Story

To err is human--and to blame it on a computer is even more so.

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

Computers aren't intelligent, they only think they are.

Murphy's Technology Laws

Murphy's Technology Law #1:
You can never tell which way the train went by looking at the track.

Murphy's Technology Law #2:
Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.

Murphy's Technology Law #3:
Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not
understand.

Murphy's Technology Law #4:
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

Murphy's Technology Law #5:
An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until
he/she knows absolutely everything about nothing.

Murphy's Technology Law #6:
Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe, and he'll
believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it, and he'll have to
touch to be sure.

Murphy's Technology Law #7:
All great discoveries are made by mistake.

Murphy's Technology Law #8:
Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.

Murphy's Technology Law #9:
All's well that ends... period.

Murphy's Technology Law #10:
A meeting is an event at which minutes are kept and hours are lost.

Murphy's Technology Law #11:
The first myth of management is that it exists.

Murphy's Technology Law #12:
A failure will not appear until a unit has passed final inspection.

Murphy's Technology Law #13:
New systems generate new problems.

Murphy's Technology Law #14:
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.

Murphy's Technology Law #15:
We don't know one millionth of one percent about anything.

Murphy's Technology Law #16:
Any given program, when running, is obsolete.

Murphy's Technology Law #17:
A computer makes as many mistakes in two seconds as 20 men working
20 years make.

  1. Home is where you hang your @
  2. The E-mail of the species is more deadly than the mail.
  3. A journey of a thousand sites begins with a single click
  4. You can't teach a new mouse old clicks
  5. Great groups from little icons grow.
  6. Speak softly and carry a cellular phone.
  7. C:\ is the root of all evils.
  8. Don't put all your hypes in one home page.
  9. Pentium wise; pen and paper foolish.
10. The modem is the message.
11. Too many clicks spoil the browse.
12. The geek shall inherit the earth.
13. A chat has nine lives.
14. Don't byte off more than you can view.
15. Fax is stranger than fiction.
16. What boots up must come down.
17. Windows will never cease.
18. In Gates we trust (and our tender is legal).
19. Virtual reality is its own reward.
20. Modulation in all things.
21. A user and his leisure time are soon parted.
22. There's no place like <http://www.home.com>
23. Know what to expect before you connect.
24. Oh, what a tangled website we weave when first we practice.
25. Speed thrills.
26. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
   Teach him to use the Net and he won't bother you for months.

It's wise to remember how easily this wonderful technology can be misused,  sometimes unintentionally, with serious consequences.

Consider the case of the Illinois man who left the snow-filled streets of
Chicago for a vacation in Florida.  His wife was on a business trip and was planning to meet him there the next day.  When he reached his hotel, he decided to send his wife a quick email.  Unable to find the scrap of paper on which he had written her address, he did his best to type it in from memory.

Unfortunately, he missed one letter and his note was directed instead to an elderly preacher's wife whose husband had passed away only the day before. When the grieving widow checked her email she took one look at the monitor, let out a piercing scream and fell to the floor in a dead faint.

At the sound her family rushed into the room and saw this note on the
screen: 

Dearest Wife,
Just got checked in.  Everything prepared for your arrival tomorrow.
P.S.  Sure is hot down here.

02/20/01

  10/25/01

COMPUTER FUNNIES
 
  So you think you're computer-illiterate?  Check out the following excerpt  from a "Wall Street Journal" article.
 
  1. Compaq is considering changing the command "Press any key" to "Press the Enter key" because of the flood of calls asking where the "any" key is.
 
  2. Gateway support had a caller complain that her mouse was hard to control with the dust cover on.  The dust cover turned out to be the plastic bag  the mouse was packaged in.
 
  3. A Compaq technician received a call from a man complaining that the system wouldn't read word processing files from his old diskettes.  After troubleshooting for magnets and heat failed to diagnose the problem, it
 was found that the customer had labeled the diskettes and then rolled them into the typewriter to type the labels.
 
  4. Another Gateway customer was asked to send a copy of her defective diskettes.  A few days later a letter arrived from the customer along with Xeroxed copies of the diskettes.
 
  5. A Dell technician advised a customer to put his troubled floppy back in the drive and close the door.  The customer asked the technician to hold on, and was heard putting the phone down, getting up and crossing the room to close the door to his office.
 
  6. Another Dell customer called to say he couldn't get his computer to fax anything.  After 40 minutes of troubleshooting, the technician discovered that the man was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the monitor and pressing the "Send" key.
 
