Over time I find myself becoming more and more of a geek, but only in relation to what I started out as. I’ll never understand the inner workings of real programming. If I did, I wouldn’t be so baffled many gremlins in my own machine. My word processor takes fits. I will type a sentence (and I’m not the world’s fastest typist) and then sit back and wait while one by one the letters appear on the screen. It may take thirty seconds or so for my words to appear. No one can figure this out. No matter what browser I use, I cannot paste URLs into a link field at Blogger or Moveable Type. At Wordpress, I can paste in using rich text, but not html mode. I can at Squarespace in Foxfire versions 1.4 and 3, but not version 2. I can't have Safari ever again because I for some reason don't have Safari now. I always manage to come up with problems no one has heard of before. If I were a geek, I’d be spending all my time casting out demons or whatever it is they do.

The worst thing about Mac is ... Mac fans. (via Geek Like Me)

The Top Ten (fictional) Evil Computers. I’m not familiar with all these, but I remember having nightmares about Nomad.

Signs that programming may be ruining your lovelife.

30 Error Messages You Never Want to See.

The Programmer Dress Code. The world’s greatest ubergeeks all seem to share a sartorial deficit. And they can’t get their hair to behave.

More Funny Tech Support calls.

Getting a computer repaired by the Geek Squad at Best Buy inspired a poem. A really funny poem you can sing to the tune of The Beverly Hillbillies.

TECH SUPPORT

(from a comment in response to Tech Jokes 1.0 at Neatorama -Thanks, jmanna!)
Dear Technical Support,

I am writing to express my deep dissatisfaction with your Companion for Women series of programs. While Boyfriend Ver1 was quite lovely, having flowers delivered, sending sweet emails, subsequent versions were increasingly less useful. Each version would install numerous additional sub-programs that I could not disable. I’m not entirely sure what the ‘Night Out With the Boys’ program does, only that while it was running the Boyfriend program seemed to disappear from my system. If I tried to uninstall NOWB I would get a Smothering error message.

I was told that would all be fixed in the latest version, Husband, but I have found this version riddled with even more problems then the Boyfriend series. The Flatulence audio bug is particularly annoying.

The regular email alerts no longer contain compliments and declarations of love. Instead they complain about the figures in the Quicken budget and criticized the frequency of my online shopping purchases. I also keep finding links to diet and plastic surgery websites that I did not add in my bookmarks folder. That is particularly amusing since I’ve needed to upgrade my RAM several times to compensate for Husband’s ever expanding consumption of resources.

The calendaring functionality is completely broken as the Anniversary, Birthday and other special occasion features have ceased to function at all. The Handyman program functions sporadically, only working for one Saturday out of a month. If I’m lucky. I’ve just given up on the Romance packet. And don’t get me started on the Bedroom Peripheral. Functions for about five minutes then just dies and refuses to function again for several days.

The program is also quite susceptible to viruses. The Buddies Worm has destroyed my operating system, particularly the Living Room Suite. Some second party program called ‘Poker Night’ installed itself, consuming even more of my resources and littering my system with vulgar .txt files while the tower discharges this noxious smoke.

Any attempts to modify the Husband program have been met with administrative error messages berating me for being too controlling. In fact, the Husband program has taking over most of my operating system, bogging it down with constant requests, especially ‘file not found’ errors. The program just can’t seem to keep track of anything for itself. Honestly, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to re-establish file paths for it.

It’s gotten to the point where it’s absolute misery to log into my computer. I come home found work (followed by a series of necessary errands) only to be meet by a long list of requests from my Husband program as if I have nothing better to do then meet it’s needs when I log in.

I suspect the only solution will be to wipe the hard drive and reinstall my operating system. I don’t really need your help as I’ve purchased the Divorce Lawyer uninstaller program and it promises to both remove all traces of Husband from my operating system while recovering most of my resources.

THE AIRPORT

(via Phil’s Phun)
Jake is struggling through an airport terminal with two huge and obviously heavy suitcases when Bill Gates walks up to him and asks: "Have you got the time?"

Jake sighs, not recognizing Mr. Gates, puts down the suitcases and glances at his wrist. "It's a quarter to six", he says.

"Hey, that's a pretty fancy watch!" exclaims Mr. Gates.

Jake brightens a little. "Yeah, it's not bad. Check this out..." He shows him a time zone display for every time zone in the world. He hits a few buttons and from somewhere on the watch a voice says "The time is eleven till six" in a very West Texas accent. A few more buttons and the same voice says something in Japanese. Jake continues "I've put in regional accents for each city. The display is unbelievably high quality and the voice is simply astounding." Bill Gates is dumb struck with admiration.

"That's not all...", says Jake.

He pushes a few more buttons and a tiny but very hi-resolution map of New York City appears on the display. "The flashing dot shows our location by satellite positioning, " explains Jake. "View recede ten," Jake says, and the display changes to show eastern New York state.

"I want to buy this watch!" says Bill Gates, thinking of the potential profits after his engineers tear it apart and then market it throughout the world.

"Oh, no, it's not ready for sale yet; I'm still working out the bugs",says the inventor. "But look at this", and he proceeds to demonstrate that "the watch is also a very creditable little FM radio receiver witha digital tuner, a sonar device that can measure distances up to 125meters, a pager with thermal paper print out and, most impressive of all,the capacity for voice recordings of up to 300 standard-size books,though I only have 32 of my favorites in there so far" says Jake.

"I've got to have this watch!" says Bill Gates, becoming insane with desire.

"No, you don't understand; it's not ready."

"I'll give you $1,000 for it!"

"Oh, no, I've already spent more than..."

"I'll give you $5,000 for it!"

"But it's just not..."

"I'll give you $15,000 in cash for it!" And Bill Gates pulls out his bulging wallet.

Jake stops to think. He's only put about $8,500 into materials and development, and with $15,000 he can make another one and have it ready for merchandising in maybe a year or so...

Bill Gates frantically waves the cash in front of Jake: "Here it is,right here and now, $15,000! Take it or leave it!"

Jake abruptly makes his decision: "Okay," he agrees as he peels off the watch and hands it to the stranger. They make the exchange and Bill Gates prances happily away.

"Hey, wait a minute", calls Jake after the stranger.

Bill Gates turns around warily and says:"What?"

Jake points to the two heavy suitcases he had been trying to wrestle through the terminal.

"Don't forget your batteries."

This comic strip was made with Bitstrips. If you have made yourself into a character there, and you'd like to be in a future strip here, just let me know!

Previously at Miss Cellania: Many more posts on Computers.

Thought for today: The computer is mightier than the pen, the sword, and usually, the programmer.

humor jokes video funny games computer geek tech support programming software