You know you've been using computers to much when....

All of your mental calculations are off by one, because you keep counting form zero.

You surround long strings of written arithmetic in parentheses, based on the Operator Precedence in ANSI C; and wish the rest of the world did the same.

You habitually use semi-colons and comment symbols in documents, as if they were natural.


You can't remember the last time you spoke to someone on the phone.


You give people your Instant Messenger, rather then you're phone number


You can type your login faster then your street address.


Your calculator has it's own programming language, but you can't make it count from zero.


When you forget something, you blame it on your brain not "swapping" the data from short-term to longer-term memory in time.


You think people are backwards, if they don't understand SI


Debating the endianness of various date formats sounds like fun


You have to pause to remember how to write rarely used letters in cursive, because you haven't written on paper in years.


You've named a computer in honour of HAL9000s female counterpart.



Words like grep, parse, regular expression, archive, constant, null, void, port, IP, socket, packet,; are imprinted on your vocabulary. much to your friends annoyance.


You describe the functioning of your brain, as if it was a computer; because you're not a neuro-specialist.


You would rather use /bin/ed then notepad.exe


You have several command prompts open at all times, even on Windows.


You can tell the difference between explorer.exe and My Computer.


You can't tell the difference between explorer.exe and your Windows taskbar, system tray, start menu, and the file manager.


You write corrections to the last message, as if invoking SED.

You use single quotes to define literal text.


You use regular expressions in place of long lists of related identifiers.


You think people are gay, if they don't think the Macbook Pro is sexy.


You write the "show work" for maths questions in pseudo code, showing the algorithm used instead of the numbers.


You know the size of a byte is machine dependent, but never used a machine without an 8bit byte.


You've used 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, and 64-bit systems, but wonder what will cause commodity systems to go 128-bit in the future.


You have more e-mail, then you can shake a stick at (after spam)


You haven't used a real dictionary or encyclopedia in years.


Your desk is a dumping ground for CD-ROM disk jackets, but your home directory is neat as a whistle.


You haven't seen a razor blade in months, but a program got written on time.


telnet and tcpdump are your favorite solutions to networking problems.


You write about network communications, as if they were PF rule sets.

You keep using -> to dereference "mental pointers" in text.


You write encrypted messages in hexadecimals or octal first, then apply a caesar chiper before encrypting them.


After so many years, that rodent with a long tail on your desk is nick named "the rat"


You use the keyboard for damn near everything, short of opening cans.


$ program folder1/folder2/folder3/filename.ext feels more natural then double clicking my computer, double clicking folder1, double clicking folder2, double clicking folder3, and then finally double clicking filename.ext.

Especially when you can type this as prog/f1/f2/f3/file.ext by using the TAB key completion of your shell, using file managers feel clumsy.


Binary files annoy you, because they can't be easily read in text editors


You know Integrated Development Environments exist, but have yet to find one better then a UNIX shell, text editor, and development tools.


Proof reading is your favorite way to debug EIDTENT.


You write things like: let foo = [ item1, item2, item3, item 4]; whenever you want to define a list of data in chats.


You meet an attractive woman, and wonder if she is computer literate.


You can use several different styles of operating system interchangeably without problem.


People ask you for something, but don't tell you how many, and you respond with "enter an integer".


Your bookshelf is full of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Foo Quck References, and Networking books.


You've sent people messages in hexadecimal, more then once.


If you had more money, your bedroom would be like a cave with 50 computers humming.


You remind your dog, that a laptop is not a pillow.


The hum of your file server keeps people awake.


Finding old PC parts is like presents under a Christmas tree


....