#1a.
Control-option-delete will not retrieve unwisely sent interoffice email.
#1c.
If you are right handed, never never let a left handed person use your computer, or vice versa. Moving the mouse to the opposite side of the keyboard from which it is normally used can weaken the containment fields around your computer’s plasma conduits.
#2a.
Replacing the hard rubber ball inside your mouse with a hair ball from your cat may give you more traction, but it raises serious doubts about whether or not you are taking your medication.
#2b.
Although studies show that being surrounded by several monitors constantly bakes you with radiation, you can keep from getting that dried-out look if you are self-basting.
#2d.
Trouble with daisy-chained SCSI devices can often be solved by rearranging the devices in the chain according to their astrological signs.
#3b.
Just because the comma is used with any number over three digits long, there is no reason for you to expect it to be on or anywhere near the numeric keypad.
#3d.
No matter how logical it “feels”, banging a mouse hard against the mouse pad will not loosen a frozen cursor on the monitor screen.
#4b.
Never open both Netscape and Internet Explorer at the same time. The resulting squeal emitted by most PC’s can disrupt the digestive systems of any small animals within a two block radius.
#4d.
Pictures of naked women downloaded from the internet can affect memory, corrupt hard drives, and fragment floppies. They may also have an effect on your computer.
#5b.
I have tried many spam filters, but can never keep the spam lit long enough to see if they reduce the amounts of tars and nicotine.
#5d.
No matter how computer-savvy you are, real men never say “tilde”.
#6a.
It is possible to go online, order flowers for your next door neighbor from a company out of state, have them delivered next door and save up to twenty dollars in state and city taxes. But, I’ve met your neighbor, and why would you even consider doing something like that?
#6c.
Terms like megahertz and gigabytes can be confusing.
Mega is how much it hertz when your giga bytes the dust.
#7a.
In 1977, Victor Melneck of New York, in an attempt to pull his car free from a car that had rear-ended him in the Lincoln Tunnel, injured his wrists with the first known case of Tunnel-car-pull syndrome.
#7c.
Keyboards with the common key layout are labeled “Qwerty”, because those letters appear in the top row of letter keys. Keyboards where the keys are laid out in alphabetical order, are labeled “Factory Seconds.”
#8a.
When you have put your desktop computer on the top of your desk directly over the top drawer of the desk, do not do the following: With the drawer open, set a full glass of coke down in front of the CD tray, and slide it back against the button that causes the tray to open.
#8c.
If you provide a web site that contains online games for children, try to remember that these three things DO NOT go together: connect-the-dot pictures, monitors, and permanent markers.
#9a.
On May 23, 1998, Tina Maguire, age 14 of Omaha, Nebraska, set the record for juggling eighty two separate but simultaneous conversation strings in one chat room. On May 24, 1998, Philip Maguire, age 12 of Omaha, Nebraska, set the record for the Maguire family’s longest “grounding”, when it was discovered that he had spiked his sister’s tapioca pudding with seven of his mother’s diet pills.
#10a.
A good Christmas gift, for that brother-in-law that you have always semi-tolerated, is a new computer game for his kids which can only be played if the operating system is upgraded or more memory is purchased.
#10b.
Escape, tab, shift, control, option, and return, oddly enough, can all be used as either nouns or verbs. That’s not especially funny, but it comes close to being interesting.
#10d.
It is time to pay for some training seminars if, when your boss talks about ecommerce, you think he means buying a vowel on Wheel of Fortune.
#11a.
If your VCR has been blinking “12:00” for the past three years, it’s probably not a good idea for you to apply for one of those “I.T.” positions you saw advertised in the newspaper.
#11c.
It is less than truthful to tell a date that you made your money in hi-tech stock, when in reality you work in a slaughter house for genetically engineered cattle.
#12a.
A pet shop owner in Polyfield, Oregon discovered that the static attraction on his monitor’s screen was strong enough to adhere 23 gerbils to the glass surface. Toupee wearers should keep that fact in mind at all times.
#12c.
When you are the 83 rd. recipient of a forwarded email containing humorous lists, life lessons, mini-sermons, virus alerts, or good luck chain letters, hitting the “tab”, “caps lock”, “shift”, “control” and “delete” keys simultaneously, as you hold a stun gun against the mouse, will send an electrical charge back to the sender of sufficient voltage to cause his ear lobes to melt and run down his shirt collar.
