Information Technology/Computer Jokes
Contributed by IST/CMPSC Students

• Corporate Lesson Number One: A crow was sitting on a tree, doing nothing all day. A small rabbit saw the crow, and asked him, “Can I also sit like you and do nothing all day long?” The crow answered: “Sure, why not.” So the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow and rested. All of a sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it. Moral of the story: To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up.

• There was once a COBOL programmer in the mid to late 1990s. For the sake of this story, we’ll call him Jack.  After years of being taken for granted and treated as a technological dinosaur by all the UNIX programmers and Client/Server programmers and website developers, Jack was finally getting some respect. He’d become a private consultant specializing in Year 2000 conversions.  He was working short-term assignments for prestige companies, traveling all over the world on different assignments. He was working 70 and 80 and even 90 hour weeks, but it was worth it.

  Several years of this relentless, mind-numbing work had taken its toll on Jack. He had problems sleeping and began having anxiety dreams about the Year 2000. It had reached a point where even the thought of the year 2000 made him nearly violent. He must have suffered some sort of breakdown, because 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. This was very expensive process and totally automated. He was thrilled. 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. “It is over?” he asked. “Is 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. But the spokesman told Jack that he shouldn’t get excited; someone important wanted to speak to him.

  Suddenly a wall-sized projection screen displayed the image of a man that looked very much like Bill Gates.  This man was Prime Minister of Earth. He told Jack not to be upset. That this was a wonderful time to be alive.  That there was world peace and no more starvation.  That the space program had been reinstated and there were colonies on the moon and on Mars. That technology had advanced to such a degree that everyone had virtual reality interfaces which allowed them to contact anyone else on the planet, or to watch any entertainment, or to hear any music recorded anywhere.

  “That sounds terrific,” said Jack. “But I’m curious. Why is everybody so interested in me?”

  “Well,” said the Prime Minister. “The year 10000 is just around the corner, and it says in your files that you know COBOL.”

   

• Twas The Night Before Release Date

  Twas the night before release date and all through the house
  not a program was working not even a browse.
  The programmers hung by their cubes in despair
  with hopes that a miracle soon would be there.
  The users were nestled all snug in their beds
  while visions of productivity danced in their heads.
  When out in the lobby there arose such a clatter
  I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter.
  And what to my wondering eyes did appear
  but "Superprogrammer" with a six-pack of beer.
  His resume glowed with experience so rare,
  he turned out code with temerity and flair.
  More rapid than eagles his programs they came.
  He whistled and shouted and called them by name.
  "On menu! on report! on GUI and delete!
  On monitor! on batch job! on function complete!"
  His eyes were glazed over, fingers nimble and lean
  from weekends and nights spent in front of a screen.
  A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
  soon made it clear we had nothing to dread.
  He spoke not a word but went straight to his work
  turning specs into code - this man was no jerk!
  And after laying his finger upon the enter key
  the software came up and worked perfectly.
  The menus they menued, the deletes they deleted
  the reports they reported and the batch jobs completed.
  He tested each whistle and tested each bell
  with nary a core dump and all had gone well.
  The software was finished, the tests were concluded -
  even the last-minute requests were included.
  Then the customer exclaimed with a snarl and a taunt,
  "It's just what we asked for, but not what we want!"

• Millennium Pie (with apologies to Don McLean)

  A long, long time ago... I can still remember how
  Computers used to make me smile.
  And I knew if I had my chance,
  That I could make electrons dance,
  And maybe I'd be happy for a while.

  But January made me shiver,
  it chilled me deep down in my liver,
  Bad news I'd collected...
  I couldn't get connected.

  I can't remember back that day
  When I first knew the Y2K
  But something touched me anyway,
  The day computers died.

  So, ...Bye, bye to the next digit of Pi
  Ran my PC on some DC but the voltage was dry
  And good ol' boys were sending e-mail replies
  Saying this will be the day I retire
  this will be the day I retire

  Can you write in C plus plus ?
  And do you have faith in your local bus
  If the driver tells you so ?

