Here are some computer/geek jokes I have found around the web and, in some cases, given a source. None of them are copyrighted by me.
True Story
This is a true story from the WordPerfect helpline. Needless to say the help desk employee was fired; however, the person is currently suing the WordPerfect organization for "termination without cause". This is from the taped conversation leading up to dismissal:
> "WordPerfect Technical Desk, 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?"
> "Can you see the C prompt on the screen?"
>> "What's a sea-prompt?"
> "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!"
> "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 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?"
>> "Yes, I think so."
> "Great. Follow the cord to the plug, and tell me if it's plugged into the wall."
>> ".......Yes, it is."
> "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."
>> "....... Okay, here it is."
> "Follow it for me, and tell me if it's plugged securely into the back of your computer."
>> "I can't reach."
> "Uh huh. Well, can you see if it is?"
>> "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... 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 bloody stupid to own a computer."
Top 10 annoying questions to the Help Desk
10. Can you get me a faster computer?
9. It was not doing this yesterday what did you do to me?
8. I need you fix this right now. It has been busted for three weeks and this is the first time I've called.
7. This computer is jinxed. I want another one.
6. I hate dealing with computer geeks - Ooops, I don' t mean you.
5. You are saying it is user error? Well let's just see what your manager thinks about this.
4. What took you so long? This is the 15th time I've called you. 14th times just last night.
3. I want a new hard drive. This one's out of focus.
2. Oh, by the way, yesterday I swapped out the motherboard and the hard disk, installed Windows 98, and dropped the computer down the stair. Do you think that that has anything to do with my problem?
1. I didn't change anything - I swear!
Running Under Windows
A woman called the Canon help desk with a problem with her personal printer.
The tech asked her if she was "running it under Windows."
The woman responded, "No, my desk is next to the door. But that's a good point. The man sitting in the cubicle next to me is under a window, and his is working fine."
Customer in Computer Shop
"Can you copy the Internet onto this floppy disk for me?"
You Know You Are Addicted to the Internet When...
-You find yourself typing `com` after every period.
-You turn off your modem and get this awful empty feeling, like you just pulled the plug on a loved one.
-Your wife drapes a blond wig over your monitor to remind you of what she looks like.
-You can`t call your mother - she doesn`t have a modem.
-Your phone bill comes to your doorstep in a box.
-You laugh at people with 2400 modems.
-You move into a new house and decide to Netscape before you landscape.
-Even the dog in your family has a web page.
-You tell the cab driver you live at: http://www.yourwebaddress.com.
-You start tilting your head sideways to smile :-).
-Your spouse says communication is important in a marriage, so you buy another computer and install a second phone line so the two of you can chat..."
What If Dr. Seuss Wrote Technical Manuals?
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!
If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
and the double clicking icons put your window in the trash,
and your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash,
then your situation's hopeless, and your system's gonna crash!!!
If the label on your cable on the gable at your house
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
but your packet wants to tunnel to another protocol,
that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall.
And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
then may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
'cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!!
When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk,
and the microcode instructions cause unnecessary RISC,
then you have to FLASH your memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM.
Quickly turn off your computer and be sure to tell your Mom!!!
-Salman Nawaz
Top 10 Signs You're Addicted To the 'Net
10. You wake up at 3 a.m. to go to the bathroom and stop and check your e-mail on the way back to bed.
9. You get a tattoo that reads "This body best viewed with Netscape Navigator 1.1 or higher."
8. You name your children Eudora, Mozilla and Dotcom.
7. You turn off your modem and get this awful empty feeling, like you just pulled the plug on a loved one.
6. You spend half of the plane trip with your laptop on your lap...and your child in the overhead compartment.
5. You decide to stay in college for an additional year or two, just for the free Internet access.
4. You laugh at people with 2400-baud modems.
3. You start using smileys in your snail mail.
2. The last girl you picked up was a JPEG.
1. Your hard drive crashes. You haven't logged in for two hours. You start to twitch. You pick up the phone and manually dial your ISP's access number. You try to hum to communicate with the modem. You succeed.
What is Technical Harassment?
In our complex technical environment there are many opportunities for a competent technical individual to be the subject of technical harassment. Sometimes it can be so subtle that you may not even be aware you are being harassed. Worse yet, you may inadvertently technically harass another person by accident.
Following are some guidelines to help you determine if you are being technically harassed.
-If you are repeatedly asked the same technical question you might be the victim of technical harassment. While it is most common to be asked the question repeatedly within the same conversation, some instances have been identified of habitual technical harassment. Habitual technical harassment is not uncommon and has been known to exhibit group tendencies where members of a group may ask the same question repeatedly. Untreated, these instances of group technical harassment can continue for years.
-If a non-technical person asks you a technical question and they do not write your answer down it is likely the question is frivolous. Most non-technical people are not capable of remembering a true technical answer for more than 30 seconds.
-If you are forced into a discussion where a person uses more than three (3) buzzwords in one sentence the person is most likely a fake and you are the unwitting victim of technical harassment. One note of caution, competent technical people have been known to inadvertently use buzzwords after reading mindless drivel like PC Week or LAN Times. If the person has been known to use more common technical terms in the past such as "stuff" and "things", they are most likely victims of computer magazine brainwashing.
-If during a troubleshooting session, a person uses the term "trick". For example "maybe we could trick the database into thinking it has been updated". This is a sure sign of technical harassment.
