Verity Stob is the comedienne of the programming world. She has been writing satirical chronicles of techie life since 1988. Her column first appeared in the legendary .EXE Magazine, then Dr. Dobbs' Journal, and it now graces The Register.

For the first time, the very best of Stob's columns have been collected into one essential book. Discover why Mrs. Bill Gates calls in a programmer to fix her plumbing; find out about the Google computer that suffers from Tourette's syndrome; discover the shameful secret of the CEO who types his correspondence in CAPITAL LETTERS, and much, much more!

Table of Contents

1. How Friendly Is Your Software?
2. The Programmers’ Guide to Programmers
3. Larn Yasel Programmin!
4. POET’S Day
5. The Maltese Modem
6. Late One Night
7. The Kraken Sleeps
8. Twenty Things (Almost) You Didn’t Know
9. Few Lend (but Fools)
10. The Best Improve with Age
11. STOB versus the Software Engineers
12. Auntie Verity’s Hardware Help
13. Underground Liff
14. The Games We Play
15. A Chance to Meet You
16. Wot Any Bule Kno
17. About
18. Not Fairies’ Footfalls
19. FLGMJLLGHQ
20. In Glorious VerityVision
21. I Want to Die
22. Dear Bill
23. Modem Tales
24. Around and Around
25. Four Yorkshiremen
26. Email and Femail
27. Morse Code
28. I Prefer Tea
29. Junior Makes Three
30. Don’t Look Back
31. Book of Anders
32. The Black Eye of the Little Blue Techie
33. Mr. Jobs Works Next Door
34. Quality Street
35. You May Start
36. 8086 and All That
37. The Browser
38. Park Gates
39. Et Tu Gnome?
40. Let’s Parler Y2K!
41. Yocam Hokum
42. Bye Bye Byte
43. Night Mail
44. Cringing for Bobot or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About the Quality of My Work and Just Made Dreary TV Programmes Instead
45. One Nostril Hair, 17mm, Grey
46. The Dog’s Breakfast
47. Book of Yoc-am (Cont'd.)
48. Fair Play
49. By Other Means
50. Waltz$
51. Thirteen Ways to Loathe VB
52. Claire’s Story and Other Tragedies
53. Down the Pole
54. Out to Lunch
55. Two by Two
56. Big Iron Age Man
57. Just William
58. Downwards and Backwards with Dotdotdot
59. Up with the Joneses
60. Wherever He Goes
61. The Devil’s Netiquette
62. At the Tomb of the IUnknown Interface
63. Double Plus Good?
64. I Know This, It’s Unix
65. Your Call Is Important to Us
66. Way After 1984
67. Patter Song
68. Roger D. Hubris Ate My Hamster
69. State of Decay
70. In Memoriam—Edsger Dijkstra, 1930–2002
71. Open Saucery
72. Idle Thoughts of an Idle Process
73. Fragments from a New Finnish Epic
74. Stoblog
75. We Don’t Guarantee That Using The Latest .NET XML Windows API Feature Can Metaphorically Speaking Put Bounce In Your Boobs And/Or Hairs On Your Chest (Delete As Applicable) But By Golly We Find It Extremely Hard To Imagine Circumstances Under Which This Will Not Follow As Naturally As Night Follows Day
76. Soundtrack
77. Damnation Without Relief
78. Cold Comfort Server Farm ForgeAhead
79. One After 409
80. Jam Today
81. Borland Revelations
82. Patenting by Numbers
83. Confessions of a Spammer
84. Solder Cellar—Kindly Accept Substitutes
85. Lara’s Last Stand?
86. Too Obscure or Rude