  Do you believe in Compaq's goals
  Can software save your mortal soul
  And can you teach me how to type real slow ?

  Well I thought that you were prepared
  'Cause your memo said you weren't impaired
  Your stationery's swell
  But you can go to hell

  I was a lonely teenage Unix hack
  With an incantation and a modem jack
  but I knew the cat had left the sack
  The day computers died
  I started singin'...

  Bye, bye to the next digit of Pi
  Ran my PC on some DC but the voltage was dry
  And good ol' boys were sending e-mail replies
  Saying this will be the day I retire
  this will be the day I retire

  Now for 10 years we've ignored the threat
  And we haven't solved the problem yet
  But that's not how it used to be

  When the luddites read for the king and queen
  with a light they filled with kerosene
  And some manuals they stole from you and me

  And while Bill Gates was looking pleased
  Time stole his monopolies
  The courtroom was adjourned
  No verdict was returned

  While Apple tried a color scheme
  The engineers returned to steam
  And we had purges of their dreams
  The day computers died
  We were singin'

  Bye, bye to the next digit of Pi
  Ran my PC on some DC but the voltage was dry
  And good ol' boys were sending e-mail replies
  Saying this will be the day I retire
  this will be the day I retire

  Intel inside in an iron smelter
  The food leftover from my fallout shelter
  Twinkies old and aging fast
  I'd rather eat the grass

  Q and A tried for a system crash
  With the tester on the sidelines in a cast

   Now the timeshare net was running Doom
  While mainframes played a marching tune
  We all tried to log in
  Oh, but we never could begin

  'Cause Cobol tried to take the field,
  And Hollerith refused to yield.
  Do you recall what was revealed,
  The day computers died?
  We started singing

  Bye, bye to the next digit of Pi
  Ran my PC on some DC but the voltage was dry
  And good ol' boys were sending e-mail replies
  Saying this will be the day I retire
  this will be the day I retire

  There we were all in a state
  A generation- really late
  With no time left to start again

  So come on mouse be nimble, mouse be quick
  Don't let my spreadsheet data stick
  'Cause data is the devil's only friend.

  As I watched him on my screen
  My hands and face were drenched in steam
  No angel born in hell
  Could run that stupid shell

  And as the ball climbed high into the night
  To call the sacrificial night
  I saw Dick Clark laughing with delight
  the day computers died.

  I met a girl with a cell phone
  And I asked her for a dial tone
  But she just smiled and turned away

  I went down to the software store
  Where I'd seen computers years before
  But the man there said the games there wouldn't play

  And in the streets the children screamed
  The lovers cried and the poets dreamed
  their interface was spoken
  The Internet was broken

  And the three things I connect to most
  The Website, Lan and the Network host
  Every single one was toast
  The day computers died
  They were singin'

  Bye, bye to the next digit of Pi
  Ran my PC on some DC but the voltage was dry
  And good ol' boys were sending e-mail replies
  Saying this will be the day I retire
  this will be the day I retire

• One of our servers crashed. I was watching our new system administrator trying to restore it. He inserted a CD and needed to type a path name to a directory named "i386." He started to type it and paused, asking me "Where's the key for that line thing?" I asked what he was talking about, and he said, "You know, that one that looks like an upside-down exclamation mark." I replied, "You mean the letter 'i'?" and he said, "Yeah, that's it!"

• A helicopter was flying around above Seattle yesterday when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft's electronic navigation and communications equipment. Due to the clouds and haze, the pilot could not determine the helicopter's position and course to steer to the airport. The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, drew a handwritten sign, and held it in the helicopter's window. The pilot's sign said "WHERE AM I?" in large letters. People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign, and held it in a building window. Their sign said "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER." The pilot smiled, waved, looked at his map, determined the course to steer to SEATAC airport, and landed safely. After they were on the ground, the co-pilot asked the pilot how the "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER" sign helped determine their position. The pilot responded "I knew that had to be the MICROSOFT building because, similar to their help-lines, they gave me a technically correct but completely useless answer."

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Larry Newcomer (Updated February 15, 2000 )