Category: Personal News

You think any­thing slow­er than DSL is bar­bar­ic, but can’t get it in your neigh­bor­hood

You know what DSL stands for

You and your spouse almost come to blows decid­ing to hit Peet’s or Star­bucks

You think that Amer­i­can food includes sushi, naan, pho, pesto and pad thai

You met your neigh­bors once

When asked about your com­mute you answer in time, not dis­tance

Even though you work 80 hours per week on a com­put­er, for relax­ation you read your email and peruse eBay

You have worked at the same job for a year and peo­ple call you an ‘old-timer’

The T‑shirts you val­ue most were for prod­ucts that nev­er made it to mar­ket

You can name four dif­fer­ent pro­gram­ming lan­guages and you are not a pro­gram­mer

You remem­ber the names of the three clos­est cheap sushi joints, the loca­tion of all the Fry’s in the area and which com­pa­nies your friends work for that are going pub­lic in the next year, but don’t know the name of the may­or

Stand­ing in line at Star­bucks you won­der why the employ­ees don’t call a head hunter

You work 6 miles from your home and spend two hours a day com­mut­ing and $40 a week on gas

Win­ter is when your lawn grows too fast and sum­mer is when it dies

The medi­an price of a house is $500,000…for 1200 sq. ft. with no yard because it’s a town house

You live on some of the rich­est farm land in the world but most of what you eat comes from South Amer­i­ca on a boat

Your best friend lives across town but you hard­ly ever see each oth­er because after your com­mute you’re too pooped to spend anoth­er hour dri­ving to their home

You have a mas­ter’s degree in engi­neer­ing but half the peo­ple in your depart­ment either did­n’t go to col­lege or have his­to­ry degrees, except if you have a mas­ter’s from Stan­ford, in which case every­one in your depart­ment has a mas­ter’s degree from Stan­ford

You cringe when you see peo­ple in suits at your office, won­der­ing if some­one in man­age­ment will make you stop wear­ing bun­ny slip­pers

You plan your vaca­tion so that you don’t have to dri­ve back from the air­port in com­mute hours

You don’t go to sport­ing events unless you are giv­en tick­ets by your employ­er

You could sell your home and live like a king in 99% of the rest of the world, but don’t because it would be dif­fi­cult to move back.

You have at least three com­put­ers at home.

You own at least one domain on the Inter­net, prob­a­bly sev­er­al.

You think it’s nor­mal to see chip-design soft­ware or rela­tion­al data­bas­es adver­tised on free­way bill­boards.

You know that Cal­i­for­nia isn’t just one big beach.

You know that not every­one in Cal­i­for­nia surfs.

You know there’s lots of ski­ing in Cal­i­for­nia.

You know your rotat­ing out­age block num­ber at home and at work, and lis­ten for them when­ev­er there are rolling black­outs.

If some­one refers to “Sun­ny­to­gaDeAn­zavale Road”, you laugh and know what they’re talk­ing about.

You take your out-of-town friends to see the techie gad­gets at Fry’s. But you don’t let them buy any­thing.

You know how to rec­og­nize re-sealed returned elec­tron­ics at Fry’s.

You don’t ask the staff any ques­tions at Fry’s. You know they hire idiots and pass the sav­ings on to you.

You watch dot-com boomers go back to the states they came from, and the traf­fic gets bet­ter by the month. But you are home so you’re not mov­ing.

You own a Sport Util­i­ty Vehi­cle and have nev­er tak­en it off-road. You would­n’t know what to do if you tried. Same with all your friends.

You don’t know how to dri­ve in snow. You’re a road haz­ard when you vis­it the moun­tains.

You think bicy­cles don’t belong on the road.

You think any car ahead of you does­n’t belong on the road.

Your out-of-state friends are impressed at how much mon­ey you make… until you tell them how much you pay for hous­ing.

You know that a “fix­er-upper” home could cost a half-mil­lion dol­lars.

You do a “Cal­i­for­nia stop” at stop signs. And you think it’s only Cal­i­for­ni­ans who call them that.

You aren’t both­ered much by earth­quakes because you’re ready for them. But the thought of tor­na­does and hur­ri­canes ter­ri­fies you.

You clear­ly remem­ber where you were when the Loma Pri­eta quake hit.

You know sev­er­al fun­ny sto­ries about swim­ming pools in the quake.

You can’t rec­og­nize a thun­der­storm with­out see­ing light­ning first.

You cringe when a South­ern Cal­i­forn­ian refers to high­ways like “the 101”. It’s just “101”. No “the”.

You call low clouds “fog” even if they’re hun­dreds of feet off the ground.

At least once you have gone to San Fran­cis­co for the day wear­ing shorts and a t‑shirt because it was a warm clear day in San Jose. And you froze your lit­tle *@#!% off in the fog, driz­zle and wind.

You say you’re from Sil­i­con Val­ley because no one knows where San Jose is.

You actu­al­ly get these jokes and pass them on to oth­er friends from Sil­i­con Val­ley.