Because laughter is the best medicine...

Does this look familiar?

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

IF YOU RECEIVE A GIFT IN THE SHAPE OF
A LARGE WOODEN HORSE DO NOT DOWNLOAD IT!!!!

It is EXTREMELY DESTRUCTIVE and will overwrite your ENTIRE CITY!

The "gift" is disguised as a large wooden horse about two stories tall. 
It tends to show up outside the city gates and appears to be abandoned. 
DO NOT let it through the gates! It contains hardware that is 
incompatible with Trojan programming, including a crowd of heavily 
armed Greek warriors that will destroy your army, sack your town, and 
kill your women and children. If you have already received such a gift, 
DO NOT OPEN IT! Take it back out of the city unopened and set fire 
to it by the beach.

FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!

-Poseidon

----------------------------------------------------------

FROM: hector@studmuffin.com
TO: laocoon@gloondome.edu
RE: Greeks bearing gifts

Laocoon,

I hate to break to you, but this is one of the oldest hoaxes there 
is. I've seen variants on this warning come through on other 
listservs, one involving some kind of fruit that was supposed to kill 
the people who ate it and one having to do with something called the 
"Midas Touch." Here are a few tipoffs that this is a hoax:

1) This "Forward this message to everyone you know" crap. 
If it were really meant as a warning about the Greek army, why tell 
anyone to post it to the Phonecians, Sumerians, and Cretans?

2) Use of exclamation points. Always a giveaway.

3) It's signed "from Poseidon." Granted he's had his 
problems with Odysseus but he's one of their guys, isn't he? Besides, 
the lack of a real header with a detailed address makes me suspicious.

4) Technically speaking, there is no way for a horse to 
overwrite your entire city. A horse is just an animal, after all.

Next time you get a message like this, just delete it. I 
appreciate your concern, but once you've been around the block a couple 
times you'll realize how annoying this kind of stuff is.

Bye now,

Hector.

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January 1, 2000

Re: Vacation Pay

Dear Valued Employee:


Our records indicate that you have not used any vacation time over the
past 100 year(s). As I'm sure you are aware, employees are granted 3
weeks of paid leave per year or pay in lieu of time off. One
additional week is granted for every 5 years of service.

Please either take 9,400 days off work or notify our office and your
next pay check will reflect payment of $8,277,432.22, which will
include all pay and interest for the past 1,200 months.

Sincerely,

Automated Payroll Processing

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While browsing through material in the recesses of the Roman Section of the British Museum, a researcher recently came across a tattered bit of parchment. After some effort he translated it and found it was a letter from a man called Plutonius with the title of "magister factorium," or keeper of the calendar, to one Cassius. It was dated, strangely enough, 2 BC, December 3 -- about 2,000 years ago.

The text of the message follows:

Dear Cassius: 

Are you still working on the Y zero K problem? The change from BC to
AD is giving us a lot of headaches and we haven't much time left.

I don't know how people will cope with working the wrong way around.
Having been working happily downward forever, now we have to start
thinking upward.

You would think that someone would have thought of it earlier and not
left it to us to sort it all out at the last minute.  I spoke to
Caesar the other evening. He was livid that Julius hadn't done
something about it when he was sorting out the calendar. He said he
could see why Brutus had turned nasty. 

We called in the consulting astrologers, but they simply said that
continuing downwards using minus BC won't work.   As usual, the
consultants charged a fortune for doing nothing useful. 

As for myself, I just can't see the sand in an hourglass flowing upward.
We have heard that there are three wise men in the East who have been
working on the problem, but unfortunately they won't arrive until it's
all over. 

Some say the world will cease to exist at the moment of transition.

We're continuing to work on the Y zero K problem and I'll send you a
parchment if anything develops.

Best regards,

Plutonius

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To:  VP, Corporate Administration

I hope I haven't misunderstood your instructions, because this Y to K
problem makes no sense to me.

Be that as it may, I have completed the conversion of the corporate
calendar for the year 2000, per my understanding of the instructions.

The months now read as follows:
* Januark
* Februark
* March
* April
* Mak
* June
* Julk

Please let me know if there is anything else that needs to be done in
preparation for the year 2000.

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