Computer "Stuff" 001

Memory was something you lost with age 
An application was for employment 
A program was a TV show 
A cursor used profanity
A keyboard was a piano 
A web was a spider's home 
A virus was the flu 
A CD was a bank account
A hard drive was a long trip on the road 
A mouse pad was where a mouse lived
And if you had a 3 inch floppy . .
. . . you just hoped nobody ever found  out!

Some Acronyms

BASIC   - Bill's Attempt to Seize Industry Control
CD-ROM  - Consumer Device - Rendered Obsolete in Months
OS/2   - Obsolete Soon, Too
IBM   - I Blame Microsoft
ISDN   - It Still Does Nothing
MACINTOSH  - Most Applications Crash, If Not, The Operating System
Hangs
PENTIUM  - Produces Erroneous Numbers Thru Incorrect Understanding of
Mathematics
COBOL  - Completely Obsolete Business Oriented Language
LISP   - Lot's of Infuriating Parentheses
MIPS   - Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed
WINDOWS  - Will Install Needless Data On Whole System
RISC   - Reduced into Silly Code
MICROSOFT - Most Intelligent Customers Realize Our Software Only Fools
Teenagers
PCMCIA  - People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
SCSI   - System Can't See It

Tech Support: "OK Fred, let's press the control and escape keys at the same time.
That brings up a task list in the middle of the screen.  Now type the letter 'P' to bring up
the Program Manager."
Customer: "I don't have a 'P'."
Tech Support: "On your keyboard, Bob."
Customer: "What do you mean?"
Tech Support: "'P' on your keyboard, Bob."
Customer: "I'm not going to do that!"

The following conversation was overheard in a computer shop:
Customer: "I'd like a mouse mat, please."
Salesperson: "Certainly sir, we've got a large variety."
Customer: "But will they be compatible with my computer?"

I once received a fax with a note on the bottom, to fax the document back
to the sender when I was finished with it.  He said he needed to keep it.

Customer in computer shop: "Can you copy the Internet onto this disk for me?"

I work for a local ISP. Frequently we receive phone calls that start
something like this: Customer: "Hi. Is this the Internet?

Customer: "So that'll get me connected to the Internet, right?"
Tech Support: "Yeah"
Customer: "And that's the latest version of the Internet, right?"
Tech Support: "Uhh...uh...uh...yeah."

Customer: "My computer crashed!"
Tech Support: "It crashed?"
Customer: "Yeah, it won't let me play my game."
Tech Support: "All right, hit Control-Alt-Delete to reboot."
Customer: "No, it didn't crash - it crashed."
Tech Support: "Huh?"
Customer: "I crashed my game. That's what I said before.  I crashed
my spaceship and now it doesn't work."
Tech Support: "Click on 'File,' then 'New Game.'"
Customer: [pause] "Wow! How'd you learn how to do that?"

I got a call from a woman who said that her laser printer was having
problems: the bottom half of her printed sheets were coming out blurry.
It seemed strange that the printer was smearing only the bottom half.
I walked her through the basics, then went over and printed out a test
sheet. It printed fine. I asked her to print a sheet, so she sent a job to
the printer.  As the paper started coming out, she yanked it out and showed
it to me.  I told her to wait until the paper came out on its own.
Problem solved.

I had been doing Tech Support for Hewlett-Packard's DeskJet
division for about a month when I had a customer call with a problem
I just couldn't solve.  She could not print yellow. All the other colors
would print fine, which truly baffled me because the only true colors
are cyan, magenta, and yellow. For instance, green is a combination of
cyan and yellow, but green printed fine.  Every color of the rainbow
printed fine except for yellow.
I had the customer change ink cartridges. I had the customer delete
and reinstall the drivers.  Nothing worked. I asked my coworkers for
help; they offered no new ideas.  After over two hours of troubleshooting,
I was about to tell the customer to send the printer in to us for repair when
she asked quietly,  "Should I try printing on a piece of white paper instead
of this yellow paper?"

A man attempting to set up his new printer called the printer's tech
support number, complaining about the error message: "Can't find the
printer."  On the phone, the man said he even held the printer up in
front of the screen, but the computer still couldn't find it.

And another user was all confused about why the cursor always moved in
the opposite direction from the movement of the mouse. She also complained
that the buttons were difficult to depress. She was very embarrassed when we
asked her to rotate the mouse so the tail pointed away from her. 

