You Know Youve Been In It Too Long When
You know you have been in the IT business too long when:
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You hand somebody a 3.5" diskette and they roll their eyes
- Or, somebody hands you a diskette and you don't think twice about it...until you actually try to insert it.
- You like the DOS prompt over Windows Explorer
- You talk about how your screwy cousin needs "serious debugging".
- You realize the new IT fads look like the old ones renamed, repackaged, and re-buzzworded.
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Everybody asks, "why aren't you in management yet?"
- Extra points if you pull out a thumbdrive with the answer in PDF.
- Triple points if you pull out a floppy with the answer in Word-Perfect.
- You can't learn new languages because you keep mixing up the new function/method names with all the other 30 languages you know with similar names or concepts.
- Instead of answering "yes" to questions, you answer with "Is a nybble four bits?"
- You refer to the excess of visiting relatives as a Denial Of Service Attack on your food and favorite chair.
- You revel in finding the flaws in video games - so you can gain insight into how they were written.
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You forget what the sun looks like. The what? Oh, you mean that old unix workstation in the corner?
- Revision: You interpret "Get some sun" differently than everybody else.
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You think of waking up as "power on", coffee as "bootup", talking to co-workers as "network startup", and lunch as "loading data".
- Extra points if you install Linux on your coffee pot or shaver after discovering they have an ARM microprocessor.
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You find jokes about hex conversion funny.
- or hexually stimulating.
- is that being "binary-curious"?
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You consider two couples and a fifth person at dinner as "an off by one error"
- Or you call the fifth person the "parity bit".
- You ever need to say "I'd explain it, but I'd totally nerd out and bore you".
- You tell somebody "It allowed me to kill 1.8 birds with 1 stone".
- You call your wife's busybody friends "brain malware conduits".
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You have a file in your office relating to a major network procurement bid in 1985.
- True in my case I have it here -- JohnFletcher
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You have memory cards from a Honeywell 316 and can remember it running.
- Also true in my case, I also have some actual blank 80 column cards. -- JohnFletcher
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You keep a slide rule in the office as a backup processor.
- I show mine to my current students who have no idea what it is. -- JohnFletcher
- Extra points for an abacus.
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Substantial portions of your last 4 home folders are contained in an ever-deepening hierarchy under your current one. ~/old_documents/backup_transfer/files_from_old_computer/...
- Dontcha mean "docs/black&white_docs/iron_plate_docs/bronze_docs/cave_docs/australopithecus_docs" ?
- You think in COBOL when you write Python and in Python when you write COBOL.
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You are contemplating writing a paper on the history of computers in the organisation over the last 40 years.
- and can do this from personal knowledge of using them in my case. -- JohnFletcher
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{And turning the collection in your garage into a museum.}
- Or donated your 8" disk drive to a museum.
- {Extra point if you ask for it back to retrieve some data}
- {Double points if you mistake the museum for a store.}