Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!looking!watmath!maytag!watserv1!looking!funny-request From: funny-request@looking.on.ca Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny Subject: The "true news" digest Nov/90 (5 of 8) Keywords: various, true Message-ID: Date: 14 Nov 90 08:25:05 GMT Lines: 209 Approved: funny@looking.on.ca Here comes the "true news" digest. This is a collection of various submitted items of "found humour." True (or supposedly true) stories, cute sayings or quotes seen or overheard, that sort of thing. These were judged not quite appropriate for an individual posting, so they are collected here. This is posted in several parts ------------------------------------ From: gdk@hpindda.cup.hp.com (Gary Koerzendorfer) Subject: Funny kid story This happened to a friend when she was 5 years old - she didn't remember it, but her mother will never forget. My friend was the oldest child, so all her hand-me-down clothing came from her aunts and uncles rather than from her immediate family. Living far away, they mailed the clothes to her, so when she was asked "Where did you get that cute outfit?" she would always reply "I got it from the mailman." Everyone would chuckle when she would answer this way. One day, she was asked "Where did you get all those freckles?", and my friend decided it would be fun to reply "I got them from the mailman." ------------------------------------ From: atf@formtek.UUCP (Anne Franusich) Subject: kids and "inheritance" Like many siblings, my twelve year old daughter and my seven year old son are prone to blaming each other for lost or damaged property. Recently Sarah outgrew one of her favorite T-shirts, and decided to give it to David. She told him, "Hey David, you just inherited my Einstein T-shirt!" His immediate comeback was "I did NOT!!" ------------------------------------ From: GLEN@calstate.UUCP (Glen Shiery) Subject: Pascal Syntax....? This is from a friend of mine, Rich McGee RICH@CALSTATE.Bitnet. Only the names have been changed to protect the confused. BTW: George called today. Sample phone coversation (tenth, last week of class...) "Hey guy, got a Pascal question...Turbo, v.5. Won't open a file on the reset statement." "OK, what does reset line say?" "RESET,FILENAME." "Nope, that should read RESET PAREN filename CLOSE PAREN." "How do ya spell Paren????" Honest! That's what he said! ------------------------------------ From: davidvc@sybase.com (David Van Couvering) Subject: Naive Users I used to work on a project at UC Berkeley that was intended for "naive users." After hearing these two stories from my father about a PC hardware vendor's adventures with users, I wonder if the folks in this project have considered the level of naivete that is around: - The man received a call from one woman who complained that the disks he had given her were all faulty. They would work once, but always the second time she tried it, the computer would reject them as faulty. He asked her the exact circumstances around this event. She said, "Well, all I do is take them from the fridge..." "Wait a minute!" he said, "you take them from the fridge?" "Oh yes, I store them up there! I keep them up with magnets!" - He described his own mother as calling him saying, "I can't figure out these disks, I can never get them into the drive after getting them out of their little envelopes..." It turns out she was using scissors to take the "envelopes" off the disks... ------------------------------------ Subject: Offensive Advertisement From: XRARP@amarna.gsfc.nasa.gov Let's hear it for creative use of history to make new and offensive advertising campaigns... Here's an announcement somebody at Berkeley got from DEC: A Short Chronology Of Major Demonstrations 1960s: Berkeley gets Civil Rights 1970s: Berkeley gets Individual Rights 1980s: Berkeley gets Animal Rights 1990s: Berkeley gets Fastest Read/Writes! # Come sit-in at the Demonstration, May 2nd Hogan Room, 5th Floor Cory Hall at 10:00 am and at 3:00 pm Digital Equipment Corp. Introduces the DECstation 5000 to UC Berkeley ------------------------------------ From: DUSK9322@wooster.UUCP (Absolut Gem) Subject: Games Heard this on the T.V. show "In Sport": About car-racing: It's like a game of chess, you have to play your cards right. ------------------------------------ From: daugher@cs.tamu.edu (Dr. Walter C. Daugherity) Subject: 0,1,... (Offensive to business majors, true) First some background information to set the stage: Most computers have zero as the lowest memory address, so if there are N locations in memory the highest address would be N-1. Are you with me so far? Now back in the olden days (1962) of punched cards, and before the days of memory-mapped I/O, computers made by IBM (of course) had fixed buffers for a card image. For example, on the IBM 1620, the "Read Card" instruction would read the 80 characters on the next card into locations 0 through 79. However, printed on the card were column numbers 1 through 80, so programmers had to remember to subtract one. For example, if you had some data in columns 10-20 it would be read into locations 9-19. This was no problem for scientists, engineers, mathematicians, etc., who were used to using zero as the first subscript in a series (Newton's approximation starts with an initial value x[0], etc.). But when IBM decided to build a computer for data processing, they doubted that business majors could handle the "offset by one." So, the IBM 1401 was designed to read columns 1-80 of the next card into-- you guessed it--locations 1 through 80. With location 0 no longer needed, it was deleted!!! P.S. The subsequent model, the 1410, did the same. ------------------------------------ From: Wilson.H.Heydt@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Hal Heydt) Subject: SF vs. the religous right The late and very much missed science fiction author Randall Garrett had a very quick wit and was no respecter of sensibilities. A convention of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) held in Oakland, CA overlapped on it's last day with the beginning of a convention of archetypical little old ladies in tennis shoes--Baptist variety. Garrett came out of the hotel bar right in front of one of the LOLs with a cigarette in hand . . . LOL: *Sniff*. And I suppose you drink, too! Garrett: Yes, Ma'am. And I also fuck. (I was told the story by Garrett.) ------------------------------------ From: sachin@vlsic2.csc.ti.com (Sachin Sapatnekar) Subject: Visitor Parking Sign at the Johnson Space Center, Houston : ------------------------- | ^ | | | | | | | Visitor Parking | | | ------------------------- What's funny? The arrow points vertically upwards. ------------------------------------ Subject: automatic teller machines (true story) From: cathy@freezer.it.udel.edu (Hoff Cathy) My dad once went to a money machine to withdraw some money. The machine was out of twenty dollar bills, but didn't seem to 'know' it, and was trying to crank them out anyway. My dad couldn't get his card back or cancel the transaction. He wasn't sure the 'emergency phone' would get him any help, since he figured the bank employees might not consider a non-holdup an 'emergency.' A line was forming behind him, though, so he picked up the phone and said, "Help! Your machine is broken. It's already given me ten thousand dollars, and I can't get it to stop!" Needless to say, someone appeared IMMEDIATELY to assist him. -- Edited by Brad Templeton. MAIL your jokes (jokes ONLY) to funny@looking.ON.CA Attribute the joke's source if at all possible. A Daemon will auto-reply. Remember: PLEASE spell check and proofread your jokes. You think I have time to hand-correct everybody's postings?