(I was at a recruitment company, filling in forms in the hope they would find me a job…)
Recruiter: It says here you’re good at hit ‘em all. That sounds violent.
Me: Uh…do you mean HTML?
Recruiter: Yes. Is that like Fight Club?
Me: Er, no, it’s code. It’s a programming language. It’s what you use to make websites.
Recruiter: I don’t think we want people involved in secret codes for Fight Clubs on the web.
Me: OK, hold down the button and tell Siri to do anything.
Mom: Call the police! (laughs)
Siri: Calling 911.
Mom: OH GOD STOP IT HANG UP HANG UP
(To this day Mom refuses to talk at all if she is in the same room as my iPhone, afraid it will get her in trouble)
Boss: Do you know anyone at Microsoft?
Me: Oh sure, Bill Gates and I play poker all the time. It’s how I won Rwanda.
Boss: Good, can you tell them I have a great idea to make their email program better.
Me: …Do I have to actually explain I don’t know Bill Gates personally?
Boss: Instead of the “Reply “ button they should call it the “Write back to them” button. It’s a much more better use of English and stuff.
Me: …Are you even listening?
Boss: Let me know when they make a new Outlook for me.
Boss: Aw darn, I was going to reply to that email, but it was sent to me last month, and it will have evaporated.
Me: …evaporated?
Boss: Yeah, at the start of the month all old emails disappear. I guess they evaporate on the Internet.
Me: They go into last month’s archive folder…
Boss: Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat
Phone caller: Hi, it’s me, I got a problem with our computers.
Me: Uh…sorry?
Phone caller: Do you remember what our passwords are?
Me: Wait. Who is this?
Phone caller: It’s Todd, your old boss…
Me: Why are you calling? I haven’t worked for you in over two years.
Todd: This is why I can’t remember my password.
Dad: I can’t believe you wasted money buying Windows for your computer. You don’t need Windows. You can use Linux! It’s exactly the same and free.
Me: I need Windows for Photoshop.
Dad: But you can get GIMP for Linux. It can open Photoshop files.
Me: That’s kind of like saying a soap box derby is just like a Ferrari because it uses the same roads.
Dad: I heard you can ‘overclock’ a computer.
Me: I heard you can ‘rob’ a bank, too, but I wouldn’t recommend it either.
Dad: I want to ‘overclock’ my computer. Come and help me the next time you’re over.
(Two weeks later)
Me: So yeah, I totally just overclocked your computer.
Dad: Sweet. I’ll test it out!
(As I predicted, he just sits there at the desktop looking at how ‘fast’ the mouse moves around the screen now. I didn’t overclock a thing!)
Distant Relative At A Family Gathering: So what do you do now?
Me: Well, I work in marketing and PR, mostly dealing with computer game companies…
Distant Relative At A Family Gathering: Computer games? Oh my son would love a job with you. He’s good with that. I’ll tell him he can start next week.
Me: Oh there’s the problem. You couldn’t connect to the wireless router because the network adaptor driver wasn’t installed properly. Easy fix.
Dad: Was that because the firewall wasn’t set up to do graphics?
Me: …what?
Dad: You need to enable the firewall graphics card in a proxy.
Me: …do…do you even know what any of those words mean?
Dad: Yes I read computer magazines.
Me: Ugh, I don’t know what they did but this Windows installation is…ugh. It’s probably better if we just reformat it, install Windows again and start over.
Dad: No. We can’t do that. I’ll lose my important stuff.
Me: What stuff? All your data is saved on the other hard drive, all you use is a web browser and a word processor and we can reinstall that easily…
Dad: No, I mean the picture of the alien on the desktop.
