Twelve bugs of Christmas

[lmccrock]

Almost out of season, perhaps more suited to a computer forum, but right on if you have ever done phone tech support:

Twelve bugs of Christmas

A summary:

For the twelfth bug of Christmas, my manager said to me

Tell them it's a feature

Say it's not supported

Change the documentation

Blame it on the hardware

Find a way around it

Say they need an upgrade

Reinstall the software

Ask for a dump

Run with the debugger

Try to reproduce it

Ask them how they did it and

See if they can do it again.

Lee

[Merlin Orr]

I see four quotes from my conversations with Adobe Elements ver. 3 tekkies over the past week!

[carinab]

From keeper of the lists:

Top Signs that your preschooler is a future geek:

Counts from zero

Hacked fisher-price.com, can now place orders online free of charge

asks things like "how can space be both fininte and unbounded,daddy"

Your babysitter doesn't charge b/c your child helps her with her math homework

Telnets into your bank when you withhold her allowance

Uses a binary clock to tell time

Rewires Disney See'n'Say to run all your kitchen appliances

Her Lego creations are just a little *too* functional

Names her pet kitty "Felis Domesticus"

Invisible friends are named Spock, Kirk, and Sulu

Suddenly your DVD player plays any region

Asks Santa Clause for a GeForce 3 video card

Has higher slashdot karma than everyone you know, combined

Has written a Palm-OS port of "Candyland" for her PDA

knows pi to the 500th decimal place

Stephen Hawkings lists her as a colleague in his newest paper.

Compiles a Linux Kernel for Tickle me Elmo.

Points out the bogus science in "Star Trek" and "Dexter's Lab"

Not only understands this list, posts another list enumerating the typos in it.

her favorite numbers are 0 and 1

calculates the amount of jelly beans in a jar instantly in his head

You carry a dictionary with you so you can understand what he is saying

Bedtime story requests look a lot like your motherboard user manual

quotes gandi in every day situations

Calls you 'Grasshopper'

does your taxes

helped you build your webpage

Has already memorized the Constitution and the Bill of Rights word for word

breaks the speed limit using only his erector-set

can read the ingredients of nail polish remover better than you can

Can tell you which magic item in the AD&D DM's guide has the price typo.

Favorite toy is a stuffed Mr.Tux

Rates baby food for Consumer Reports

He shaves his head and starts denying the existence of spoons.

She begins tutoring her older brother in Physics, Chemestry, and Computer Sci.

Can beat video games you can't

Did a biography on William Shatner for fun

has a bill gates poster on his wall

He beat every Mario game 10 times without using guides

knows all the presidents in alphabetical order by last name.

petitions Seasame Street to add a robot muppet to the cast

Worships Albert Einstein.

Insists on counting in Fibbonaci numbers

can name and spell all the countrys in Europe

has competing Scholarship offers from CalTech and MIT

admin's the home network, even if you dont own a computer.

Makes up words to the Dell tune

Wields her screwdriver better than her fork

Can make small cars out of ice-cream tubs

Her bedroom looks like a Rube Goldberg project.

Her first Linux distro released yesterday.

Keeps saying "All your base are belong to us" over and over and over...

She has a laptop with wireless card (My daughter Kirsten actually does!)

number of Languages she is fluent in is equal to age

Doesn't throw food on the floor, just the Windows.

Asks if she can trade in her Haloween candy for penguin mints

Has nightmares about core dumps.

[diehli]

Top Signs that your preschooler is a future geek:

You might be a geek if...

... you hot rod your Texas Instruments calculator: http://richfiles.solarbotics.net/Turbo.html

[George]

You might be a geek if...

when you have to write with a pen, you find yourself using the Palm Graffiti characters.

you think (x<<6)+(x<<4) is a perfectly natural way to multiply by 80.

you've gutted and rebuilt your computer 5 times since you last changed the oil in your car.

you know what a router is, and you know what a bit is, but you've never heard of a router bit.

you know the square root of 65536 is 256 without having to do the math.

you consider 65536 and 256 "nice round numbers".

