You know you are addicted to the Internet when...

You kiss your girlfriend's home page.

Your bookmark takes 15 minutes to scroll from top to bottom.

Your eyeglasses have a web site burned in on them.

All your daydreaming is preoccupied with getting a faster \par connection to the net: 28.8...ISDN...cable modem...T1...T3.

And even your night dreams are in HTML.

You turn off your modem and get this awful empty feeling, like you just pulled the plug on a loved one.

You refer to going to the bathroom as downloading.

You start introducing yourself as "Jim at I-I-Net dot net dot au

Your heart races faster and beats irregularly each time you see a new WWW site address in print or on TV, even though you've never had heart problems before.

You step out of your room and realize that your parents have moved and you don't have a clue when it happened.

You turn on your intercom when leaving the room so you can hear if new e-mail arrives.

Your wife drapes a blond wig over your monitor to remind you of what she looks like.

All of your friends have an @ in their names.

When looking at a pageful of someone else's links, you notice all of them are already highlighted in purple.

Your dog has its own home page.

You can't call your mother...she doesn't have a modem.

You check your mail. It says "no new messages." So you check it again.

Your phone bill comes to your doorstep in a box.

You code your homework in HTML and give your instructor the URL.

You don't know the sex of three of your closest friends, because they have neutral nicknames and you never bothered to ask.

Your husband tells you he's had the beard for 2 months.

You wake up at 3 a.m. to go to the bathroom and stop and check your e-mail on the way back to bed.

You tell the kids they can't use the computer because "Daddy's got work to do" and you don't even have a job.

You buy a Captain Kirk chair with a built-in keyboard and mouse.

Your wife makes a new rule: "The computer cannot come to bed."

You get a tattoo that says "This body best viewed with Netscape 2.01or higher."

You never have to deal with busy signals when calling your ISP...because you never log off.

The last girl you picked up was only a jpeg.

You ask a plumber how much it would cost to replace the chair in front of your computer with a toilet.

Your wife says communication is important in a marriage...so you buy another computer and install a second phone line so the two of you can chat.

As your car crashes through the guardrail on a mountain road, your first instinct is to search for the "back" button.

At the time of writing, Microsoft's slogan for Windows 95 was "Where do you want to go today?" These are some alternative and probably more truthful ad slogans for use with Windows.11. My lastest screen-saver: Curtains for Windows.

Dear [insert screen name here] (if that is your real name),

I regret to inform you that, under a plan for the periodic removal of
unpleasantness from my life, I must terminate our online affair. This
termination takes effect immediately, but only because I could not make it
retroactive. Below, you will find the reasons for this action:

_____ While our cybersex sessions were, for the most part,competent, your
constant use of "brb gotta pee" took some of the romance out of it.

_____ Your use of the term "the ol' cyber ball and chain" to refer to me
has hurt my feelings.

_____ I've found another lover, one who knows the importance of
punctuation.

_____ Certain errors during cyber sessions indicate that you were less
than honest:

_____ You typed: "I remove my bra" when you claimed to be a man.

_____ You typed: "I enter you" when you claimed to be a woman.

_____ You typed your own name at the end.

_____ Your supposedly original scenario, it turns out, is simply page 56
of a Jackie Collins novel.

_____ Your repeated references to animals suggest that you are hiding
something from me.

_____ Your refusal to cyber until I submitted a recent AIDS test suggests
a degree of paranoia that is, simply put, unhealthy.

_____ I finally opened the file with your __ gif __ jpg __ police record.

_____ I have no choice but to comply with the court orders unless I wish
to face stalking charges.

_____ Mommie says I need to spend less time on the computer.

_____ Your mommie called me and yelled at me because of all the time
you're spending on the computer.

_____ I have established a more personal relationship with the Lord, and I
would like to talk to you in great detail about what you can do to
ensure a place in Heaven when the endtimes come. They are closer than
you think.

_____ The fact that you BCC all your love letters to me leaves me feeling
less than special. As in cyber cheating.

_____ I finally read your profile, and the fact that you are only 14
violates the terms of my parole.

_____ I am entering the witness protection program.

Please understand, __ [screen name] and/or __ you misbegotten son of a
bitch__ sir/madam __ mom/dad [for use in West Virginia], that there is
nothing personal in this. We've simply grown apart.

Any additional correspondence you may direct to my attorney,

__ Sincerely,

__ Gleefully,

__ I have to go before the warden calls "lights out,"

__ Uh oh, my Real Life mate is coming up the stairs,

__ Good riddance,

[Name or alias]

El Explicito - "I tried the thing, ya know, and it worked, ya know, but
now it doesn't, ya know?"

Advantages: Provides interesting communication challenges.

Disadvantages: So do chimps.

Symptoms: Complete inability to use proper nouns

Real Case: One user walked up to a certain Armenian pod manager and said,
"I can't get what I want!" The pod manager leaned back, put his hands on
his belt-buckle, and said, "Well, ma'am, you've come to the right place."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mad Bomber - "Well, I hit ALT-f6, shift-f8, CNTRL-f10, f4, and f9, and now
it looks all weird."

Advantages: Will try to find own solution to problems.

Disadvantages: User might have translated document to Navajo without
meaning to.

