Computers (3)

Abort/Retry/Ignore (read like Poe's The Raven)

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 spreadsheets:
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 that it goes straight to Hell.
And that's the tale I have to tell -
Your choice: Abort, Retry, Ignore.

The Lord's Prayer for Computers
Our Hard Drive
Which art internal
Volume C by name;
Thy code be clean,
Thy fonts be seen
On screen as they are on paper.
Give us this day our documents,
And lead us not into fragmentation
But deliver us our data.
For thine is the SCSI,
And the EISA, and the NuBus,
Forever and Ever,
Amen