Joke of the Day

[B.O.B.]

If restaurants functioned like Microsoft....

Patron: Waiter!

Waiter: Hi, my name is Bill, and I'll be your Support Waiter. What seems
to be the problem?

Patron: There's a fly in my soup!

Waiter: Try again, maybe the fly won't be there this time.

Patron: No, it's still there.

Waiter: Maybe it's the way you're using the soup; try eating it with a
fork instead.

Patron: Even when I use the fork, the fly is still there.

Waiter: Maybe the soup is incompatible with the bowl; what kind of bowl
are you using?

Patron: A SOUP bowl!

Waiter: Hmmm, that should work. Maybe it's a configuration problem; how
was the bowl set up?

Patron: You brought it to me on a saucer; what has that to do with the
fly in my soup?!

Waiter: Can you remember everything you did before you noticed the fly in
your soup?

Patron: I sat down and ordered the Soup of the Day!

Waiter: Have you considered upgrading to the latest Soup of the Day?

Patron: You have more than one Soup of the Day each day??

Waiter: Yes, the Soup of the Day is changed every hour.

Patron: Well, what is the Soup of the Day now?

Waiter: The current Soup of the Day is tomato.

Patron: Fine. Bring me the tomato soup, and the check. I'm running late
now.

Waiter leaves and returns with another bowl of soup and the check.

Waiter: Here you are, Sir. The soup and your check.

Patron: This is potato soup.

Waiter: Yes, the tomato soup wasn't ready yet.

Patron: Well, I'm so hungry now, I'll eat anything.

Waiter leaves.

Patron: Waiter! There's a gnat in my soup!

The check:

Soup of the Day ................................... $5.00
Upgrade to newer Soup of the Day .................. $2.50
Access to support ................................. $1.00


Author Unknown.

[B.O.B.]

Real Stories of the Non-Technical

I called a company and asked to speak to Bob. The person who answered said, "Bob is on vacation. Would you like to hold?"
I worked with an individual who plugged their power strip back into itself and for the life of them could not understand why their computer would not turn on.

"Do you know anything about this fax-machine?"

"A little. What's wrong?"

"Well, I sent a fax, and the recipient called back to say all she received was a cover-sheet and a blank page. I tried it again, and the same thing happened."

"How did you load the sheet?"

"It's a pretty sensitive memo, and I didn't want anyone else to read it by accident. So I folded it so only the recipient could open it and read it."

I recently saw a distraught young lady weeping beside her car. "Do you need some help?" I asked.

"I knew I should have replaced the battery in this remote control door unlocker. Now I can't get into my car. Do you think that store would have a battery for this?"

"Hmmm, I dunno. Do you have an alarm, too?" I asked.

"No, just this remote," she answered, handing it and the car keys to me.

As I took the keys and manually unlocked the door, I said, "Why don't you drive over there and check about the batteries? It's a long walk."

Tech Support: What does the screen say now?
Caller: It says 'Hit ENTER when ready.'
Tech Support: Well?
Caller: How do I know when it's ready?

A man moved to New Mexico and called his credit company to change his address. When he told the girl where he was moving, she told him that she couldn't help him since they didn't issue cards outside of the United States!

My friend called his car insurance company to tell them to change his address from Texas to Vermont. The woman who took the call asked where Vermont was. As he tried to explain, she interrupted and said, "Look, I'm not stupid or anything, but what state is it in?"

Several years ago, we had an intern who was none too swift. One day, he was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of typing paper. What do I do?"

"Just use copier machine paper," she told him.

With that, the intern took his last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five blank copies.

One of our servers crashed. I was watching our new system administrator trying to restore it. He inserted a CD and needed to type a path name to a directory named "i386."

He started to type it and paused, asking me, "Where's the key for that line thing?"

I asked what he was talking about, and he said, "You know, that one that looks like an upside-down exclamation mark."

I replied, "You mean the letter 'i'?"

And he said, "Yeah, that's it!"

I was in a car dealership a while ago when a large motor home was towed into the garage. The front of the vehicle was in dire need of repair and the whole thing generally looked like it had been an extra in "Twister." I asked the manager what had happened. He told me that the driver had set the cruise control, and then went in back to make a sandwich.

[B.O.B.]

Well I just picked on Unix in another thread, but I found a good windows one too and feel like picking on it too:

• MicroSoft is not the answer, MicroSoft is the question, the answer is no.
• Why does the DOS version of a program always run faster on a 2 MB 16 MHz 386SX than the Windows version on a 8 MB 66 MHz 486DX2?
• Is MicroSoft a new toilet paper or what?
• The PC has created anarchy. Hardware and software have been thrown together in random configurations at the whim of any employee with access to an expense voucher and a computer catalogue. The result has been a financial and adminstrative nightmare for corporations.
• 640K ought to be enough for anybody said Bill Gates in 1981.
• I wonder how much the harddisk and RAM producers pay the Windows developers to write such ressource-demanding programs.
• Question: How many Microsoft engineers do you need to replace a broken light-bulb?
  Answer: None, Microsoft will standardize the darkness in such cases!
• Windows-95 makes Unix look like an operating system!
• Competition of writing books about elephants:
  • IBM: Big blue elephant.
  • Novell: Linking elephants.
  • Microsoft: Why you must buy Windows 95.
• PnP = Plug Not Play
• PnP = Plug aNd Phone
• PnP = Plus aNd Pray
• 1995: DOS is dead. Bill.
• 1998: Bill is dead. DOS.
• 1995: DOS is dead. Bill.
• 1998: C:\>copy con prn
• Bill is dead.
• ^Z
• Question:What is the difference between Windows and an apple ?
  Answer:Apples only fall down once a year.
• NT = Not Today
• If MicroSoft would sell cars:
  • the model of a given year would be available one year later
  • you have to buy a new car, if any traffic signs change
  • your car would stop sometimes and for some reason you think this is normal
  • you can only drive in your car alone except if you have a Car95 or a CarNT
  • there would be no controls for oil, gas or breaks - only a "unknown error" light
  • people would be fascinated by all these new features in car95 like doors and gearboxes
  • they will have to use MicroSoft gas
• Windows = cheap Mac clone
• An Intel PC has four protections modes: Abort, Retry, Fail and Reboot
• Windows 95: 32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition.
• NT is not enterprise ready until MS is willing to support it.
• Bill Gates: If GM (General Motors) had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty five dollar cars that got 1000 miles/gallon.
• General Motors: Yes, but would you want your car to crash twice a day?
• error #123: This system has been running Windows for more than 6 hours without an error. Something must be wrong! Please reboot!
• MS Windows - the 3270 of the 21st century.
• In a world without walls and fences - who needs windows and gates?
• "The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers" [Bill Gates, The Road Ahead, p.265]
• GM vs MS
• At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), 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 1,000 miles to the gallon."
• In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating (by Mr. Welch himself):
• "If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
  1. For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.
  2. Every time they painted new 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 just accept this, restart and drive on.
  4. Occasionally, executing a manoeuvre 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". But then you would have to buy more seats.
  6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, 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 default" warning light.
  8. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
  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 grab hold of the radio antenna.
  11. GM would also 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% or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.
  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.
  14. NT = New Teflon (Wall Street alone are reported to have thrown over 100 million dollars down the drain on failed NT projects, but nothing sticks ...)

[B.O.B.]

I lthought this one was hilarious, but maybe that's because I'm in the military...