  7. Another Dell customer needed help setting up a new program, so a technician suggested he go to the local Egghead.  "Yeah, I got me a couple of friends," the customer replied.  When told that Egghead was a software store,  the man said "Oh, I thought you meant for me to find a couple of geeks."
 
  8. Yet another Dell customer called to complain that his keyboard no longer worked.  He had cleaned it by filling his tub with soap and water and soaking the keyboard for a day, and then removing all the keys and washing them individually.
 
  9. A Gateway technician spoke to a customer who was enraged because his computer had told him he was "bad and an invalid."  The technician explained that the computer's "bad command" and "invalid entry" responses shouldn't be taken personally.
 
  10. An exasperated caller to Dell couldn't get her new computer to turn on. After making sure the computer was plugged in, the technician asked her what happened when she pushed the power button.  Her response was "I pushed
 and pushed on this foot pedal and nothing happened."  The "foot pedal" turned out to be the mouse.
 
  11. A customer called Compaq to say her brand new computer wouldn't work.  She said she unpacked the unit, plugged it in and sat there for 20 minutes waiting for something to happen.  When asked what happened when she pressed the power switch, she asked, "What power switch?"
 
  12. This guy calls in to complain that he gets an "Access Denied" message every time he logs in.  It turned out he was typing his username and password in capital letters.  Tech Support: "OK, let's try once more, but use lower case letters."  Customer: "Uh, I only have capital letters on my
 keyboard."
 
  13. True story from a Novell NetWire technician:

Caller: "The cup holder on my PC is broken and I'm within my Warranty period. How do I get it fixed?"

Tech: "I'm sorry, but did you say a cup holder?"

Caller: "Yes, it's attached to the front of my computer."

Tech: "Please excuse me if I seem a bit stumped, but it's because I am.
 Did you receive this as part of a promotional at a trade show?  How did you get this cup holder?  Does it have any trademark on it?"

Caller: "It came with my computer.  I don't know anything about a
promotional.  It just has '32X.' on it." 

GOD BLESS AMERICA.

A TRIBUTE TO THE UNITED STATES
This, from a Canadian newspaper, is worth sharing.

America: The Good Neighbor.

Widespread but only partial news coverage was given recently to a remarkable editorial broadcast from Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television commentator. What follows is the full text of his trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional Record:

"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States. When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.

When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped.

The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans.

I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC-10. If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes? [of course he's forgetting airbus]

Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon - not once, but several times - and safely home again.

You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here.

When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke.

I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake. Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those."

Stand proud, Americans!

To say America can have strong leadership without strong character is to say we can get water without the wet.

A public opinion poll is no substitute for thought.

Dear IRS,
Enclosed is my 1999 tax return and payment.  Please take note of the
attached article from USA Today newspaper.  In the article, you will see
that the Pentagon is paying $171.50 for hammers and NASA has paid $600.00 for a toilet seat.

Please find enclosed four toilet seats (value $2,400.00) and six hammers
(value $l,029.00). This brings my total payment to $3,429.00.

Please note the overpayment of $22.00 and apply it to the "Presidential
Election Fund," as noted on my return.  Might I suggest that you send the
above mentioned fund a 1.5 inch screw ? (See attached article:  HUD paid
$22.00 for a 1.5 inch Phillips head screw.)  It has been a pleasure to
pay my tax bill this year, and I look forward to paying it again next
year.

Sincerely,
A satisfied taxpayer

Archilbald Rutledge tells this story: "When I was a boy, I was cured forever of caging wild things. Not content with hearing mocking-birds sing from the cedars, I determined to cage a young one, and thus have a young musician all my own. On the second day in the cage, he saw his mother fly to him with food in her bill. This attention pleased me for surely the mother knew how to feed her child better than I did. The following morning my pathetic little captive was dead. When I recounted this experience to Arthur Wayne, the renowned ornithologist, he said, `A mother mocking-bird, finding her young in a cage, will sometimes take it poison berries. She thinks it better for one she loves to die rather than to live in captivity.'"

God frees our souls, not from service, not from duty, but into service and into duty, and he who mistakes the purpose of his freedom mistakes the character of his freedom. He who thinks that he is being released from the work, and not set free in order that he may accomplish that work, mistakes the condition into which his soul is invited to enter. Phillips Brooks