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#1b.
Even if you have had some luck using your scanner and color printer to produce counterfeit $20 bills, it shows a real lack of thinking to attempt the same thing with coins.
#1d.
It is illegal in Wisconsin to point a web cam at a parrot which has been duct-taped to a ceiling fan.
(Follow up: One reader inquired, "Is it still illegal if you don't turn the fan on?"
The answer is: Yes, but it's only a misdemeanor, because it's no longer a moving violation.)
#2c.
Contrary to what your mother told you, discharging a can of Lysol into the floppy drive opening of your computer does not protect your computer from viruses.
#3a.
When you find yourself in the common situation of having so many windows open on your monitor that you couldn’t find your way back to the original with a divining rod, pick up the monitor and shake it with the screen facing up. The window you seek will rise to the top of the pile.
#3c.
The security of computer files encrypted and protected by passwords is somewhat compromised by keeping the passwords on little yellow post-its stuck to the edges of your monitor.
#4a.
A serial port is not where Captain Crunch docks his boat.
#4c.
When burning an effigy of Bill Gates, one should always follow proper safety procedures, and in the construction of the effigy use only materials that give off non-toxic fumes.
#5a.
The number following an “error code” has nothing to do with real cause of the error. It is actually the number of lines of dialog from “Monty Python’s Holy Grail” that the programmer can quote by heart.
#5c.
Unsupervised usage of your computer by your children should never be allowed. Without proper guidance, the child will surpass the adult’s computer skills within the life span of a fruit fly. The resulting loss of credibility can permanently damage any future parent-child relationship.
#6b.
Wearing a helmet constructed of aluminum foil and pipe cleaners will not make the voices you hear go away, if those voices are due to speech software that you have accidently enabled.
#6d.
Should a power outage result from Y2K, a home the size of Windsor Castle can be heated by burning the computer catalogs you will have received the previous week.
#7b.
It is possible to construct a handy and efficient array of reflective solar mirrors to heat your swimming pool just from the free AOL CD-ROMs delivered to your mailbox in the course of one month.
#7d.
Do not use voice recognition software in the office, if you are working on your resume.
#8b.
Today, there is more computing power in the average car than was on any of the Apollo space craft that landed on the moon. Unfortunately, this commonly known fact is behind many statements like, “If they can get all the way to the moon and back with what they had, I can get us to your cousin’s wedding without stopping and asking directions.”
#8d.
Eight out of ten floppy drives will cease to function when sliced cheese is inserted into them.
#9b.
Macintosh users and PC users should never be seated together at a dinner party, unless you seat an old NeXT user with them to keep them both humble.
#9c.
Unless you feel the need to introduce the UPS man to your cat, maybe a home office Christmas party isn’t all that good an idea.
#9d.
The letters required to spell out “typewriter” all reside on the fourth row of keys on the keyboard. But, not on one single keyboard that I have tried can I get F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F6, F7, F8, F9, F10, F11, F12, F13, F14, F15 to print out when I hit the keys with those labels.
#10c.
The fact that you buy an audio CD packaged only in it’s slim jewel case, yet pay software manufacturers to pack the same media in dictionary-sized mostly-empty cardboard boxes that wind up huddling together in your storage closet, means that the cardboard box companies’ subliminal messages imbedded in all your computer games are working just fine.
#11b.
A man in Faith, South Dakota, actually read the 3000 word, 4 point type “License Agreement” that was printed on the envelope containing his Microsoft software CD-ROM, before he opened it. Of course, it is possible that the fact that he then slit his wrists and wrote the words “Hail Satan” in blood across his monitor was totally unrelated to that event.
#11d.
Using a naked picture of your boss’s wife as a screen saver is considered a poor career move.
#12b.
If there is a Palm Pilot in your inside breast pocket, a cell phone clipped to your belt, a pager in your pants pocket, a calculator watch on your wrist, and a laptop in your briefcase, not only are you a technoholic, but you are also generating an electromagnetic field strong enough to wipe out the magnetic strips on the credit cards of everyone in your car pool.
#12d.
University studies show that your I.Q. will actually decrease proportionately according to the number of small cute plastic or stuffed creatures you stand along the top of your computer monitor. |
