YOU MAY BE ADDICTED TO IRC IF . . .
(aka internet junkie or chataholic)
*****

• You wake up at 3 a.m. to go to the bathroom and stop to check your e-mail on the way back to bed.
• Your bookmarks take 15 minutes to scroll from top to bottom.
• Your eyeglasses have a web site burned into them.
• You refuse to go to a vacation spot that has no electricity and no phone lines.
• You spend half of the plane trip with your laptop on your lap...and your child in the overhead compartment.
• You find yourself typing "com" after every period when using a word processor.com
• You have commandeered your teenager's phone line for the net, and even his friends know not to call on his line anymore.
• Your phone bill comes to your doorstep in a box.
• Even though you died last week, you've managed to retain OPS on your favorite IRC channel.
• You start using smileys in your snail mail.
• You start tilting your head sideways to smile.
• You move into a new house and decide to Netscape before you landscape.
• You check your mail. It says "no new messages." So you check it again.
• You can't call your mother . . . she doesn't have a modem.
• You turn on your intercom when leaving the room so you can hear if new e-mail arrives.
• You step out of your room and realize that your parents have moved and you don't have a clue when it happened.
• Your husband tells you he's had the beard for 2 months.
• Your wife makes a new rule: "The computer cannot come to bed."
• You tell the cab driver you live at http://123.elm.street/house/ bluetrim.htm.
• You are so familiar with the WWW that you find the search engines useless.
• You ask your doctor to implant a gig in your brain.
• You never have to deal with busy signals when calling your ISP...because you never log off.
• You ask a plumber how much it would cost to replace the chair in front of your computer with a toilet.
• Your hard drive crashes. You haven't logged in for two hours. You start to twitch. You pick up the phone and manually dial your ISP's access number. You try to hum to communicate with the modem . . . and you succeed.
• You decide to stay in college for an additional year or two, just for the free Internet access.
• You get a tatoo that reads "This body best viewed with Netscape Navigator 1.1 or higher."
• You refer to going to the bathroom as downloading.
• You start introducing yourself as "John Doe at AOL dot com."
• All of your friends have an @ in their names.
• Your cat/dog has its own homepage.
• You don't know what sex three of your closest friends are because they have neutral nicknames and you never bothered to ask.
• You turn off your modem and get this awful empty feeling, like you just pulled the plug on a loved one.
• You code your homework in HTML and give your instructor the URL.
• Your friends no longer send you e-mail...they just log onto your IRC channel.
• You buy a Captain Kirk chair with a built-in keyboard and mouse.
• Your job interferes with your chat time.
• You have to check Encarta Encyclopedia for the definition of "sun."
• You get jealous when someone else looks at your monitor.
• You compare processor sizes instead of your children's accomplishments.
• You sleep with your harddrive.
• You rearrange your furniture for easy access to your computer from anywhere in the house.
• You forget how to turn on the T.V.
• Your house looks like Computers R Us exploded.
• You ask the college dean where to sign up for Chat 101.
• You think flowers smell like paper and ink.
• Someone asks you for your number and you give them your ICQ number.
• When someone says "ut oh" your right finger twitches.
• Your theme song is "User is Online."
• Your keyboard reaches the toilet.
• Your fine china is made by Chinet Paper Products.
• You have a dinner party and everyone gathers around your monitor to view your website instead of your slides from last summer's family vacation.
• When you're in a room with other people and it gets quiet, you try to check to see if your screen is frozen.
• When someone asks "what did you say?" you tell them to Scroll Back.
• You turn off all other electrical appliances in the house so you can hear your Ut Oh's.
• You move the coffee pot next to your computer.
• You buy a mini fridge and set it within chair rolling distance of your computer.
• Your wife asks you to unzip her dress for her and you think of your computer.
• The mat at your front door says "Welcome to Chat.com."
• Someone tells a joke and you shout, "LOL LOL."
• You leave a room and say, "BRB."
• Your wife spends so much time chatting that you begin to think "AFK" stands for Away From Kitchen.
• Your family and co-workers have to use your chat name to get your attention.
• The first thing you hug in the morning is your monitor.
• You start pacing the floor and having withdrawals when your ICQ goes down.
• You spend more time in a chat room than in your bedroom.
• Your wife emails you when dinner is ready.
• You stop making out with your date when you hear "Ut Oh."

