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.