Archive for June, 2008

What’s the difference

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

What’s the difference between mechanical engineers and civil engineers?
Mechanical engineers build weapons.
Civil engineers build targets.

A mathmatician, a physicist, and an engineer

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

A mathmatician, a physicist, and an engineer were all given a red rubber ball
and told to find the volume.
The mathmatician carefully measured the diameter and evaluated a triple
integral.
The physicist filled a beaker with water, put the ball in the water,
and measured the total displacement.
The engineer looked up the model and serial numbers in his red-rubber-ball
table.

A communication technician

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

A communication technician drafted by the army was at a firing range. At the
range, he was given some instruction, a rifle and 50 rounds. He fired several
shots at the target. The report came from the target area that all attempts had
completely missed the target.

The technician looked at his weapon, and then at the target. He looked at the
weapon again, and then at the target again. He then put his finger over the end
of the rifle barrel and squeezed the trigger with his other hand. The end of his
finger was blown off, whereupon he yelled toward the target area.

All objects in the world

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

All objects in the world can be placed into one of two categories:

- things that need to be fixed,
- things that will need to be fixed after you’ve had a few minutes to play
with them.

No Refills

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

A distraught patient phoned her doctor’s office. “Is it true”, the woman
wanted to know, “that the medication you prescribed has to be taken for the rest
of my life?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.” The doctor told her.

There was a moment of silence before the woman continued, “I’m wondering,
then, just how serious my condition is. This prescription is marked ‘NO
REFILLS.’”

Efficiency

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

I took some clients out to dinner last week, and I noticed a spoon in the
shirt pocket of our waiter as he handed us the menus. It seemed a little odd,
but I dismissed it as a random thing. Until our busboy came with water and
tableware; he too, sported a spoon in his breast pocket. I looked around the
room, and all the waiters and busboys had spoons in their pockets. When our
waiter returned to take our order, I just had to ask, “Why the spoons?”

“Well,” he explained, “our parent company recently hired some Andersen
Consulting efficiency experts to review all our procedures, and after months of
statistical analyses, they concluded that our patrons drop spoons on the floor
73% more often than any other utensil, at a frequency of 3 spoons per hour per
workstation. By preparing our workers for this contingency in advance, we can
cut our trips to the kitchen down and save time… nearly 1.5 extra man-hours
per shift.” Just as he concluded, a “ch-ching” came from the table behind him,
and he quickly replaced the fallen spoon with the one from his pocket.”I’ll grab
another spoon the next time I’m in the kitchen instead of making a special
trip,” he proudly explained.

I was impressed. “Thanks, I had to ask.”

“No problem,” he answered. Then he continued to take our orders. As the
members of our dinner party took their turns, my eyes darted back and forth from
each person ordering and my menu. That’s when, out of the corner of my eye, I
spotted a thin black thread protruding from our waiter’s fly. Again, I dismissed
it; yet I had to scan the room and, sure enough, there were other waiters and
busboys with strings hanging out of their trousers. My curiosity overrode
discretion at this point, so before he could leave I had to ask. “Excuse me,
but…uh…why, or what about that string?”

“Oh, yeah,” he began, in a quieter tone, “not many people are that observant.
That same efficiency group found we could save time in the Men’s Room, too.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“You see, by tying a string to the end of our, uh, selves, we can pull it out
at the urinals literally hands-free and thereby eliminate the need to wash our
hands, cutting time spent in the washroom by over 93%!”

“Hey, wait a minute. If the string helps you pull it out, how do you get it
back in?”

“Well,” he whispered, “I don’t know about the other guys, but I use the
spoon.”

Girlfriend

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

Last year, my friend upgraded his GirlFriend 3.1 to GirlFriendPlus1.0
(marketing name: Fiancee1.0).

Recently he upgraded Fiancee1.0 to Wife1.0 and it’s a memory hogger, has taken
all his space; and Wife1.0 must be running before he can do anything. Although
he didn’t ask for them, Wife1.0 came with Plug-Ins such as MotherInLaw and
BrotherInLaw.

Some features I’d like to see in the upcoming GirlFriend4.0.
- A “Don’t remind me again” button
- Minimize button
- Shutdown feature - An install shield feature so that Girlfriend4.0 can be
completely uninstalled if so desired (so you don’t lose cache and other objects)

I tried running Girlfriend 2.0 with Girlfriend 1.0 still installed, they
tried using the same I/O port and conflicted. Then I tried to uninstall
Girlfriend 1.0 but it didn’t have
an uninstall program. I tried to uninstall it by hand, but it put files in my
system directory.

Another thing that sucks — in all versions of Girlfriend that I’ve used is
that it is totally “object orientated” and only supports hardware with gold
plated contacts.

US MILITARY

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

The U.S. military has succeeded in building a computer able to solve any
strategic or tactical problem.

Military leaders are assembled in front of the new machine and instructed to
feed a difficult tactical problem into it. They describe a hypothetical
situation to the computer and then ask the pivotal question: attack or retreat?

The computer hums away for an hour and then comes up with the answer: YES.

The generals look at each other, somewhat stupefied. Finally one of them
submits a second request to the computer: YES WHAT?

Instantly the computer responded: YES SIR.

Top 10 reasons computers must be male

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

10. They have a lot of data but are still clueless.
9. A better model is always just around the corner.
8. They look nice and shiny until you bring them home.
7. It is always necessary to have a backup.
6. They’ll do whatever you say if you push the right buttons.
5. The best part of having either one is the games you can play.
4. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on.
3. The lights are on but nobody’s home.
2. Big power surges knock them out for the night.
1. Size does matter.

Three Engineers

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

There are three engineers in a car; an electrical engineer, a chemical
engineer and a Microsoft engineer. Suddenly the car just stops by the side of
the road, and the three engineers look at each other wondering what could be
wrong. The electrical engineer suggests stripping down the electronics of the
car and trying to trace where a fault might have occurred. The chemical
engineeer, not knowing much about cars, suggests that maybe the fuel is becoming
emulsified and getting blocked somewhere. Then, the Microsoft engineer, not
knowing much about anything, comes up with a suggestion, “Why don`t we close all
the windows, get out, get back in, open the windows again, and maybe it`ll work
!?”