Death of a ContractorThe Lost BalloonistC programming for ContractorsBug Warning - GirlfriendTechnical Support? - GirlfriendEngineer and ProgrammerWindows 98 Source CodeDigital TV - So that's how they do it!MistressesKangaroo Code
Death of a Contractor
The Lost Balloonist
C programming for Contractors
Bug Warning - Girlfriend
Technical Support? - Girlfriend
Engineer and Programmer
Windows 98 Source Code
Digital TV - So that's how they do it!
Mistresses
Kangaroo Code
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Big Joke List
There once was a contractor who lived her whole life without ever taking advantage of any of the people she worked for. In fact, she made sure that every job she did resulted in a win-win situation. One day while walking down the street she was tragically hit by a bus and she died. Her soul arrived up in heaven where she was met at the Pearly Gates by St.Peter himself.
"Welcome to Heaven," said St. Peter. "Before you get settled in though it seems we have a problem. You see, strangely enough, we've never once had a contractor make it this far and we're not really sure what to do with you." "No problem, just let me in." said the contractor. "Well, I'd like to, but I have higher orders. What we're going to do is let you have a day in Hell and a day in Heaven and then you can choose whichever one you want to spend an eternity in." "Actually, I think I've made up my mind...I prefer to stay in Heaven" "Sorry, we have rules..."
And with that St. Peter put the contractor in an elevator and it went down-down-down to hell. The doors opened and the contractor found herself stepping out onto the putting green of a beautiful golf course.
In the distance was a country club and standing in front of her were all her friends - fellow contractors that she had worked with and they were all dressed in evening gowns and cheering for her. They ran up and kissed her on both cheeks and they talked about old times. They played an excellent round of golf and at night went to the country club where she enjoyed an excellent steak and lobster dinner. She met the Devil who was actually a really nice guy (kinda cute) and she had a great time telling jokes and dancing. The contractor was having such a good time that before she knew it, it was time to leave. Everybody shook her hand and waved goodbye as she got on the elevator. The elevator went up-up-up and opened back up at the Pearly Gates and found St. Peter waiting for her. "Now it's time to spend a day in heaven." So the contractor spent the next 24 hours lounging around on clouds and playing the harp and singing. She had a great time and before she knew it her 24 hours were up and St. Peter came and got her.
"So, you've spent a day in hell and you've spent a day in heaven. Now you must choose you're eternity." The contractor paused for a second and then replied, "Well, I never thought I'd say this, I mean, Heaven has been really great and all, but I think I had a better time in Hell."
So St. Peter escorted her to the elevator and again the contractor went down-down-down back to Hell. When the doors of the elevator opened. She found herself standing in a desolate wasteland covered in garbage and filth. She saw her friends were dressed in rags and were picking up the garbage and putting it in sacks. The Devil came up to her and put his arm around her.
"I don't understand," stammered the contractor, "Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and a country club and we ate lobster and we danced and had a great time. Now all there is a wasteland of garbage and all my friends look miserable."
The Devil looked at her and smiled. "That's because yesterday you were a contractor, but today you're permanent staff."
A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts:
"Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?" The man below says, "Yes, you're in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field."
"You must work in information technology" says the balloonist. "I do," replies the man. "How did you know." "Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but it's no use to anyone."
The man below says, "You must be a corporate manager." "I am," replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?" "Well", says the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you're going, but you expect me to be able to help. You're in the same position you were before we met, but now it's my fault."
struct ComputerContractor
{
double salary;
long lunches;
float jobs;
char unstable;
void work;
int hiring_him_again;
const pain_in_the_arse;
unsigned agreement;
short fuse;
volatile personality;
static progress;
}; /* and there are no unions in sight */
Last year a friend of mine upgraded GirlFriend 1.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that it's a memory hog leaving very little system resources for other applications. He is only now noticing that Wife 1.0 also is spawning Child-Processes which are further consuming valuable resources. No mention of this particular phenomena was included in the product brochure or the documentation, though other users have informed him that this is to be expected due to the nature of the application. Not only that, Wife 1.0 installs itself such that it is always launched at system initialization where it can monitor all other system activity. He's finding that some applications such as PokerNight 10.3, BeerBash 2.5 and PubNight 7.0 are no longer able to run in the system at all, crashing the system when selected (even though they always worked fine before). At installation, Wife 1.0 provides no option as to the installation of undesired Plug-Ins such as MotherInLaw 55.8 and BrotherInLaw Beta release. Also system performance seems to diminish with each passing day.
