THE CORPORATE ZODIAC

MARKETING: You are ambitious yet stupid. You chose a marketing degree to avoid having to study in college, concentrating instead on drinking and socialising - which is pretty much what your job responsibilities are now. Least compatible with Sales.

SALES: Laziest of all signs, often referred to as "marketing without a degree", you are also self-centered and paranoid. Unless someone calls you and begs you to take their money, you like to avoid contact with "customers" so you can "concentrate on the big picture". You seek admiration for your golf game throughout your life.

TECHNOLOGY: Unable to control anything in your personal life, you are instead content to completely control everything that happens at your workplace. Often even YOU don't understand what you are saying, but who the hell can tell?! It is written that the Geeks shall inherit the Earth.

ENGINEERING: One of only two signs that actually studied in school, it is said that ninety percent of all Personal Ads are placed by engineers. You can be happy with yourself: your office is typically full of all the latest "ergodynamic" gadgets. However, we all know what is really causing your "carpal tunnel"...

ACCOUNTING: The only other sign that studied in school, you are mostly immune from office politics. You are the most feared person in the organization; combined with your extreme organizational traits, the majority of rumors concerning you say that you are completely insane.

HUMAN RESOURCES: Ironically, given your access to confidential information, you tend to be the biggest gossip within the organization. Possibly the only other person that does less work than marketing, you are unable to return any calls to ay ecause you ave to get a haircut, have lunch, AND mail a letter!

MIDDLE MANAGEMENT/ DEPARTMENT MANAGEMENT/ "TEAM LEADS" Catty, cutthroat, yet completely spineless, you are destined to remain at your current job for the rest of your life. Unable to make a single decision you tend to measure your worth by the number of meetings you can schedule for yourself. Best suited to marry other "Middle Managers", as everyone in your social circle is a Middle Manager".

SENIOR MANAGEMENT: Catty, cutthroat, yet completely spineless, you are destined to remain at your current job for the rest of your life. Unable to make a single decision you tend to measure your worth by the number of meetings you can schedule for yourself. Best suited to marry other "Senior Managers", as everyone in your social circle is a "Senior Manager".

CUSTOMER SERVICE: Bright, cheery, positive, you are a fifty-cent cab ride from taking your own life. As a child very few of you asked your parents for a little cubicle for your room and a headset so you could pretend to play "Customer Service". Continually passed over for promotions, your best bet is to sleep with your manager.

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WIN '95 BUGS

Here are some newly discovered Windows 95 error codes that Microsoft forgot to explain in the original manual;

WinErr: 001 Windows Loaded - System in Danger

WinErr: 002 No Error - Yet

WinErr: 003 Dynamic linking error - your mistake is now in every file

WinErr:004 Erroneous error - Nothing is wrong

WinErr:005 Multitasking attempted - System confused

WinErr:006 System price error - Inadequate money spent on hardware

WinErr:007 Broken Windows - Watch out for glass

WinErr:008 Horrible bug encountered - God knows what has happened

WinErr:009 Memory hog error - More Ram needed. More! More!

WinErr:010 Window closed - Do not look outside

WinErr:011 Unexplained error - Please tell us how this happened

WinErr:012 Keyboard locked - Try anything you can think of

WinErr:013 User error - Not our fault. It's not! It's not!

WinErr:014 Operating system overwritten - Please reinstall all your software

WinErr:015 Illegal error - You are not allowed to get this error. Next time you will get a penalty for that.

WinErr:016 Mouse not found - A mouse driver has not been installed. Please click the left mouse button to continue.

WinErr:017 Working error - The system has been working perfectly for the past ten minutes.

WinErr:018 Memory error - What? Tell me again!

WinErr:019 Crucial halt - Hang on. What was that?

WinErr:020 BlackMail error - $500 to Bill Gates or he will show your wife the JPGs you just downloaded.

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THE CRUELLEST CUT OF ALL

Joe was moderately successful in his career, but as he got older, he was increasingly hampered by remarkably painful headaches. When his personal hygiene and love life began to suffer, he sought medical help.

