You Know You've Been On The Computer Too Long...

When asked about a bus schedule, you wonder if it is 16 or 32 bits.

When you are counting objects, you count, "0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D...".

When your wife says "If you don't turn off that machine and come to bed, then I am going to divorce you!" and you chastise her for omitting the "else" clause.

When you are reading a book and look for the scroll bar to scroll to the next page.

When you pick up the phone and start dialing an IP number.

When you get in the elevator and double-click the button for the floor you want.

When you hit the wrong key on the elevator keypad and feel frustrated when you find no "undo" key.

When you not only check your e-mail more often than your paper mail, but you remember your network address faster than your postal one.

When your computers have a higher street value than your car.

When your SO kisses you on the neck and the first thing you think is "Uh oh, priority interrupt!"

When you try to bring a window to the front of something, then you realize that "something" is a Post-It™ note on your screen.

When you pick up a root beer and read the label as "High Res," not "Hires."

When you go to balance your checkbook and discover that you have been doing the math in octal.

When you want an elevator to the basement and begin looking for the "0" key, because 0 is less than 1.

When you are afraid to hit the snooze bar on your alarm clock too many times because you think that the clock's subroutine was mallocing memory each time it goes and printing the free memory on the front, and soon it would run out.

When you are trying to recall something and hear in your head: "parity error at address..."

When you're writing a homework assignment, and get the end of the line in the middle of a sentence, tack on a '\', and continue writing on the next line.

When you have two books, one on top of another, and think: "No problem. I'll just click on its title bar to raise the other book to the front."

When you start typing semi-colons at the end of sentences instead of full stops;

You see something written on the blackboard and think: "Why don't I just log on and download it?"

When your children do something they shouldn't do, you tell them to stop, and they do it just once more, and you react by thinking: "Well, they prefetched the instruction and are executing it in the delay slot..."

When in your universe, "round numbers" are powers of 2, not 10.

 

August 2003

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