Shortly after Bill Gates was killed in a freak accident, he found himself being sized up by Saint Peter. "Bill, this is a tough call. You've made great technological advancements with Microsoft, but you've also given us Windows 95. I think I'm going to let you choose between Heaven and Hell."

"That sounds fair," Gates replied. "May I have a look at hell first?"

And so first Saint Peter took him to Hell.

"This is hell? Wow, look at all those gorgeous women, the ones that laughed when I asked them out on dates in high school. And look at those mansions!" exclaimed Bill.

"And see all those coders? They work 24 hours a day for free just because they really love you, Bill, and live only to please you."

"Shazam, this is all virtual, isn't it, Saint Peter?"

"Yep. With no bugs, Bill."

"If this is hell, what can heaven be like?"

(Saint Peter makes sweeping gesture) "Like this!"

"People wearing robes and playing harps while they sit on clouds? What a boring cliche. I'll take Hell!" replies, Gates.

And so two weeks later, St Peter paid a little visit.

"Hey what's going on? It's nearly 200 degrees and the air is terrible. There's no food or drink. Goblins jab me in the ribs constantly. I'm crawling with vermin and weak with disease. They play the Beastie Boys at all hours, for all eternity. There are NO COMPUTERS! Where are the women, the program slaves, the virtual wonders? Where is the splendid hell you promised me?" cries Gates.

"Oh that, that was just a demo..."

A young businessman had just started his own firm. He'd rented a beautiful office and had it furnished with antiques. Sitting there, he saw a man come into the outer office. Wishing to appear busy, the businessman picked up the phone and started to pretend he had a big deal working. He threw huge figures around and made giant commitments. Finally, he hung up and asked the visitor, "Can I help you?" The man said, "Sure. I've come to install the phone!"

UNIX Airways
Everyone brings one piece of the plane along when they come to the airport. They all go out on the runway and put the plane together piece by piece, arguing non-stop about what kind of plane they are supposed to be building.

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
and your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash,
then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash!

If the label on the cable on the table at your house,
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
but your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,

And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
then you may as well reboot it and go out with a big bang,
'cause as sure as I'm a poet, know that sucker's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk,
and the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risk,
then you have to flash your memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM.
Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your Mom.

You know it is time to reassess your relationship with your computer when....

1. You wake up at 4 O'clock in the morning to go to the bathroom and stop to check your email on the way back to bed.

2. You turn off your computer and get an awful empty feeling, as if you just pulled the plug on a loved one.

3. You decide to stay in college for an additional year or two, just for the free internet access.

4. You laugh at people with 28.8 modems.

5. You start using smileys :-) in your snail mail.

6. You find yourself typing "com" after every period when using a word processor.com

7. You can't correspond with your mother because she doesn't have a computer.

8. When your email box shows "no new messages" and you feel really depressed.

9. You don't know the gender of your three closest friends because they have nondescript screen name and you never bothered to ask.

10. You move into a new house and you decide to "Netscape" before you landscape.

11. Your family always knows where you are.

12. In real life conversations, you don't laugh, you just say "LOL, LOL".

13. After reading this message, you immediately forward it to a friend!

Windows95: n.
32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company, that can't stand 1 bit of competition.

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 a 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".

INSTRUCTIONS FOR MICROSOFT'S NEW TV DINNER PRODUCT:

You must first remove the plastic cover. By doing so you agree to accept and honor Microsoft rights to all TV dinners. You may not give anyone else a bite of your dinner (which would constitute an infringement of Microsoft's rights). You may, however, let others smell and look at your dinner and are encouraged to tell them how good it is.

If you have a PC microwave oven, insert the dinner into the oven. Set the oven using these keystrokes:

mstv.dinn.//%heat

Then enter:

ms//start.cook_dindin/yummy\|/yum~yum:-)gohot#cookme.

If you have a Macintosh microwave oven, insert the dinner and press start. The oven will set itself and cook the dinner.

If you have a Unix microwave oven, insert the dinner, enter the ingredients of the dinner found on the package label, the weight of the dinner, and the desired level of cooking and press start. The oven will calculate the time and heat and cook the dinner exactly to your specification.