After being referred from one specialist to another, he finally came across a doctor who solved the problem.

The doctor said, "I have good news, and I have bad news. The good news is that I can cure your headaches, the bad news is that it will require castration. You have a very rare condition which causes your testicles to press up against the base of your spine. The pressure creates one hell of a headache. The only way to relieve the pressure is to remove the testicles."

Joe was, of course, both shocked and depressed. He indeed wondered if he even had anything to live for at this point. Yet, he immediately decided he had no choice but to go under the knife.

When he left the hospital his mind was at long last clear, but naturally he felt like he was missing an important part of himself. As he walked down the street, he felt like an entirely different person.

He walked past a men's clothing store and thought, "I'll buy a new suit. Maybe that will cheer me up!"

He entered the shop and told the salesman, "I'd like a new suit."

The salesman eyed him briefly and said, "Let's see ... size 44 long."

Joe laughed, "That's right, how did you know?"

"It's my job," said the salesman.

Joe tried on the suit, and it fit perfectly. As Joe admired himself in the mirror, the salesman asked, "How about a new shirt?"

Joe thought for a moment and then said, "Sure ...."

The salesman eyed Joe and said, "Let's see ... 34 sleeve and ... 16 neck".

Joe was once again surprised, "That's exactly right. How did you know?"

"It's my job," said the salesman, very matter-of-factly. Joe tried on the shirt,

and it fit perfectly. As Joe adjusted the collar in the mirror, the salesman asked, "How about new shoes?"

Joe was on a roll by this point and said, "Well, sure ...."

The salesman eyed Joe's feet and said,"Let's see ... 9 ... wide."

Joe was astonished, "That's right .... How did you know?"

"It's my job," said the salesman. Joe tried on the shoes and they fit perfectly. Joe walked comfortably around the shop and the salesman asked, "So, how about a new hat?"

Without hesitation, Joe said, "Sure ...."

The salesman eyed Joe's head and said, "Let's see ... 7 5/8."

Joe was incredulous. "That's right! Man, how can you tell all of this?"

"It's my job," reiterated the salesman. The hat fit perfectly. Joe was feeling great, when the salesman asked, "How about some new underwear?"

Joe hesitated for a second and said, "Sure..."

The salesman stepped back, eyed Joe's waist and said, "Let's see ... size 36."

Joe laughed, "No, I've worn size 34 since I was 18 years old."

The salesman shook his head, "No, you can't wear a size 34. It would press your testicles up against the base of your spine and give you one hell of a headache!"

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POINTS TO PONDER...

What is the speed of dark?

When you're sending someone Styrofoam, what do you pack it in?

Why are there Braille signs on drive-up ATM's?

If women wear a pair of pants, a pair of glasses, and a pair of earrings, why don't they wear a pair of bras?

How come you never hear about gruntled employees?

What is a "free" gift? Aren't all gifts free?

After eating, do amphibians have to wait one hour before getting out the water?

If white wine goes with fish, do white grapes go with sushi?

What's another word for synonym?

If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation?

When sign makers go on strike, what is written on their picket signs?

Where do forest rangers go to "get away from it all"?

Why isn't there mouse-flavored cat food?

Why are builders afraid to have a 13th floor and planes don't have a row 13, but book publishers aren't afraid to have a Chapter ll?

How can there be self-help groups?

Why do you need a driver's licence to buy liquor when you can't drink and drive?

Why are cigarettes sold in gas stations when smoking is prohibited there?

If a cow laughed, would milk come out her nose?

Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii?

Why is it that when you transport something by car, its called a shipment, but when you transport something by ship, its called cargo?

Why do we play in recitals and recite in plays?

Why isn't phonetic spelled the way it sounds?

Where are Preparations A through G?

Are there seeing eye humans for blind dogs?

If knees were backwards, what would chairs look like?

When you open a new bag of cotton balls, are you supposed to throw the top one away?

