op Ten Ways A Computer Nerd Can Impress His Date

10. Flash the big wads of tens and twenties you created with your color laser printer and top-notch graphics program.

9. Spend an evening playing floppy disks backward, listening for the secret messages about Satan.

8. Invite her back to your place to show her the etchings on your Newton MessagePad.

7. Let the lady go first when you reach the virtual reality escalator.

6. Serenade her with your MIDI-compatible drum pads.

5. Have your dinner illuminated by the soft glow of an active-matrix LCD panel.

4. If you’re getting serious, consider a set of “his ‘n’ her” system unit keys.

3. Drive her crazy by murmuring tender love words with the help of a French-speaking voice synthesizer.

2. Never type on your date’s laptop computer without permission, particularly if the system is on her lap.

1. When things get tough, simply ask yourself, “What would Bill Gates do in a situation like this?

If you receive an email entitled “Badtimes,” delete it immediately! Do not open it. Apparently, this one is pretty nasty.

It will not only erase everything on your hard drive, but it will also delete anything on disks within 20 feet of your computer. It demagnetizes the stripes on ALL of your credit cards. It reprograms your ATM access code, screws up the tracking on your VCR and uses subspace field harmonics to scratch any CD’s you attempt to play. It will re-calibrate your refrigerator’s coolness settings so all your ice cream melts and your milk curdles. It will program your phone’s autodial to call only your mother-in-law’s number. This virus will mix antifreeze into your fish tank. It will drink all your beer. It will leave dirty socks on the coffee table when you are expecting company. Its radioactive emissions will cause your toe jam and bellybutton fuzz (be honest, you have some)to migrate behind your ears. It will replace your shampoo with Nair and your Nair with Rogaine, all while dating your current boy/girlfriend behind your back and billing their hotel rendezvous to your Visa card. It will cause you to run with scissors and throw things in a way that is only fun until someone loses an eye. It will give you Dutch Elm Disease and Tinea. It will rewrite your backup files, changing all your active verbs to passive tense and incorporating undetectable misspellings, which grossly change the interpretations of key sentences. If the “Badtimes” message is opened in a Windows95 environment, it will leave the toilet seat up and leave your hair dryer plugged in dangerously close to a full bathtub. It will not only remove the forbidden tags from your mattresses and pillows, but it will also refill your skim milk with whole milk. It will replace all your luncheon meat with Spam. It will molecularly rearrange your cologne or perfume, causing it to smell like dill pickles. It is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve. These are just a few signs of infection.

In order to streamline the handling of problems within the system. Please fill out the following questionnaire before sending it in for Help. With your co-operation we should be able to provide faster and more efficient fault resolution.

COMPUTER PROBLEM REPORT FORM
1. Describe your problem:
______________________________________________________

2. Now, describe the problem accurately:
______________________________________________________

3. Speculate wildly about the cause of the problem:
______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
____________________________-_________________________

4. Problem Severity:
A. Minor__
B. Minor__
C. Minor__
D. Trivial__
5. Nature of the problem:
A. Locked Up__
B. Frozen__
C. Hung__
D. Shot__
6. Is your computer plugged in? Yes__ No__
7. Is it turned on? Yes__ No__
8. Have you tried to fix it yourself? Yes__ No__
9. Have you made it worse? Yes__
10. Have you read the manual? Yes__ No__
11. Are you sure you’ve read the manual? Yes__ No__
12. Are you absolutely certain you’ve read the manual? No__
13. Do you think you understood it? Yes__ No__
14. If ‘Yes’ then why can’t you fix the problem yourself?
______________________________________________________

15. How tall are you? Are you above this line?
______________________________________________________

16. What were you doing with your computer at the time the problem
occurred?
______________________________________________________

17. If ‘nothing’ explain why you were logged in.
______________________________________________________

18. Are you sure you aren’t imagining the problem? Yes__ No__

19. How does this problem make you feel?
_____________________________________________________
20. Tell me about your childhood.
_____________________________________________________

21. Do you have any independent witnesses of the problem? Yes__ No__

22. Can’t you do something else, instead of bothering me? Yes__

Did you hear about the new computer virus?
It’s called the “Lorena Bobbit Virus”.
Apparently, it turns your hard drive into a 3 1/2 inch floppy!

A man arrives at the Pearly Gates and finds that St. Peter is not there, but a computer terminal is sitting next to the arch. He walks up to it and sees “Welcome to www.Heaven.com. Please enter your User ID and Password to continue.” He doesn’t have either, but underneath the fields is a small line reading: “Forgot your ID or Password? Click Here.” So he does.

Up pops a screen which reads, “Please enter at least two of the following, and your pasword and ID will be e-mailed to you.” The fields include “Name,” “Date of birth,” “Date of death,” and “Favorite Food.”

The man enters his name and date of birth, and clicks “Submit.”

Up pops another screen which reads, “We are sorry, we did not find a match in our database. Would you like to register?” So the man clicks the button marked “Yes.”

A long and detailed form appears on the screen, and the man spends some time filling it out. Then he clicks the “Submit” button.

Now he is faced with a screen reading, “We are sorry, this service is temporarily unavailable; please try again later.” There is a button marked “Back.” He clicks it.

A new page appears. It reads, “Welcome to www.Purgatory.com. Please enter your User ID and Password to continue…”