Your Wife, Your Copyright, Your Professional IQ April 12, 2002February 21, 2017 My (very happily married) cousin-in-law Paul sent me this. As usual, I apologize if you’ve already seen it; and I lament the lack of attribution. (See below.) I would also like to point out that it applies almost equally well to life-partners as to wives, even though we have a different tech support number to call. Dear Tech Support, Last year I upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 and noticed that the new program began unexpected child processing that took up a lot of new space, valuable resources and monetary funds. No mention of this phenomenon was included in the product brochure. In addition, Wife 1.0 installs itself into all other programs and launches during system initialization, where it monitors all other system activity. Applications such as Poker Night 10.3, Drunken Boys Night 2.5 and Saturday Football 5.0 no longer run, crashing the system whenever selected. I cannot seem to keep wife 1.0 in the background while attempting to run some of my other favorite applications. I am thinking about going back to Girlfriend 7.0, but the uninstall does not work on this program. Can you please help me!!!??? Thanks, A Troubled User + + + Dear Troubled User, This is a very common problem men complain about, but is mostly due to a primary misconception. Many people upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 with the idea that Wife 1.0 is merely a UTILITIES & ENTERTAINMENT program. Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM and designed by its creator to run everything. It is unlikely you would be able to purge Wife 1.0 and still convert back to Girlfriend 7.0. Hidden operating files within your system would cause Girlfriend 7.0 to emulate Wife 1.0 so nothing is gained. It is impossible to uninstall, delete, or purge the program files from the system once installed. You cannot go back to Girlfriend 7.0 because Wife 1.0 is not designed to do this. Some have tried to install Girlfriend 8.0 or Wife 2.0 but end up with more problems than the original system. Look in your manual under “Warnings- Alimony! /Child support!”. I recommend you keep Wife 1.0 and deal with the situation. I suggest installing background application program C:YESDEAR to alleviate software augmentation. Having installed Wife1.0 myself, I might also suggest you read the entire section regarding General Partnership Faults (GPFs). You must assume all responsibility for faults and problems that might occur, regardless of their cause. The best course of action will be to enter the command C:APOLOGIZE. In any case avoid excessive use of C:YES DEAR because ultimately you may have to give the APOLOGIZE command before the operating system will return to normal. The system will run smoothly as long as you take the blame for all the GPFs. Wife 1.0 is a great program, but very high-maintenance. Consider buying additional software to improve the performance of Wife 1.0. I recommend Flowers 3.1 and nothing less than Diamonds 2K. Do not, under any circumstances install Secretary with Short Skirt 3.3. This is not a supported application for Wife 1.0 and is likely to cause irreversible damage to the operating system. Best of Luck, Tech Support Now, before I go steal the next person’s work, I would like to repeat my suggestion of June 20, 2000 – which I am annoyed to see you have not yet fully implemented. Namely: whenever you receive something clever that is unsigned, ask the sender to ask whoever sent it to him to find out the source. You will not, likely, find the source this way. But fairly soon, if this becomes Internetiquette, we will become more source-conscious and stop chopping off attributions when we forward e-mail. Those who initiate these little gems will either get the credit they deserve or, if they choose not to take credit, perhaps tell us why they have worked so hard to create something anonymously. Fair enough? ‘So it is written, so it shall be done.’ — Yul Brynner Ok. Have you seen this one? I don’t know if it really came from Andersen Consulting (now ‘Accenture’), but I do know that they split off from Arthur Andersen not a moment too soon. Thanks to Rick Adler for sending it to me: Test for Professionals The following short quiz consists of 4 questions and will tell you whether you are qualified to be a “professional.” Scroll down for each answer. The questions are NOT that difficult. 1. How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator? The correct answer is: Open the refrigerator put in the giraffe and close the door. This question tests whether you tend to do simple things in an overly complicated way. 2. How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator? The answer is: Open the refrigerator put in the elephant and close the refrigerator. Wrong Answer! Correct Answer: Open the refrigerator, take out the giraffe, put in the elephant and close the door. This tests your ability to think through the repercussions of your previous actions. 3. The lion king is hosting an All-Creatures Conference. All the creatures attend except one. Which creature does not attend? The answer is: The Elephant. The elephant is in the refrigerator. This tests your memory. OK, even if you did not answer the first three questions correctly, you still have one more chance to show your true abilities. 4. There is a river you must cross. But it is normally inhabited by crocodiles. How do you manage it? The answer is: You swim across. All the crocodiles are attending the Creatures Conference. This tests whether you learn quickly from your mistakes. According to Andersen Consulting Worldwide, around 90% of the professionals they tested got all questions wrong. But many preschoolers got several correct answers. Anderson Consulting says this conclusively disproves the theory that most professionals have the brains of a four year old. * Please note that the title of this website is, at long last and thanks to web master Marc Fest, no longer ‘Demystifying Finance.’ So if you don’t feel today’s column profited you in any way – tough.