Technical Writing by Dr. Seuss

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort, and the address of the memory makes your plotty disk abort, then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.
If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash, and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash, and your data is corrupted ’cause the index doesn’t hash, then your situation’s hopeless, and your system’s gonna crash!
If the label on the cable on the table at your house, says the network is connected to the button on your mouse, but your packets want to tunnel on another protocol, that’s repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall, and your screen is all distorted by the side effects from gauss, so your icons in the window are as wavy as a sauce, then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang, ’cause as sure as I’m a poet, the sucker’s gonna hang.
When the copy of your floppy’s getting sloppy on the disk, and the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risk, then you have to flash your memory and you’ll want to RAM your ROM. Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom!




The Parrot

There was this quiet, conservative man who happened to own a parrot. Unfortunately for the man, this parrot swore like a sailor. He would swear for five minutes straight without repeating himself. This bird’s foul mouth was driving the man crazy. One day, it just got to be too much.
The guy grabbed the bird by the neck, shook him really hard, and yelled “QUIT IT!” But this just made the bird mad and he would start swearing even more.
The guy finally got fed up and said, “OK for you” and locked the bird in a kitchen cabinet. This only aggravated the parrot who contined to claw and scratch the cabinet while he cursed even louder than before with a stream of swearing that would make a sailor blush.
At that point the guy became so mad that he threw the parrot into the freezer!
For the first few seconds the bird started swearing at words at the top of his lungs
He kicked and clawed and thrashed all about the place. Then it suddenly became VERY quiet. At first the guy just waited, but then he started to think that the bird might be hurt.
After a couple of minutes of silence, he became so worried that he opened the freezer door. The bird calmly climbed on the man’s out-stretched arm and said,
“Awfully sorry about all the trouble I gave you. I’ll do my best to improve my vocabulary from now on.”
The man was astounded. He couldn’t understand the transformation that had come over the parrot.
Then the parrot said, “By the way, what did the chicken do?”




Contemporary Art

A tiny but dignified old lady was among a group looking at an art exhibition in a newly opened gallery. Suddenly one contemporary painting caught her eye.
“What on earth,” she inquired of the artist standing nearby, “is that?”
He smiled condescendingly. “That, my dear lady, is supposed to be a mother and her child.”
“Well, then,” snapped the little old lady, “why isn’t it?”




The Chem Final

This past fall semester, at Yale University, there were two sophomores who were taking organic chemistry. They did pretty well on the labs, the quizzes and the mid-terms. So well that the weekend before finals week, even though the chem final was on Monday, they decided to go up to Harvard and party with some friends. Well they did. And they had a great time.
However, with their hangovers and everything, they overslept all day Sunday and didn’t make it back to New Haven until early Monday morning. Rather than take the final exam then, what they did was to find the professor after the final and explain to him why they missed the final. They told him that they went up to Cambridge for the weekend and had planned to come back in time to study, but that they had a flat tire on the way back and didn’t have a spare and couldn’t get help for a long time and so were late getting back to campus. The prof thought this over and then agreed that they could make up the final on the following day. The two guys were elated and relieved. So they studied that night and went in the next day at the time prof had told them.
He placed them in separate rooms, handed each of them a test booklet and told them to begin. They looked at the first problem which was something simple about free radical formation and was worth 5 points. “Cool,” they thought. “This is going to be easy.” They quickly finished that problem and turned the page.
They were however unprepared for what they saw on the next page.
It Said: (95 points) Which Tire?




Thermodynamics

A thermodynamics professor had written a take home exam for his graduate students. It had one question:
“Is hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with a proof.”
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law or some variant. One student, however wrote the following:
First, we postulate that if souls exist, then they must have some mass.
If they do, then a mole of souls can also have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.
As for souls entering hell, lets look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to hell. Since, there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to hell.
With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially.
Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in hell. Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls and volume needs to stay constant.
So, if hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose.
Of course, if hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, than the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over.




