Bad news you can understand

Knowing about computers in a world where most people do not means you've got to give a lot of bad news to people who don't understand what they've done.

I think that we, as tech people, should explain to them what they've done in their terms.

For example, 'You've let IE install too many toolbars so your system is slow' would become 'You left your front door and now animals have crapped all over the inside of your house.'

'Norton is why your computer takes so long to start up' becomes 'You've paid a lot of money for something that's difficult to remove to bog you down. You've glued silver chainmail to your chest when all you needed was a light jacket.'

And finally, 'Your system is filled with so many viruses it can't even boot so we have to reformat,' becomes 'You've ruined your life so badly should probably kill yourself and hope you come back as somebody less stupid.'

(work.)

And if you don't believe in reincarnation, you shouldn't own a computer.

A coffee can full of hypodermic needles

Please stop clicking this message when it is sent to you:
you think I should put this picture On Myspace? http://img683.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture57.jpg, I think my eyes look weird. do I look cross eyed in that pic to you? lol'

Clearly, it's a virus. It causes someone to begin a conversation with 'hey click this' instead of something like, say, 'hi.' If someone IMs you with that, tell them to go to jayloden.com and download Aimfix after they eat a dick for being so stupid.

Can you imagine if there were viruses in real life that got you to randomly convince strangers to infect themselves? You'd walk up to people you haven't talked to in years and say stuff like, 'HEY! Put your hand in this coffee can. There might be money inside!' when really the coffee can is full of hypodermic needles.

(Ratchet and Clank 3.)

When you're designing a virus that tricks a large amount of people into downloading infected files, you want to use a language they understand. In this case, it's the language of "OMG look at this pic on Myspace LOL." Not to help virus authors, but why not disguise a virus as a YouTube link? YouTube is generally linked to more than Myspace, plus I think the Myspace crowd already has enough problems with computers.

In case you don't know them, The Problems Myspace Users have are:

• not knowing how to not get raped by strangers over the internet
  
• setting bikini babes as tiled background images
• liking shitty music, then forcing everybody who visits a page to listen to it

Am I missing any?

Amy phones an Indian man

Tonight Amy's CD-rom drive decided to quit working and sit on the couch all day collecting welfare. Upon realizing she had to call tech support, she had this to say to me online:
Amy: it might be too late to call
Henry: to call me or to call an indian man?
Amy: (pause, as she calls tech support) fuuuuuck he's Indian
Amy: fuck fuck fuck!

And Amy's the more politically correct of the two of us. Just goes to show you that when cutting through a multi-layered onion of a computer problem, nobody wants to have to deal with the language barrier, too.

No offense, Indian people. You guys are great. ALL OF YOU.

(sleep.)

I mean it.