You Know You Have an Internet Addiction When . . .

• You kiss your girlfriend's home page.
• A VRML virtual walk through a park is your idea of a good date.
• Your bookmark takes 15 minutes to scroll from top to bottom.
• Your eyeglasses have a web site burned in on them.
• All your daydreaming is preoccupied with getting a faster connection to the net: 28.8...ISDN...cable modem...T1...T3. And even your night dreams are in HTML.
• You turn off your modem and get this awful empty feeling, like you just pulled the plug on a loved one.
• You refer to going to the bathroom as downloading.
• You start introducing yourself as "Jim at I-I-Net dot net dot au
• Your heart races faster and beats irregularly each time you see a new WWW site address in print or on TV, even though you've never had heart problems before.
• You step out of your room and realize that your parents have moved and you don't have a clue when it happened.
• You turn on your intercom when leaving the room so you can hear if new e-mail arrives.
• Your wife drapes a blond wig over your monitor to remind you of what she looks like.
• All of your friends have an @ in their names.
• When looking at a pageful of someone else's links, you notice all of them are already highlighted in purple.
• Your dog has its own home page.
• Your dog's homepage is actually good.
• You can't call your mother...she doesn't have a modem.
• You check your mail. It says "no new messages." So you check it again.
• Your phone bill comes to your doorstep in a box.
• You code your homework in HTML and give your instructor the URL.
• You don't know the sex of three of your closest friends, because they have neutral nicknames and you never bothered to ask.
• Your husband tells you he's had the beard for 2 months.
• You wake up at 3 a.m. to go to the bathroom and stop and check your e-mail on the way back to bed.
• You tell the kids they can't use the computer because "Daddy's got work to do" and you don't even have a job.
• You buy a Captain Kirk chair with a built-in keyboard and mouse.
• Your wife makes a new rule: "The computer cannot come to bed."
• You get a tatoo that says "This body best viewed with Netscape 2.01or higher."
• You never have to deal with busy signals when calling your ISP...because you never log off.
• The last girl you picked up was only a jpeg.
• You ask a plumber how much it would cost to replace the chair in front of your computer with a toilet.
• Your wife says communication is important in a marriage...so you buy another computer and install a second phone line so the two of you can chat.
• As your car crashes through the guardrail on a mountain road, your first instinct is to search for the "back" button.

Male Hobbies

Q: What two men's hobbies require the most hand-eye coordination?
A: Video games and porn.

The Unofficial Manual for Graduate Teaching Assistants

The Unofficial Manual for Graduate Teaching Assistants
Teaching Introductory Computer Science Courses for Non-majors:
LATE HOMEWORK - When a student turns in his/her project two weeks late and asks for full credit, accept the late work and tell them that it will be awarded full credit. However, do inform them that you will not have time to grade it until after you complete your Ph.D.
DISRUPTIVE STUDENTS -

1. If students will not stop talking when the class period begins, announce that there will be a quiz the following day on today's lecture. Then leave.
2. If your students are prone to reading the school paper in class, try taking out a full page ad in the paper informing them that they are going to flunk your class.

LECTURES -

1. In the event that you are unprepared for a lecture, be sure to use the class time to stress to the class the importance of keeping up with the readings. In fact, spend most of the class time stressing this.
2. When the time comes to lecture on a subject you know nothing about, the art of controlled digression is invaluable. Here, you try to incite unrelated questions from the class which you answer at length. Then at the end of class scold them for digressing and tell them they'll just have to get the material from the book.

GRADING -

1. Always use a fire engine red felt-tip marker with a 1/2 inch tip to grade papers. Position your comments strategically so that they spell "DUMB" when seen from a distance.
2. You may grade assignments however you like. Here is a guide to quick and easy grading: 20 % Name 20 % Penmanship 50 % Homework is stapled together 10 % The work itself Warning: Be prepared for a 60% class average.

GRADING ERRORS - If student A approaches you complaining that an answer on their exam was marked incorrect but was marked correct on student B's exam, promptly mark student B's answer incorrect as well. This will redirect the heat from you onto student A.
EXTRA CREDIT -

1. If students request extra credit to make up for the homework they didn't turn in, be sure to make the opportunity available to them. Some good extra credit problems are: Solve the dining philosopher's problem, using semaphores. Write a C compiler for the Commodore 64. Translate Moby Dick into ASCII-8 code with a leftmost odd parity bit. Design a replacement for the 80486 chip. Build a File Allocation Table (FAT) out of balsa wood.
2. You may also wish to tell the student that they can do extra credit work while you decide whether to accept it. When the student turns in the work, decide against it.

CHEATING -

1. When it is obvious to you that several people have copied each other's homework, grade one person's work on a separate sheet of paper, then photocopy your comments onto everyone else's homework.
2. Should you have very skilled cheaters in your class, try giving incorrect information during your lectures. This should result in incorrect answers on exams. Examples that have proven effective include:

• The three components of a computer system are Larry, Moe and Curly.
• The only possible digits in the binary system are 0, 1, and 2.
• The three components of the CPU are the ALU, REGISTERS and cheap bathroom lighting fixtures.
• The microphone is an output device.
• "Booting" the computer involves waving a large magnet over your hard drive for 60 seconds.
• MS-DOS is the operating system for the CRAY Y-MP.
• When preparing to purchase a new computer system running Windows, you should make sure it has at least 128,000 bytes of main memory.
• Protocols include saluting your computer and calling the mouse "sir".
• CPU stands for Ceramic Public Urinal.
• Structured Programming says that you can write any computer program using only three basic control structures: Sequence, Selection and Guessing.

LAB - You are expected to spend at least 4 hours each week in the lab to assist with student's questions. Students have been known to come up with some real beauties:

• "Why should I save it? I wasn't done yet."
• "My disk erased itself!"
• " Hurry up, I need help. This was due last week."
• "Directory? What's that?"
• "What do I need my textbook for? I'm using a computer." 

Here are the solutions to the most common problems:

• P: "The screen is blank - I can't see what I'm doing" S: Turn on the monitor
• P: "How do I get into Windows?" S: Stare at it long enough and it will start to look like candy.
• P: "I can't get this computer to do anything." S: Have them move to a computer that has a keyboard.
• P: "The stupid printer printed the wrong file." S: Reprimand the printer.
• P: "WordPerfect didn't do what I told it to do." S: Tell them they have to earn its respect first.