**********

THESE NEW FANGLED MACHINES!!
*****
PROPER CARE OF FLOPPIES

1. Never leave diskettes in the disk drive, as data can leak out of the disk and corrode the inner mechanics of the drive. Diskettes should be rolled up and stored in pencil holders.
2. Diskettes should be cleaned and waxed once a week. Microscopic metal particles can be removed by waving a powerful magnet over the surface of the disk. Any stubborn metallic shavings can be removed with scouring powder and soap. When waxing diskettes, make sure application is even. This will allow the diskettes to spin faster, resulting in better access time.
3. Do not fold diskettes unless they do not fit in the drive. "Big" diskettes may be folded and used in "little" diskette drives.
4. Never insert a disk into the drive upside down. The data can fall off the surface of the disk and jam the intricate mechanics of the drive.
5. Diskettes cannot be backed up by running them through the Xerox machine. If your data is going to need to be backed up, simply insert two diskettes together into the drive. Whenever you update a document, the data will be recorded on both diskettes.
6. Diskettes should not be inserted into or removed from the drive while the red light is flashing. Doing so could result in smeared or possibly unreadable text. Occasionally the red light continues to flash in what is known as a "hung" or "hooked" state. If your system is "hooking" you, you will probably need to insert a few coins before being allowed to access the disk drive.
7. If your diskette is full and you need more storage space, remove the disk from the drive and shake vigorously for two minutes. This will pack the data enough (Data compression) to allow for more storage. Be sure to cover all the openings with scotch tape to prevent loss of data.
8. Data access time can be greatly improved by cutting more holes in the diskette jacket. This will provide more simultaneous access points to the disk.
9. Diskettes can be used as coasters for beverage glasses, provided they have been properly waxed beforehand. Be sure to wipe the diskettes dry before inserting into drive (see item #2).
10. Never use scissors and glue to manually edit documents. The data stored is much too small to be seen with the naked eye, and you may end up with data from some other document stuck in the middle of your document. Razor blades and scotch tape may be used, provided the user is equipped with an electron microscope.
11. Periodically spray diskettes with insecticide to prevent system bugs from spreading.

**********

HELPFUL TERMINOLOGY

• LOG ON: Making a wood stove hotter.
• LOG OFF: Don't add no more wood.
• MONITOR: Keeping an eye on the woodstove.
• DOWNLOAD: Gettin' the farwood off the truk.
• MEGA HERTZ: When yer not keerful gettin' the farwood.
• FLOPPY DISC: Whatcha git from tryin' to carry too much farwood.
• RAM: That thar thing whut splits the farwood.
• HARD DRIVE: Getting home in the winter time.
• PROMPT: Whut the mail ain't in the winter time.
• WINDOWS: Whut to shut when it's cold outside.
• SCREEN: Whut to shut when it's blak fly season.
• BYTE: Whut dem dang flies do.
• CHIP: Munchies fer the TV.
• MICRO CHIP: Whut's in the munchie bag.
• MODEM: Whacha did to the hay fields.
• DOT MATRIX: Old Dan Matrix's wife.
• LAP TOP: Whar the kitty sleeps.
• KEYBOARD: Whar ya hang the dang keys.
• SOFTWARE: Them dang plastic forks and knifs.
• MOUSE: What eats the grain in the barn.
• MAIN FRAME: Holds up the barn ruf.
• PORT: Fancy Flatlander wine.
• ENTER: Northerner talk fer, C'Mon in y'all.
• RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY: When ya cain't 'member whut ya paid fer the rifle when yore wife asks.
• MOUSE PAD: That hippie talk fer the rat hole.

  **********

  Technical Support Funnies

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

       +++++++++++

            Tech Support "OK Bob, 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!"

       +++++++++++

       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, because he needed to keep it.

       +++++++++++

       Customer "Can you copy the Internet for me on this diskette?"

       +++++++++++

       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 "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?"

  **********

   

   

  Microsoft Spell Checker

      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
      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 chequer tolled me sew.

   

  Background by Jato

  back to CHUCKLES