Like a lot of Unicode engineers, Jim would occasionally take his wife with him on his foreign travels. On their last trip to China, his wife became enamored of calligraphy and Chinese characters. In fact, at one point while having lunch in a simple Chinese restaurant, she noticed an especially beautiful rendering of a few characters on a handwritten luncheon menu. She discreetly tucked the menu in her purse.
Being an avid knitter and skilled at designing intricate patterns, within a few months she had produced a stunning white sweater with the same Chinese symbols hand-stitched down the front. She received compliments galore whenever she wore it.
She was also quite excited to wear it to the next Unicode Conference dinner event. The sweater seemed to attract a lot of interest and many more compliments. She knew the Unicode experts would really appreciate her attention to the styling of the Chinese characters.
After dinner another Unicode engineer came up to Jim's wife and asked where she got the symbols. He then wanted to know if she knew what they meant.
"I'm afraid to ask, but tell me anyway." she said.
Even she had to laugh when he told her their meaning.
"This is a cheap dish--but good."
Two Unicode engineers are married to each other. They decided they needed to use "a code" to indicate that they wanted to have sex without letting their children in on it. Working with characters and letters all day, they decided on a related, if old-fashioned word: "typewriter."
One day the husband told his five year old daughter, "Go tell your mommy that daddy needs to type a letter."
The child told her mom what her dad said and her mother responded,
"Tell your daddy that he can't type a letter right now because there's a red ribbon in the typewriter."
The child went back to tell her father what mommy had said.
A few days later the mom told the daughter, "Tell daddy that he can type that letter now."
The child told her father, and then returned to her mother and announced,
"Daddy said never mind with the typewriter, he already wrote the letter by hand."
A virile, young Unicode engineer was relaxing at his favorite bar, when he managed to attract a spectacular young blonde. Things progressed to the point where he invited her back to his apartment, and after some small talk, they retired to his bedroom and made love.
After a pleasant interlude, he asked with a smile, "So...you finish?" She paused for a second, frowned, and replied, "No."
Surprised, the young man reached for her and the lovemaking resumed. This time she thrashes about wildly and there are screams of passion. The love making ends, and again, the young man smiles, And again he asks, "You finish?" And again, after a short pause, she returns his smile, cuddles closer to him, and softly says, "No."
Stunned, but damned if this woman is going to outlast him, the young man reaches for the woman yet again. Using the last of his strength, he barely manages it, but they climax simultaneously, screaming, bucking, clawing and ripping the bed sheets.
The exhausted man falls onto his back, gasping. Barely able to turn his head, he looks into her eyes, smiles proudly, and asks again, "You finish?"
Barely able to speak, she whispers in his ear...... "No! I Norwegian!"
Two internationalization engineers are attending a Unicode conference.
Amidst all the learning and idea exchange, they make plans for amusement in the evening.
One says to the other, "Hey, I know a couple girls in the area. How about we make
a booty call?"
The second engineer replies "Big-endian or Little-endian?"
A grade school teacher was asking his pupils what their parents did for a living.
"Tim, you be first. What does your mother do?"
Tim stood up and proudly said, "She's a doctor."
"That's wonderful. How about you, Amy?"
Amy shyly stood up, scuffed her feet and said, "My father is a mailman."
"Thank you, Amy" said the teacher. "What does your parent do, Billy?"
Billy proudly stood up and announced, "My daddy plays piano in a whorehouse."
The teacher was shocked and went to Billy's house and rang the bell. Billy's father answered the door. The teacher explained what his son had said and demanded an explanation. Billy's dad said, "I'm actually an internationalization engineer specializing in collation and normalization with multibyte and 16-bit Unicode called UTF-8 and UTF-16. How can I explain a thing like that to a seven-year-old?"
A married couple is driving down the interstate doing 55 mph.
The Unicode engineer is behind the wheel. His wife looks over at him.
"Honey, I know we've been married for 15 years, but, I want a divorce."
The Unicode engineer says nothing, but slowly increases speed to 60 mph.
"I don't want you to try to talk me out of it,
because I've been having an affair with your best friend, and he's a better lover than you."
Again the Unicode engineer stays quiet and just speeds up as his anger increases.
"I want the house also."
Again the Unicode engineer speeds up, and now is doing 75 mph.
"I want the kids too."
The Unicode engineer just keeps driving faster and faster; now he's up to 85 mph.
"And I want the car, the checking account, and all the credit cards."
The Unicode engineer slowly starts to veer toward a bridge overpass piling as the speedometer reaches 90 mph.
"You're taking this incredibly calmly," the wife says. "Isn't there anything that you want?"
"No, I have everything I need."
"What's that?"
"The airbag."
Here are some limericks in honor of IUC21 being held in Ireland.
A large group went to Dublin, a consortium.
They had more and more characters, ad nauseum,
Too many to draw and transform,
They needed to establish a norm,
They couldn't agree and so had four of them.
There was an old lady that lived in a shoe.
Housed so many characters, she didn't know what to do.
But she compressed and encoded
and then shifted and mode'd
And now its called UTR 6 or SCSU.
Hebrew writing and Arabic writing go from east to west,
Latin writing, from west to east.
Languages are like cats:
You must not stroke their hair the wrong way.
Copyright © 2002-2009 Tex Texin. All rights reserved.