The Race to Insanity and Beyond!

[El_Phil]

Get me an inflatable goat, a large knife, three spoons and a mongoose. Stat! Let's just hope we're not too late.

[inigma]

deflate, deflate... er defib, defib!

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Warning: If you are a geek, the following poem may cause intense mental and emotional discomfort. You have been warned:

Subject: A poem based on E.A.Poe's The Raven.
Author: Stan Slaughter
Date: 14 Oct 2005 03:49 PM
Originally Posted: 14 Oct 2005 04:55 PM
A poem based on E.A.Poe's The Raven.

Abort, Retry, Ignore?
By Anonymous

Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bed sheets, still I sat there doing spreadsheets.
Having reached the bottom line I took a floppy from the drawer
I then invoked the SAVE command and waited for the disk to store,
Only this and nothing more.

Deep into the monitor peering, long I sat there wond'ring, fearing.
Doubting, while the disk kept churning, turning yet to churn some more.
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token.
"Save!" I said, "You cursed mother! Save my data from before!"
One thing did the phosphors answer, only this and nothing more,
Just, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

Was this some occult illusion, some maniacal intrusion?
These were choices undesired, ones I'd never faced before.
Carefully I weighed the choices as the disk made impish noises.
The cursor flashed, insistent, waiting, baiting me to type some more.
Clearly I must press a key, choosing one and nothing more,
>From "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

With fingers pale and trembling, slowly toward the keyboard bending,
Longing for a happy ending, hoping all would be restored,
Praying for some guarantee, timidly, I pressed a key.
But on the screen there still persisted words appearing as before.
Ghastly grim they blinked and taunted, haunted, as my patience wore,
Saying "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

I tried to catch the chips off guard, and pressed again, but twice as hard.
I pleaded with the cursed machine: I begged and cried and then I swore.
Now in mighty desperation, trying random combinations,
Still there came the incantation, just as senseless as before.
Cursor blinking, angrily winking, blinking nonsense as before.
Reading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

There I sat, distraught, exhausted, by my own machine accosted.
Getting up I turned away and paced across the office floor.
And then I saw a dreadful sight: a lightning bolt cut through the night.
A gasp of horror overtook me, shook me to my very core.
The lightning zapped my previous data, lost and gone forevermore.
Not even, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

To this day I do not know the place to which lost data go.
What demonic nether world is wrought where lost data will be stored,
Beyond the reach of mortal souls, beyond the ether, into black holes?
But sure as there's C, Pascal, Lotus, Ashton-Tate and more,
You will be one day be left to wander, lost on some Plutonian shore,
Pleading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"


Stan Slaughter
http://www.StanSight.com/
"Eat right. Stay fit. Die anyway."

[Jack Simth]

Bah! How often do floppies actually see use nowadays?

Besides - that's on oldie - Abort, Retry, Ignore? Was mostly the DOS version - it now only rarely comes up with legacy (or legacy portions of...) drivers on unattended servers. We now have the Blue Screen of Death, you see....

[kerensky]

That was a good one Narf.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Not mine, though. Got it off the Baen humor forum.

But I'll take the credit for recognizing good poetry when I see it.

Methinks Jack just doesn't recognize quality when he sees it. Shame, really.

[Jack Simth]

Well, that's what happens when I don't write any ranks in Appraise into my character sheet....

[Kamog]

What is that green glowing light I see between the steps of an escalator? What is down there?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Kryptonite!

It's to keep general zod from stealing the secrets of the escalator!

[Jack Simth]

Nah, it's how they run the things. With a very clever arrangement of gears and belts, an escalator actually gives off free energy.

Pity the only arrangement of gears and belts that gives off free energy always ends up being an escalator....

That, or it's a particular breed of warning/diagnostic light.