The feature he'd like to see in the upcoming Wife 2.0 include:
I myself decided to avoid all of the headaches associated with Wife 1.0 by sticking with GirlFriend 2.0. Even here, however, I found many problems. Apparently you cannot install GirlFriend 2.0 on top of GirlFriend 1.0. You must uninstall GirlFriend 1.0 first. Other users say this is a long standing bug which I should have been aware of. Apparently the versions of GirlFriend have conflicts over shared use of the I/O port. You think they would have fixed such a stupid bug by now. To make matters worse, the uninstall program for GirlFriend 1.0 doesn't work very well leaving undesirable traces of the application in the system.
Another thing that sucks - all versions of GirlFriend continually pop-up little annoying messages about the advantage of upgrading to Wife 1.0.
UNDOCUMENTED BUG
Wife 1.0 has an undocumented bug. If you try to install Mistress 1.1 before uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete Microsoft Money files before doing the uninstall itself. Then Mistress 1.1 will refuse to install, claiming insufficient resources.
BUG WORK-AROUNDS
To avoid the above bug, try installing Mistress 1.1 on a different system and never run any file transfer applications such as LapLink 6.0. Also, beware of similar shareware that have been known to carry viruses that may affect Wife 1.0.
Another solution would be to run Mistress 1.0 via a UseNet provider under an anonymous name. Here again, beware of the viruses which can accidentally be downloaded from the UseNet.
Desperately seeking technical support. I'm currently running the latest version of Girlfriend and having some problems. I've been running the same version of DrinkingBuddies 1.0 all along as my primary application, and all the Girlfriend releases have always conflicted with it.
I hear that DrinkingBuddies won't crash if you run Girlfriend in background mode with the sound switched off. But I'm embarrassed to say that I can't find the switch to turn it off. I just run them separately, and it works OK.
Girlfriend also seems to have a problem co-existing with my Golf program, often trying to abort Golf with some kind of timing incompatibility.
I probably should have stayed with Girlfriend 1.0, but I thought I might see better performance with Girlfriend 2.0. After months of conflicts and other problems, I consulted with a friend who has had experience with Girlfriend 2.0. He said that I probably didn't have enough cache to run Girlfriend 2.0 and that eventually it would require a Token Ring to run properly. He was right- as soon as I purged my cache, it un-installed itself.
Shortly after that, I installed Girlfriend 3.0 Beta. All the bugs were supposed to be gone, but the first time I used it, it gave me a virus. I had to clean out my whole system and shut down for a while. I very cautiously upgraded to Girlfriend 4.0. This time I used an SCSI probe first and also installed virus protection. It worked OK for a while until I discovered that Girlfriend 1.0 was still in my system! I tried to run Girlfriend 1.0 again with Girlfriend 4.0 still installed, but Girlfriend 4.0 has a feature I didn't know about that automatically sense the presence of Girlfriend 1.0 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 re-program. Frankly, I think there is too much attention paid to the look and feel and not enough to the desired functionality.
Also, to get the best connections with your hardware, you usually have to use gold plated contacts. And I've never liked how Girlfriend is totally object-oriented.
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, you have to upgrade to Wife 1.0, which he describes as "a huge resource hog". One of the primary reasons that he upgraded to Wife 1.0 was that it came bundled with FreeSexPlus 1.0.
Well, it turns out that the resource allocation module of Wife 1.0 sometimes prohibits access to FreeSexPlus, particularly the new Plug and Play items he wanted to try. On top of that, Wife 1.0 must be running on a well warmed-up system before he can do anything. And, although he did not ask for it, Wife 1.0 came with MotherInLaw 1.0, which has a pop-up feature he can't turn off.
I told him to install Mistress 1.0, but he said that he heard that if you try to run it without first un-installing Wife, that Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before doing the un-install itself. The Mistress 1.0 won't install anyway due to insufficient resources. Anybody out there able to offer technical advice.....
A Programmer and an Engineer are sitting next to each other on a long flight from LA to NY. The Programmer leans over to the Engineer and asks if he would like to play a fun game. The Engineer just wants to take a nap, so he politely declines and rolls over to the window to catch a few winks. The Programmer persists and explains that the game is real easy and a lot of fun. He explains "I ask you a question, and if you don't know the answer, you pay me $5. Then you ask me a question, and if I don't know the answer, I'll pay you $5."
Again, the Engineer politely declines and tries to get to sleep. The Programmer, now somewhat agitated, says, "OK, if you don't know the answer you pay me $5, and if I don't know the answer, I'll pay you $50!" This catches the Engineer's attention, and he sees no end to this torment unless he plays, so he agrees to the game.