-If a person explains that a needed feature will be provided by a vendor and that person is non-technical then you are at risk of being technically harassed. If you believe that person, you have definitely been technically harassed, if you don't believe them you have only been technically annoyed.
-If, when trying to resolve a technical problem with a product from a vendor, you are instructed to call the salesman that sold us the product you are being set up for technical harassment. It is a common reaction for a non-technical person when they have purchased technical equipment to call another non-technical person. The dialogue between two non-technical people usually provides some sense of comfort that they aren't the only ones who are confused.
You Know You're a Geek When...
-You look at a movie trailer and think, "I have that typeface."
-You set up an automatic rerouting of your e-mail to your pager.
-You get sudden attacks of bittersweet nostalgic feelings when thinking about your long-lost old Commodore 64, Sinclair ZX-81, TRS-80 (or whatever hardware you were raised on), and use large amounts of money/time trying to track one down.
-You are wearing ten year old spectacles, made of steel.
-You realize you _never_ cook, eating only take-away pizza.
-You check your web access_page more than once a day.
-You seriously consider devoting a web page to your computer. (Not the brand, mind you, but the actual computer itself)
-You have more e-mail addresses than you do pairs of shoes.
-You get depressed when you get less than 10 e-mail msgs a day.
-You already know what you want to write both Master's papers and your dissertation about, and you just graduated from College.
-You can discuss the philosophical and physical differences among the tangos.
-Although vaguely insulted by pocket-protector jokes, you still find them funny.
-You plan to get two Masters degrees.
-You start getting paranoid you aren't getting all your e-mail.(If you have sent me e-mail, and there seems to be no life from me, try again.)
-Someone asks you what languages you know, and you reply Upper Slavic, French, Esperanto and C.
-You spend more than 10 minutes contemplating how traffic lights work.
-You can talk for hours about how, in 25 years, the whole country won't have E-Mail addresses.
-You buy a Mac SE, install 7.1 and MacHTTP, and become a web server - running over PPP (Hi Sean!).
-You design detailed floorplans before moving all of your furniture around.
-You've created a new variety of rose.
-If anyone has said to you: "You are Jhayden?!?! I see you on the Vax all the time!" (Insert the appropirate substitutions, as appropriate.)
-You set up your own newsgroup.
-If you know the correct pronunciation of Tex, Linux, and TCL.
-If you paid $6000 for your computer and $500 for your car.
-There's a newsgroup dedicated to you because of your netly activities.
-Someone mentions the Q Continuum, and you know what that means.
-You seriously consider scanning in a picture of a squirrel, just to bug Maryam. (Got the nice picture; am using it for blackmail.)
-You get really excited that your mixer has a dough hook.
-Everyone in the neighborhood brings you (to) their computers to figure out what is wrong.
-You can hold detailed technical conversations in a second language.
-You are on the Obscure Software and Computer Crap Junk Mailing Lists
-You can explain how AppleTalk Networks work.
-Sleep and nightime are no longer irrevocably linked
-You arrange to get e-mail access no matter where you go.
-WAIS is your life.
-You walk past a Con and people know who you are.
-You have a definite philosphy of stacking wood for fires.
-You hear the word "Scuzzy" and the first thing you think of is not an adjective.
-You went to a high school where the only team with a winning record was the Chess team.
-You rig up elaborate mechanisms to do really basic tasks.
-You know about USENET cultures in groups you don't even read.
-You put your pathfinder on the web.
-You get REALLY excited when people from countries with limited access to the 'net are frequent visitors to your pages.
-You don't hand in final papers unless they've been formatted on a desktop publishing program.
-You write web pages about your web pages.
-Your favorite part of Geometry was proving theorems.
-You've ever contemplated collecting graters.
-You can remember your web address faster than your phone number.
-You'll spend a long time customizing a computer you'll use for one day to the absolute pinacle of comfort, but you won't bother to spend two hours sewing up a skirt, and wear the damn thing sarong style.
-You do your best work after 11 p.m.
-You work in a building where you need a badge to move between floors.
-You calculate the odds of getting one of the primo parking spaces in relation to your apartment, factoring in time, weather, season, etc, and are accurate over 80% of the time.
-You can count the number of moderately good hacker/computer dude type films on one hand. (I promised not to froth at the mouth when I went to go see The Net -- I failed miserably. )
-You've bought one of those license plate holders on which you can have your URL or E-Mail address embossed.
-You head straight past People and the always entertaining Weekly World News for this month's Computer Shopper
-You can track the geek gene through your family tree.
-You froth at the mouth when someone talks about the "Information Superhighway."
-You are a member of the USENET elite, invoked in posts in threads to which you have not posted.
-You can sing Tom Lehrer's element song.
-Not only is your computer in the center of your room, it's set up so as allow 'netting from your couch, as well as your desk chair.
-You arrange your jobs so you can telecommute.
-You organize your CDs, so the tops all face upward, alphabetically, or by record label (If you do more than one of these, you are an Anal-Retentive Geek).
-You spend a lot of time figuring out which of 100 adult goldfish are the most fertile, have the strongest genes, and combined to produce tiny little goldfish.
-You carry an 88 mb removable cartridge to and from work.
-You can sing any song from Grease 2. If you do the hand movements while singing, you should get out more.
-You plot to get your grandmother on E-mail.
-You've ever contemplated devoting a web page to World News Now, Kevin, Thalia, Bill, Shielah, Nissan, Okido, Asha, Dick Schapp, Willis, or, natch, Barry.