Nerds

NERD TEST -- See how many you answer "yes":  

• Have you ever written software?  Just for fun, not because you were paid to?
• Have you ever built a computer?
• Done either continuously for more than eight hours?
• Done either past 4 a.m.?
• Have you ever played a computer game for more than eight hours straight? Past 4 a.m.?
• Do you wear glasses? Are your glasses broken (e.g. taped)?
• Is your vision worse than 20/40? Worse than 20/80? Are you legally blind?
• Have you ever asked a question in a lecture? Have you ever answered a question in a lecture? Do you sit in the front row?
• Have you ever worn a calculator?
• Do you read science fiction? Have you read all the Star Trek books?
• Have you ever used a telescope? Have you ever used an oscilloscope?
• Is your weight less than your IQ?
• Do you have acne? Do you have greasy hair? Are you unaware of it?
• Have you ever bought anything from Radio Shack?
• Do you wear a T-Shirt you got from a project team in public?
• Do you know pi past five decimal places?
• Have you ever watched Dr. Who?
• Have you ever read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
• Was your SAT math score more than 300 points higher than your verbal?
• Are your pants too short?
• Do your socks mismatch?
• Have you ever used a chemistry set? Past the age of 13?
• Have you ever entered a science fair? Did you win?
• Does your watch play music? Does it have a calculator?
• Were you ever on a chess team?
• Do you know more than three programming languages? More than eight?
• Have you ever made a technical joke? Did no one get it?
• Can you name more than ten Star Trek episodes?
• Do you own a pocket protector? Do you ever wear it?
• Can you count in binary? Hexadecimal?
• Do you have more data lines into your house than telephone voice lines?
• Have you ever broken into a computer system? A government system?

Programmers Drinking Song:

100 little bugs in the code,
100 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again,
101 little bugs in the code.

101 little bugs in the code.....

Repeat until BUGS = 0

Bill Gates goes to Hell

Bill Gates dies in a car accident. He finds himself in purgatory, being sized up by St. Peter.

"Well, Bill, I'm really confused on this call; I'm not sure whether to send you to Heaven or Hell. After all, you enormously helped society by putting a computer in almost every home in America, yet you also created that ghastly Windows 95. I'm going to do something I've never done before in your case; I'm going to let you decide where you want to go."

Bill replied, "Well, what's the difference between the two?"

St. Peter said, "I'm willing to let you visit both places briefly, if it will help your decision. I'll let you try Hell first."

So Bill went to Hell. It was a beautiful, clean, sandy beaches with clear waters and lots of bikini-clad women running around playing in the water, laughing and frolicking about. The sun was shining; the temperature perfect. He was very pleased. "This is great!" he told St. Peter. "If this is hell, I REALLY want to see heaven!"

"Fine," said St. Peter, and off they went.

Heaven was a place high in the clouds, with angels drifting about, playing harps and singing. It was nice, but not as enticing as Hell. Bill thought for a quick minute, and rendered his decision.

"Hmmmm, I think I'd prefer Hell," he told St. Peter.

"Fine," retorted St. Peter, "as you desire."

So Bill Gates went to Hell.

Two weeks later, St. Peter decided to check on the late billionaire to see how he was doing in Hell. When he got there, he found Bill, shackled to a wall, screaming amongst hot flames in dark caves, being burned and tortured by demons.

"How's everything going?" he asked Bill.

Bill responded, with his voice filled with anguish and disappointment, "This is awful! This is nothing like the Hell I visited two weeks ago! I can't believe this is happening! What happened to the other place, with the beautiful beaches, the scantily clad women playing in the water?????"

"That was a demo," replied St. Peter.

