The Story of Micro and Mini Micro was a real-time operator and dedicated multi-user. His broad-band protocol made it easy for him to interface with numerous input/output devices, even if it meant time-sharing. One evening he arrived home, just as the Sun was crashing and had parked his Motorola 6800 in the main drive (he missed the 5100 bus that morning ), when he noticed an elegant piece of hardware escorting her daisy wheels in his garden. He thought to himself, "She looks user-friendly," "I'll see if she'd like an update tonight." Mini was her name, and she was delightfull, engineered with eyes like COBOL and a Prime mainframe architecture that set Micro's peripherals networking all over the place. He browsed over to her casually, admiring the power of her twin 32 bit floating point processors and inquired "How are you Honey Well?." "Yes I am well," she responded, batting her optical fibres engagingly and smoothing her console over her curvilinear functions. Micro settled for a straight line approximation. "I'm stand-alone tonight," he said, "How about computing a vector to my base address?" "I will cut out a byte to eat, and maybe we could get an offset later on." Mini ran a priority process for 2.6 milliseconds then transmitted OK. "I've been dumped myself recently, and a new page is just what I need to refresh my disks. I'll park my machine cycle in your background and meet you inside. She walked off, leaving Micro admiring her solenoids and thinking, "Wow, what a global variable, I wonder if she'd like my firmware?." They sat down at the process table to a top of form feed of fiche and chips and a bucket of bawdots. Mini was in conversational mode and expanded on ambiguous arguments while Micro gave occasional acknowlegments, although, in reality, he was analyzing the shortest and least critical path to her entry point. He finally settled on the old "would you like to see my benchmark subroutine?" but Mini was again one step ahead. Suddenly she was up and stripping off her parity bits to reveal the full functionality of her operating software. "Let's get Basic, you RAM," she said. Micro was loaded by this stage, but his hardware polling module had a processor of it's own and was in danger of overflowing its output buffer (a hang-up that Micro had consulted his analyst about). "Core," was all he could say, as she prepared to log him off. Micro soon recovered, however, when he went down on the DEC and opened her device files to reveal her data set ready. He accessed his fully packed root device and was about to start pushing her CPU stack, when she attempted an escape sequence .... "No, No" she cried, "You are not shielded." "Reset, Baby," he replied, "I've been debugged." "But I haven't got my current loop enabled, and I can't support child processes," she protested. "Don't run away," he said, "I will generate an interrupt." "No that's too error prone, and I can't abort because of my design philosophy." Micro was locked in by this stage though, and could not be turned off. But Mini soon stopped his thrashing by introducing a voltage spike into his main supply, whereupon he fell over with a head crash and went to sleep. "Computers," She thought as she compiled herself, "All they ever think of is HEX." Send this joke to a friend 1 The Diet BREAKFAST 1/2 grapefruit 1 slice whole wheat toast 8 oz glass skim milk LUNCH 4 oz lean broiled chicken breast 1 cup steamed zucchini 1 Oreo cookie MID-AFTERNOON SNACK rest of the package of Oreo cookies 1 quart Rocky Road ice cream 1 jar hot fudge DINNER 2 loaves garlic bread 1 large pepperoni & mushroom pizza 1 large pitcher of beer 3 Milky Way candy bars 1 entire cheesecake DIET TIPS 1. If no one sees you eat it, it has no calories 2. If you drink a diet soda with a candy bar, they cancel each other out. 3. When eating with someone else, calories dont count if you both eat the same amount. 4. Foods used for medicinal purpose have no calories. These include any chocolate used for energy, brandy, cheesecake, and ice cream. 5. Cookie pieces contain no calories, because breakage causes the calories to leak out. 6. If you eat food from someone else's plate, the calories don't count. 7. Movie related snacks are much lower in calories because they are part of the entertainment, and not ones of personal fuel. Send this joke to a friend 2 American Way of Robbery True Stories of Some of the Dumbest Crooks on Earth: Kentucky (where else?): Two men tried to pull the front off a cash machine by running a chain from the machine to the bumper of their pickup truck. Instead of pulling the front panel off the machine, though, they pulled the bumper off their truck. Scared, they left the scene and drove home. With the chain still attached to the machine. With their bumper still attached to the chain. With their vehicle's license plate still attached to the bumper. (Editor's Note 1: And they wonder why we call them "Yahoos" ...) South Carolina: A man walked into a local police station, dropped a bag of cocaine on the counter, informed the desk sergeant that it was substandard cut, and asked that the person who sold it to him be arrested immediately. Indiana: A man walked up to a cashier at a grocery store and demanded all the money in the register. When the cashier handed him the loot, he fled--leaving his wallet on the counter. England: A