Symptoms: More than six stopped jobs in UNIX, a 2:1 code-to-letter ratio
in WordPerfect

Real Case: One user came in complaining that his WordPerfect document was
underlined. When I used reveal codes on it, I found that he'd set and
unset underline more than fifty times in his document.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Frying Pan/Fire Tactician - "It didn't work with the data set we had, so I
fed in my aunt's recipe for key lime pie."

Advantages: Will usually fix error.

Disadvantages: 'Fix' is defined VERY loosely here.

Symptoms: A tendency to delete lines that get errors instead of fixing
them.

Real Case: One user complained that their program executed, but didn't do
anything. The scon looked at it for twenty minutes before realizing that
they'd commented out EVERY LINE. The user said, "Well, that was the only
way I could get it to compile."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shaman - "Last week, when the moon was full, the clouds were thick, and
formahaut was above the horizon, I typed f77, and lo, it did compile."

Advantages: Gives insight into primitive mythology.

Disadvantages: Few scon are anthropology majors.

Symptoms: Frequent questions about irrelevant objects.

Real Case: One user complained that all information on one of their disks
got erased (as Norton Utilities showed nothing but empty sectors, I
suspect nothing had ever been on it). Reasoning that the deleted
information went *somewhere*, they wouldn't shut up until the scon checked
four different disks for the missing information.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

X-user - "Will you look at those. . .um, that resolution, quite
impressive, really."

Advantages: Using the cutting-edge in graphics technology.

Disadvantages: Has little or no idea how to use the cutting-edge in
graphics technology.

Symptoms: Fuzzy hands, blindness

Real Case: When I was off duty, two users sat down in front of me at DEC
station 5000/200s that systems was reconfiguring. I suppressed my laughter
while, for twenty minutes, they sat down and did their best to act like
they were doing exactly what they wanted to do, even though they couldn't
log in.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Miracle Worker - "But it read a file from it yesterday!" 'Sir, at a guess,
this disk has been swallowed and regurgitated.' "But I did that a month
ago, and it read a file from it yesterday!"

Advantages: Apparently has remarkable luck when you aren't around.

Disadvantages: People complain when scon actually use the word
'horse-puckey'.

Symptoms: Loses all ability to do impossible when you're around. Must be
the kryptonite in your pocket.

Real Case: At least three users have claimed that they've loaded IBM
WordPerfect from Macintosh disks.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Taskmaster - "Well, this is a file in MacWrite. Do you know how I can
upload it to MUSIC, transfer it over to UNIX from there, download it onto
an IBM, convert it to WordPerfect, and put it in three-column format?"

Advantages: Bold new challenges.

Disadvantages: Makes one wish to be a garbage collector.

Symptoms: An inability to keep quiet. Strong tendencies to make machines
do things they don't want to do.

Real Case: One user tried to get a scon to find out what another person's
E-mail address was even though the user didn't know his target's home
system, account name, or real name.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Maestro - "Well, first I sat down, like this. Then I logged on, like this,
and after that, I typed in my password, like this, and after that I edited
my file, like this, and after that I went to this line here, like this,
and after that I picked my nose, like this."

Advantages: Willing to show you exactly what they did to get an error.

Disadvantages: For as long as five or six hours.

Symptoms: Selective deafness to the phrases, "Right, right, okay, but what
was the ERROR?", and a strong fondness for the phrase, "Well, I'm getting
to that."

Real Case: I once had to spend half an hour looking over a user's shoulder
while they continuously retrieved a document into itself and denied that
they did it (the user was complaining that their document was 87 copies of
the same thing).

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Princess (unfair, perhaps, as these tend, overwhelmingly, to be males) "I
need a Mac, and someone's got the one I like reserved, would you please
garrote him and put him in the paper recycling bin?"

Advantages: Flatters you with their high standards for your service.

Disadvantages: Impresses you with their obliviousness to other people on
this planet.

Symptoms: Inability to communicate except by complaining.

Real Case: One asked a scon to remove the message of the day because he
(the user) didn't like it.

Why is a woman different from a PC?

A woman won't accept a 3" floppy.

Submitted by Calamjo
Edited by Curtis and Christine

A man walking down the beach, sees a old bottle in the sand and begins to play kick-the-bottle to amuse himself. After a while he picks it up, and a pissed off genie emerges.

She says "normally I grant 3 wishes, but in your case, you son of a bitch, I am going to grant only 1".

He thinks a minute and says - "OK, I want to wake up with 3 women in my bed".

She says "So be it!", and disappears back into the bottle.

Next morning, he wakes up with Lorena Bobbitt, Tonya Harding and Hilary Clinton. He has no penis, a broken leg, and no health insurance!

Why does Michael Jackson like twenty-nine year olds?
Because there are twenty of them.

****GM vs MICROSOFT***** At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: ''If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon.''

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating (by Mr Welch himself):

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have tobuy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, andyou would just accept this, restart and drive on.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn, would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought ''Car95'' or ''CarNT.'' But then you would have to buy more seats.

6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five per cent of the roads.

7. The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single ''general car default'' warning light.

8. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.

9. The airbag system would say ''Are you sure?'' before going off.

10. Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grab hold of the radio antenna.

11. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50% or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.

12. Every time GM introduced a new model car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

13. You'd press the ''start'' button to shut off the engine.