—RENEE EAREGOOD
Learning new computer skills can be a challenge. An office manager in my software training class, taking nothing for granted, jotted down every word.
During a recent session, I peeked over his shoulder and read what he’d written: “New Computer Training—password is first name…Mine is Bob.”
—TIMOTHY FOUBERT
“HTML code is automatically generated by Fireworks when you export, copy, or update HTML,” stated our highly technical computer manual. But in case technophobes should begin to panic, it went on to explain, “You do not need to understand it to use it.”
—KATE LINDON
During a break at the plant where I’m employed, I walked by a friend who works with computers. He was sitting at his desk with his feet propped up, staring straight ahead as if in a trance. When he didn’t stir as I passed, I asked, “Are you all right?”
He blinked, smiled and said, “I’m on screensaver.”
—ALBERT F. BECKER
The computer in my high school classroom recently started acting up. After watching me struggle with it, one of my students took over. “Your hard drive crashed,” he said.
I called the computer services office and explained, “My computer is down. The hard drive crashed.”
“We can’t just send people down on your say-so. How do you know that’s the problem?”
“A student told me,” I answered.
“We’ll send someone over right away.”
—ROLF EKLUND
I was looking over some computer hardware at an electronics store when I overheard a customer tell the salesclerk, “I’d like a mouse pad, please.”
“We have loads to choose from, sir,” answered the clerk.
“Great,” said the customer. “Will they all be compatible with my computer?”
—SNEHAL SHAH
“Pardon me,” said the young man. I looked up from behind my desk at the library. “How do I get on the computer?”
“Just tell us your name and wait,” I answered.
“Okay, it’s John,” he said, “125 pounds.”
—LORI RICHARDSON
At the radio station where I worked, the manager called me into his office to preview a new sound-effects package we were considering purchasing. He closed the door so we wouldn’t bother people in the outer office. After listening to a few routine sound effects, we started playing around with low moans, maniacal screams, hysterical laughter, pleading, and gunshots. When I finally opened the door and passed the manager’s secretary, she looked up and inquired, “Asking for a raise again?”
—NANCY ERVIN
My husband and I are both in an Internet business, but he’s the one who truly lives, eats, and breathes computers.
I finally realized how bad it had gotten when I was scratching his back one day.
“No, not there,” he directed. “Scroll down.”
—CHRISTINE AYMAN
In an attempt to complete its fiscal year figures on time, our company’s finance department one day posted this sign outside its offices: “Year-end in progress. Please be quiet.”
Our network specialist, whose office is right next door, put up this notice in response: “Shhh…quiet please. Information Technology works all year.”
—LINDA MCGRAW
As a new federal employee, I felt a combination of excitement and anxiety about meeting the strict standards of discretion and respect that our government imposes on its workers. Fearful of making a costly mistake, I decided to read up on procedures and standards on the federal Office of Personnel Management web page. I’m not sure if I was relieved or worried when I clicked on one page and found: “Ethics: Coming Soon!”
—JAMES RESTIVO
After being on the phone forever with a customer who had been having difficulties with a computer program, a support technician at my mother’s company turned in his report: “The problem resides between the keyboard and the chair.”
—NICOLE MILLIGAN
“I don’t understand it, sir, the computers have only been down for an hour.”
I had always considered myself a with-it communicator of the ’90s. But I had no clue what my friend was saying recently when he pointed out a “Double Beamer.”
“What do you mean by ‘Double Beamer’?” I asked.
With a grin he replied, “An IBM employee driving a BMW.”
—KAY L. CAMPBELL
My husband, Brian, is a computer systems administrator. He is dedicated to his job and works long hours, rarely taking time off for meals.
One afternoon, Brian was overwhelmed with solving a computer network problem, so I decided to deliver a meal for him to eat at his workstation.
When I was getting ready to leave, I said good-bye and reminded him to eat his burger and fries while they were still warm.
Staring at his monitor, he waved me away. “Don’t worry,” he said, obviously distracted, “I’ll delete them in a few minutes.”
—MICHELLE HILL
Manning the computer help desk for the local school district was my first job. And though I was just an intern, I took the job very seriously. But not every caller took me seriously.
“Can I talk to a real person?” a caller asked.
“I am real,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the caller said. “That was rude of me. What I meant to say was, could I talk to someone who actually knows something?”
—SHARRON JONES
As I was cleaning my computer keyboard with a can of air duster (compressed chemicals), I noticed a slew of warnings: “Do not breathe fumes!” “Use only in well-ventilated areas!” “Avoid contact with skin and eyes!” And in BIG, impossible-to-miss letters: “INTENTIONAL MISUSE BY DELIBERATELY INHALING CONTENTS CAN BE FATAL!”
Then, I turned over the can. There, I found a symbol with a tree in it. Surrounding it were the words “Environmentally Friendly.”
—SHARON BACON
My techie husband and I were walking in the high desert when he stopped to photograph one stunning vista after another. Overcome by the sheer beauty, he paid it his ultimate compliment: “Everywhere I look is a screen saver!”