German "tourist," supposedly on a golf holiday, shows up at customs with his golf bag. While making idle chatter about golf, the customs official realizes that the tourist does not know what a "handicap" is. The customs official asks the tourist to demonstrate his swing, which he does--backward! A substantial amount of narcotics was found in the golf bag. Germany: Oil of Olay no longer turning the trick for her, a woman decided that she would bathe in the milk of a camel (a modern-day Cleopatra). So she stole a camel from the local zoo (where *else* can you find a camel when you need one?) and transported it back to her house--where she realized that the camel's name was "Otto." Arizona: A company called "Guns For Hire" stages gunfights for Western movies, etc. One day, they received a call from a 47-year- old woman, who wanted to have her husband killed. She got 4-1/2 years in jail. Texas: A man convicted of robbery worked out a deal to pay $9600 in damages rather than serve a prison sentence. For payment, he provided the court a check--a *forged* check. He got 10 years. (Location Unknown): A man went into a drug store, pulled a gun, announced a robbery, and pulled a Hefty-bag face mask over his head--and realized that he'd forgotten to cut eyeholes in the mask. (Location Unknown): A man successfully broke into a bank after hours and stole--are you ready for this?--the bank's video camera. While it was recording. Remotely. (That is, the videotape recorder was located elsewhere in the bank, so he didn't get the videotape of himself stealing the camera.) (Location Unknown): A man successfully broke into a bank's basement through a street-level window, cutting himself up pretty badly in the process. He then realized that (1) he could not get to the money from where he was,(2) he could not climb back out the window through which he had entered, and (3) he was bleeding pretty badly. So he located a phone and dialed "911" for help ... Virginia: Two men in a pickup truck went to a new-home site to steal a refrigerator. Banging up walls, floors, etc., they snatched a refrigerator from one of the houses, and loaded it onto the pickup. The truck promptly got stuck in the mud, so these brain surgeons decided that the refrigerator was too heavy. Banging up *more* walls, floors, etc., they put the refrigerator BACK into the house, and returned to the pickup truck, only to realize that they locked the keys in the truck--so they abandoned it. (Location Unknown): A man walked into a Circle-K (a convenience store similar to a 7-11), put a $20 bill on the counter and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled-- leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer? Fifteen dollars. Send this joke to a friend 3 California Driving Test Answers The following are a sampling of REAL answers received on exams given by the California Department of Transportation's driving school (read at Saturday Traffic School for moving violation offenders.) Q: Do you yield when a blind pedestrian is crossing the road? A: What for? He can't see my license plate. Q: Who has the right of way when four cars approach a four-way stop at the same time? A: The pick up truck with the gun rack and the bumper sticker saying "Guns don't kill people. I do." Q: What are the important safety tips to remember when backing your car? A: Always wear a condom. Q: When driving through fog, what should you use? A: Your car. Q: How can you reduce the possibility of having an accident? A: Be too shit faced to find your keys. Q: What problems would you face if you were arrested for drunk driving? A: I'd probably lose my buzz a lot faster. Q: What changes would occur in your lifestyle if you could no longer drive lawfully? A: I would be forced to drive unlawfully. Q: What are some points to remember when passing or being passed? A: Make eye contact and wave "hello" if he/she is cute. Q: What is the difference between a flashing red traffic light and a flashing yellow traffic light? A: The color. Q: How do you deal with heavy traffic? A: Heavy psychedelics. Q: What can you do to help ease a heavy traffic problem? A: Carry loaded weapons. Q: Why would it be difficult to be a police officer? A: It would be tough to be a dickhead all day long. Send this joke to a friend 4 Chinese Subtitles From a list of English subtitles used in films made in Hong Kong, Compiled by Stefan Hammond and Mike Wilkins for their book *Sex & Zen & a Bullet in the Head*, to be published in August by Fireside. Cited in Harper's, June 1996. I am damn unsatisfied to be killed in this way. Fatty, you with your thick face have hurt my instep. Gun wounds again? Same old rules: no eyes, no groin. A normal person wouldn't steal pituitaries. Damn, I'll burn you into a BBQ chicken! Take my advice, or I'll spank you without pants. Who gave you the nerve to get killed here? Quiet or I'll blow your throat up. You always use violence. I should've ordered glutinous rice chicken. I'll fire aimlessly if you don't come out! You daring lousy guy. Beat him out of recognizable shape! I have been scared shitless too much lately. I got knife scars more than the number of your leg's hair! Beware! Your bones are going to be disconnected. How can you use my intestines as a gift? The bullets inside are very hot. Why do I feel so cold? Send this joke to a friend 5
