Women are under the illusion they don’t have to ask men for anything - that if the man really loved her, he would automatically and instinctively know what she needed. Right! As if the dysfunctional drone even knew you were in the room, let alone knew what you were feeling. A woman has a better chance of finding a bathing suit off the rack that fits than finding a man who knows what she is going through.

Ironically, however, men like to feel needed - like they’re her knight in shining armor. Unfortunately, most turn out to be needy, like her nightmare from The Shining. Therefore, it is important that a woman ask a man directly for what she wants, not indirectly. He is not a mind reader. He doesn’t even read a map, how’s he going to read a mind?

HOW TO ASK A MAN TO DO SOMETHING

Always remember these five important rules when asking a man to do something:

1. Make sure the man is conscious.

2. Crash the hard drive on his computer and line the bird cage with the sports section.

3. Be brief! Limit your nagging harangue to two, three hours, max.

4. Reward him for cooperative behavior. Offer to cook him something that doesn’t have a peel-back cover.

5. Punish him when he refuses to cooperate. Microwave his remote on high power for 55 minutes. Rotate 1/4 turn, and microwave again for another 35 minutes.

6. Use “would you” or “will you” instead of “you’d better” or “do as I say and no one will get hurt”.

The Right And Wrong Way to Ask A Man

How you ask a man to do something makes all the difference. Women think that a subtle nuance or slight turn of phrase will have no effect whatsoever on the resolve of their mucho-macho muscular moron. It does! Which is why you should always use “would you” and “will you” instead of “could you” and “can you”.

For example:

Do say: would you please take out the garbage?
Do not say: could you get off your big butt and do something around here? What am I, the maid?

Do say: would you like to go out to a nice dinner Saturday night?
Do not say: could you please take me to any restaurant that doesn’t have the words “burger”, “king” or “happy meal” in their advertising??

Do say: would you mind watching the kids while I take a night off with my girlfriends?
Do not say: could you, just for one night, watch the kids you helped spawn-that I never get a break from-ever! I haven’t seen my friends in so long we wear name tags to identify ourselves.

Do say: would you take me to a movie this week?
Do not say: could you prove to me you’re not Velcroed to the couch and actually have the motor skills to take me to a motion picture? Something without Pamela Anderson in it.

Do say: would you like me to listen to you talk about your day some more?
Do not say: could you step up the filibuster, Sparky? Jeopardy is on in ten minutes.

Do say: would you consider getting a vasectomy?
Do not say: could you even imagine what it feels like taking birth control pills that make you feel like Attila the Hun one minute and Attila the Hun’s evil twin the next minute? Do it or I’ll do it FOR you!!

Do say: would you like to take a vacation?
Do not say: could you move out?

Do say: would you get out of my life?
Do not say: could you get out of my life?
Notice how different these two statements are. A man is much more likely to get out of your life if you say “would”.

There may be a redneck in the ghetto if . . .

. . . somebody says, “Yo man” and he says, “Yo mama.”

. . . someone says Ho, he starts looking for cotton the chop.

. . . he thinks he can leave his rifle mounted in the back of his parked pickup truck overnight.

. . . girls walking the streets ask him for a date, and he feels this is his lucky day.

. . . he hears a guy standing on the street saying, “Crack, Crack, Crack,” and he pulls up his bluejeans.

. . . he thinks greens is something you play golf on.

. . . his wife tells him she is being blackmailed and he wants to know what dude she is having an affair with.

. . . he thinks it would be funny to go out as a ghost on Halloween, and run around the ghetto with a white sheet over his head.

. . . someone asks him for a forty, and he gives them two twenty dollar bills.

. . . he walks up to the local basketball court and says, “You BOYS are making to much noise.”

Submitted by Ripping Rich.

. . . somebody farts and the cops come. (from Stormshopper)

. . . he has a hitching post and a bail of hay in front of apartment B. (from LolJameslol)

. . . you’ve got a deer crossin’ sign on your door. (from Teen8784)

. . . he starts his pickup truck and people think they are getting shot at. (from Rdjj273)

. . . they come in on a carriage and two horses. (from Bladingmonkey20)

. . . he see’s a black man running from the cops and hollers, “Cledus get in the truck!” (from Chevyredneck83)

. . . he keeps his food stamps in a money clip. (from DancerinVegas)

This is a personal story of some of my experiences with computers, over the last 40 years. This accounting of “computer history/computer trivia” does not attempt to be complete. I lean towards those aspects of computing, that have touched my life or career. I have written it to be fun, informative and as accurate as I can. That being said … let’s get started!

——————————————————————————–

We’ll start with “the olden days.” When I was young, computers were huge mainframes, that filled a whole room, but had less computing power than today’s calculators. Large companies owned these computers, not “regular people.” If you are too young to remember this, you may be interested in some little bits of computer history …

I remember this as the time of “Do Not Fold, Staple or Mutilate.” These mainframes, of the 1950’s and 60’s, used IBM punch cards (invented by Herman Hollerith in 1884). The holes in these cards represented data. The cards had to be handled very carefully, because a computer could not read a damaged card! Thus, the warning … “Do Not Fold, Staple or Mutilate.” (Some consumers found this warning rather funny, I remember.) From the time of their invention, until they became obsolete, these “Hollerith cards” were used in a variety of ways - for everything from keeping track of people and supplies for the U.S. Army to training a new generation of engineers. Unfortunately, there is a dark side to this history - IBM punch cards were used by the Nazis.

