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>Return-Path: <Banderilla who-is-at aol.com>
>From: Banderilla <Banderilla who-is-at aol.com>
>Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 21:33:21 EST
>Subject: A poem...
>
>http://members.aol.com/longknive
>
>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 bedsheets,
>Still I sat there, doing spredsheets:
>Having reached the bottom line,
>I took a floppy from the drawer.
>Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command
>But got instead a reprimand: it read "Abort, Retry, Ignore".
>
>Was this some occult illusion? Some maniacal intrusion?
>These were choices Solomon himself had never faced before.
>Carefully, I weighed my options.
>These three seemed to be the top ones.
>Clearly, I must now adopt one -
>Choose : "Abort, Retry, Ignore".
>
>With my fingers pale and trembling,
>Slowly toward the keyboard bending,
>Longing for a happy ending, hoping all would be restored,
>Praying for some guarantee
>Finally I pressed a key --
>But on the screen what did I see?
>Again: "Abort, Retry, Ignore".
>
>I tried to catch the chips off-guard --
>I pressed again, but twice as hard.
>Luck was just not in the cards,
>I saw what I had seen before.
>Now I typed in desperation,
>Trying random combinations.
>Still there came the incantation -
>Choose: "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 an awful sight,
>A bold and blinding flash of light,
>A lightning bolt that cut the night and shook me to my very core.
>The PC screen collapsed and died,
>"Oh no -- my database", I cried.
>I thought I heard a voice reply,
>"You'll see your data-- Nevermore!"
>
>To this day I do not know
>The place to which our data goes
>Perhaps it goes to Heaven where the angels have it stored.
>But as for productivity - well,
>I fear it has gone straight to Hell.
>And that's the tale I have to tell -
>Your choice: "Abort, Retry, Ignore".
>
>
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"Man may smile and smile but he is not an investigating animal.
He loves the obvious. He shrinks from explanations." --Jos. Conrad
___ _ _
| | \ | / John Konopak, Ph.D. +----------------------+
| | ) | / EDUC/ILAC Rm 122 | You can lead a horse |
| |___/ |_/ University of Oklahoma | to water; but you |
| | | \ Norman OK 73019 | can't make him surf! |
/ | | \ jkonopak who-is-at ou.edu +----------------------+
(__/ * ! * | \* Ph: 405-325-1498||FX: 405-325-4061
"People know what they do; and sometimes they know why they do it.
But what they don't know is what what they do does." -- M. Foucault
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| [Standard Disclaimer: Irremediable intertextuality, |
| and/or consequent and/or collateral intersubjectivity |
| notwithstanding, opinions here are as much "my own" |
| as I can make them. Still, I wish I'd said: |
| "Those who can, do; those who know, teach."] |
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