LAURIE EYNON
My husband, Jeff, and I incurred several problems while assembling our new computer system, so we called the help desk. The man on the phone started to talk to Jeff in computer jargon, which confused us even more. “Sir,” my husband politely said, “please explain what I should do as if I were a four-year-old.”
“Okay,” the computer technician replied. “Son, could you please put your mommy on the phone?”
—LENA WORTH
Driving on the interstate, I saw a vehicle with the license: ALT F7. I checked my computer at home, and as I suspected it was a Word-Perfect command. The truck had to belong to a plumber. Who else would choose the command: “Flush Right”?
—RUTHANN NICHOLS
Over the years I have heard my share of strange questions and silly comments from people who call the computer software company where I work as a tech support telephone operator. But one day I realized how absurd things can sound on the other end of the line when I heard myself say to one caller, “Yes, sir, you must first upgrade your download software in order to download our upgrade software.”
—CARLOS MEJIA
On my way to deliver a computer to a customer, I saw a handwritten sign at the entrance of an alley. It read: “Blocked! Do not pass! Difficult to turn back.” I continued anyway, only to discover that the alley was indeed blocked by a fallen tree.
As predicted, it took a while to turn the truck around. When I finally got back to the entrance, I noticed a second sign. It read: “Told you so!”
—IRWAN WIJAYA
I couldn’t have been happier the day I figured out how to play my favorite CDs on my computer at the office while simultaneously doing my work. One day I was enjoying Beethoven when an administrative assistant delivered a stack of papers. Hearing classical music fill the air,
she shook her head and said, “Don’t you hate it when they put you on hold?”
—BENNY J. WURZ
No doubt about it, the new temp hadn’t a clue about computers. Since part of her job was directing calls to our technical support department, I gave her simple instructions: “When people call with computer problems, always ask which operating system they’re using—Windows, Macintosh or UNIX.”
Later, she handed a technician this phone message. “Call immediately,” she’d written. “Customer has problem with eunuchs.
—SUSAN CROFT
Powering up his office computer one morning, my colleague saw a unique error message: “Keyboard undetected.”
Then he saw how he was supposed to clear the error: “Press any key to continue.”
—DAVID BAUER
A computer company had a seemingly impossible problem with a very expensive machine. Staff engineers tried everything they could think of, but they couldn’t fix it. Desperate, they contacted a retired engineer with a reputation for repairing all things technical. The engineer spent a day studying the huge machine. With a piece of chalk he marked the trouble spot with an X. The part was replaced, and the machine worked perfectly again. But when the company’s accountants received the engineer’s bill for $50,000, they demanded an itemized tally of his charges.
The engineer responded: One chalk mark, $1. Knowing where to put it, $49,999.
A coworker asked if I knew what to do about a computer problem that was preventing her from getting e-mail. After calling the help desk, I told my colleague that e-mail was being delayed to check for a computer virus.
“It’s a variant of the I Love You virus, only worse,” I said.
“What could be worse?” my single coworker asked wryly. “The Let’s Just Be Friends virus?”
—ARTHUR J. ORCHEL
With five kids at home and one more on the way, I wasn’t quite sure what to think when I was assigned the following password for my computer at work: “iud4u.”
—CAROLYN THOMAS
I work in a busy office where a computer going down causes quite an inconvenience. Recently one of our computers not only crashed, it made a noise that sounded like a heart monitor. “This computer has flat-lined,” a coworker called out with mock horror. “Does anyone here know how to do mouse-to-mouse?”
—MARY BOSS
The latest term being bandied about our IT office is PICNIC: “Problem In Chair, Not In Computer.”
—ARLIN JOHNSON
The chef of the upscale restaurant I manage collided with a waiter one day and spilled coffee all over our computer. The liquid poured into the processing unit, and resulted in some dramatic crackling and popping sounds.
After sopping up the mess, we gathered around the terminal as the computer was turned back on.
“Please let it work,” pleaded the guilt-ridden waiter.
A waitress replied, “Should be faster than ever. That was a double espresso.”
—BRIAN A. KOHLER
I was a computer-savvy student, so the high school librarian called me to her office complaining of a computer crash. While booting up the computer, I asked her what she had done immediately prior to the crash. “I just erased some files that were taking up memory space,” she replied matter-of-factly. “There was one big one that the Spanish teacher, Señorita Dobias, must have put on there. I think it was called DOS.”
—BRANDIE LITTLETON
At work, my dad noticed that the name of an employee was the same as that of an old friend. So he found the man’s e-mail address and sent him a message. When Dad received a reply, he was insulted. So he fired back another e-mail: “I have put on some weight, but I didn’t realize it was that noticeable!”
His friend’s hastily typed message, with an apparent typo, had read, “Hi, Ron. I didn’t know you worked here, but I did see a gut that looked like you in the cafeteria.”
