If IBM made toasters …
They would want one big toaster where people bring bread to be submitted for overnight toasting. IBM would claim a worldwide market for five, maybe six toasters.

If Microsoft made toasters …
Every time you bought a loaf of bread, you would have to buy a toaster. You wouldn’t have to take the toaster, but you’d still have to pay for it anyway. Toaster’95 would weigh 15000 pounds (hence requiring a reinforced steel countertop), draw enough electricity to power a small city, take up 95% of the space in your kitchen, would claim to be the first toaster that lets you control how light or dark you want your toast to be, and would secretly interrogate your other appliances to find out who made them. Everyone would hate Microsoft toasters, but nonetheless would buy them since most of the good bread only works with their toasters.

If Apple made toasters …
It would do everything the Microsoft toaster does, but 5 years earlier.

If Xerox made toasters …
You could toast one-sided or double-sided. Successive slices would get lighter and lighter. The toaster would jam your bread for you.

If Radio Shack made toasters …
The staff would sell you a toaster, but not know anything about it. Or you could buy all the parts to build your own toaster.

If Oracle made toasters …
They’d claim their toaster was compatible with all brands and styles of bread, but when you got it home you’d discover the Bagel Engine was still in development, the Croissant Extension was three years away, and that indeed the whole appliance was just blowing smoke.

If Sun made toasters …
The toast would burn often, but you could get a really good cuppa Java.

If Hewlett-Packard made toasters …
They would market the Reverse Polish Toaster, which takes in toast and gives you regular bread.

If The Rand Corporation made toasters …
It would be a large, perfectly smooth and seamless black cube. Every morning there would be a piece of toast on top of it. Their service department would have an unlisted phone number, and the blueprints for the box would be highly classified government documents. The X-Files would have an episode about it.

If Sony made toasters …
The ToastMan, which would be barely larger than the single piece of bread it is meant to toast, can be conveniently attached to your belt.

If Fisher Price made toasters …
“Baby’s First Toaster” would have a hand-crank that you turn to toast the bread that pops up like a Jack-in-the-box.

If the Franklin Mint made toasters …
Every month, you would receive another lovely hand-crafted piece of your authentic hand-crafted Civil War pewter toaster.

POE and PCs

Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary, System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor, Longing for the warmth of bedsheets, still I sat there, doing spreadsheets. Having reached the bottom line, I took a floppy from the drawer. Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command And waited for the disk to store, only this and nothing more.

Deep into the monitor peering, long I sat there wond’ring, fearing, Doubting, while the disk kept churning, turning yet to churn some more. “Save!” I said, “You cursed mother! Save my data from before!” One thing did the phosphors answer, only this and nothing more, Just, “Abort, Retry, Ignore?”

Was this some occult illusion? Some maniacal intrusion? These were choices undesired, ones I’d never faced before. Carefully, I weighed the choices as the disk made impish noises. The cursor flashed, insistent, waiting, baiting me to type some more. Clearly I must press a key, choosing one and nothing more, From “Choose Abort, Retry, Ignore?”

With my fingers pale and trembling, slowly toward the keyboard bending, Longing for a happy ending, hoping all would be restored, Praying for some guarantee, timidly I pressed a key. But on the screen there still persisted words appearing as before. Ghastly grim, they blinked and taunted, haunted, as my patience wore, Saying “Abort, Retry, Ignore?”

I tried to catch the chips off-guard — I pressed again, but twice as hard. I pleaded with the cursed machine: I begged and cried and then I swore. Now in desperation, trying random combinations, Still there came the incantation, just as senseless as before. Cursor blinking, angrily winking, blinking nonsense as before. Reading, “Abort, Retry, Ignore?”

There I sat, distraught, exhausted by my own machine accosted Getting up I turned away and paced across the office floor. And then I saw dreadful sight: a lightning bolt cut through the night. A gasp of horror overtook me, shook me to my core. The lightning zapped my previous data, lost and gone forevermore. Not even, “Abort, Retry, Ignore?”

