Day: October 17, 2009

An astronomer for lunch

An astronomer, taking a holiday from a commercial satellite company is on an expedition to Africa to observe a total eclipse of the sun, which will only be observable there, when he’s captured by cannibals. The eclipse is due the next day around noon. To gain his freedom he plans to pose as a god and threaten to extinguish the sun if he’s not released, but the timing has to be just right. So, in the few words of the cannibals’ tongue that he knows, he asks his guard what time they plan to kill him.

The guard answers, “Tradition has it that captives are to be killed when the sun reaches the highest point in the sky on the day after their capture so that they may be cooked and ready to be served for the evening meal“.

“Great”, the astronomer replies.

The guard continues, “But because everyone’s so excited about it, in your case we’re going to wait until after the eclipse.”

Shopping for a husband

A store that sells husbands has just opened where a woman may go to choose a husband from among many men. The store is composed of 6 floors, and the men increase in positive attributes as the shopper ascends the flights.

There is, however, a catch. As you open the door to any floor you may choose a man from that floor, but if you go up a floor, you cannot go back down except to exit the building.

So a woman goes to the shopping center to find a husband.

On the first floor the sign on the door reads:

Floor 1 – These men have jobs.

The woman reads the sign and says to herself, “Well, that’s better than my last boyfriend, but I wonder what’s further up?” So up she goes.

The second floor sign reads:

Floor 2 – These men have jobs and love kids.

The woman remarks to herself, “That’s great, but I wonder what’s further up?” And up she goes again.

The third floor sign reads:

Floor 3 – These men have jobs, love kids and are extremely good looking, especially when wearing men’s sunglasses.

“Hmmm, better” she says. “But I wonder what’s upstairs?”

The fourth floor sign reads:

Floor 4 – These men have jobs, love kids, are extremely good looking and help with the housework.

“Wow!” exclaims the woman, “very tempting. BUT, there must be more further up!” And again she heads up another flight.

The fifth floor sign reads:

Floor 5 – These men have jobs, love kids, are extremely good looking, help with the housework and have a strong romantic streak.

“Oh, mercy me! But just think… what must be awaiting me further on?” So up to the sixth floor she goes.

The sixth floor sign reads:

Floor 6 – You are visitor 6,875,953,012 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please.

We’re backed up!

Back in the 70s, disk drives were about the size of washing machines. One type had two disk platters: one was embedded and could not be removed except by a technician, and the other was in a large plastic shell and was easily removable. Each platter held five megabytes. Yes, that’s right: five whole megabytes, an insignificant amount of space now but humongous then.

Many used this dual platter drive to keep their operating system and database on the embedded one, and at the end of the day they’d copy it to the removable one. Then they would open the disk drive, take out the removable disk, store it in a safe, insert a new removable disk, and close the drive. Then they’d be ready for business the next day.

We got a call one morning from a customer when I used to work for an Orange County computer support firm. He couldn’t boot. One of the techs went over to have a look and found that the embedded disk had a bad sector. It would need to be replaced.

  • Technician: “The embedded disk is bad. Are you backed up?”
  • Customer: “Yes!”

So the technician replaced the disk, snapped the old one in half so it would fit in the garbage can, and threw it away.

  • Technician: “I’m done — she’s all yours.”
  • Customer: (after playing with the system a bit) “I can’t find any of my data.”
  • Technician: “Right — you’ll have to restore it.”
  • Customer: “What does ‘restore’ mean?”
  • Technician: “Uh, it means you have to RESTORE it from a copy.”
  • Customer: “Copy? What copy?”
  • Technician: “The one you make every night.”
  • Customer: “WE DON’T HAVE A COPY!!!”
  • Technician: “When I asked you if you were backed up, you said YES!”
  • Customer: “We ARE backed up! We’re SO backed up that we haven’t had time to make any recovery disks!”