When your pet bird sees you reading the newspaper, does he wonder why you're just sitting there, staring at carpeting?

What happened to the first 6 "ups"?

If an orange is orange, why isn't a lime called a green or a lemon called a yellow?

Why does your nose run, and your feet smell?

If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?

Hermits have no peer pressure.

Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories ...

There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot..

How much deeper would the ocean be if sponges didn't live there?

What a nice night for an evening.

Did Washington just flash a quarter for his ID?

I just got skylights put in my place. The people who live above me are furious.

I live on a one-way dead-end street.

It doesn't matter what temperature a room is, it's always room temperature.

Yesterday, my eyeglass prescription ran out.

I was hitchhiking the other day and a hearse stopped. I said, "No thanks - I'm not going that far."

I played a blank tape on full volume. The mime who lives next door complained.

Why in a country of free speech, are there phone bills?

When a man talks dirty to a woman, it's sexual harassment. When a woman talks dirty to a man, it's $3.95 per minute.

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THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN UPGRADING TO WIFE 1.0

I'm currently running the latest version of GirlFriend and I've been having some problems lately. I've been running the same version of DrinkingBuddies 1.0 forever as my primary application, and all the GirlFriend releases I've tried have always conflicted with it.

I hear that DrinkingBuddies won't crash if GirIrriend is run in background mode and the sound is turned off. But I'm embarrassed to say I can't find the switch to turn the sound off. I just run them separately, and it works okay. GirlFriend also seems to have a problem coexisting with my Golf program, often trying to abort Golf with some sort of timing incompatibility.

I probably should have stayed with Girlfriend 1.0, but I thought I might see better performance from GirlFriend 2.0. After months of conflicts and other problems, I consulted a friend who has had experience with GirlFriend 2.0 and he said eventually it would require a Token Ring to run properly. He was right - as soon as I purged my cache, it uninstalled itself.

Shortly after that, I installed GirlFriend 3.0. All the bugs were supposed to be gone, but the first time I used it, it gave me a virus anyway. I had to clean out my whole system and shut down for awhile.

I very cautiously upgraded to GirlFriend 4.0. This time I used a SCSI probe first and also installed a virus protection program. It worked okay for awhile until I discovered that GirlFriend 1.0 was still in my system. I tried running GirlFriend 1.0 again with GirlFriend 4.0 still installed, but GirlFriend 4.0 has a feature I didn't know about that automatically senses the presence of any other versions of GirlFriend and communicates with it in some way, which results in the immediate removal of both versions.

The version I have now works pretty well, but there are still some problems. Like all versions of GirlFriend, it is written in some obscure language I can't understand, much less reprogram. Also, to get the best connections with your hardware you usually have to use gold-plated contacts.

A year ago, a friend of mine upgraded his version of GirlFriend to GirlFriendPlus 1.0, which is a Terminate and Stay Resident version of GirlFriend. He discovered that GirlFriendPlus 1.0 expires within a year if you don't upgrade to Fiancee 1.0. So he did, but soon after that he had to upgrade to Wife 1.0, which he describes as a huge resource hog. It has taken up all his space so he can't load anything else.

On top off all this, although he did not ask for it, Wife 1.0 came with MotherInLaw which has an automatic pop-up he can't turn off.

I told him to try installing mistress 1.0, but hesaid he heard if you try to run it without first uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before doing the uninstall itself. Then Mistress 1.0 won't install anyway because of insufficient resources.

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DESCARTES ETC.

I am, therefore I think. That's putting Descartes before the horse.

Descartes walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Would you like a beer?" Descartes says, "I think not." Descartes disappears.

Descartes described how his father taught him how to swim by throwing him into the Seine: "I sink, therefore I swam.".

Two men walked into a bar. You'd think the second one would have seen it.

- Katherine Angus, age 8, Toronto

You know what the problem with a lot of people is? Overpopulation.

Rule of thumb for evaluating computer technology: If it works, its obsolete.

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YOU'VE BEEN IN THE CORPORATE WORLD TOO LONG WHEN...

