Nerd Season
A truck driver, hauling a tractor-trailer load
of computers, stops for a beer. As he approaches
the bar, he sees a big sign on the door that
says, "COMPUTER NERDS NOT ALLOWED - ENTER AT
YOUR OWN RISK!" He enters and sits down.
The bartender comes over to him, sniffs, and
says that he smells kind of nerdy. He then asks
him what he does for a living. The truck driver
explains to him that he drives a truck, and the
smell is just from the computers he is hauling.
The bartender serves him a beer and says, "OK,
truck drivers aren't nerds."
As he is sipping his beer, a skinny guy walks in
wearing a pair of glasses with tape around the
middle, a pocket protector with twelve kinds of
pens and pencils, and a belt that is at least a
foot too long. The bartender, without saying a
word, pulls out a shotgun and blows the guy
away. The truck driver asks him why he did that.
The bartender replied, "Don't worry. The
computer nerds are in season because they are
overpopulating Silicon Valley. You don't even
need a license."
So the truck driver finishes his beer, gets back
in his truck, and heads for the freeway.
Suddenly, he veers to avoid an accident, and the
load shifts. The back door breaks open and
computers spill out all over the road. He jumps
out and sees a crowd already forming, snatching
up all of the computers. The scavengers are
comprised of engineers, accountants and
programmers - computer geeks. Each of them
wearing the nerdiest clothes he has ever seen.
He can't let them steal his whole load. So
remembering what happened in the bar, he pulls
out his gun and starts blasting away, killing
several of them instantly. A highway patrol
officer comes zooming up and jumps out of the
car screaming at him to stop.
The truck driver said, "What's wrong? I thought
computer nerds were in season."
"Well, sure," says the patrolman, "But you can't
bait 'em!"
Is It Better To Be A Jock Or A Nerd?
The answer to the eternal question "Is it better
to be a jock or a nerd"?
Michael Jordan made over $300,000 a game. That
equals $10,000 a minute, at an average of 30
minutes per game.
With $40 million in endorsements, he made
$178,100 a day, working or not.
If he sleeps 7 hours a night, he makes $52,000
every night while visions of sugarplums dance in
his head.
If he goes to see a movie, it'll cost him $9.50,
but he'll make $18,550 while he's there.
If he decides to have a 5 minute egg, he'll make
$618 while boiling it.
He makes $7,415/hr more than minimum wage.
He'd make $3,710 while watching each episode of
Friends.
If he wanted to save up for a new Acura SLX
(about $90,000) it would take him a whole 12
hours.
If someone were to hand him his salary and
endorsement money, they would have to do it at
the rate of $2.00 every second.
He'd probably pay around $200 for a nice round
of golf, but will be reimbursed around $30,000
during that round.
Assuming he puts the federal maximum of 15% of
his income into a tax deferred account (401k),
he will hit the federal cap of $9500 at 8:30
a.m. on January 1st.
If you were given a penny for every 10 dollars
he made, you'd be living comfortably at $65,000
a year.
He'd make about $19.60 while watching the 100
meter dash in the Olympics.
He'd make about $15,600 during the Boston
Marathon.
While the common person is spending about $20
for a meal in his trendy Chicago restaurant,
he'd pull in about $5600.
In his last year, he made more than twice as
much as all U.S. past presidents for all of
their terms combined.
... However...
... If Jordan saves 100% of his income for the
next 250 years, he'll still have less than Bill
Gates has today.
Game over. Nerd wins
How To Get A Life
It's never easy to overcome innate nerdity, a
serious Internet addiction, or a hard-core
computer gaming habit, but for a geek, trying usually isn't
as painful as kidney stones. Here's how:
Let go of the mouse.
Turn off the computer.
Play a game of solitaire with a real deck of
cards.
Eat something other than taco chips.
Fart without recording it and putting it up your
Web page.
Get some sleep in bed rather than on your
keyboard.
Next time you wake up in the middle of the night
to go to the bathroom, don't tell everyone on
your ICQ list about it.
Open a window without turning your computer back
on (yes, it is possible). Very gradually expose
your eyes to increasingly bright light so as to
avoid damage or permanent sun blindness.
When you feel prepared for a massive dose of
non-CRT radiation, put on welding goggles and go
outside.
If you see someone, say "Hi" to them instead of
trying to make the modem connect sound.
Visit a friend that you haven't spoken to in
years because they don't have an email address.
Have ".com" officially removed from behind your
name.
Go on a date with someone you didn't meet in a
chat room.
How to Determine if 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 can no longer sit 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 minutes 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
wrist-rest for her 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 that 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 screwdrivers 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 above jokes. 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 email these jokes 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.
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