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 1000 mi/gal.”

Recently General Motors addressed this comment by releasing the statement: “Yes, but would you want your car to crash twice a day?”

The Latest Report on Windows98: New Error Codes Assigned

Winerr 000 – Unexpected Intelligent User Detected; Please Reload Everything Winerr 001 – Intimidation Failed; Attempting to Crash Repeatedly Winerr 002 – Erroneous Error; No Error Occurred (Yet) Winerr 003 – RAM Depleted; Annex Japan (Y/N)? Winerr 004 – Deluxe Error. Please Send $75 to Upgrade Your Error Winerr 005 – Long File Name Error; Tape Erased to Make Room for Filename Winerr 006 – Insufficient RAM to Crash Properly; Attempting Fake Crash Winerr 007 – Alphanumeric Sequence “OS2″ Prohibited Winerr 008 – This License Has Expired; Please Purchase Another Copy Winerr 009 – Error Buffer Overflow; Too Many Errors Winerr 00A – Non-Microsoft Application Encountered Winerr 00B – Push Error; Removing Files to Make Room for Advertisement Winerr 00C – Windows Loaded Correctly This Time Winerr 00D – User Error; Lemming Not Found Winerr 00E – Open Standard Encountered; Attempting to Redmondize Winerr 00F – Reserved for Future Coding Errors Winerr 010 – Virus Error – Other Applications Will Be Closed Instead Winerr 011 – Orwell Not Found; You Must Use MSN Winerr 012 – Cash Underflow – Credit Card Number Will Be Assimilated Winerr 013 – Keyboard Error; User Must Learn to Slow Down Winerr 014 – User Error; Reading License Agreement Mandatory to Continue Winerr 015 – Error Message Deleted Winerr 016 – Expected Error Did Not Occur; Attempting to Restart Error Sequence Winerr 017 – Multitasking Attempted; System Confused Winerr 018 – Network Error – Your Crash Will Be Replicated to All Stations Winerr 019 – Freedom-of-Choice Error; Select a Microsoft Browser To Continue Winerr 01A – Insult Detected — Your Bill Gates Joke Will Be Deleted Winerr 01B – Error Removing Temp File; a Permanent File Will Be Substituted Winerr 01C – Wrong Disk Formatted. Sorry About That. Winerr 01D – Mandatory Error Inserted to Meet Error Quota Winerr 01E – Please Insert Your Favorite Error Here Winerr 01F – Error In Progress; Please Wait…. Winerr 020 – Unknown Error Occurred But Was Lost. Windows Will Try To Remember Winerr 021 – Error Parsing Error List; Please Wait For Next Error Winerr 022 – Upgrade Error; Please Format Your Drive And Reload Everything

Top10 Reasons E-Mail is Like a Penis:

10. Those who have it would be devastated if it was ever cut off.

9. Those who have it think that those who don’t are somehow inferior.

8. Those who don’t have it may agree that it’s neat, but think it’s not worth the fuss that those who have it make about it.

7. Many of those who don’t have it would like to try it, a phenomenon psychologists call “E-mail Envy.”

6. It’s more fun when it’s up, but this makes it hard to get any real work done.

5. In the distant past, its only purpose was to transmit information vital to the survival of the species. Some people still think that’s the only thing it should be used for, but most folks today use it mostly for fun.

4. If you don’t take proper precautions, it can spread viruses.

3. We attach an importance to it that is far greater than its actual size and influence warrant.

2. If you’re not careful what you do with it, it can get you into a lot of trouble.

And the number one reason “Why e-mail is like a penis.”

1. If you play with it too much, you’ll go blind!

“Hello. Tech Support; may I help you?” “Yes, well, I’m having trouble with WordPerfect.”

“What sort of trouble?” “Well, I was just typing along, and all of a sudden the words went away.”

“Went away?” “They disappeared.”

“Hmm. So what does your screen look like now?” “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” “It’s blank; it won’t accept anything when I type.”

“Are you still in WordPerfect, or did you get out?” “How do I tell?”

[Uh-oh. Well, let's give it a try anyway.] “Can you see the C:\ prompt on the screen?” “What’s a sea-prompt?”

[Uh-huh, thought so. Let's try a different tack.] “Never mind. Can you move the cursor around on the screen?” “There isn’t any cursor: I told you, it won’t accept anything I type.”

[Ah--at least s/he knows what a cursor is. Sounds like a hardware problem. I wonder if s/he's kicked out his/her monitor's power plug?]

“Does your monitor have a power indicator?” “What’s a monitor?”

“It’s the thing with the screen on it that looks like a TV. Does it have a little light that tells you when it’s on?” “I don’t know.”

“Well, then look on the back of the monitor and find where the power cord goes into it. Can you see that?” [sound of rustling and jostling] [muffled] “Yes, I think so.”

“Great! Follow the cord to the plug, and tell me if it’s plugged into the wall.” [pause] “Yes, it is.”

[Hmm. Well, that's interesting. I doubt s/he would have accidentally turned it off, and I don't want to send him/her hunting for the power switch because I don't know what kind of monitor s/he has and it's bound to have more than one switch on it. Maybe the video cable is loose or something.] “When you were behind the monitor, did you notice that there were two cables plugged into the back of it, not just one?”

“No.”

“Well, there are. I need you to look back there again and find the other cable.” [muffled] “Okay, here it is.”

