How to tell whether you have a serious web addiction. Howard Hsieh 8-25-99 -------------------------------------------------------------------- You might be an engineer if: >> You might need more than professional counseling for your web addiction if: * choosing to buy flowers for your girlfriend or upgrading your RAM is a moral dilemma. >> You decide that RAM can wait since it will be cheaper tomorrow, so you look up the hundreds of virtual flower shops and postcards on the web, so you don't have to leave the house. Then you regret not getting the real flowers, so you go looking for the best web sites for the packaged flowers that give you that ten dollar discount for Amazon, but that annoys you because you have to join a Flower Club or have a credit card to buy it. Frustrated, you decide finally to cut and paste someone else's web picture of flowers and email those with lots of smileys. How sweet! And hey your friend doesn't even have to go to a web site to receive them. What a convenience. * you take a cruise so you can go on a personal tour of the engine room. >> The first thing you look for in a cruise is whether there is a web connection and a good web site with nice pictures. Forget the tour of the engine room! You want the 3-d walkthrough like you saw on Star Trek, so you can see where all the nice but economical rooms are located. And those navigation charts with G.P.S., gotta have those too in case you get lost. And don't even bother signing up if there aren't online reservations. * in college you thought Spring Break was metal fatigue failure. >> Spring break means web surfing 24/7. No classes to interrupt and all the Ramen you can eat. Your only regret is that your web friends aren't on spring break that same weekend but that's okay you can bug them while they are taking their finals. Time to PARTY!!! * the sales people at the local computer store can't answer any of your questions >> Forget asking questions, that's for the uneducated web browser who can't even work Java. You spend hundreds of hours looking up every web site related to your question and have enough info to add a new and exciting web page which you promptly add to your twelve existing sites, so you can say hey my web page is up to date now. * at an air show you know how fast the skydivers are falling. >> The skydiving event gets you excited about designing a skydiving page, where you can reload the skydivers' fall, or make them fall upwards, and change the direction of the sun and the color of their costumes. Especially Elvis, that movie was so funny. With such enthusiasm, you're ready to design their web site for next year's show, but then you check their web site and yikes someone's beaten you to it! In the meantime, the skydivers have landed. * you can type 70 words per minute but can't read your own handwriting. >> Oh the joys of cut/paste so you don't even have to type 70 wpm if you don't want to. That's good for your already hurting carpal tunnel wrists. You prefer online reply cards, and wish everyone's reply form would be standardized like your web site, which is smart enough to extract personal information straight from their pooter. And God forbid you actually go to the post office and use a stamp on a real letter. That'll save the trees and your laserprinter paper. * you comment to your spouse that his/her straight hair is nice and parallel. >> You like how your spouse's hair was "crop"-ed, because now it's easier to see your spouse on your web cam now while you 'talk' online during dinner while your spouse is two feet away from you typing away on the other pooter. * you sit backwards on the Disneyland rides to see how they do the special effects. >> You are disappointed because 'virtualdisney.com' was sooo much better, but are glad that your little kids are still enjoying such obsolete park exhibits. * you have saved every power cord from all your broken appliances. >> You plan to install a new web cam for your microwave network interface system this weekend, but the web has been acting rather slow, so you wonder whether your time is better spent running level two diagnostics on your washing machine. * you know what "http://" stands for. >> You love that fact that no one has to type www or http anymore, and that you are the first person on your web neighborhood to have a homepage from :).com * you look forward to Christmas so you can put the kids' toys together. >> Actually, you shudder at the fact that your favorite e-bay site will be cluttered with people buying and selling trees, but look forward to updating your christmas.html page which has every single christmas carol MP3 in multiple languages. And all the hassle of sending Christmas e-cards to your two e-friends. Christmas is so commercialized! * you see a good design and still have to change it. >> Your homepage is always UNDER CONSTRUCTION and you're ready to upgrade it for the latest plugins but you have to finish downloading and installing those plugins first so they can be compatible with your old browser. * you spent more on your calculator than you did on your wedding ring. >> Not only that, but you need to spend some time to update your online wedding status page since your virtual spouse ran off with a MAC user, of all people. Grumble, it's such a sad task but someone's gotta do it. * you still own a slide rule and know how to use it. >> You still own one because it's been in your family for over one generation, and someday you'll finish coding that Java based slide rule to impress your friends. * you think that people yawning around you are sleep deprived. >> You think people yawning around you are just tired of those old windows products as much as you are, or trying to get you off the web so you answer: "NO, I'M NOT DONE YET!" And you wish you didn't have to be sleep deprived since that would mean of course more time to web surf. * you window shop at Radio Shack >> Your idea of window shopping is that small banner in the corner of your desktop that you can't get rid of since if you did you would have to pay money for your ISP, but now that you've set it up to display your stock quotes it's worth looking at once in a while. * your laptop computer costs more than your car. >> Your ISP connection is better insured than you are, and it is the most valuable item in your house, even more so than the pooter. * your spouse hasn't the foggiest idea of what you do at work. >> Your spouse has a darn good idea what you do at work, and you have to periodically disable that "come home and eat" sound coming from your online status page. * you've already calculated how much you make per second. >> You count the e-bucks you've earned while surfing on the net, but it's awfully small, and with stock prices going up only 10% today, you wish you had enough so you could upgrade to that faster line. * you've tried to repair a $5 radio. >> Let's face it, your mp3 collection is bigger and much better sounding than the any local radio station's. But since your $5 (after rebate) radio doesn't have RealSound technology you try to exchange it at Fry's. --------------------------------------------------------------------------