The Programmer asks the first question. "What's the distance from the earth to the moon?"
The Engineer doesn't say a word, but reaches into his wallet, pulls out a five dollar bill and hands it to the Programmer.
Now, it's the Engineer's turn. He asks the Programmer "What goes up a hill with three legs, and comes down on four?"
The Programmer looks up at him with a puzzled look. He takes out his laptop computer and searches all of his references. He taps into the Airphone with his modem and searches the net and the Library of Congress. Frustrated, he sends e-mail to his co-workers -- all to no avail. After about an hour, he wakes the Engineer and hands him $50. The Engineer politely takes the $50 and turns away to try to get back to sleep.
The Programmer, more than a little miffed, shakes the Engineer and asks "Well, so what's the answer?" Without a word, the Engineer reaches into his wallet, hands the Programmer $5, and turns away to get back to sleep.
/*
TOP SECRET Microsoft(c) Code
Project: Chicago(tm)
Projected release-date: Summer 1998/99
Original version date : Aug 1994
*/
#include "win31.h"
#include "win95.h"
#include "evenmore.h"
#include "oldstuff.h"
#include "billrulz.h"
#define INSTALL = HARD
char make_prog_look_big[1600000];
void main()
{
while(!CRASHED)
{
display_copyright_message();
display_bill_rules_message();
do_nothing_loop();
if (first_time_installation)
{
make_50_megabyte_swapfile();
do_nothing_loop();
totally_screw_up_HPFS_file_system();
search_and_destroy_the_rest_of_OS/2();
hang_system();
}
write_something(anything);
display_copyright_message();
do_nothing_loop();
do_some_stuff();
if (still_not_crashed)
{
display_copyright_message();
do_nothing_loop();
basically_run_windows_3.1();
do_nothing_loop();
do_nothing_loop();
}
}
if (detect_cache())
disable_cache();
if (fast_cpu())
{
set_wait_states(lots);
set_mouse(speed, very_slow);
set_mouse(action, jumpy);
set_mouse(reaction, sometimes);
}
/* printf("Welcome to Windows 3.11"); */
/* printf("Welcome to Windows 95"); */
printf("Welcome to Windows 98");
if (system_ok())
crash(to_dos_prompt);
else
system_memory = open("a:\swp0001.swp", O_CREATE);
while(something)
{
sleep(5);
get_user_input();
sleep(5);
act_on_user_input();
sleep(5);
}
create_general_protection_fault();
}
Extract from New Scientist:
Confused about Digital TV and what it means? Then look no further than Britain's popular women's weekly, Woman's Own. The magazine carried a leading article last month "to take you through the maze and sweep away the myths":
Question: First of all, what is digital?
Answer: Simply, what we've got now is an analogue system, which means pictures come to our TVs via a pattern of wavy lines.
Digital pictures come in via straight lines so there's no distortion.
So now you know.
An artist, a lawyer, and a programmer are discussing the merits of a mistress.
An artist tells of the passion, the thrill which comes with the risk of being discovered.
A lawyer warns of the difficulties. It can lead to guilt, divorce, bankruptcy. Not worth it. Too many problems.
The programmer says "It's the best thing that's ever happened to me. My wife thinks I'm with my mistress. My mistress thinks I'm home with my wife, and I can spend all night on the computer!"
Funny story from today's Defence Science Lectures Series, as related by the head of DSTO's Land Operations/Simulation division. They've been working on some really nifty virtual reality simulators, the case in point being to incorporate Armed Recon Helicopters into exercises (from the data fusion point of view). Most of the people they employ on this sort of thing are ex- (or future!) computer game programmers :-)
Anyway, as part of the reality parameters, they include things like trees and animals: for Operation Phoenix out near Katherine, the latter included kangaroos. In particular, they had to model kangaroo movements and reactions to helicopters (since hordes of disturbed kangaroos might well give away a helicopter's position). Being good little programmers, they just stole some code (which was originally used to model infantry detachments reactions under the same stimuli), and changed the mapped icon, the speed parameters, etc.
The first time they've gone to demonstrate this to some visiting Americans, the hotshot pilots have decided to get "down and dirty" with the virtual kangaroos. So, they buzz them, and watch them scatter.
Visiting Americans nod appreciatively... then gape as the kangaroos duck around a hill, and launch about two dozen Stingers at the hapless helicopter :-) Programmers look rather embarrassed at forgetting to remove that part of the infantry coding....and Americans leave muttering comments about not wanting to mess with the Aussie wildlife :-)
As an addendum, simulator pilots from that point onwards avoided kangaroos like the plague, just like they were meant to do :-)