It’s time to turn off your computer when…

…you wake up at 3 am to go to the bathroom, but stop to check your email first.

…you name your children Eudora, Aol, and Dotcom.

…you turn off your modem and get this awful empty feeling as if you pulled the plug on a loved-one.

…you spend half of the plane trip with your laptop on your lap, and your child in the overhead compartment.

…you decide to stay in college for an additional year or two, just for the free internet access.

…you laugh at people with 14.4 baud modems.

…you start using smileys in your snail mail (if you even remember what that is).

…you find yourself typing “com” after every period when using a word processor.com

…you refer to going to the bathroom as downloading.

…you can’t call your mother…she doesn’t have a modem.

…you check your mail. It says “no new messages”. So you check it again.

…you don’t know what gender your three closest friends are because they have neutral screen-names, and you never bothered to ask.

…you move into a new house and decide to netscape before you landscape.

…you tell the cab driver to take you to http://1000.edison.garden/house/brick.html.
…you start tilting your head sideways to smile.

MACINTOSH stands for…

Most Applications Crash, If Not, The Operating System Hangs.

Q: How many internet mail list subscribers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 1,331

1 to change the light bulb and to post on the mailing list that the light bulb has been changed.

14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently.

7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs.

27 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs.

53 to flame the spell checkers.

156 to write to the list administrator complaining about the light bulb discussion and its inappropriateness to this mail list.

41 to correct spelling in the spelling/grammar flames.

109 to post that this list is not about light bulbs and to please take this email exchange to alt.lite.bulb

203 to demand that cross posting to alt.grammar, alt.spelling and alt.punctuation about changing light bulbs be stopped.

111 to defend the posting to this list saying that we all use light bulbs and therefore the posts are relevant to this mail list.

306 to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior, where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best for this technique, and what brands are faulty.

27 to post URLs where one can see examples of different light bulbs

14 to post that the URLs were posted incorrectly, and to post corrected URLs.

3 to post about links they found from the URLs that are relevant to this list which makes light bulbs relevant to this list.

33 to concatenate all posts to date, then quote them including all headers and footers, and then add “Me Too.”

12 to post to the list that they are unsubscribing because they cannot handle the light bulb controversy.

19 to quote the “Me Too’s” to say, “Me Three.”

4 to suggest that posters request the light bulb FAQ.

1 to propose new alt.change.lite.bulb newsgroup.

47 to say this is just what alt.physic.cold_fusion was meant for, leave it here.

143 votes for alt.lite.bulb.

1. Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.
2. COFFEE.EXE Missing – Insert Cup and Press Any Key
3. Buy a Pentium 586/90 so you can reboot faster.
4. 2 2 = 5 for extremely large values of
2.
5. Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes.
6. Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.
7. My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.
8. C:\WINDOWS C:\WINDOWS\GO C:\PC\CRAWL
9. C:\DOS C:\DOS\RUN RUN\DOS\RUN
10. -{—– The information went data way ——–[
11. Best file compression around: “DEL .” = 100% compression
12. The Definition of an Upgrade: Take old bugs out, put new ones in.
13. BREAKFAST.COM Halted…Cereal Port Not Responding
14. The name is Baud……, James Baud.
15. BUFFERS=20 FILES=15 2nd down, 4th quarter, 5 yards to go!
16. Access denied–nah nah na nah nah!
17. C:\ Bad command or file name! Go stand in the corner.
18. Bad command. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaay..
19. Why doesn’t DOS ever say “EXCELLENT command or filename!”
20. As a computer, I find your faith in technology amusing.
21. Southern DOS: Y’all reckon? (Yep/Nope)
22. Backups? We don’ NEED no steenking backups.
23. E Pluribus Modem
24. … File not found. Should I fake it? (Y/N)
25. Ethernet (n): something used to catch the Etherbunny
26. A mainframe: The biggest PC peripheral available.
27. An error? Impossible! My modem is error correcting.
28. CONGRESS.SYS Corrupted: Re-boot Washington D.C. (Y/n)?
29. Does fuzzy logic tickle?
30. A computer’s attention span is as long as it’s power cord.
31. 11th commandment – Covet not thy neighbor’s Pentium.
32. 24 hours in a day…24 beers in a case…coincidence?
33. Disinformation is not as good as datinformation.
34. Windows: Just another pane in the glass.
35. SENILE.COM found . . . Out Of Memory . . .
36. Who’s General Failure & why is he reading my disk?
37. Ultimate office automation: networked coffee.
38. RAM disk is not an installation procedure.
39. Shell to DOS…Come in DOS, do you copy? Shell to DOS…
40. All computers wait at the same speed.
41. DEFINITION: Computer – A device designed to speed and automate errors.
42. Go ahead, make my data!
43. Smash forehead on keyboard to continue…..
44. Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue…
45. ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI!
46. E-mail returned to sender — insufficient voltage.
47. Help! I’m modeming… and I can’t hang up!!!
48. All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound?
49. Error: Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue.
50. “640K ought to be enough for anybody.” – Bill Gates, 1981
51. DOS Tip #17: Add DEVICE=FNGRCROS.SYS to CONFIG.SYS
52. Hidden DOS secret: add BUGS=OFF to your CONFIG.SYS
53. Press any key to continue or any other key to quit…
54. Press any key…… no, No, NO!! Not THAT one!
55. Press CTRL-ALT-DEL to continue …

*** VIRUS ALERT ***

If you receive an email entitled “Fighting Canaries,” delete it immediately. Do not open it! 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 demagnetises 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 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 theinterpretations 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…