This guy calls in to complain that he gets an "Access Denied"
message every time he logs in. It turned out he was typing his username and
password in capital letters.
Tech Support: "Ok, let's try once more, but use lower case letters."
Customer: "Uh, I only have capital letters on my keyboard."

My friend was on duty in the main computer lab on a quiet afternoon. He
noticed a young woman sitting in front of one of the workstations with
her arms crossed across her chest, staring at the screen. After about
15 minutes he noticed that she was still in the same position, only now she
was impatiently tapping her foot. He asked if she needed help and she 
replied "It's about time! I pressed the F1 (help) button over twenty
minutes ago!"

A woman called the Canon help desk, about a problem she was having with
her printer.  The tech asked her if she was running it under Windows.
The woman responded, No, my desk is next to the door. But that's a good point.
The man sitting in the cubicle next to me is under a window, and his is
working just fine.

Millennium Pie (with apologies to Don McLean)

A long, long time ago...
I can still remember how
Computers used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance,
That I could make electrons dance,
And maybe I'd be happy for a while.

But January made me shiver,
it chilled me deep down in my liver,
Bad news I'd collected...
I couldn't get connected.

I can't remember back that day
When I first knew the Y2K
But something touched me anyway,
The day computers died.

So, ...Bye, bye to the next digit of Pi
Ran my PC on some DC but the voltage was dry
And good ol' boys were sending e-mail replies
Saying this will be the day I retire
this will be the day I retire

Can you write in C plus plus ?
And do you have faith in your local bus
If the driver tells you so ?
Do you believe in Compaq's goals
Can software save your mortal soul
And can you teach me how to type real slow ?

Well I thought that you were prepared
'Cause your memo said you weren't impaired
Your stationery's swell
But you can go to hell

I was a lonely teenage Unix hack
With an incantation and a modem jack
but I knew the cat had left the sack
The day computers died
I started singin'...

Bye, bye to the next digit of Pi
Ran my PC on some DC but the voltage was dry
And good ol' boys were sending e-mail replies
Saying this will be the day I retire
this will be the day I retire

Now for 10 years we've ignored the threat
And we haven't solved the problem yet
But that's not how it used to be
When the Luddites read for the king and queen
with a light they filled with kerosene
And some manuals they stole from you and me

And while Bill Gates was looking pleased
Time stole his monopolies
The courtroom was adjourned
No verdict was returned

While Apple tried a color scheme
The engineers returned to steam
And we had purges of their dreams
The day computers died

We were singin'

Bye, bye to the next digit of Pi
Ran my PC on some DC but the voltage was dry
And good ol' boys were sending e-mail replies
Saying this will be the day I retire
this will be the day I retire

Intel inside in an iron smelter
The food leftover from my fallout shelter
Twinkies old and aging fast
I'd rather eat the grass
Q and A tried for a system crash
With the tester on the sidelines in a cast

Now the timeshare net was running Doom
While mainframes played a marching tune
We all tried to log in
Oh, but we never could begin

'Cause Cobol tried to take the field,
And Hollerith refused to yield.
Do you recall what was revealed,
The day computers died?

We started singing
Bye, bye to the next digit of Pi
Ran my PC on some DC but the voltage was dry
And good ol' boys were sending e-mail replies
Saying this will be the day I retire
this will be the day I retire

There we were all in a state
A generation- really late
With no time left to start again
So come on mouse be nimble, mouse be quick
Don't let my spreadsheet data stick
'Cause data is the Devil's only friend.

As I watched him on my screen
My hands and face were drenched in steam
No angel born in hell
Could run that stupid shell

And as the ball climbed high into the night
To call the sacrificial night
I saw Dick Clark laughing with delight
the day computers died.

I met a girl with mobile phone
And I asked her for a dial tone
But she just smiled and turned away

I went down to the software store
Where I'd seen computers years before
But the man there said the games there wouldn't play
And in the streets the children screamed
The lovers cried and the poets dreamed
their interface was spoken
The Internet was broken

And the three things I connect to most
The website, Lan and the network host
Every single one was toast
The day computers died

They were singin'

Bye, bye to the next digit of Pi
Ran my PC on some DC but the voltage was dry
And good ol' boys were sending e-mail replies
Saying this will be the day I retire
this will be the day I retire.