Ten Ways Microsoft Would Change the Car Business

10. New seats would require everyone to have the same butt size.
9. We would all have to switch to Microsoft Gas.
8. The U.S. government would be forced to rebuild all of the roads for Microsoft cars; they will drive on the old roads, but they run very slowly.
7. The oil, alternator, gas and engine warning lights would be replaced by a single 'General Car Fault' warning light.
6. Sun MotorSystems would make a car that was solar-powered, twice as reliable and five times as fast, but would run on only 5% of the roads.
5. You would be constantly pressured to upgrade your car.
4. You could have only one person in the car at a time, unless you bought a Car95 or CarNT -- but then you would have to buy ten more seats and a new engine.
3. Occasionally, your car would die for NO apparent reason and you would have to restart it. Strangely, you would just accept this as normal.
2. Every time the lines of the road were repainted, you would have to buy a new car.
1. People would get excited about the new features of the latest Microsoft cars, forgetting that these same features had been available from other carmakers for years!

You Know You're From Silicon Valley When…

• You make $120,000 a year, but can't afford a place to live.
• Your commute time is only 45 minutes 
• You stop asking how much things cost and start asking "How long will it take?"
• Two-thirds of the people you know are from Boston, Austin, Raleigh-Durham, New York, or Taiwan.
• You know vast and subtle differences between Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Cantonese, and Korean food.
• Your home computer contains mostly hardware/software that isn't on the consumer market yet.
• You think that "I'm going to Fry's Electronics" is an acceptable excuse to leave the office for a while. And your boss does too.
• You lost/never had/don't know how to set/ the alarm clock. You'll just get to work when you get there.
• You go to an industrial-heavy-metal bar and see two guys get into a fight over what flavor of UNIX is better.
• You own more than 10 articles of clothing that have hardware and/or software companies printed on them. (Bonus for embroidered stuff.)
• You know where Woz Way, Resistor Ave, and Floppy Drive are located. You know where Woz is.
• You have more bandwidth in your apartment or condo than most major universities and many European countries.
• You scan yard sales for motherboards.
• Your favorite computer reseller speaks only Cantonese.
• Your workplace vending machines dispense "100% natural twig-bars" right next to Jolt cola and Instant Espresso mix.
• No one brings radios into work - they just use RealAudio and listen to dj.com.
• You don't understand how the carpool lanes work because you normally don't commute during those hours.
• You meet a friend for lunch and the first topic is where they are working now.  You know he's not doing very well because he drives an American car.
• You entice prospective employees to join your company by bragging about the speed of your internet connection.
• You consider overnight delivery to be painfully slow.
• Your pick up lines include references to liquid assets and capital gains.
• You look forward to Saturday because you can wear sweats to work.
• You don't get a chance to watch a ball game on a weekend any more, but you have ESPN bookmarked at work.
• You refer to the tomatoes growing in your garden as deliverables.
• You lecture the neighborhood kids selling lemonade on process improvement.
• You know the people at the gym better than your next door neighbors.
• You eat out of a vending machine for lunch and have a $25 entrée with a $40 bottle of wine for dinner.
• You tell your friends to "think out of the box" when making Friday night plans.
• The last book you've read is "The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest: A Silicon Valley Novel."
• You have completely forgotten how to write longhand.

Computer Terminology Explained
Information Technology definitions and buzzwords:

You are an Internet addict when...

• You refer to going to the bathroom as downloading.
• You step out of your room and realize that your parents have moved and you don't have a clue as to when it happened.
• Your bookmark menu takes 15 minutes to go from top to bottom.
• You start introducing yourself as "Jim at net dot com"
• Your heart races faster and beats irregularly each time you see a new WWW site address on TV.
• You turn on your intercom when leaving the room so you can hear if new e-mail arrives.
• All of your friends have an @ in their names.
• Your cat or dog has its own home page.
• You can't call your mother...she doesn't have a modem.
• You write your homework in HTML and give your instructor the URL.
• You don't know the sex of three of your closest friends, because they have neutral nicknames and you never bothered to ask.
• You buy a Captain Kirk chair with a built-in keyboard and mouse.
• You get a tattoo that says "This body best viewed with Netscape 3.0 or higher."
• The last girl you picked up was only a GIF.
• You ask a plumber how much it would cost to replace the chair in front of your computer with a toilet.
• As your car crashes through the guardrail on a mountain road, your first instinct is to search for the "back" button.
• Your wife 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.
• When a major catastrophe occurs like the Oklahoma City bombing or an earthquake your first reaction to set up a Web page.

You might be a Software Engineer if.....