1. You ask the waiter what the restaurant's core competencies are.

2. You decide to re-org your family into a "team-based organization."

3. You refer to dating as test marketing.

4. You can spell "paradigm."

5. You actually know what a paradigm is.

6. You understand your airline's fare structure.

7. You write executive summaries on your love letters.

8. Your Valentine's Day cards have bullet points.

9. You think that it's actually efficient to write a 10 page presentation with 6 other people you don't know.

10. You celebrate your wedding anniversary by conducting a performance review.

11. You believe you never have any problems in your life, just "issues" and "improvement opportunities."

12. You calculate your own personal cost of capital.

13. You explain to your bank manager that you prefer to think of yourself as "highly leveraged" as opposed to "in debt."

14. You end every argument by saying "let's talk about this off-line".

15. You can explain to somebody the difference between "re-engineering", "downsizing", "right-sizing", and "firing people's asses."

16. You actually believe your explanation in number 15.

17. You talk to the waiter about process flow when dinner arrives late.

18. You refer to your previous life as "my sunk cost."

19. You refer to your significant other as "my co-CEO."

20. You like both types of sandwiches.. ham and turkey.

21. You start to feel sorry for Dilbert's boss.

22. You believe the best tables and graphs take an hour to comprehend.

23. You account for your tuition as a capital expenditure instead of an expense.

24. You insist that you do some more market research before you and your spouse produce another child.

25. At your last family reunion, you wanted to have an emergency meeting about their brand equity.

26. Your "deliverable" for Sunday evening is clean laundry and paid bills.

27. You use the term "value-added" without falling down laughing.

28 You ask the car salesman if the car comes with a whiteboard and Internet connection.

29. You give constructive feedback to your dog.

30. You feel guilty about reading this humorous list on company time.

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COMPUTER PROBLEM REPORT FORM (THE REAL THING)

1. Describe your problem: _

2. Now, describe the problem accurately: _

3. Speculate wildly about the cause of the problem: _

4. Problem Severity:
a. Minor  _
b. Minor  _
c. Minor  _
d. Trivial  _

5. Nature of the problem:
a. Locked Up _
b. Frozen _
c. Hung _
d. Strange Smell _

6. Is your computer plugged in? Yes _  No _

7. Is it turned on? Yes _  No _

8. Have you tried to fix it yourself? Yes _  No _

9. Have you made it worse? Yes _

10. Have you had "a friend" who "knows all about computers" try to fix it for you? Yes _  No _

11. Did they make it even worse? Yes _

12. Have you read the manual? Yes _  No _

13. Are you sure you've read the manual? Maybe _  No _

14. Are you absolutely certain you've read the manual? No _

15. If you read the manual, do you think you understood it? Yes _   No _

16. If 'Yes' then explain why you can't fix the problem yourself: _

17. What were you doing with your computer at the time the problem occurred? _

18. If you answered nothing, then explain why you were logged in? _

19. Are you sure you aren't imagining the problem? Yes _  No _

20. Does the clock on your home VCR blink 12:00? Yes _  What's a VCR? _

21. Do you have a copy of PC's for Dummies'? Yes _  No _

22. Do you have any independent witnesses to the problem? Yes _   No _

23. Do you have any electronics products that DO work? Yes _   No _

24. Is there anyone else you could blame this problem on? Yes _   No _

25. Have you given the machine a good whack on the top? Yes _ No _

26. Is the machine on fire? Yes _  Not Yet _

27. Can you do something else instead of bothering me? Yes _

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PRESIDENT CLINTON AND THE POPE

President Clinton and the Pope die on the same day, and due to an administrative foul-up, Clinton is sent to heaven and the Pope gets sent to hell. The Pope explains the situation to the Devil, he checks out all of the paperwork, and the error is acknowledged. The Pope is told, however, that it will take about 24 hours to fix the problem and correct the error. The next day, the Pope is called in and the Devil says his good-bye as he goes off to heaven. On his way up, he meets Clinton who is on his way down, and they stop to chat.