Facts of Life

1. The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
2. If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.
3. Money can’t buy happiness. But it sure makes misery easier to live with.
4. Deja Moo: The feeling that you’ve heard this bull before.
5. Psychiatrists say that 1 of 4 people are mentally ill. Check 3 friends.
If they’re OK, you’re it.
6. Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad check.
7. A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
8. It has recently been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
9. Always remember to pillage BEFORE you burn.
10. If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book.
11. COROLLARY: If you are given a take-home test, you will forget where you
live.
12. The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
appreciates how difficult it was.
13. It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning
to others.
14. Paul’s Law: You can’t fall off the floor.
15. The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the
average man can see better than he can think.
16. Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
17. Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by moving from where you
left them to where you can’t find them.
18. Law of Probability Dispersal: Whatever it is that hits the fan will not
be evenly distributed.




The Memory Course

An elderly couple were experiencing declining memories, so they decided to take a power memory class, where they teach you to remember things by association.
Later, the man was talking to a neighbor about how much the class helped him.
“Who was the instructor?” asked the neighbor.
“Oh, let’s see,” pondered the man. “Umm…what’s that flower, you know, that smells real nice, but it has those thorns…?”
“A rose?” offered the neighbor.
“Right,” said the man. He turned toward his house and shouted, “Hey, Rose, what’s the name of the guy we took that memory class from?”




Feliz Navidad!

Twas the night before Christmas and all through la casa
Not a creature was stirring; !Caramba! ?Que pasa?
Los nin~os were all tucked away in their camas,
Some in vestidos, and some in pijamas,
While Mama worked late in her little cocina,
El Viejo was down at the corner cantina.
The stockings were hanging con mucho cuidado,
In hopes that St. Nicholas would feel obligado,
To bring all the children, both buenos and malos,
A nice batch of dulces and other regalos.
Outside in the yard there arose such a grito
That I jumped to my feet like a frightened cabrito.
I ran to my window and looked out afuera,
And who in the world do you think that it era?
St. Nick in a sleigh and big red sombrero
Came dashing along like a crazy bombero!
And pulling his sleigh, instead of venados
Were eight little burros, approaching volados.
I watched as they came, and this quaint little hombre
Was shouting and whistling and calling by nombre:
“!Ay, Pancho! !Ay, Pepe! !Ay, Cuca! !Ay, Beto!
!Ay, Chato! !Ay, Chopo! !Ay, Maruca y Nieto!
Then standing up tall with his hand on his pecho,
He flew to the top of our very own techo.
With his round little belly like a bowl of jalea,
He struggled to squeeze down our old chimenea.
Then, huffing and puffing, at last in our sala,
With soot smeared all over his read suit de gala,
He filled all the stockings with lovely regalos.
He turned like a flash and was gone like viento,
And I heard him exclaim–and this is verdad–
“Merry Christmas to all! !Feliz Navidad!




Good Advice for College Students

Before going home for Christmas …
Go to the back of your closet, and take out those
ugly sweaters and shirts that your parents gave
you last Christmas.
Then toss them into the washer with a few large stones,
or run a sanding block over them a few times. Make sure
that they look old and worn out when you get done.
And most importantly, make sure that you’re WEARING these
items when you get to your parent’s house!
Try to give them the impression that you only had one shirt
to wear all year (the one that THEY gave to you, of course).
We want them to see how tough your money situation has been.
If you do this right, … you’ll have an extra $50 or $100
in your pocket when you go back for the spring semester!




My Resignation

I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult. I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of an 8 year-old again. I want to go to McDonald’s and think that it’s a four-star restaurant. I want to sail sticks across a fresh mud puddle and make a sidewalk with rocks. I want to think M&M’s are better than money because you can eat them. I want to lie under a big oak tree and run a lemonade stand with my friends on a hot summer’s day. I want to return to a time when life was simple. When all you knew were colors, multiplication tables, and nursery rhymes, but that didn’t bother you, because you didn’t know what you didn’t know and you didn’t care. All you knew was to be happy because you were blissfully unaware of all the things that should make you worried or upset. I want to think the world is fair. That everyone is honest and good. I want to believe that anything is possible. I want to be oblivious to the complexities of life and be overly excited by the little things again. I want to live simple again. I don’t want my day to consist of computer crashes, mountains of paperwork, depressing news, how to survive more days in the month than there is money in the bank, doctor bills, gossip, illness, and loss of loved ones. I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, justice, peace, dreams, the imagination, mankind, and making angels in the snow. So . . . here’s my checkbook and my car-keys, my credit card bills and my 401K statements. I am officially resigning from adulthood. And if you want to discuss this further, you’ll have to catch me first, cause. . . .Tag! You’re it.