> NEVERMORE: Poe Meets DOS
> 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 had cut the night and shook me to my very core. I
> saw the screen collapse and die "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 lost data goes
> I bet 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.
VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask] In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html
|