“Follow it for me, and tell me if it’s plugged securely into the back of your computer.” [still muffled] “I can’t reach.”

“Uh huh. Well, can you see if it is?” [clear again] “No.”

“Even if you maybe put your knee on something and lean way over?” “Oh, it’s not because I don’t have the right angle–it’s because it’s dark.”

“Dark?” “Yes–the office light is off, and the only light I have is coming in from the window.”

“Well, turn on the office light then.” “I can’t.”

“No? Why not?” “Because there’s a power outage.”

“A power–!?!” …[AAAAAAARGH!]“A power outage? Aha! Okay, we’ve got it licked now. Do you still have the boxes and manuals and packing stuff your computer came in?” “Well, yes, I keep them in the closet.”

“Good! Go get them, and unplug your system and pack it up just like it was when you got it. Then take it back to the store you bought it from.”

“Really? Is it that bad?” “Yes, I’m afraid it is.”

“Well, all right then, I suppose. What do I tell them?”

“Tell them you’re TOO STUPID TO OWN A COMPUTER!”

Tech Support Trials and Tribulations

Customer: “Your sound card is defective and I want a new one.” Tech Support: “What seems to be the problem?” Customer: “The balance is backwards. The left channel is coming out of the right speaker and the right channel is coming out the left. It’s defective!” Tech Support: “You can solve the problem by moving the left speaker to the right side of the machine and vice versa.” Customer: (sputter) (click) Tech Support: (snicker)

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I had been doing Tech Support for Hewlett-Packard’s DeskJet division for about a month when I had a customer call with a problem I just couldn’t solve. She could not print yellow. All the other colors would print fine, which truly baffled me because the only true colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow. For instance, green is a combination of cyan and yellow, but green printed fine.

Every color of the rainbow printed fine except for yellow. I had the customer change ink cartridges. I had the customer delete and reinstall the drivers. Nothing worked. I asked my co-workers for help; they offered no new ideas.

After over two hours of troubleshooting, I was about to tell the customer to send the printer in to us for repair when she asked quietly,

“Should I try printing on a piece of white paper instead of this “yellow” construction paper?”

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A man attempting to set up his new printer called the printer’s tech support number, complaining about the error message: “Can’t find the printer.”

On the phone, the man said he even held the printer up in front of the screen, but the computer still couldn’t find it! (YEE-HAW!)

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Customer: “Hello? I’m trying to dial in. I installed the software okay, and it dialed fine. I could hear that. Then I could hear the two computers connecting. But then the sound all stopped, so I picked up the phone to see if they were still connected, and I got the message, ‘No Carrier,’ on my screen. What’s wrong?”

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An unfailingly polite lady called to ask for help with a Windows installation that had gone terribly wrong.

Customer: “I brought my Windows disks from work to install them on my home computer.” (Training stresses that we are “not the Soft-ware Police,” so I let the little act of piracy slide.) Tech Support: “Umm-hmm. What happened?” Customer: “As I put each disk in it turns out they weren’t initialized.”

Tech Support: “Do you remember the message exactly, ma’am?” Customer:(proudly) “I wrote it down. ‘This is not a Macintosh disk. Would you like to initialize it’?” Tech Support: “Er, what happened next?” Customer: “After they were initialized all the disks appeared to be blank. And now I brought them back to work, and I can’t read them in the
A: drive; the PC wants to format them. And this is our only set of Windows disks for the whole office. Did I do something wrong?”

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For a computer programming class, I sat directly across from someone, and our computers were facing away from each other.

A few minutes into the class, she got up to leave the room. I reached between our computers and switched the inputs for the keyboards. She came back and started typing and immediately got a distressed look on her face.

She called the teacher over and explained that no matter what she typed, nothing would happen. The teacher tried everything. By this time I was hiding behind my monitor and quaking red-faced.

I started to type, “Leave me alone!”

They both jumped back, silenced. “What the . . . ” the teacher said. I typed, “I said leave me alone!”

The kid got real upset. “I didn’t do anything to it, I swear!” It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud. The conversation between them and HAL 2000 went on for an amazing five minutes.

Me: “Don’t touch me!”

Her: “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hit your keys that hard.”

Me: “Who do you think you are anyway?!” Etc. Finally, I couldn’t contain myself any longer and fell out of my chair laughing.

After they had realized what I had done, they both turned beet red. Funny, I never got more than a C- in that class.

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I have a friend who just bought a computer and was instructed to load a program by typing ”
A:” and then the name of the program. My friend told me it would not work because his keyboard was no good. He said he couldn’t type the “dot over dot thingie” and that every time he tried to type the “dot over dot thingie” he kept getting the “dot over comma thingie” no matter how careful he was to press only on the very top of the key. When I taught him about the shift key, he thought I was a genius.

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This guy calls in to complain that he gets an “Access Denied” message every time he logs in. It turned out he was typing his user name and password in capital letters. Tech Support: “OK, let’s try once more, but use lower case letters.” Customer: “Uh, I only have capital letters on my keyboard.”

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Email from a friend: “CanYouFixTheSpaceBarOnMyKeyboard?”

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My friend was on duty in the main lab on a quiet afternoon. He noticed a young woman sitting in front of one of the workstations with her arms crossed across her chest and staring at the screen. After about 15 minutes he noticed that she was still in the same position only now she was impatiently tapping her foot. He asked if she needed help and she replied, “It’s about time! I pushed the F1 button over twenty minutes ago!” ****************