Section Gee! Advice, Humor, Comics, Horoscope, Kids : In the Beginning, the Programmer Had a Problem

Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their software. Once upon a time, when Stone Age man was just oozing out off the slime, he invented the computer. It was unwieldy and not much use for killing game. But as time went on, great hairy minds kept reducing the size of it until a person was able to drop it from a tree on a dinosaur’s head and knock the reptile out.

Then a wise hairy man named Zilch, with a math degree from Cro-Magnon Tech, said, “There must be other uses for a computer than to drop it on a dinosaur’s head. I will develop a program from mud so we can solve problems and make seat reservations when the airplane is invented.”

Everyone laughed at him, but Zilch was determined. He worked day and night creating a program that would make the computer useful to society.

Unfortunately the computer he was working with had very little memory, and when asked such simple questions as “Where is Broadway and 42nd Street?” could not give an answer.

So Zilch worked out a solution. When it came to the date, let’s say 497 BC, he dropped the 4 because everyone knew the century was 4.

Hundreds of years passed without problems. Then in 1995, a freshman at MIT wrote a paper for his math class indicating that all hell would break loose in 2000 because every software program was written with two spaces for the year instead of four.

After talking to all the experts, the president made his decision. Every double-zero computer in the United States would be confiscated and dropped on Saddam Hussein’s head in Baghdad.

It was a great plan and restored the original purpose of the computer’s invention.

I know the big question people are asking is: “Now what happens to e-mail?” The answer is simple. You print it out, stuff it in an envelope, put on a 33-cent stamp, take it down to the post office, stick it in a box and mail it.