My ideas about computers were sure different, back in “those olden days”! One summer, I had a job operating a keypunch card sorter at a local bank. I remember quite clearly the day that summer that I read somewhere, “One day, ordinary people will have computers in their own homes.” With the clear vision of youth, I just knew how dumb this statement was! The idiot author didn’t have any idea what he was talking about or anything about computers. After all, I worked with computers and they just weren’t something you could put in a house. Many, many years later, when this unknown author’s prediction came true, I was amazed!

On the other hand, maybe I shouldn’t feel so bad. Many people, who knew more than I did, were equally skeptical, about the future of computing. For example, there was Ken Olson, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). In 1977, he stated, “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” For an amusing insight about how programmers of that era “might” have felt, read about Mel, a computer programmer from those days. (”Mel” wrote his programs in an old computer programming language, named Fortran.)

What I also know now, of course, is that sometimes, computers can be more trouble than they’re worth! I have a special theory about why computers can be so difficult. But you can get even:

I Want to Hurt My Computer
Computer Shot Dead by Frustrated Owner (a real AP story)
Illustrated Guide to Breaking Your Computer.
On the other hand, you might even find a solution to your computer problem at Wugnet’s Computing Tip Center.

Getting back to my story, though … In the computer world, things were changing rapidly! After that early 1960’s era summer job, I didn’t think much about computers (again), one way or the other, until the late 1970’s/early 1980’s.

At that time, my children were learning about computers, at their elementary school. And Radio Shack had just introduced the TRS-80 (affectionately known as the “trash 80″). Their hot marketing technique was to display a demo computer in local shopping malls, just outside the store. When my family went shopping, the children often stopped at these demo computers, to show off and write little programs in BASIC. (Note: This is not today’s Visual Basic. It was a primitive little language, designed to teach novices how to program computers.)

Are you old enough to remember the popular little program that would write your name over and over again on the screen? The program went like this:

10 PRINT “MY NAME IS ALICE”
20 GO TO 10

And the computer wrote MY NAME IS ALICE, over and over, until you hit a “break” key. The output looked something like this:

Not knowing how simple this program was, I was awed by the genius of my children! (Of course, they are … But, that’s another story!) I decided to go to school and learn about computers, so that I could “keep up with them.” This was the beginning of my new career in computers. Now, that’s a very long story, starting with adult education at the local high school and ending with Cleveland State University. I won’t bore you with the details. I will just say that, after several years, I earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from CSU and that I now have a very rewarding job in the computer industry (again with a bank … what a coincidence). If you do want to know more, read What Do You Want to Be, When You Grow Up? It’s a great Toastmasters speech I gave, for my club.

Here’s an interesting side point. One of my email friends recently expressed surprise that “anybody still uses mainframes.” Those of you who do not work in the computer industry may picture mainframes as being all museum pieces. Not at all! Be assured, in the world of really, really big business, mainframe systems are still important! You depend on several of these … to keep track of your bank account, your credit card account, your utility bills … and you don’t even notice them, until something goes wrong, the dreaded “computer error.”

Yes, computer errors are all too common, aren’t they? I’m not perfect, but I do try not to make any big mistakes. Here’s what might happen, if I was less careful:

Truth in Advertising
Software Bug at the Space Agency
Now, let me warn you! As you surf the web or cruise the information superhighway (depending on which cliche you prefer), beware of those Detours on the Information Superhighway. (That’s one of my computer-related joke collections. The others are Computer Quips, Microsoft Bashing, Help Desk Humor and just plain old Computer Jokes.) On a more serious note, see Just Because You Get It In Email, That Doesn’t Mean It’s True! — my links to sites on both Internet hoaxes and real viruses — and, on a related note, the Ten Commandments of Email.

Speaking of surfing, here are some online computer museums:

Computer History Museum
Obsolete Computer Museum
Computer Museum of America
Back from the museum circuit, look up that computer term, that’s been puzzling you, at one of these online computer glossaries:

whatis.com
maranGraphics 3D Dictionary
And, of course, there was Freenet! I started this story with the “olden days” and ended with the present time … but somehow skipped over a very important part of it. Around the same time that I started school, we got our first home computer - an IBM PC Jr. (Side note: At that time, IBM was the leader in computing. The industry was still dominated by the large business mainframe. Read here about how IBM got started in the PC business. Note that they don’t even mention the PC Jr., because it was such a business flop!)

The “Junior” had one 5 1/4″ disk drive, a 300-baud modem and 64K RAM. (Don’t laugh too hard, it got me started!) Besides learning to program in BASIC, I got interested in the Cleveland Freenet. The didn’t exist and for it’s time, the Cleveland Freenet was quite progressive.

The idea behind Freenet was that it would model an “electronic city.” One day, somebody had the idea, if we were a city, we should have a mayor, so there was an election. I almost won this election. I came within one vote … It was fun! I was still using Freenet regularly, until late 1996, when we finally got an up-to-date home computer and a full Internet connection, with a regular ISP. But, the Cleveland Freenet days ended on September 30, 1999!

To wrap this up, here are two “goodies.” First, here is another interesting perspective on the history of computing. Last, but definitely not least, here is a joke that only a computer geek would appreciate - NULL - The Ultimate Computer Language.

If you want to know more about any of this computer history or if you have any comments, please email me at aschubach@hotmail.com