Barry - Dave Barry in Cyberspace

ALSO BY DAVE BARRY

The Taming of the Screw
Babies and Other Hazards of Sex
Stay Fit and Healthy Until Youre Dead
Claw Your Way to the Top
Bad Habits
Dave Barrys Guide to Marriage and/or Sex
Homes and Other Black Holes
Dave Barrys Greatest Hits
Dave Barry Turns 40
Dave Barrys Only Travel Guide Youll Ever Need
Dave Barry Talks Back
Dave Barry Does Japan
Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up
Dave Barrys Complete Guide to Guys
Dave Barrys Gift Guide to End All Gift Guides
Dave Barrys Book of Bad Songs
Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus
Dave Barry Turns 50
Big Trouble
Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down
Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway

A Fawcett Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group

Copyright 1996 by Dave Barry

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Fawcett Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Fawcett is a registered trademark and the Fawcett colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

www.ballantinebooks.com

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-90891

eISBN: 978-0-307-75868-2

This edition published by arrangement with Crown Publishers, Inc.

First Ballantine Books Edition: October 1997

v3.1

For Hoobert and MsPtato
With special thanks to Crow

Y ou need to know right off the bat that Im a total computer geek. I am pathetic. Youve seen all those computer magazines with names like Data Dweeb and cover headlines like:

INSIDE:
EXPLICIT COLOR PHOTOGRAPHS
OF BIG HARD DRIVES!

or:

WAX YOUR MODEM FOR IMPROVED SPEED!

No doubt youve asked yourself, What kind of no-life loser actually reads these magazines?

I do! All the time! I read them in bed! I look at the pictures of new computer systems and become moderately aroused and say things like Whoa! Check out the 6X SCSI-2 CD-ROM drive on THAT baby!

dating back to the early 1980s, when I got one of the first primitive Radio Shack models, which looked like a mutant toaster oven that had been exposed to atomic radiation and developed a keyboard.

This computer had virtually no practical use other than to consume electricity. You know how modern personal computers contain a microchip brain that, despite being no larger than a Chiclet, can perform millions of mathematical calculations per second? Well, I dont think my Radio Shack computer had one of those. I think there might have been an actual Chiclet in there, calling the shots. Because this frankly was not a gifted computer. I would not have put my money on this computer in a head-to-head IQ test against a doorknob.

I had two programs for my Radio Shack: a word processor and a game where you were a spaceship commander, trying to destroy invading alien spaceships. In terms of enhancing my personal productivity, there was essentially no difference between these two programs. Both were very difficult to get working; both frequently stopped working for no apparent reason; and both had insanely obscure instructions that were written neither by nor for human beings. (To delete a word, you must first enter the Command Mode by pressing the slash key, followed by the percent key, followed by the key with that little squiggly thing, followed by the first five digits of your Social Security number, followed by ) It was impossible to use these programs for more than a few minutes without seriously screwing up and losing an important document or (even worse) your spaceship.

But I loved that computer. I spent many happy hours cursing at it. I even learned to program it a little bit. At one point I spent hours writing a simple program that made the computer count. When I ran the program, numbers would appear on the screen in sequence, like this:

and so on, until the Chiclet pooped out. I ran this program over and over. I was proud of myself for developing this innovative way to utilize my data-processing resources to do my counting for me automatically, thereby freeing me to devote my valuable time to the important task of shopping for a new computer.

Of course today I have a far more powerful computer containing numerous important computer things such as megahertzes and megs of RAM, and I use it for many vital tasks other than counting. For example, I am writing this book on a computer that is running the hugely popular Windows 95 operating system, which has revolutionized the software world thanks to its capability of accomplishing the seemingly impossible task of making Bill Gates even richer than he already was.