A linguistics professor was lecturing to his class one day. “In English,” he said, “A double negative forms a positive. It’s a 2-factor case that is not always true however.”
“In some languages, “, he continued,”, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative.”
A voice from the back of the room piped up, ‘Yeah, right.’
This technician’s company uses satellite communications …
… to send and receive messages from tugboats moving barges up and down major rivers. Each day, by 2 p.m., the tugboats send data on the day’s activities to the company’s traffic department.
At least that’s how it’s supposed to work.
“I got a call from our traffic department saying they only got data from about half the boats, and would I check on it?” technician says.
He calls the satellite communications company, but the technician there says there’s no problem on his end.
Meanwhile, the traffic department calls again — they’re still not getting messages from the missing boats.
“So I called the boats and got them to re-send the messages, and they came through,” says our tech. “The problem apparently cleared itself up.”
But he isn’t quite satisfied. “I called the satellite company back to see what happened, and what we could do if the problem recurred.”
Satellite company’s technician doesn’t know what happened and doesn’t have any way of finding out. “In order to track the messages, we would need an identification number from the message,” he tells our tech.
We could find out those numbers eventually, he figures.
“Also, the identification numbers are recycled every half hour,” tech continues.
“So I need to get you the identification number within that time?” he asks.
“Right”, says the satellite tech.
“So to summarize,” says our tech glumly, “we need to give you the identification numbers of the messages we haven’t received, within half an hour of not receiving them?”
Crazy!
Jack was a COBOL programmer in the mid to late 1990s. After years of being taken for granted and treated as a technological dinosaur by all the Client/Server programmers, PC repair technicians and website developers, he was finally getting some respect. He’d become a private consultant specializing in Year 2000 conversions.
Several years of this relentless, mind-numbing work had taken its toll on Jack. He began having anxiety dreams about the Year 2000. All he could think about was how he could avoid the year 2000 and all that came with it.
Jack decided to contact a company that specialized in cryogenics. He made a deal to have himself frozen until March 15th, 2000. The next thing he would know is he’d wake up in the year 2000; after the New Year celebrations and computer debacles; after the leap day. Nothing else to worry about except getting on with his life.
He was put into his cryogenic receptacle, the technicians set the revive date, he was given injections to slow his heartbeat to a bare minimum, and that was that.
The next thing that Jack saw was an enormous and very modern room filled with excited people. They were all shouting “I can’t believe it!” and “It’s a miracle” and “He’s alive!”. There were cameras (unlike any he’d ever seen) and equipment that looked like it came out of a science fiction movie.
Someone who was obviously a spokesperson for the group stepped forward. Jack couldn’t contain his enthusiasm. “Is it over?” he asked. “Is the year 2000 already here? Are all the millennial parties and promotions and crises all over and done with?”
The spokesman explained that there had been a problem with the programming of the timer on Jack’s cryogenic receptacle, it hadn’t been year 2000 compliant. It was actually eight thousand years later, not the year 2000. Technology had advanced to such a degree that everyone had virtual reality interfaces which allowed them to contact anyone else on the planet.
“That sounds terrific,” said Jack. “But I’m curious. Why is everybody so interested in me?”
“Well,” said the spokesman. “The year 10000 is just around the corner, and it says in your files that you know COBOL”.
A young bride and groom-to-be had just selected the wedding ring and picked a special one from a shop specialising in tungsten rings. As the girl admired the plain tungsten and diamond band, she suddenly looked concerned.
“Tell me,” she asked the elderly salesman, “is there anything special I’ll have to do to take care of this ring?”
With a fatherly smile, the salesman said, “One of the best ways to protect a wedding ring is to dip it in dishwater three times a day.”