Be forewarned that Microsoft dinners may crash, in which case your oven must be restarted. This is a simple procedure. Remove the dinner from the oven and enter:

ms.nodamn.good/tryagain\again/again.crap

This process may have to be repeated. Try unplugging the microwave and then doing a cold reboot. If this doesn't work, contact your oven vendor. The oven itself is obviously on the blink.

Many users have reported that the dinner tray is far too big, larger than the dinner itself, having many useless compartments, most of which are empty. These are for future menu items. If the tray is too large to fit in your oven, you will need to upgrade your equipment.

Dinners are only available from registered outlets, and only the chicken variety is currently produced. If you want another variety, call Microsoft Help and they will explain that you really don't want another variety. Microsoft Chicken is all you really need.

Microsoft has disclosed plans to discontinue all smaller versions of their chicken dinners. Future releases will only be in the larger family size. Excess chicken may be stored for future use, but must be saved only in Microsoft approved packaging.

Microsoft promises a dessert with every dinner after '98. However, that version has yet to be released. Users have permission to get thrilled in advance.

Microsoft dinners may be incompatible with other dinners in the freezer, causing your freezer to self-defrost. This is a feature, not a bug. Your freezer probably should have been defrosted anyway.

God was fed up. In a crash of thunder He yanked up to Heaven three influential men: Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin and Bill Gates.

"The human race is a complete disappointment," God boomed. "You each have one week to prepare your followers for the End of the World."

With another crash of thunder they found themselves back on Earth.

Clinton immediately called his cabinet. "I have good news and bad news," he announced grimly. "The good news is that there is a God. The bad news is, He's really mad and plans to end the world in a week."

In Russia, Yeltsin announced to parliament, "Comrades, I have bad news and worse news. The bad news is that we were wrong; there is a God after all. The worse news is He's mad and is going to end the world in a week."

Meanwhile, Bill Gates called a meeting of his top engineers. "I have good news and better news. The good news is that God considers me one of the three most influential men on Earth," he beamed. "The better news is we don't have to fix WINDOWS 95."

1. NO KNOWN SPECIES OF REINDEER CAN FLY. But there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer, which reindeer only Santa has ever seen.

2. THERE ARE 2 BILLION CHILDREN (PERSONS UNDER 18) IN THE WORLD. But, since Santa doesn't appear to handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces his world load to 15% of the total - 378m. according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3* children per household, that's 91.8m. homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each home.

3. 'SANTA' HAS 31 HOURS OF X-MAS TO WORK WITH, THANKS TO THE DIFFERENT TIME ZONES and the rotation of the Earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems most logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say for each 'Christian' household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining [resents under the tree, eat whatever snack have been left, get back up the chimney, get back in the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of the 91.8 m. stops are evenly distributed around the earth, (which we know to be false, but for purposes of calculation will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75* million miles, not counting the stops to do what most of us must do at least every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second - a conventional reindeer conventional can run tops, 15 miles per hour.

4. The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium lego set, (2 pds.) the sled is carrying 321,000 tons, not counting Santa who is invariably described as overweight. On land, a conventional reindeer can carry no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that 'flying reindeer' (see pt. #1) could pull 10 times the normal amount we cannot do the job with even 8 or 9. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh, to 353,430 tons. Again for comparison this is 4 times the weight of Queen Elizabeth.

5. 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering earth's atmosphere. The lead reindeer will absorb 14,3 quintillion joules of energy per second, each. In short they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa meantime will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.6 times greater than gravity. A 250 lb. Santa, (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.
IN CONCLUSION: If Santa ever did deliver presents on Xmas eve, he's dead now.

Consider the case of the Illinois man who left the snow-filled streets of Chicago for a vacation in Florida. His wife was on a business trip and was planning to meet him there the next day. When he reached his hotel, he decided to send his wife a quick e-mail. Unable to find the scrap of paper on which he had written her e-mail address, he did his best to type it from memory. Unfortunately, he missed one letter, and his note was directed instead to an elderly preacher's wife, whose husband had passed away only the day before. When the grieving widow checked her e-mail, she took one look at the monitor, let out a piercing scream, and fell to the floor in a dead faint. At the sound, her family rushed into the room and saw this note on the screen:

Dearest Wife,

Just got checked in. Everything prepared for your arrival tomorrow.

Signed, Your eternally loving husband.

PS. Sure is hot down here