...and you *always* put the period outside the quotes, since you're not quoting the end of the sentence...what the hell do english majors know, anyway.

you see a good-looking girl and you DESPERATELY want her e-mail address so you can get to know her.

you wake up and realize that your sleep pattern has been following an algorithm.

your computer chair has the permanent and stiff indentation of your butt in it.

the only tan you've ever acquired comes from your monitor.

you have assembled your own Linux distribution, and re-wrote some of the more inefficient code, just for fun. ( Hmmm... it's a thought... ).

when asked if you have more than one hard drive, you answer "In which computer?".

you postpone your moving date so your computers can set new uptime records.

given the choice between a T3 and a date with a good looking guy/girl, you'd take the T3.

you've ever been successful at catching a spammer.

you call sex with your cute girlfriend "CuteFTP".

you spend more time changing settings in Windows than using it.

you dream of high-end computers instead of beautiful girls.

your friends have a club with the word .com in it.

you refer to going to the toilet as "extracting to the temp folder" and flushing the toilet as "deleting the temp folder".

you refer to eating and drinking as uploading.

you understand and find www.ircnews.com funny.

you've ever passed notes at school in binary.

you regard the "User Friendly" virus as a good thing.

you've had an article appear at segfault.org.

you go into a computer store and takeover a discussion for a salesman on the specs and merits of a computer while he site there nodding as you make the sale.

you've ever written a useless program just for the "fun" of it.

...or you prefer writing useless programs.

you can actually read the error message details when a program has a problem.

you spend more time chatting on-line in one day then you do in a week's worth of actual conversation with people face-to-face.

you refer to using the bathroom as downloading.

the number of computers in your house exceeds the number of relationships you've had in your lifetime.

if you HAS A job or you IS A human being. (this one might be above the heads of a few computer geeks, too.)

...and you didn't correct the grammar of that last item.

if (DEC 25 = OCT 31) means true to you.

your computer costs more and runs better than your car.

your watch is set to GMT. Always. (After all, it's the only time that makes logical sense).

in real life, you tell people to go to http://www.hell.com/.

when you're reading a magazine and you see an underlined passage, you feel compelled to click on it.

you have the Linux Penguin sitting on your monitor

... and you know the penguin's name.

everytime you go to write a note, you put your hands on your desk, as if looking for a keyboard to type it on.

you're grossly offended that anyone would want to make their Linux box work anything like Windows.

you wake up wondering which directory you're in.

you set up your old computer next to your new one 2 months ago so that you could transfer files and you've been using them "both" since.

your wallpaper pattern is Linux code.

your favorite pasttime is IRC on Saturday nights.

your computer is set for Dvorak... but your keyboard is actually a qwerty.

...you know what Dvorak and Qwerty refer to.

you have a PC for every person in the house, and still think you need one more. What if one goes down!?

you salivate when you hear the word, "upgrade".

instead of laughing you say "El-Oh-El!"

you have actually heard someone do this in real life.

...and you actually understood what it meant.

you dream in code.

you not only know what Be OS is, you have an opinion about it.

you want to be the first one on your block to be wet-wired.

you dual boot because you want to be able to play some of them there cool new games.

you bought a super socket-7 motherboard, not because you really needed it, but because you got it for only 40.00 via an online auction. Now you have a reason to build that extra computer you don't really need.

to you, the word "scuzzy" is sexy.

your girlfriend kisses you on the neck and you think "uh oh, priority interupt!".

you check your e-mail before you brush your teeth in the morning.

you believe Unix/Linux is the most superior operating system out there.

you e-mail yourself notes rather than writing them...

...and you can justify the advantages of doing so.

...or you actually reply to the note.

you can program in more languages than you can speak.

you refer to your computer as a friend.

you can talk to your computer without being sarcastic or raising your voice.

you talk to your computer the way most people talk to their significant other.

you use old CD-ROMs as coasters...

...and you've collected a matching set for every room in your house.

with the exception of the blood-sucking part, you have the same basic characteristics as a vampire.

--

Regards,

[SiG Lady]

"you refer to using the bathroom as downloading."

I rather thought it was 'offloading'.