To this day I do not know the place to which lost data goes. What demonic nether world is wrought where data will be stored, Beyond the reach of mortal souls, beyond the ether, into black holes? But sure as there’s C, Pascal, Lotus, Ashton-Tate and more, You will one day be left to wander, lost on some Plutonian shore, Pleading, “Abort, Retry, Ignore?”

Speech Recognition Software Demo

At a recent Sacramento PC User’s Group meeting, a company was demonstrating its latest speech-recognition software. A representative from the company was just about ready to start the demonstration and asked everyone in the room to quiet down.

Just then someone in the back of the room yelled,
“Format C: Return.”

Someone else chimed in:
“Yes, Return”

Unfortunately, the software worked…

Top 50+ Geek T-Shirt slogans

1. Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.
2. COFFEE.EXE Missing – Insert Cup and Press Any Key.
3. Buy a Pentium 586/90 so you can reboot faster.
4. 2 + 2 = 5 for extrememly large values of
2.
5. Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.
6. Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes.
7. My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.
8. C:\DOS C:\DOS\RUN RUN\DOS\RUN
9. C:\WINDOWS C:\WINDOWS\GO C:\PC\CRAWL
10. <—————-The information went data way———–
11. Best file compression around: “DEL . ” = 100% compression
12. The Definition of an Upgrade: Take old bugs out, put new ones in.
13. BREAKFAST.COM Halted…Cereal Port Not Responding
14. The name is Baud……. James Baud.
15. BUFFERS FILES_ 2nd down, 4th quarter, 5 yards to go!
16. Access denied�nah nah na nah nah!
17. c:\> Bad Command or file name! Go stand in the corner.
18. Bad command. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaay…
19. Why doesn’t DOS ever say “EXCELLENT command or filename!”
20. As a computer, I find your faith in technology amusing.
21. Southern DOS: Y’all reckon? (Yep/Nope)
22. Backups? We don’ NEED no steenking backups.
23. E Pluribus Modem
24. >… File not found. Should I fake it? (Y/N)
25. Ethernet (n): something used to catch the etherbunny
26. A mainframe: The biggest PC peripheral available.
27. An error? Impossible! My modem is error correcting.
28. CONGRESS.SYS Corrupted: Re-boot Washington, D.C.? (Y/N)
29. Does fuzzy logic tickle?
30. A computer’s attention span is as long as its power cord.
31. 11th commandemnt – Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s Pentium.
32. 24 hours in a day … 24 beers in a case… coincidence?
33. Disinformation is not as good as datinformation.
34. Windows: Just another pane in the glass.
35. SENILE.COM found … Out of Memory…
36. Who’s General Failure & why’s he reading my disk?
37. Ultimate office automation: networked coffee.
38. RAM disk is not an installation procedure.
39. Shell to DOS… Come in DOS, do you copy? Shell to DOS…
40. All computers wait at the same speed.
41. Computer: A device designed to speed and automate errors.
42. Press — to continue…
43. Smash forehead on keyboard to continue…
44. Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue…
45. ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI!
46. E-mail returned to sender�insufficient voltage.
47. Help! I’m modeming… and I can’t hang up!!!
48. All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound?
49. Error: Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue.
50. “640K ought to be enough for anybody.” – Bill Gates, 1981
51. DOS Tip #17: Add DEVICE=FNGRCRS.SYS to CONFIG.SYS
52. Hidden DOS Secret: add BUGS=OFF to your CONFIG.SYS
53. Press any key… no, no, no, NOT THAT ONE!
54. Press any key to continue or any other key to quit…
55. Go ahead, make my data

A guy is taking a walk and sees a frog on the side of the road.
As he comes closer, the frog starts to talk. ‘Kiss me and I will turn into a princess.’
The guy picks the frog up and puts it in his pocket.

The frog starts shouting, ‘Hey! Didn’t you hear me? I’m a Princess. Just kiss me and I will be yours.’
The guy takes the frog out of his pocket and smiles at it and puts it back.

The frog is really frustrated. ‘I don’t get it. Why won’t you kiss me? I will turn into a beautiful princess and do anything you ask.’

The guy says, ‘Look, I’m a computer geek. I don’t have time for girls.
But a talking frog is cool!’