Reaching the end of a job interview, the Human Resources person asked a young engineer

fresh out of MIT, “And what starting salary were you looking for?”
The Engineer said, “In the neighborhood of $125,000 a year, depending on the benefits
package.”
The interviewer said, “Well, what would you say to a package of five-weeks vacation, 14
paid holidays, full medical and dental, company matching retirement fund to 50 percent of
salary, and a company car leased every two years, say, a red Corvette?”
The Engineer sat up straight and said, “Wow! Are you kidding?”
And the interviewer replied, “Yeah, but you started it.”

The Real Truth about Accountants

A young accountant spends a week at his new office with the retiring accountant he is
replacing. Each and every morning as the more experienced accountant begins the day, he
opens his desk drawer, takes out a worn envelope, removes a yellowing sheet of paper, reads
it, nods his head, looks around the room with renewed vigor, returns the envelope to the
drawer, and then begins his day’s work.

After he retires, the new accountant can hardly wait to read for himself the message contained
in the envelope in the drawer, particularly since he feels so inadequate in replacing the far
wiser and more highly esteemed accountant. Surely, he thinks to himself, it must contain the
great secret to his success, a wondrous treasure of inspiration and motivation. His fingers
tremble anxiously as he removes the mysterious envelope from the drawer and reads the
following message:

“Debits in the column toward the file cabinet. Credits in the column toward the window.”

Dream interpretation

This morning I was dreaming about wandering in a castle from a far-far away fairy land…
[Real life: I’m planning to move in another apartment soon]. In one room there was a white
marble fountain like those fountains in which you throw a little penny for good luck or for
wishes to come true. I quickly scanned the room: mirrors all around [Real life: my secret
wish for my new bedroom is a mirror on the ceiling]

Suddenly a paparazzi reporter came out of nowhere and started to ask me a series of
questions. He just pushed his microphone in my face and asked me: “What are the top five
things you hate to do in the morning?” And my answer was damn fast “To wake up!!! (It
wouldn’t matter anyway to continue with the other four)” [Real life: alarm clock was
buzzing]
Wife shopping

What’s the worst thing that inevitably happens to every married man every once in a while?
He has to join the spouse while she is shopping. (Just lovely, isn’t it? You may never know if
it comes as a revenge or not).

Here is how I managed to drag Manzel in more than 10 shoe stores:

Step 1: I defined my issues as “I would like some summer shoes for the office” (Please notice
this girlish way of thinking. WOULD LIKE means “I’m not sure if I really want it; maybe
it’s the shoes I want, maybe not. Anyway, I want a change”. SOME SHOES means- “new
shoes, but no idea about details like shape, color, etc:)

Step 2: I managed to break the shoes that I bought last summer.

Step 3: I asked Manzel to repair the shoe with some glue: “Honey, I’m a girl and I do not
know if this can be fixed. But if you take some glue, put it there like this and keep it like this,
hold it for about 3 minutes, [blablabla-bla] than problem is solved. Oh, I wished I knew how
to fix it by myself, otherwise I wouldn’t be asking you”

Step 4: After hearing all my non-senses about repairing shoes, it just didn’t matter if I could
be right or not. So Manzel declared “Oh, crap, please buy some other shoes”

Step 5: Arguing time. With a whining voice, I started to argue that those shoes were special
shoes (for all kinds of silly arguments, please use your imagination. When out of resources,
you can pretend to cry while saying “and you think I’m just silly and all these are fake
arguments”). The q.e.d of my performance was “So, please tell me where am I gonna find
some other shoes?”

Step 6: When you ask questions, men usually answer. For them, the idea of rhetoric questions
is just silly: If you don’t expect answers, why the hell are you asking questions?

In my case, he had to answer my question “where am I gonna find some other shoes?”.

Step 7: He joins me.

Step 8: Efficiency. Let’s go back to step #5. While arguing, I carefully mentioned to him “my
shoes should have this color; I need high heels having this shape; the shape of the shoe
should be like this… etc”. (In fact, I just delegate the problem. If they have a target in mind,
joining spouse for shopping is less painful).

Step 9: Final results. Instead of spending 1 hour in one store, we spend 40 minutes in about
10 stores. He was looking for some product that would meet all my requirements, meanwhile
I was screening everything and doing some fashion overview.

Step 10: If I’d like some second other new shoes in this summer, I should make up my mind
in the next following days. I can just say I don’t feel comfortable wearing these ones.
XP
…

In today’s menu we have Vista. I wonder for While offline, Manzel received a link from his
friend. One line, one link: nothing more. It’s called perfect communication between IT guys.
(Example of communication between two girls: “Darling, would you please check out this
link below?! It’s absolutely great!”)

Once you follow the link, you see some pictures with a new born child. Child is wearing
pampers, so there is no easy way to determine if it’s a boy or a girl. If I were to say judging
after child’s face, I would say it’s an unisex kid (I’m perfectly aware of the fact that I will be
virtually killed in the most mysterious ways the minute his parents get to read about this
unisex stuff)

What do IT guys do when it’s such an event in their family? They take pictures, man, THEY
TAKE PICTURES!!!!!!!!! Lots!!! And they immediately put them on internet. They do not
care about sharing important details such as :
- Sex of their child
- Have they chosen a name yet?
- Date of birth is…?

If you really want to know all these details, here is what you need to do: save the only picture
where you can see a tag on the baby’s leg. Zoom in. Could it be there on the tag: sex, name
and date of birth? Case you’re not successful during your Sherlock Homes actions, ask for
more pictures.

Serious Conversation

Last time when these two little cute words were spoken, he ended up buying an engagement
ring. So girls, please choose the labels carefully

Vista vs XP

Whenever there’s something new in IT, by default they have to try it.
I knew it and I thought I could live with it.

Since Bill invented Vista:

Day 1: My admin googled to see how Vista Beta behaved to other IT guys
Day 2: “It’s too soon to tell, I’ll wait a little bit more to see the bugs”
Day 3: New computer
Day 4: Sysadmin is sending flowers to his wife (he is paying taxes for having a new server)
Day 5: Installing Vista
Day 6: Installing XP back – he thinks Vista has too many little useless things for desktop use
(watch, calendar,… all these eating up resources)
Day 9: Installing Vista
Day 10: Installing back XP because his Creative 5.1 doesn’t make enough “quality” noise if
the OS is Vista
…
Day….: Installing Vista
Day…: Installing how long.

How to use the IT language

For about 1 year I live in CZ. It’s not my home country and I haven’t got used to the local
language (yet). When somebody is speaking Czech (to me), I’m trying to understand some
basic words from my limited Czech vocabulary; as soon as I identify any sound that I think it
might be a Czech word, I just make up the meaning of what the other person is trying to say
(note: body language helps a lot).

With IT guys is basically the same.

Tip1: learn some basic words in order to send them your message.

Tip2: don’t worry if you do not understand wtf they are trying to tell you. Usually, their logic
has no meaning for us (so don’t bother.)

Ticket. Ex.: instead of “honey, will you please take out the trash?” , simply say “there’s a
severity one ticket assigned to you, due this evening. ”

On call. You can replace “honey, will you watch the kids this evening?” with “You are on
call in children’s room”

Reboot. As in “we need to talk about this, please pay some attention to me”

Install updates. As in “How are you/ how have you been doing?”

Shut down. As in “no partner for discussion”

Log of. As in “honey, am I talking to myself?” (did you log off?)

You can also try File, Edit, View, Format, Tools, F1 (never use the word “help”)…if it’s
there on a toolbar menu, you can definitely use it