Pope: sorry about the mix up.

President Clinton: No problem.

Pope: Well, I'm really excited about going to heaven.

President Clinton: Why's that?

Pope: All my life I've wanted to meet the Virgin Mary.

President Clinton: You're a day late.

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THE BEER PRAYER

Our lager,
Which art in barrels,
Hallowed be thy hops.
Thou will drunk
And I will be drunk
At home as in the tavern.
Give us this day our foamy head,
And forgive us our spillages,
As we forgive those who spill against us.
And lead us not to incarceration,
But deliver us from hangovers.
For thine is The Ale,
The Bitter and The Lager.
Forever and ever..

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BEATLES SONGS FOR THE COMPUTER AGE

YESTERDAY

Yesterday,
All those backups seemed a waste of pay.
Now my database has gone away.
Oh I believe in yesterday.

Suddenly,
There's not half the files there used to be,
And there's a milestone
hanging over me
The system crashed so suddenly.

I pushed something wrong
What it was I could not say.
Now all my data's gone
and I long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay.

Yesterday,
The need for back-ups seemed so far away.
I knew my data was all here to stay,
Now I believe in yesterday.

Songs to program by...

ELEANOR RIGBY

Eleanor Rigby
Sits at the keyboard
And waits for a line on the screen
Lives in a dream
Waits for a signal
Finding some code
That will make the machine do some more.
What is it for?

All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?

Guru MacKenzie
Typing the lines of a program that no one will run;
Isn't it fun?
Look at him working,
Munching some chips as he waits for the code to compile;
It takes a while...

All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?

Eleanor Rigby
Crashes the system and loses 6 hours of work;
Feels like a jerk.
Guru MacKenzie
Wiping the crumbs off the keys as he types in the code;
Nothing will load.

All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?

UNIX MAN (Nowhere Man)

He's a real UNIX Man
Sitting in his UNIX LAN
Making all his UNIX plans
For nobody.

Knows the blocksize from du(1)
Cares not where /dev/null goes to
Isn't he a bit like you
And me?

UNIX Man, please listen(2)
My lpd(8) is missin,
UNIX Man
The wo-o-o-orld is at(l) your command.

He's as wise as he can be
Uses lex and yacc and C
UNIX Man, can you help me
At all?

UNIX Man, don't worry
Test with time(l), don't hurry
UNIX Man
The new kernel boots, just like you had planned.

He's a real UNIX Man
Sitting in his UNIX LAN
Making all his UNIX plans For nobody ...
Making all his UNIX plans For nobody.

WRITE IN C ("Let it Be")

When I find my code in tons of trouble,
Friends and colleagues come to me,
Speaking words of wisdom:
"Write in C."

As the deadline fast approaches,
And bugs are all that I can see,
Somewhere, someone whispers:
"Write in C."

Write in C, Write in C,
Write in C, oh, Write in C.
LOGO's dead and buried,
Write in C.

I used to write a lot of FORTRAN,
For science it worked flawlessly.
Try using it for graphics!
Write in C.

If you've just spent nearly 30 hours,
Debugging some assembly,
Soon you will be glad to
Write in C.

Write in C, Write in C,
Write in C, yeah, Write in C.
BASIC's not the answer.
Write in C.

Write in C, Write in C
Write in C, oh, Write in C.
Pascal won't quite cut it.
Write in C.

SOMETHING

Something in the way it fails,
Defies the algorithm's logic!
Something in the way it coredumps...
I don't want to leave it now
I'll fix this problem somehow

Somewhere in the memory I know,
A pointer's got to be corrupted.
Stepping in the debugger will show me...
I don't want to leave it now
I'm too close to leave it now

You're asking me can this code go?
I don't know, I don't know...
What sequence causes it to blow?
I don't know, I don't know...

Something in the initializing code?
And all I have to do is think of it!
Something in the listing will show me...
I don't want to leave it now
I'll fix this tonight I vow!

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