• You sat at the same desk for 4 years and worked for 3 different companies.
• Your resume is on a diskette in your pocket.
• You have to call home or look on the Internet to check the weather.
• When someone asks about what you do for a living, you say, "It's hard to explain."
• You learn about your layoff on CNN.
• Your biggest loss from a system crash is that you lose your best jokes.
• Your supervisor lacks the ability to do your job.
• You sit in a cubicle smaller than your bedroom closet.
• Salaries of the members on the Executive Board are higher than all the Third World countries' annual budgets.
• Your home computer has none of the features you developed because you're never there.
• Your 2 yr. old kid knows how to get to your company and to your cube. And it is referred to as daddy's/mommy's room.
• You think lunch is just a meeting to which you drive.
• It's dark when you drive to and from work.
• Fun is when issues are assigned to someone else.
• Communication is something your group is having problems with.
• You see a good-looking person and know it must be a visitor.
• Free food left over from meetings is your main staple.
• Weekends are those days your spouse makes you stay home.
• Art involves a white board.
• You're already late on the assignment you just got.
• You work 200 hours 'overtime' for the $100 recognition check and then jubilantly say, "Oh wow, thanks!"
• All real work gets started after 5pm or on weekends.
• Dilbert cartoons hang outside every cube.
• Plants in your cube are healthier than your plants at home.
• Your boss' favorite lines are "when you get a few minutes", "in your spare time", "when you're freed up", and "I have an opportunity for you".
• Of the people you work with, no one (boss included) knows what they do.
• Vacation is something you rollover to next year.
• Your relatives and family describe your job as "works on computers."
• Change is the norm.
• The only reason you recognize your kids is because their pictures are hanging in your cube.
• You only have makeup for florescent lighting.
• You read this entire list and understood it.

Top Ten Signs You're Living the High Tech Lifestyle

10.	You tried to enter your password on the microwave.
9.	You think "getting wasted" means having a triple espresso
8.	You haven't played solitaire with a real deck of cards in years.
7.	You have a list of fifteen phone numbers to reach your three closest friends.
6.	You emailed your child in their room to tell them it was dinner time.
5.	Your daughter sells her Girl Scout cookies from her web site.
4.	You called the manufacturer to make sure your blow dryer was Y2K compliant.
3.	When a relative takes a photo of your kids with their 35mm camera you refer to it as "that quaint analog photography method."
2.	As you pull into your driveway you use your cell phone to see if anyone's home
1.	You chat online daily with a stranger from South Africa, but you haven't spoke to your next door neighbor in a year.

Engineers are Just Regular People Too

• Two engineering students were walking across campus when one said, "Where did you get such a great bike?" The second engineer replied, "Well, I was walking minding my own business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike. She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, "Take what you want." The second engineer nodded approvingly, "Good choice; The clothes probably wouldn't have fit."
• An architect, an artist and an engineer were discussing whether it was better to spend time with the wife or a mistress. The architect said he enjoyed time with his wife, building a solid foundation for an enduring relationship. The artist said he enjoyed time with his mistress, because of the passion and mystery he found there. The engineer said, "I like both." "Both?" Engineer: "Yeah. If you have a wife and a mistress, they will each assume you are spending time with the other, and you can go to the plant and get some work done."
• What is the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers? Mechanical Engineers build weapons, Civil Engineers build targets.
• The graduate with a Science degree asks, "Why does it work?" The graduate with an Engineering degree asks, "How does it work?" The graduate with an Accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?" The graduate with an Arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"
• Four Engineers a mechanical engineer, a chemical engineer, an electrical engineer and a computer engineer were traveling in a car when, suddenly, the car stopped. "Sounds to me as if the pistons have seized. We'll have to strip down the engine before we can get the car working again" said the mechanical engineer. "Well," said the chemical engineer, "it sounded to me as if the fuel might be contaminated. I think we should clean out the fuel system." "I think it might be a grounding problem," said the electrical engineer," or maybe a faulty plug wire." All three turned to the computer engineer who had said nothing. "Well, what do you think?" they asked. He replied, "Well, perhaps if we all get out of the car and get back in again."