The difference between involvement and commitment can be simply illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs. The chicken was involved, the pig was committed. The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing more important to do. Now I have a very firm grasp on reality -- I can reach out and strangle it anytime. Men may come and men may go, but legacy code stays on forever. I think, therefore I am. I code, therefore I am paid. Don't let your status become too quo. Everyone: join the march to save individuality. Experience is that marvelous thing - I enables me to recognize a mistake whenever I make it again. C++ is an onion: you peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep. Early to rise, early to bed, makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead. Early bird gets the worm ... as if that's a great incentive. Dinosaurs aren't extinct. They've just learned to hide in the trees. Programmers are great playwrights... it's computers that are lousy actors. I believe that every human has a finite number of heart-beats. I don't intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises. -- Neil Armstrong This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. -- Douglas Adams Wife: Did you miss me dear? Husband: How can I miss you if you won't go away? Charity begins at home. Poverty begins there too. Very few people do anything creative after the age of thirty-five. The reason is that very few people do anything creative before the age of thirty-five. Life is a horror movie, starring people you know. -- Richard J. Needham In my next life, I want more memory installed. How many boards would the mongols hoard, If the mongol hordes got bored? -- Calvin (Bill Watterson) This door is baroquen, please wiggle Handel. (If I wiggle Handel, will it wiggle Bach?) -- Found on a door in the MSU music building If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars. -- J. Paul Getty A billion here, a billion there -- pretty soon it adds up to real money. -- Sen. Everett Dirksen, on the U.S. defense budget Early to bed and early to rise ... till you make enough money to do otherwise. Hurewitz Memory Principle: The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional to .... to .... uhm .... "It's at times like this I wish I'd listened to my mother" "Why, what did she say?" "I don't know, I never listened." -- Douglas Adams Murphy's Law is recursive. Washing your car to make it rain doesn't work. College: The fountain of knowledge, where everyone goes to drink. You turn me on, I'm a radio. -- Joni Mitchell Why drink and drive when you can smoke and fly? "Microsoft programs are generally bug-free. If you visit the Microsoft hotline, you'll literally have to wait weeks if not months until someone calls in with a bug in one of our programs. 99.99% of calls turn out to be user mistakes." - Bill Gates Cats are smarter than dogs. You can not get eight cats to pull a sled through snow. - Jeff Valdez When Briton Malcolm Ecles, 50, died of bowel cancer, his family turned him into a kitchen aid. In accordance with his wishes, they keep his ashes in a specially crafted glass egg timer. "I can't boil a soft egg ever in my life," widow Brenda Eccles said. "He knew that and said I should turn some of his ashes into an egg-timer. Then he could help me and it would be a nice way of remembering him."' Determined to reduce the number of disease-carrying insects, Manila officials offered a bounty of 1.50 pesos (6 cents) for every 10 cockroaches turned in. The Asahi Evening News reported the offer has given rise to a booming industry in the Phillipines: roach farming. A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, hit a ball, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. I have been walking miles of bad road, If the bible is right, the world will explode ... I've been trying to get as far away from myself as I can. -- Dylan As long as I have to die in the attempt Then there is no reason to live forever -- John Petrucci In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways. Our asymptotes no longer out of phase, We shall encounter, counting, face to face. -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" A pig is a jolly companion, Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt -- A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale, Though mountains may topple and tilt. When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you, When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig, Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover, You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig, You'll never go wrong with a pig! -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow" Drive defensively. Buy a tank. Men who cherish for women the highest respect are seldom popular with them. -- Joseph Addison Electrical engineers do it with less resistance Black holes are where God divided by zero Voting gives me an election There was a college student trying to earn some pocket money by going from house to house offering to do odd jobs. He explained this to a man who answered one door. "How much will you charge to paint my porch?" asked the man. "Forty dollars." "Fine" said the man, and gave the student the paint and brushes. Three hours later the paint-splattered lad knocked on the door again. "All done!", he says, and collects his money. "By the way," the student says, "That's not a Porsche, it's a Ferrari." Never call a man a fool - borrow from him Nobody really knows what happiness is, until they're married. And then it's too late. Theorem: a cat has nine tails. Proof: No cat has eight tails. A cat has one tail more than no cat. Therefore, a cat has nine tails. Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. They worship us and are always bothering us to do something for them. -- Oscar Wilde Sample questions from grad quals: MEDICINE You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of Scotch. Remove your appendix. Do not suture until your work has been inspected. (You have 15 minutes.) HISTORY Describe the history of the papacy from its origins to the present day, concentrating especially, but not exclusively, on its social, political, economic, religious and philisophical impact upon Europe, Asia, America, and Africa. Be brief, concise, and specific. BIOLOGY Create life. Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture if this form of life had been created 500 million years ago or earlier, with special attention to its probable effect on the English parliamentary system. Women are like elephants to me: I like looking at them, but I wouldn't want to own one. -- W. C. Fields If I were an enzyme i would be DNA helicase so i could unzip your genes. Logical inconsistency in natural proof systems: (1) Alexander the Great was a great general. (2) Great generals are fore(-four-)warned. (3) Fore(-Four-)warned is fore(-four-)armed. (4) Four is an even number. (5) Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have. (6) The only number that is both even and odd is infinity. (7) Four is not the same as infinity. Therefore, any statement is true. So, all horses are black. unzip ; touch ; finger ; mount ; gasp ; yes ; umount ; sleep; Unix is fun! When in doubt, do it. It's much easier to apologize than to get permission. -- Grace Murray Hopper Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur [Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound]. The odds are a million to one against you being one in a million. I never made a mistake in my life. I thought I did once, but I was wrong. -- Lucy Van Pelt This weekend was fun ... I wonder if it was net fun or gross fun. Neckties strangle clear thinking. Indifference is going to be the end of humankind one day - but what do I care? My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies. It at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried. I know it all. I just can't remember it all at once. American football represents the best of American life ... mob violence punctuated by committee meetings I like work; it fascinates me; I can sit and look at it for hours. Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account. This status message means nothing ... but saying something pointless always gets people's attention. Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. -- Wernher von Braun Any given program, when running, is obsolete. Row, row, row your bits, gently down the stream... Humpty dumpty was pushed. You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a laptop. If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from? Famous last words: The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late and owns the worm farm. -- Travis McGee drug, n: A substance that, injected into a rat, produces a scientific paper. May you die in bed at 99 ... shot by a jealous spouse. UFOs are for real: the Air Force actually doesn't exist. A: To be or not to be. Q: What is the square root of 4b^2? Dear Lord: Please make my words sweet and tender, for tomorrow I may have to eat them. Things will be colorful and bright tonight. A patrol car will pull you over and a cop will shine a flashlight in your face. Friday after lunch is the cosmic time of the week. Diplomacy is when you tell your wife: "How do you expect me to remember your birthday when you don't look any older?" I think a relationship is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And it has to sometimes eat other smaller relationships ... Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer ... when they complained about the heat. Last yeer I kudn't spel Engineer. Now I are won. War is not peace. Slavery is not freedom. Ketchup is not vegetable. Which is worse: ignorance or apathy? Who knows? Who cares? I will give myself upto God when the Devil wants nothing more to do with me. $100 invested today at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at which time it will be worth absolutely nothing. All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy. Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. The only person who always got his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe. This statement would be seven words long if it were six words shorter. Absolutum obsoletum. (If it works, it's out of date.) QOTD: This is a one-line proof ... if we start sufficiently far to the left. If an experiment works, something has gone wrong. Even bytes get lonely for a little bit. Do I have lysdexia? The Briggs-Chase Law of Program Development: To determine how long it will take to write and debug a program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add one, and convert to the next higher units. Join the army, see the world, meet interesting and exciting people, kill them. Disc space -- the final frontier. A woman was once in love with 14 soldiers ... it was clearly platoonic. System going down at 42pm this afternoon to fix scheduler bug. A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing but together can decide that nothing can be done. -- Fred Allen "Beat your children every day; you may not know why, but they will". Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them. Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard drive? Television is a medium because anything well done is rare. Love poem: Neurosis is red, melancholy is blue ... I am a schizophrenic, so are you. Every time I lose weight, it finds me again ... Post-MSWord, spelling is a lossed art. Murphy was an optimist. Rich people should go on a spending spree to save the economy.