—BRAD CARBIENER
Divine Duties
The pastor of my church hates to plead for money. But when the coffers were running low, he had no choice. “There’s good news and there’s bad news,” he told the congregation “The good news is that we have more than enough money for all the current and future needs of the parish. The bad news is, it’s still in your pockets.”
—GILES V. SCHMITT
“What’s the difference between a Catholic priest and a minister?” our daughter Sarah asked.
My husband, a pastor, answered, “Well, one big difference is that a priest can’t marry. That’s because he’s expected to devote his life to God. A pastor also dedicates his life to God, but he can marry. It’s like having your cake and eating it too.”
Sarah’s next question: “Priests can’t eat cake?”
—JO-ANNE TWINEM
During our priest’s sermon, a large plant fell over right behind the pulpit, crashing to the ground. Acknowledging his reputation for long-windedness, he smiled sheepishly and said, “Well, that’s the first time I actually put a plant to sleep.”
—DAVID BERGER
A Catholic priest I once knew went to the hospital to visit patients. Stopping at the nurses’ station, he carefully looked over the patient roster and jotted down the room number of everyone who had “Cath” written boldly next to his name.
That, he told me, was a big mistake. When I asked why, he replied, “It was only after I had made the rounds that I learned they were all patients with catheters.”
—DENNIS SMYTH
“But wasn’t God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit the ultimate multi-Tasker?”
As church treasurer, he had two computer files labeled “St. Mary’s Income” and “St. Mary’s Expenditure.” While copying them from a Macintosh to a PC, he had no idea the PC would automatically truncate the file names to ten characters, eliminate spaces and replace apostrophes with periods.
Now the church’s income is stored in “StMary.sin” and expenses in “StMary.sex.”
—CHRISTINE THIEN
One Sunday, while serving as a guest minister to a local church, I noticed in the program an order of worship with which I was unfamiliar. Since the service had already begun, I was unable to ask anybody about it. So when we reached that particular moment, I swallowed my pride and asked from the pulpit, “What do I do now?”
Someone in the congregation shouted back, “You say something and we respond.”
Embarrassed, I admitted, “For the first time in my life, I’m speechless.”
And the congregation responded, “Thanks be to God.”
—BEN POWELL
While I was preaching in a church in Mississippi, the pastor announced that their prison quartet would be singing the following evening. I wasn’t aware there was a prison in the vicinity and I looked forward to hearing them. The next evening, I was puzzled when four members of the church approached the stage. Then the pastor introduced them. “This is our prison quartet,” he said, “behind a few bars and always looking for the key.”
—RAYMOND MCALISTER
My appointment as pastor coincided with the church’s appeal for aid for victims of a hurricane.
Unfortunately, on my first Sunday in the parish, the center page of the church bulletin was accidentally omitted. So members of the congregation read from the bottom of the second page to the top of the last page: “Welcome to the Rev. Andrew Jensen and his family…the worst disaster to hit the area in this century. The full extent of the tragedy is not yet known.”
—ANDREW JENSEN
When our minister and his wife visited our neighbor, her four-year-old daughter answered the door. “Mom!” she yelled toward the living room. “God’s here, and he brought his girlfriend.”
—KRISTEN KIMBALL
When a nun collapsed in the sales representative’s office at our time-share resort, the rep ran to the front-desk manager.
“Two nuns walked into the sales office, and one of them fainted!” she yelled breathlessly.
Unfazed, the manager just looked at
her.
“Well,” said the rep, “aren’t you going to do anything?”
He replied, “I’m waiting for the punch line.”
—DONNA CAPLAN
Having grown up just outside New York City, I barely knew a cow from an ear of corn. Until, that is, I married a small-town Ohio girl. While I was in seminary school, I had a temporary assignment at a church in a rural community. The day of my first sermon, I tried very hard to fit in. Maybe too hard. With my wife sitting in the first pew, I began my discourse: “I never saw a cow until I met my wife.”
—THE REV. LOUIS LISI, JR.
My friend opened a ministry, using a snippet from the Bible as the name. But he soon regretted his decision to order office supplies over the phone. When his stationery arrived, it bore the letterhead: “That Nun Should Perish.”
—TOM HARRISON
That’s Academic
When I was 28, I was teaching English to high school freshmen in a school where occasionally the faculty and staff were allowed to dress down.
One of those days I donned a sweatshirt and slacks. A student came in and his eyes widened.
“Wow!” he exclaimed. “You should wear clothes like that every day. You look twenty, maybe even thirty years younger!”
—MARY NICHOLS
At a cross-curricular workshop for teachers, several of us from the English department found ourselves assigned to a math presentation. In the middle of the lesson, I leaned over to a colleague and whispered, “Are you getting any of this?”
He shook his head. “Math and I broke up in the ’80s, and now it’s really awkward whenever we get together.”
—BECKY POPE
At a planning meeting at my college, I congratulated a colleague on producing some superb student-guidance notes explaining how to combat plagiarism.
“How long did it take you to write them?” I asked.
“Not long,” he said. “I copied them from another university’s website.”
Laughter Is the Best Medicine Page 10
