Once upon a time, there was a software engineer who used to develop programs 

on his Pentium machine, sitting under a tree on the banks of a river. He 

used to earn his bread by selling those programs in the Sunday 

market........... 

One day, while he was working, his machine tumbled off the table and fell in 

the river. Encouraged by the Panchatantra story of his childhood (the 

woodcutter and the axe), he started praying to the River Goddess. 

The River Goddess wanted to test him and so appeared only after one month of 

rigorous prayers. The engineer told her that he had lost his computer in the 

river. 

As usual, the Goddess wanted to test his honesty. She showed him a match box 

and asked, "Is this your computer ?" Disappointed by the Goddess' lack of 

computer awareness, the engineer replied, "No." 

She next showed him a pocket-sized calculator and asked if that was his. 

Annoyed, the engineer said "No, not at all!!" 

Finally, she came up with his own Pentium machine and asked if it was his. 

The engineer, left with no option, sighed and said "Yes." 

The River Goddess was happy with his honesty. She was about to give him all 

three items, but before she could make the offer, the engineer asked her, 

"Don't you know that you're supposed to show me some better computers before 

bringing up my own ?" 

The River Goddess, angered at this, replied, "I know that, you stupid 

donkey! The first two things I showed you were the Trillennium and the 

Billennium, the latest computers from IBM!". So saying, she disappeared with 

the Pentium!! 

Moral: If you're not up-to-date with technology trends, its better keep your 

mouth shut and let people think you're a fool than to open your mouth and 

remove all doubt.

1. Your stationery is more cluttered than Warren Beatty's address book. The letterhead lists a fax number, e-mail addresses for two on-line services, and your Internet address, which spreads acrossthe breadth of the letterhead and continues to the back. In essence, you have conceded that the first page of any letter you write *is* letterhead. 

2. You have never sat through an entire movie without having at least one device on your body beep or buzz. 

3. You need to fill out a form that must be typewritten, but you can't because there isn't one typewriter in your house -- only computers with laser printers. 

4. You think of the gadgets in your office as "friends," but you forget to send your father a birthday card. 

5. You disdain people who use low baud rates. 

6. When you go into a computer store, you eavesdrop on a salesperson talking with customers -- and you butt in to correct him and spend the next twenty minutes answering the customers' questions, while the salesperson stands by silently, nodding his head. 

7. You use the phrase "digital compression" in a conversation without thinking how strange your mouth feels when you say it. 

8. You constantly find yourself in groups of people to whom you say the phrase "digital compression." Everyone understands what you mean, and you are not surprised or disappointed that you don't have to explain it. 

9. You know Bill Gates' e-mail address, but you have to look up your own social security number. 

10. You stop saying "phone number" and replace it with "voice number," since we all know the majority of phone lines in any house are plugged into contraptions that talk to other contraptions. 

11. You sign Christmas cards by putting :-) next to your signature. 

12. Off the top of your head, you can think of nineteen keystroke symbols that are far more clever than :-). 

13. You back up your data every day. 

14. Your wife asks you to pick up some minipads for her at the store and you return with a rest for your mouse. 

15. You think jokes about being unable to program a VCR are stupid. 

16. On vacation, you are reading a computer manual and turning the pages faster than everyone else who is reading John Grisham novels. 

17. The thought that a CD could refer to finance or music rarely enters your mind. 

19. You go to computer trade shows and map out your path of the exhibit hall in advance. But you cannot give someone directions to your house without looking up the street names. 

20. You would rather get more dots per inch than miles per gallon. 

21. You become upset when a person calls you on the phone to sell you something, but you think it's okay for a computer to call and demand that you start pushing buttons on your telephone to receive more information about the product it is selling. 

22. You know without a doubt that disks come in five-and-a- quarter-and three-and-a-half-inch sizes. 

24. You own a set of itty-bitty screw-drivers and you actually know where they are. 

25. While contemporaries swap stories about their recent hernia surgeries, you compare mouse-induced index-finger strain with a nine-year-old. 

26. You are so knowledgeable about technology that you feel secure enough to say "I don't know" when someone asks you a technology question instead of feeling compelled to make something up. 

27. You rotate your screen savers more frequently than your cars tyres. 

28. You have a functioning home copier machine, but every toaster you own turns bread into charcoal. 

29. You have ended friendships because of irreconcilably different opinions about which is better the track ball or the track pad. 

30. You understand all the jokes in this message. If so, technology has taken over your life. 

Have you been spending more and more time using the Internet?...Have your cheeks taken on that pasty white glow from over-exposure to your computer monitor?... How do you know if you're addicted to the Net and losing touch with reality?...

Take the Net Addict's Reality Test.

Answer the following multiple choice questions and check out your score to see if you should be concerned:

1. What do you think are good names for children?

a) Scott and Jenny.

b) Bill Gates IV.

c) Mozilla and Dotcom.

2. What's a telephone?

a) A thing with a round dial you use to talk to others.

b) A telecommunications device with 12 keys.

c) Something you plug into a modem.

3. Which punctuation is most correct?

a) I had a wonderful day!

b) I had a **wonderful** day!!!

c) I had a wonderful day :-)

4. You wake up at 4:00 a.m. and decide to:

a) Visit the washroom.

b) Raid the fridge.

c) Check your E-mail.

5. What are RAM and ROM?

a) A male sheep and a city in Italy.

b) Hulking stars of the WWF.

c) I need more of the former and should upgrade the latter.

6. To avoid a virus you should:

a) Stay away from people who sneeze and cough.

b) Never read E-mail titled "Good Times".

c) Use virus scanning software every time you boot up.

