A French teacher was explaining to her class that French is, unlike their English counterparts, are grammatically designated as masculine or feminine. Things like 'chalk' or 'pencil,' she described, would have a gender association although in English these words were neutral.
Puzzled, one student raised his hand and asked, "what gender is a computer?"
The teacher wasn't certain which it was, and so divided the class into two groups and asked them to decide if a computer should be masculine or feminine.
One group was composed of the women in the class, and the other, of men.
Both groups were asked to give four reasons for their recommendation.
The group of women concluded that computers should be referred to in the masculine gender because:
The men, on the other hand, decided that computers should definitely be referred to in the feminine gender because:
To get your daily exercise, just click on "run"!
To improve your appearance, just adjust the display settings.
If life gets too noisy, turn off the speakers.
When you lose your car keys, click on "find."
"Help" with the chores is just a click away.
We could click on "send" and the kids would go to bed immediately.
Click on "close" to shut up the kids and spouse.
To undo a mistake, click on "back."
Is your wardrobe getting old? Click "update."
If you don't like cleaning the litter box, click on "delete."
I saw a lady at work today putting a credit card into her floppy drive and pulling it out very quickly. I inquired as to what she was doing and she said she was shopping on the internet, and they asked for a credit card number, so she was using the ATM "thingy."
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I worked with an individual who plugged his power strip back into itself and for the life of him could not understand why his computer would not turn on.
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1st Person: "Do you know anything about this fax-machine?"
2nd Person: "A little. What's wrong?"
1st Person: "Well, I sent a fax, and the recipient called back to say all she received was a cover-sheet and a blank page. I tried it again, and the same thing happened."
2nd Person: "How did you load the sheet?"
1st Person: "It's a pretty sensitive memo, and I didn't want anyone else to read it by accident, so I folded it so only the recipient would open it and read it."
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I recently saw a distraught young lady weeping beside her car. "Do you need some help?" I asked. She replied, "I knew I should have replaced the battery in this remote door unlocker. Now I can't get into my car. Do you think they (pointing to a distant convenience store) would have a battery for this?" "Hmmm, I dunno. Do you have an alarm, too?" I asked. "No, just this remote 'thingy,'" she answered, handing it and the car keys to me. As I took the key and manually unlocked the door, I replied, "Why don't you drive over there and check about the batteries...it's a long walk."
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Tech Support: "What does the screen say now?"
Person: "It says, 'Hit ENTER when ready'."
Tech Support: "Well?"
Person: "How do I know when it's ready?"
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Several years ago we had an intern who was none too swift. One day he was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of typing paper. What do I do?" "Just use copier machine paper, " she told him. With that, the intern took his last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five blank copies.
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One of our servers crashed. I was watching our new system administrator trying to restore it. He inserted a CD and needed to type a path name to a directory named "i386." He started to type it and paused, asking me "Where's the key for that line thing?" I asked what he was talking about, and he said, "You know, that one that looks like an upside-down exclamation mark." I replied, "You mean the letter ' i ' ?'" He said, "Yeah, that's it!"
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I was in a car dealership a while ago when a large motor home was towed into the garage. The front of the vehicle was in dire need of repair and the whole thing generally looked like an extra in "Twister." I asked the manager what had happened. He told me that the driver had set the cruise control, then went in the back to make a sandwich.
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