(with apologies to Edgar Allan Poe)
The Server
Once Upon a Midnight Dreary
I sat alone, awake and weary,
Caffeine racing through me clearly,
as my fingers were now sore.
Twas not a night of lacking,
yet my fingers kept a tapping,
typing madly to the rambling,
of this wretched computer core.
I am but a coder, I gently muttered,
not the geekdom of all the lore,
just coding FORTRAN, nothing more.
Then suddenly with abashing
my computer came a crashing,
crashing as my brain was dashing,
"Why did I not save before?"
Silly coder, in a sunder
making a rookie blunder
making me stop and wonder
as I lost my memory store.
Was this a twist of fate
causing me to stop and wait,
wait as the OS agitates,
wait to restart, as before.
And to begin the coding,
of the FORTRAN code in store
coding onward, forever more.
Logging into the company dialup,
to upload my night of foul up,
hoping to be through this screw up,
of my night of headache sore.
But before my waiting resting,
I must compile the software nesting,
nesting in the computer core.
Just a task to be requesting
in the night that I had in store,
Only FORTRAN Code, and nothing more.
But to my aching eyes now watering,
the thousand line code was not complying,
as the errors on the screen now flying,
as my mouth it did then swore.
As I logged off from the server,
my failing patience, it delivered
delivered me from cursing more.
Just a fact of not debugging,
debugging of the code before
before I saved to computer core.
Hours past by, as I slated,
more of my sleep, which was abated,
when my body needs to restore.
Up the stairs my wife was sleeping,
in her dreams of joys a leaping,
leaping in her hopes of more.
Meanwhile I sat, my eyes still checking,
for the errors that were wrecking
wrecking my code, as I implore.
Then in point of revelation,
In my search of investigation
found two bad lines of punctuation
just two lines, three hundred more.
Finally with heart in hoping
in the network, interloping,
uploading the FORTRAN into the Core.
With Unix I then compiled,
and found two lines still defiled,
defiled just as they were before.
Dejectedly I tore away from
of my attempt in the core.
Twas an error, same old score.
At once my code was now compiled,
and then I linked it into a file,
Ready to run, as was planned before.
But as the run file executed,
A segfault warning then polluted,
my arrays would not restore.
starring at the next message
with a cursing I then swore,
"Program Stopped, Dumped the Core"
"WHY FORTRAN!?" I Implored,
wondering why my boss ordered,
ordered me this wretched chore.
Why not C or Object Code,
why this night, in my abode,
away from my chamber door?
Turning back to code of torment,
looking at the clock once more,
It's been ten hours, forever more.
And looking in the declaration,
I found the source of agitation,
sitting line number four.
"Of course" I cryed, correcting
the line of code that was reflecting
my walking through my chamber door.
With a smile I then logged in
Executing FORTRAN as before.
"Run-Time Error - Dumped the Core."
Drinking Coffee by the Gallon
Wondering when dawn will fall on,
fall upon my office floor.
As the clock it slowly turning,
my patience fled, and soul was burning,
burning me down to the core.
As I watched my code compiling
compiling the newest code in store
found two errors, NO NOT MORE!?
Why did I become a hacker?
better to be a humble slacker,
so that I could sleep some more.
I am a geek, there's no denying
as my tears, I was crying
as the code dumped another core.
When will this night of torture end
playing with this computer core?
Quote the server, "Nevermore."