Tomorrow when my users check their e-mails, they’ll see this poem.
A Poem for Christmas by Trina, aged 34
‘Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the school
Several computers were on
And that wasn’t cool.
The computer techs were nestled
All snug in their beds
While visions of Open Source Software
Danced in their heads.
When out in the night sky
There arose such a blast
‘Twas thunder & lightning
Neither of which were forecast
The computers went down
The servers shut too
And several network hubs
All went “boo hoo!”
Some computers when down
Will never wake up
And this costs us moolah
Which we never have enough*
So the moral of this poem
If it isn’t obvious to you
Turn off your computers
Oh, and Merry Christmas, too!
*Yeah yeah, not the world’s greatest rhyme. So sue me!
heh
*applauds* Wonderful! I hope they take it to heart. 🙂
*applauds joyfully* brilliantly done. *is sure to turn her school ‘puter off at the end of the day*
*applauds!*
Very cute. 🙂
I turn off my work computer every day, and all the peripherals on its power strip, or if not it isn’t from lack of intent. At home we’re more slack about it. My laptop is usually put on standby instead of turned off; I dunno about scarfwoman’s. The desktop computer in the office is on all the time, being the home network server; it’s restarted one a week or so because scarfwoman once read that Windows “deteriorates” if it isn’t at least restarted occasionally. But at home we have some special super surge* protection that was installed by the power company.
* Master of unintentional alliteration!
After reading your brilliant poem, I thought you might enjoy this. ——– Network Working Group V. Cerf Request for Comments: 968 MCI December 1985 ‘Twas the Night Before Start-up’ STATUS OF THIS MEMO This memo discusses problems that arise and debugging techniques used in bringing a new network into operation. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. DISCUSSION Twas the night before start-up and all through the net, not a packet was moving; no bit nor octet. The engineers rattled their cards in despair, hoping a bad chip would blow with a flare. The salesmen were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of data nets danced in their heads. And I with my datascope tracings and dumps prepared for some pretty bad bruises and lumps. When out in the hall there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter. There stood at the threshold with PC in tow, An ARPANET hacker, all ready to go. I could see from the creases that covered his brow, he’d conquer the crisis confronting him now. More rapid than eagles, he checked each alarm and scrutinized each for its potential harm. On LAPB, on OSI, X.25! TCP, SNA, V.35! His eyes were afire with the strength of his gaze; no bug could hide long; not for hours or days. A wink of his eye and a twitch of his head, soon gave me to know I had little to dread. He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, fixing a net that had gone plumb berserk; And laying a finger on one suspect line, he entered a patch and the net came up fine! The packets flowed neatly and protocols matched; the hosts interfaced and shift-registers latched. He tested the system from Gateway to PAD; not one bit was dropped; no checksum was bad. At last he was finished and wearily sighed and turned to explain why the system had died. I twisted my fingers and counted to ten; an off-by-one index had done it again… Vint Cerf December 1985