You Know Youve Been In It Too Long When

You know you have been in the IT business too long when:

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• You find jokes about hex conversion funny.

  • or hexually stimulating.
  • is that being "binary-curious"?

• 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".

• 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

• 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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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
  • {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.},

CategoryOrganizationalAntiPattern, CategoryGetOffMyLawn