You know you've been hacking too long when...
You know you've been hacking too long when...
* Not only do you check your e-mail more often than your papermail, but you remember your network address faster than yourpostal one.
* Your SO kisses you on the neck and the first thing you thinkis "Uh, oh, priority interrupt".
* You go to balance your chequebook and discover that you'redoing it in octal.
* Your computers have a higher street value than your car.
* In your universe, "round numbers" are powers of 2, not 10.
* You have woken up recalling a dream in some programminglanguage.
* You realise you have never seen half of your best friends.
[An early version of this entry said "All but one of thesehave been reliably reported as hacker traits (some of themquite often). Even hackers may have trouble spotting theringer." The ringer was balancing one's chequebook in octal,which I made up out of whole cloth. Although more respondentspicked that one out as fiction than any of the others, I alsoreceived multiple independent reports of its actuallyhappening, most famously to Grace Hopper while she wasworking with BINAC in 1949. - ESR]