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The
'Net Before Christmas |
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'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the nets, not a mousie was stirring, not even the pets. |
The floppies were stacked by the modem with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there. |
| The files were nestled all snug in a folder, the screen saver turned on, the weather was colder. | And leaving the keyboard along with my mouse, I turned from the screen to the rest of the house. |
| When up from the drive there arose such a clatter, I turned to the screen to see what was the matter. | Away to the mouse I flew like a flash, zoomed open a window in fear of a crash... |
| The glow from the screen on the keyboard below, gave an electronic luster to all my macros. | When what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a little sleigh icon with eight tiny reindeer |
| And a tiny disk driver so SCSI and quick, I knew in a nano it must be Saint Nick. | More rapid than trackballs his cursors they came, he whistled and shouted and faxed them by name. |
| "Now Flasher! Now Dasher! Now Raster and Bixel! On Phosphor! On Photon! On Baudrate and Pixel! | To the top of the stack. To the top of the heap." Then each little reindeer Made a soft beep. |
| As data that before the wild electrons fly, when they meet with a node, mount to the drive, | So up to the screentop the cursors they flew, with a sleigh full of disks and databits, too. |
| And then in a twinkling I heard the high whine of a modem connecting at a baud rate so fine. | As I gazed at the screen with a puzzling frown St. Nicholas logged on though I thought I was down. |
| He was dressed all in bytes from header to footer, and the words on the screen said "Don't you reboot 'er." | A bundle of bits he had flung on his back, and he looked like a programmer starting his hack. |
| His eyes how they glazed, his hair was so scary, his cola was Jolt, not flavored with cherry. | His droll little mouth was drawn up like a GIF, and the pixels of his beard sure gave me a lift. |
| The stump of a routine he held tight in his code, and I knew he had made it past the last node. | He spoke not a word but looked right at me, and I saw in a flash his file was .SEA. |
| He self-decompressed and I watched him unfold, into a jolly old elf, a sight to behold. | And the whispering sound of my hard drive's head soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread. |
| He went straight to his work without saying a word and filled all the folders of this happy nerd. | And 'tis the whole truth, as the story is told, that giving a nod up the window he scrolled, |
| He sprang to the serial port as if truly on fire, and away they all flew down the thin copper wire. | But I heard him exclaim as he scrolled out of sight "Happy Christmas to All, and to all a good night." |
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