~ TOP 10 SIGNS YOU'RE
"WEBBED OUT" ~
10. Your opening line is, "So what's your home page
address?"
9. Your best friend is someone you've never met.
8. You see a beautiful sunset, and you half expect to see
"Enhanced for Netscape 1.1" on one of the clouds.
7. You are overcome with disbelief, anger and finally depressed
when you encounter a Web page with no links.
6. You feel driven to consult the "Cool Page of the
Day" on your wedding day.
5. You are diving on a dark and rainy night when you hydroplane
on puddle, sending your car careening toward the flimsy guard
rail that separates you from the precipice of a rocky cliff and
certain death. You look for the "Back" button.
4. You visit "The Really Big Button that Doesn't Do
Anything" again and again and again.
3. Your dog has his own Web page
2. So does your hamster.
.... And the No. 1 sign that you have overdosed on the WWW: When
you read a magazine, you have an irresistible urge to click on
the underlined passages.
Here's How to be Anoying-By-Modem:
*Make up fake acronyms. On-line veterans like to use
abbreviations like IMHO (in my humble opinion) and RTFM (read the
f...... manual) to show that they're "hep" to the
lingo. Make up your own that don't stand for anything (SETO,
BARL, CP30), use them liberally, and then refuse to explain what
they stand for ("You don't know? RTFM").
*WRITE ALL YOUR MESSAGES IN ALL CAPS AND DON'T USE PERIODS OR RETURNS SO THAT EVERYONE HAS TO SCROLL ACROSS THEIR SCREENS TO READ EVERY LINE ALSO USE A LOT OF !!!!!! AND DDOOUUBBLLEESS TO SHOW THAT YOU'RE EXCITED ABOUT BEING HERE!!!!!!!
*When replying to your mail, correct everyone's grammar and spelling and point out their typos, but don't otherwise respond to the content of their messages. When they respond testily to your 'creative criticism," do it again. Continue until they go away.
*Software and files offered on-line are often "compressed" so that it won't take so long to travel over the phone lines. Buy a compression program and compress everything you send, including one-word E-mail responses like "Thanks."
*Join a discussion group, and
tie whatever's being discussed back to an unrelated central theme
of your own. For instance, if you're in a discussion of gun
control, respond to every message with the observation that those
genetically superior tomatoes seem to have played an important
role. Within days, all discussion of gun control will have ceased
as people write you threatening messages and instruct all other
members to ignore you.
32 Signs That Technology Has Taken Over Your Life:
1. Your stationery is more cluttered than Warren Beatty's address
book. The letterhead lists a fax number, e-mail addresses for two
on-line services, and your Internet address, which spreads across
the breadth of the letterhead and continues to the back. In
essence, you have conceded that the first page of any letter you
write *is* letterhead.
2. You have never sat through an entire movie without having at least one device on your body beep or buzz.
3. You need to fill out a form that must be typewritten, but you can't because there isn't one typewriter in your house--only computers with laser printers.
4. You think of the gadgets in your office as "friends," but you forget to send your father a birthday card.
5. You disdain people who use low baud rates.
6. When you go into a computer store, you eavesdrop on a salesperson talking with customers--and you butt in to correct him and spend the next twenty minuses answering the customers' questions, while the salesperson stands by silently, nodding his head.
7. You use the phrase "digital compression" in a conversation without thinking how strange your mouth feels when you say it.
8. You constantly find yourself in groups of people to whom you say the phrase "digital compression." Everyone understands what you mean, and you are not surprised or disappointed that you don't have to explain it.
9. You know Bill Gates' e-mail address, but you have to look up your own social security number.
10. You stop saying "phone number" and replace it with "voice number, since we all know the majority of phone lines in any house are plugged into contraptions that talk to other contraptions.
11. You sign Christmas cards by putting :-) next to your signature.
12. Off the top of your head, you can think of nineteen keystroke symbols that are far more clever than :-)
13. You back up your data every day.
14. Your wife asks you to pick up some minipads for her at the store and you return with a rest for your mouse
15. You think jokes about being unable to program a VCR are stupid.
16. On vacation, you are reading a computer manual and turning the pages faster than everyone else who is reading John Grisham novels.
17. The thought that a CD could refer to finance or music rarely enters your mind.
18. You are able to argue persuasively the Ross Perot's phrase "electronic town hall" makes more sense than the term "information superhighway," but you don't because, after all, the man still uses hand-drawn pie charts.
19. You go to computer trade shows and map out your path of the exhibit hall in advance. But you cannot give someone directions to your house without looking up the street names.
20. You would rather get more dots per inch than miles per gallon.
21. You become upset when a person calls you on the phone to sell you something, but you think it's okay for a computer to call and demand that you start pushing buttons on your telephone to receive more information about the product it is selling.
22. You know without a doubt that disks come in five-and-a-quarter and three-and-a-half-inch sizes.
23. Al Gore strikes you as an "intriguing" fellow.
24. You own a set of itty-bitty screw-drivers and you actually know where they are.
25. While contemporaries swap stories about their recent hernia surgeries, you compare mouse-induced index-finger strain with a nine-year-old.
26. You are so knowledgeable about technology that you feel secure enough to say "I don't know" when someone asks you a technology question instead of feeling compelled to make something up.
27. You rotate your screen savers more frequently than your automobile tires.
28. You have a functioning home copier machine, but every toaster you own turns bread into charcoal.
29. You have ended friendships because of irreconcilably different opinions about which is better--the track ball or the track *pad*.
30. You understand all the jokes in this message. If so, my friend, technology has taken over your life. We suggest, for your own good, that you go lie under a tree and write a haiku. And don't use a laptop.
31. You e-mail this message to your friends over the net. You'd never get around to showing it to them in person or reading it to them on the phone. In fact, you have probably never met most of these people face-to-face.
32. You cc this message to your wife.
48 WAYS TO CONFUSE, WORRY, OR JUST SCARE THE BEJEEZUS OUT OF
PEOPLE IN THE COMPUTER LAB
1. Log on, wait a sec, then get a frightened look on your face
and scream "Oh my God! They've found me!" and bolt.
2. Laugh uncontrollably for about 3 minutes & then suddenly stop and look suspiciously at everyone who looks at you.
3. When your computer is turned off, complain to the monitor on duty that you can't get the damn thing to work. After he/she's turned it on, wait 5 minutes, turn it off again, and repeat the process for a good half hour.
4. Type frantically, often stopping to look at the person next to you evilly.
5. Before anyone else is in the lab, connect each computer to different screen than the one it's set up with.
6. Write a program that plays the "Smurfs" theme song and play it at the highest volume possible over and over again.
7. Work normally for a while. Suddenly look amazingly startled by something on the screen and crawl underneath the desk.
8. Ask the person next to you if they know how to tap into top-secret Pentagon files.
9. Use Interactive Send to make passes at people you don't know.
10. Make a small ritual sacrifice to the computer before you turn it on.
11. Bring a chainsaw, but don't use it. If anyone asks why you have it, say "Just in case..." mysteriously.
12. Type on the computer for a while. Suddenly start cursing for 3 minutes at everything bad about your life. Then stop and continue typing.
13. Enter the lab, undress, and start staring at other people as if they're crazy while typing.
14. Light candles in a pentagram around your terminal before starting.
15. Ask around for a spare disk. Offer $2. Keep asking until someone agrees. Then, pull a disk out of your fly and say, "Oops, I forgot."
16. Every time you press Return and there is processing time required, pray "Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease," and scream "YES!" when it finishes.
17. "DISK FIGHT!!!"
18. Start making out with the person at the terminal next to you (It helps if you know them, but this is also a great way to make new friends).
19. Put a straw in your mouth and put your hands in your pockets. Type by hitting the keys with the straw.
20. If you're sitting in a swivel chair, spin around singing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" whenever there is processing time required.
21. Quietly walk into the computer lab with a Black and Decker chainsaw, rev that baby up, and then walk up to the nearest person and say, "Give me that computer or you'll be feeding my pet crocodile for the next week".
22. Try to stick a Nintendo cartridge into the 3 1/2 disc drive, when it doesn't work, get the supervisor.
23. When you are on an IBM, and when you turn it on, ask loudly where the smiling Apple face is when you turn on one of those.
24. Print out the complete works of Shakespeare, then when its all done (two days later) say that all you wanted was one line.
25. Sit and stare at the screen, biting your nails noisily. After doing this for a while, spit them out at the feet of the person next to you.
26. Stare at the screen, grind your teeth, stop, look at the person next to you. Grind some more. Repeat procedure, making sure you never provoke the person enough to let them blow up, as this releases tension, and it is far more effective to let them linger.
27. If you have long hair, take a typing break, look for split ends, cut them and deposit them on your neighbor's keyboard as you leave.
28. Put a large, gold-framed portrait of the British Royal Family on your desk and loudly proclaim that it inspires you.
29. Come to the lab wearing several layers of socks. Remove shoes and place them of top of the monitor. Remove socks layer by layer and drape them around the monitor. Exclaim sudden haiku about the aesthetic beauty of cotton on plastic.
30. Take the keyboard and sit under the computer. Type up your paper like this. Then go to the lab supervisor and complain about the bad working conditions.
31. Laugh hysterically, shout "You will all perish in flames!!!" and continue working.
32. Bring some dry ice & make it look like your computer is smoking.
33. Assign a musical note to every key (ie. the Delete key is A Flat, the B key is F sharp, etc.). Whenever you hit a key, hum its note loudly. Write an entire paper this way.
34. Attempt to eat your computer's mouse.
35. Borrow someone else's keyboard by reaching over, saying "Excuse me, mind if I borrow this for a sec?", unplugging the keyboard & taking it.
36. Bring in a bunch of magnets and have fun.
37. When doing calculations, pull out an abacus and say that sometimes the old ways are best.
38. Play Pong for hours on the most powerful computer in the lab.
39. Make a loud noise of hitting the same key over and over again until you see that your neighbor is noticing (You can hit the space bar so your fill isn't affected). Then look at your neighbor's keyboard. Hit his/her delete key several times, erasing an entire word. While you do this, ask: "Does *your* delete key work?" Shake your head, and resume hitting the space bar on your keyboard.
Keep doing this until you've deleted about a page of your neighbor's document. Then, suddenly exclaim: "Well, whaddya know? I've been hitting the space bar this whole time. No wonder it wasn't deleting! Ha!" Print out your document and leave.
40. Remove your disk from the drive and hide it. Go to the lab monitor and complain that your computer ate your disk. (For special effects, put some Elmer's Glue on or around the disk drive. Claim that the computer is drooling.)
41. Stare at the person's next to your's screen, look really puzzled, burst out laughing, and say "You did that?" loudly. Keep laughing, grab your stuff and leave, howling as you go.
42. Point at the screen. Chant in a made up language while making elaborate hand gestures for a minute or two. Press return or the mouse, then leap back and yell "COVEEEEERRRRRR!" Peek up from under the table, walk back to the computer and say. "Oh, good. It worked this time," and calmly start to type again.
43. Keep looking at invisible bugs and trying to swat them.
44. See who's online. Send a total stranger a talk request. Talk to them like you've known them all your lives. Hangup before they get a chance to figure out you're a total stranger.
45. Bring an small tape player with a tape of really absurd sound effects. Pretend it's the computer and look really lost.
46. Pull out a pencil. Start writing on the screen. Complain that the lead doesn't work.
47. Come into the computer lab wearing several endangered species of flowers in your hair. Smile incessantly. Type a sentence, then laugh happily, exclaim "You're such a marvel!!", and kiss the screen. Repeat this after every sentence. As your ecstasy mounts, also hug the keyboard. Finally, hug your neighbor, then the computer assistant, and walk out.
48. Run into the computer lab, shout "Armageddon is here!!!!!", then calmly sit down and begin to type.
Note to the profoundly impaired: this list is intended as humor,
and consists mostly of things that you should NOT do. NOT NOT NOT
do. Once more, slowly, d-o-n-'-t d-o t-h-e-s-e t-h-i-n-g-s. If
you do, you're a bad, naughty person. Bad person! Naughty!
Naughty, *bad* person! Ok, now that *that's* out of the way,
without further ado...
1. Post a message asking how to post messages.
2. Lead a tireless crusade for the creation of newsgroups with silly names like alt.my.butt.is.hairy.
3. Put 4 addresses, 5 lines of "Geek Code", 6 ASCII-art bicycles, a PGP key, and your home phone in your signature.
4. Reinvigorate a discussion by switching attributions in followups.
5. Post recipes on rec.pets.cats.
6. Post a compendium of old articles from a thread that died months ago with a title such as "***HAS JOE SMITH FORGOTTEN HIS LIES? ***"
7. Post a 56-part binary MPG file of your dog throwing up to news.answers. Announce that you screwed it up and repeat.
8. On the MST3K groups, ask what happened to Joel.
9. Ask readers of rec.music.misc to post their favorite Zeppelin tune "for a poll".
10. Reacquaint the readers of rec.humor with the "two-strings-go-in-a-bar" joke.
11. Determine a perversion so bizarre or obscure that it doesn't yet have its own sex group.
12. Post your new "War Heroes of India" FAQ to soc.culture.pakistan.
13. Start this week's new AOL virus rumor.
14. Format your posts for 90 columns (or 20).
15. Post to rec.music.misc insisting that "Curt Kobain should leave Pearl Jam since they'll never tour again."
16. Post elaborate conspiracy theories to talk.politics.misc detailing how ATF agents under the control of Chelsea Clinton and Socks have implanted invisible microchips in your head.
17. Fill that empty mailbox, make new friends, delight your postmaster, and selflessly lead others to riches with a few "MAKE MONEY FAST" posts.
18. Attempt to sell your sweaty underwear in alt.clothing.lingerie.
19. Follow up a 200-line post to add only your signature.
20. Crosspost Amiga articles to the Mac and PC newsgroups for a valuable interchange of provocative ideas.
21. Announce a mailing list for Bill Gates' VISA card number.
22. Assume that the entire Usenet hierarchy shares your interest in helping lonely Ukrainian lasses find love.
23. Correct every spelling mistake you encounter, but misspell the word "imbecile" in your followup flames.
24. Flame yourself, and complain to your own postmaster.
25. Ask readers of the Star Trek groups when they last had dates.
26. Followup another person's posts every twelve minutes to accuse them of "obsessing". 27. Followup two dozen of another person's posts to accuse them of harassing you. Send copious e-mail if you're ignored.
28. Followup every post in a newsgroup ranking them on a scale from 1 to 10.
29. Establish your own little Usenet niche by writing a Wink Martindale FAQ.
30. Advise other readers to ftp to 127.0.0.1 for "really cool nudie pics".
31. Post daily word searches to rec.puzzles.
32. Post your trig homework to sci.math and ask the readers to e-mail you the answers, since you "don't read the group".
33. Provoke insightful and productive debates on fresh new topics such as abortion, gun control, the existence of God, penile circumcision, and the relative superiority of Mac or PC operating systems.
34. Start pointless debates over topics such as whether Whoopi Goldberg has eyebrows, what happens when you cross the International Dateline, and whether the bad guy in Popeye cartoons was named "Bluto" or "Brutus".
35. Maintain a high-level of constructive decorum by addressingsomeone with whom you disagree as "monkey boy".
36. Demand that others cease using the letter e, as you find it "dply offnsiv".
37. Post to alt.folklore.urban that this guy that a friend of your uncle's ex-girlfriend's boss knew received the donated heart of River Phoenix.
38. Relentlessly inform the readers of groups such as rec.pets.iguanas or sci.agriculture of your UFO, JFK, OJ, NRA, NSA, Nutrasweet, and Azeri genocide theories. Relate them all to sunspot activity and ancient astronauts.
39. Post instructions telling other readers how to put you in their killfile.
40. Post whining, misspelled, and vaguely creepy personal ads in wildly inappropriate newsgroups, and followup to berate the readers for not responding.
41. Announce that a particular site has opened up a new combination OJ Jury Info/Homemade Bombs/Kiddie Porn/Scientology Documents/Computer Subliminal Hypnosis ftp archive.
42. Construct a device that lets your pets post to Usenet by pawing or pecking a feeder bar.
43. Post the Niemann Marcus cookie recipe to rec.food.recipes.
44. Eliminate nearly all meaningful traffic on a newsgroup for weeks by challenging its readership to come up with as many synonyms as possible for the word vomit.
45. Accuse other posters of being AI experiments, Perl scripts, or Emacs macros.
46. Claim that you can see "hidden images" in another person's posting when you cross your eyes.
47. Ask Austrian readers about kangaroos.
48. Ask Australian readers about alpine skiing.
49. Include Rush lyrics or Rush quotes in all your posts.
50. Accuse female posters of being male.
51. Make an anonymous posting accusing others of cowardice.
52. Accuse a fellow AOL or Prodigy subscriber of being a "newbie" because their 3 months on the net are dwarfed by your own span of 4.
53. Insist that anyone objecting to your compulsive fascination with consuming the flesh of strangled disabled minors is "judgemental".
54. If you've grown tired of typing, effectively end a thread by accusing others of being Nazis.
55. Ask readers of soc.culture.nordic whether the Swedish Chef has a Sampo.
56. Write and regularly post a FAQ about yourself.
57. Post graphic descriptions of your bowel movements, genital sores, and various suppurating wounds to alt.tasteless.
58. Ask readers of sci.med for urgent, step-by-step instructions on removing arrows, or inquire why all your extremities have turned dark purple.
59. Insist that there's no such state in the U.S. as "New Mexico".
60. Post only in Esperanto.
61. Claim a copyright on the word "Usenet", and followup with a bill all posts you encounter that contain it.
62. Sell "posting permits" in news.announce.newusers.
63. Post single-part text messages in MIME format.
64. Ask the readers of rec.sewing whether any of them want to be the drummer for your new band, "Death Monkeys".
65. Claim to be an amorous highschool cheerleader while posting under a name such as "Robert´Bradley Smith, Jr."
66. In the spirit of purest optimism, ask other readers to followup with their account passwords and credit card numbers.
67. Why use a single question mark or exclamation point when you can use at least thirty?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
68. List a cute organization name in your header, such as "Canadians for Global Warming".
69. Insult a poster from another nation based on his country's performance in World War II.
70. Post vitriolic, frothing, hair-trigger flames in polite newsgroups, as if you were a testosterone-crazed adolescent debating which shotgun is superior in alt.games.doom.
71. Followup spam posts in the belief that the originator, who probably follows the group closely and is desperately curious about receiving feedback, will see your impassioned plea and be so moved by your lengthy, point-by-point indictment of their conduct that they pledge to desist from such activity for all time.
72. Regardless of its accuracy, followup another post with the line "BZZZT! Wrong answer!" or "Hello! McFly!"
73. Use a 120-line ASCII graphic of Spock as your signature.
74. Post to soc.culture.women asking "what's your favorite brand of oven mitt, little ladies?"
75. Post to news.annnounce.newusers asking if there are any nurses in Portland willing to spank you. Followup with an apology. Followup again with the original article.
76. Post with a newsreader that replaces punctuation marks with strange, non-ASCII characters.
77. Steer all debates to your own pet subjects of expertise, regardless of their relevance.
78. Make it clear from your postings that you've a profound inability to distinguish "The X Files" as fiction.
79. Insist that another poster is really Serdar Argic or Kibo.
80. Post 20-part encoded image files from NASA ftp archives that you claim show clear evidence of alien settlements.
81. Insinuate vague conspiracies in all your posts.
82. Spam post alarming ten-year-old files about Congressional bills to tax modem usage "in the name of freedom".
83. Claim that unidentified government agencies are censoring your posts.
84. Ask readers to collect aluminum pop-tops on behalf of Craig Shergold.
85. Ask readers of comp.sci.algorithms how to get Super Mario to the castle.
86. POST IN ALL CAPS
87. omit all punctuation
88. omitallspaces
89. DOALLTHREEOFTHEABOVE
90. Ask the readers of alt.current-events.net-abuse where to purchase Cantor and Siegel's book.
91. Dispense essential and priceless financial advice, such as the assertion that no one is legally required to pay taxes.
92. Compose an exhaustively researched 15-part FAQ detailing the favorite movie musicals of relatives of the Deep Space Nine cast. Post it weekly in its entirety.
93. Strive to ensure that no two consecutive words in your posts are correctly spelled.
94. Enrich the lives of thousands with a thoughtful and impassioned debate on the topic "AOL users suck".