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.
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: