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 bed sheets,
Still I sat there, doing spreadsheets:
I took my jump-drive 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? Do tell,
I fear that it goes straight to . . well . .
And that’s the tale I have to tell –
Your choice: Abort, Retry, Ignore.
~~
I tried to write a poem about computers, but all I could come up with was
the opening line: “Die, Die, Die, Bill Gates.”
~~
Dr Bob Griffin
[email protected] www.grif.net
“Jesus Knows Me, This I Love!”