7. When you want to buy something hard-to-find you:

a) Ask friends where to purchase it.

b) Check out the Yellow Pages.

c) Go to Yahoo!

8. When you don't understand how to use a new appliance you:

a)Call the retailer.

b) Call the manufacturer's toll-free number.

c) Visit the manufacturer's Web site and look for the FAQ.

9. When you want to see all the beautiful people you:

a) Visit a club on a Saturday night.

b) Turn on the TV and tune in to Baywatch.

c) Check out the alt.binary newsgroups.

10. How do you introduce yourself at a party?

a) Hi, I'm Jane!

b) Hi, I'm a Taurus on the cusp.

c) Hi, I'm a 5'10" hot blonde with a super bod.

11. When you're interested in someone at a party you say:

a) Tell me more about yourself.

b) What's your star sign?

c) What's your Profile?

12. If you really like the person, you say:

a) Could you tell me your phone number?

b) What's your E-mail address?

c) Let's chat Private.

13. When I say spam, you think:

a) Ham in a can.

b) Unsolicited advertising E-mail.

c) I mailbomb all spammers!

14. When you receive an AOL trial diskette, you say:

a) I don't need another mug coaster.

b) Great! I'll reformat and use it for backups.

c) Great! I'll sign up under a fake ID and use up the 50 hours.

15. When you want to research a reference you:

a) Open up a volume of your encyclopedia.

b) Slip Encarta in your CD-ROM drive.

c) Go to www.altavista.digital.com.

16. When you write a letter you:

a) Put pencil to paper.

b) Open Eudora.

c) Ask: What's a letter? Is it like E-mail?

17. Different types of text formatting include:

a) Writing and printing.

b) Underline and double-strike.

c) Bold and italic.

18. You correct errors using:

a) An eraser.

b) White-out.

c) Backspace or delete.

19. You sign your name:

a) Best regards, John Smith.

b) See you in IRC, John_Smith.

c) Check out my home page for the cool links, johnsmith@aol.com.

20. To keep a copy of your letter you:

a) Insert a carbon and a second sheet.

b) Take it to the photocopier.

c) Check your Sent Mail folder.

SCORING:

Give yourself zero points for each "a" response, five for each "b" and 10 for each "c".

If you scored 150 or higher, unplug your computer and log more hours in real life.

If you scored between 50 and 145, you're living a good mix of Net and reality.

If you scored under 50, you probably didn't read this far.

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?"

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. 

1) I will have a cup of coffee in the morning and read my newspaper like I used to, before the Web.

2) I will eat breakfast with a knife and fork and not with one hand typing.

3) I will get dressed before noon.

4) I will make an attempt to clean the house, wash clothes, and plan dinner before even thinking of the Web.

5) I will sit down and write a letter to those unfortunate few friends and family that are Web-deprived.

6) I will call someone on the phone who I cannot contact via the Web.

7) I will read a book...if I still remember how.

8) I will listen to those around me and their needs and stop telling them to turn the TV down so I can hear the music on the Web.

9) I will not be tempted during TV commercials to check for email.

10) I will try and get out of the house at least once a week, if it is necessary or not.

11) I will remember that my bank is not forgiving if I forget to balance my checkbook because I was too busy on the Web.

12) Last, but not least, I will remember that I must go to bed sometime ... and the Web will always be there tomorrow!

Girls are like an internet virus:

They enter your life,

Scan your pockets,

Transfer your money,

Edit your mind,

Download their problems and

Delete your smile

So please download the software SayNoToGirls.EXE to save your life otherwise the hardisk of your heart may crash

Customer : “You’ve got to fix my computer. I urgently need to print document but the computer won’t boot properly.”

Tech Support : “What does it say?”

Customer : “Something about an error and non-system disk.”

Tech Support : “Look at your machine. Is there a floppy inside?”

Customer : “No, but there’s a sticker saying there’s an Intel inside.”

A Engineer and an Programmer are sitting next to each other on a long flight from LA to NY. The Engineer leans over to the Programmer and asks if he would like to play a fun game. The Programmer just wants to take a nap, so he politely declines and rolls over to the window to catch a few winks. The Engineer persists and explains that the game is real easy and a lot of fun. He explains "I ask you a question, and if you don't know the answer, you pay me $5. Then you ask me a question, and if I don't know the answer, I'll pay you $5." Again, the Programmer politely declines and tries to get to sleep.The Engineer, now somewhat agitated, says, "OK, if you don't know the answer you pay me $5, and if I don't know the answer, I'll pay you $50!" This catches the Programmer's attention, and he sees no end to this torment unless he plays, so he agrees to the game. The Engineer asks the firs t question: "What's the distance from the earth to the moon?" The Programmer doesn't say a word, but reaches into his wallet, pulls out a five dollar bill and hands it to the Engineer. Now, it's the Programmer's turn. He asks the Engineer "What goes up a hill with three legs, and comes down on four?" The Engineer looks up at him with a puzzled look. He takes out his laptop computer and searches all of his references. He taps into the Airphone with his modem and searches the net and the Library of Congress. Frustrated, he sends e-mail to his co-workers -- all to no avail. After about an hour, he wakes the Programmer and hands him $50. The Programmer politely takes the $50 and turns away to try to get back to sleep. The Engineer, more than a little miffed, shakes the Programmer and asks "Well, so what's the answer?" Without a word, the Programmer reaches into his wallet, hands the Engineer a $5 bill, and turns away to get back to sleep.