Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny Subject: Engineers / Business Folk + Balloons From: mark@elvis.rowan.edu (Mark Sedlock) Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 19:30:00 PDT URL: http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/98/Aug/sales.html

A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts, "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"

The man below says: "Yes; you're in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field."

"You must work in Information Technology," says the balloonist.

"I do!" replies the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but it's no use to anyone."

The man below says, "You must work in business."

"I do!" replies the balloonist. "But how did you know?"

"Well," says the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you're going, but you expect me to be able to help. You're in the same position you were before we met, but now it's my fault."

[Note - extension of an old Microsoft joke - ed]

alternate version

A helicopter was flying around above Seattle yesterday when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft's electronic navigation and communication equipment. Due to the clouds and haze the pilot could not determine his position or course to steer to the airport. The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, drew a handwritten sign and held it in the helicopter's window. The sign said, "WHERE AM I?" in large letters. People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign and held it in a building window. Their sign said, "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER." The pilot smiled, waved, looked at his map, determined the course to steer to SEATAC (Seattle/Tacoma) airport, and landed safely.

After they were on the ground, the co-pilot asked the pilot how the "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER" sign helped determine their position. The pilot responded, "I knew that had to be the Microsoft building because they gave me a technically correct but completely useless answer."

alternate version

A small, 14-seat plane is circling for a landing in Atlanta. It's totally fogged in, zero visibility, and suddenly there's a small electrical fire in the cockpit which disables all of the instruments and the radio. The pilot continues circling, totally lost, when suddenly he finds himself flying next to a tall office building.

He rolls down the window (this particular airplane happens to have roll-down windows) and yells to a person inside the building, "Where are we?"

The person responds "In an airplane!"

The pilot then banks sharply to the right, circles twice, and makes a perfect landing at Atlanta International.

As the passengers emerge, shaken but unhurt, one of them says to the pilot, "I'm certainly glad you were able to land safely, but I don't understand how the response you got was any use."

"Simple," responded the pilot. "I got an answer that was completely accurate and totally irrelevant to my problem, so I knew it had to be the IBM building."