISC,

Then you have to flash your memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM,

Quickly turn off your computer and be sure to tell your mom!

Software Vs Hardware

Microsoft should make cars, GM should make software.

At a recent computer expo, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated:

"If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating the following: "If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would 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 on the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally, your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would accept this, restart, and drive on.
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 'Car95' or 'CarNT.' Then you would have to buy more seats.
6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was more reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five percent of the roads.
7. The oil, water, temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single 'general car fault' warning light.
8. New seats would force everyone to have the same butt size.
9. The airbag system would say 'Are you sure?' before going off.
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 them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50 per cent or more.
12. Every time GM introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
13. You'd press the 'Start' button to shut off the engine.

Great Writer

There was once a young man who, in his youth, professed his desire become a great writer.

When asked to define "great" he said, "I want to write stuff that the whole world will read, stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level, stuff that will make them scream, cry, howl in pain and anger!"

He now works for Microsoft, writing error messages.

Computers

The United States has succeeded in building a computer able to solve any strategic or tactical problem.

Military leaders are assembled in front of the new machine and instructed to feed a difficult tactical problem into it. They describe a hypothetical situation to the computer and then ask the pivotal question:

Attack or Retreat?

The computer hums away for an hour and a half and then comes up with the answer:

YES.

The generals look at each other, somewhat stupefied. Finally one of them submits a second request to the computer:

Yes what?

Instantly the computer responded:

YES SIR.

Computer Help

Last week my wife and I purchased a new computer. We ran into some difficulties while setting it up so I decided to call the customer support phone number we found in the manual.

I picked up the phone and called the number. A man answered the phone and I explained the problem to him.

He began rattling off computer jargon. This confused me even more.

"Sir," I said politely, "can you explain what I should do as if I were a small child?"

"Okay," the computer support guy said, "Son, could you please put your mommy on the phone?"

Jesus And Satan On The Computer

Jesus and Satan were having an ongoing argument about who was better on his computer. They had been going at it for days, and God was tired of hearing all the bickering. Finally, God said, "Cool it. I am going to set up a test which will take two hours and I will judge who does the better job." So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away.

They moused. They did spreadsheets. They wrote reports. They sent faxes. They sent e-mail. They sent out e-mail with attachments. They downloaded. They did some genealogy reports. They made cards. They did every known job. But, ten minutes before the time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, the rain poured and, of course, the electricity went off. Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known to man. Jesus just sighed. The electricity finally flickered back on, and each of them restarted computers. Satan started searching frantically screaming, "It's gone! It's all gone! I lost everything when the power went out!" Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all his files from the past 2 hours. Satan observed this and became even more irate.

"Wait! He cheated! How did he do it?"

God shrugged and said, "Jesus Saves!"

RIP Bill Gates

When Bill Gates died, he went up to Heaven, where Saint Peter showed him to his house, a beautiful 20 room house, with grounds and a tennis court. Bill Gates was pleased, and spent many months enjoying the amenities of Heaven.

One day, he was enjoying one of Heaven's many fine parks, when he ran into a man dressed in a fine tailored suit.

"That is a nice suit, my friend," said Gates. "Where did you get it?"

"Actually," the man replied, "I was given a hundred of these when I got here. I've been treated really well. I got a mansion on a hill overlooking a beautiful hill, with a huge five-hundred acre estate, a golf course, and three Rolls Royces."

"Were you a Pope, or a doctor healing the sick?" asked Gates.

"No," said his new friend, "Actually, I was the captain of the Titanic."

Hearing this made Gates so angry that he immediately stalked off to find St. Peter.

Cornering Peter, he told him about the man he had just met, saying, "How could you give me a paltry new house, while you're showering new cars, a mansion, and fine suits on the Captain of the Titanic? I invented the Windows operating system! Why does he deserve better?"

"Yes, we use Windows." replied Peter, "The Titanic only crashed once."

Christmas Programming

For the computer nerds:

better !pout !cry

better watchout

telnet why

santa claus town

cat/etc/passwd >list

ncheck list

ncheck list

cat list | grep naughty > no_gift_list

cat list | grep nice > gift_list

santa claus town

who | grep sleeping

who | awake

who | egrep 'bad|good'

for ( goodness sake) {

be good

}

'Twas The Internet Night Before Christmas

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the Net,
There were hacker's a surfing. Nerds? Yeah, you bet.
The e-mails were stacked by the modem with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

The newbies were nestled all snug by their screens,
While visions of Java danced in their dreams.
My wife on the sofa and me with a snack,
We just settled down at my rig (it's a Mac).

When out in the Web there arose such a clatter,
I jumped to the site to see what was the matter.
To a new page my Mac flew like a flash,
Then made a slight gurgle. It started to crash!!

I gasped at the thought and started to grouse,
Then turned my head sideways and clicked on my mouse.
When what to my wondering eyes should appear,
My Mac jumped to a page that wasn't quite clear.

When the image resolved, so bright and so quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick!
More rapid than mainframes, more graphics they came,
Then Nick glanced toward my screen, my Mac called them by name;

"Now Compaq! Now Acer!", my speaker did reel;
"On Apple! On Gateway!" Santa started to squeal!
"Jump onto the circuits! And into the chip!
Now speed it up! Speed it up! Make this thing hip!"

The screen gave a flicker, he was into my "Ram",
Then into my room rose a full hologram!
He was dressed in all red, from his head to his shoes,
Which were black (the white socks he really should lose).

He pulled out some discs he had stored in his backpack.
Santa looked like a dude who was rarin' to hack!
His eyes, how they twinkled! His glasses, how techno!
This ain't the same Santa that I used to know!

With a wink of his eye and a nod of his head,
Santa soon let me know I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word, gave my Mac a quick poke,
And accessed my C drive with only a stroke.

He defragged my hard drive, and added a "Dimm",
Then threw in some cool games, just on a whim!
He worked without noise, his fingers they flew!
He distorted some pictures with Kai's Power Goo!

He updated Office, Excel and Quicken,
Then added a screensaver with a red clucking chicken!
My eyes widened a bit, my mouth stood agape,
As he added the latest version of Netscape.

The drive gave a whirl, as if it were pleased,
St. Nick coyly smiled, the computer appeased.
Then placing his finger on the bridge of his nose,
Santa turned into nothing but ones and zeros!

He flew back into my screen and through my uplink,
Back into the net with barely a blink.
But I heard his sweet voice as he flew from my sight,
"Happy surfing to all, and to all a good byte!"

Yesterday

Beatles Computer Song: Yesterday

Yesterday,

All those backups seemed a waste of pay.

Now my database has gone away.

Oh I believe in yesterday.

Suddenly,

There's not half the files there used to be,

And there's a milestone hanging over me

The system crashed so suddenly.

I pushed something wrong

What it was I could not say.

Now all my data's gone

And I long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay.

Yesterday,

The need for back-ups seemed so far away.

I knew my data was all here to stay,

Now I believe in yesterday.

Ode To Spell Checker

Eye halve a spelling checker

It came with my pea sea

It plainly marks four my revue

Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word

and weight four it two say

Weather eye am wrong oar write

It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid

It nose bee fore two long

And eye can put the error rite

Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it

I am shore your pleased two no

Its letter perfect awl the weigh

My checker tolled me sew.