[ale] Fw: humor - The Day the Servers Died -- OT

[Frank Zamenski]

* OT *

Subject: humor - The Day the Servers Died


> > Microsoft Pie - To the tune of "American Pie" by Don McClean
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Rev. History
> > V1.0 - 05/2000 - Written by "Cujo The Wonder Puppy"
> > (cujo at psychokitty.com)
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > A long, long time ago...
> > I can still remember
> > How my system used to run for months
> > And I knew when I went home at night
> > The enterprise would be alright
> > And, the users, they'd be happy for a while.
> >
> > But February made me shiver
> > With every paper I'd deliver.
> > Bad news on the doorstep;
> > I couldn't take one more step.
> >
> > I can't remember if I cried
> > When I read about Win NT "5", (1)
> > But management made me take the ride
> > The day the servers died.
> >
> > Say bye-bye to your system uptime
> > Installed NT on the servers,
> > Now the servers are fried
> > And them IT(2) guys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
> > Singin', "Gotta love that paid overtime..."
> > Gonna buy a new house with mine...
> >
> > Did you read the HCL(3)
> > And do you have faith in Gates above...
> > If press releases tell you so?
> > Do you believe in beta code,
> > Can patches save your mortal soul,
> > And can you afford to spend two hours on hold?
> >
> > Well, I know the boss loves Microsoft
> > Cause he's buying up a pile of stock
> > But you know you'd love to say
> > just Where Bill should go today.
> >
> > I was a former Unix Sys Admin
> > With an MCSE(4) and an NT pin
> > I had no clue how deep I was in
> > The day the servers died.
> >
> > I started singin',
> > Say bye-bye to your system uptime
> > Installed NT on the servers,
> > Now the servers are fried
> > And them IT guys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
> > Singin', "Gotta love that paid overtime..."
> > Gonna buy a new house with mine...
> >
> > Now for ten years we've been on our own
> > The desktop's bloated, the command line gone
> > But that's not how it used to be.
> > The box was fast and the OS(5) lean
> > No 3d saver on the console screen
> > Response times in the millisecond range
> >
> > Oh, but while IT was looking down,
> > The VP(6) took their techie crown.
> > FT(7) went away
> > And PC's stole the day
> > What bosses read in PC Week(8)
> > Became the gospel for IT
> > and Windows was the strategy
> > the day the servers died
> >
> > We were singing,
> > Say bye-bye to your system uptime
> > Installed NT on the servers,
> > Now the servers are fried
> > And them IT guys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
> > Singin', "Gotta love that paid overtime..."
> > Gonna buy a new house with mine...
> >
> > Helter Skelter in the summer swelter.
> > NORAD(9) put NT in the fallout shelters
> > Eight miles high and falling fast.
> > A BSOD(10) dumped a silo's core
> > Sent fifty missiles through China's door
> > And launched another world war
> > When one more server died
> >
> > The courts(11) were after Bill and crew
> > and Unix, once again, was cool
> > We all got up to dance,
> > Oh, but we never got the chance!
> > `Cause Linux tried to take the field;
> > But Microsoft refused to yield.
> > Do you recall what was revealed
> > The day the servers died?
> >
> > We started singing,
> > "bye-bye" to our system uptime
> > Installed NT on the servers,
> > Now the servers are fried
> > And them IT guys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
> > Singin', "Gotta love that paid overtime..."
> > Gonna buy a new house with mine...
> >
> > Oh, and there we were all in one hall,
> > Following 2000's siren call
> > With no time left to start again.
> > So come on: Bill be vague and Bill be Slick!
> > Come show us what makes 2K tick
> > Cause NT4 is crashing as you speak.
> >
> > Oh, and as I watched Bill on the stage
> > My hands were clenched in fists of rage.
> > No angel born in hell
> > Could break that Satan's spell.
> > They applauded four ohs uptime week(12)
> > and cheered at 2k's 3 month peak
> > "My Sun's (13) been up since '93"
> > but no one heard me cry
> >
> > As the profits climbed high into the night
> > The Redmond campus grew beyond sight
> > I saw Bill laughing with delight
> > The day the Servers died
> >
> > He was singing,
> > Say bye-bye to your system uptime
> > Installed NT on the servers,
> > Now the servers are fried
> > And them IT guys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
> > Singin', "Gotta love that paid overtime..."
> > Gonna buy a new house with mine...
> >
> > (14)
> > I met a girl who wrote for Bill
> > And I asked if she had had her fill,
> > But she just smiled and turned away.
> > 'cause Windows bought her house, you see
> > The code's unstable(15), but it's not free
> > It's IT job security
> > Whenever servers die
> >
> > And in the streets the users screamed,
> > The admins cried, and managers dreamed.
> > But not a word was spoken;
> > The systems all were broken.
> > And the three men who had heard the call
> > Raymond, Stallman and Torvalds(16)
> > They'd tried to save us from the fall
> > The day the servers died.
> >
> > But did we listen?
> >
> > Say bye-bye to your system uptime
> > Installed NT on the servers,
> > Now the servers are fried
> > And them IT guys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
> > Singin', "Gotta love that paid overtime..."
> > Gonna buy a new house with mine...
> >
> > They were singing,
> > bye-bye to your system uptime
> > Installed NT on the servers,
> > Now the servers are fried
> > And them IT guys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
> > Singin', "Gotta love that paid overtime..."
> > Gonna buy a new house with mine...
> >
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Microsoft Pie - Copyright (C) 2000 "Cujo The Wonder Puppy"
> > (http://www.psychokitty.com/~cujo)
> > This parody is free; you may redistribute it and/or modify it as long
> > as this copyright notice remains intact and you agree to abide by the
> > terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
> > Software Foundation. (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html);
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > (1) Before it was called Windows 2000, the media referred to the next
> > release as Windows NT 5.0
> >
> > (2) Information Technology
> >
> > (3) Hardware Compatibility List - A list of hardware that doesn't
> > instantly burst into flames when used with Microsoft products. Based on
> > comments and presentation materials from the Windows 2000 launch, this
> > means that if you're lucky, it'll run for a week without hanging up or
> > requiring a reboot under NT 4.0 or 3 months in a "clean room" scenario
> > under Win2K.
> >
> > (4) Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer - A designation that certifies
> > that you either know your way around Microsoft products or that you
> > bought a set of Exam Cram guides and you're good at memory work.
> > Neither of which actually has anything to do with engineering.
> >
> > (5) Operating system - In the "good old days", the core software which
> > provided a set of tools and interfaces to the hardware. The OS would
> > consume a fraction of the system resources and provide the bare
> > necessities required for the applications to have a common interface to
> > the hardware. Now it refers to a huge pile of unrelated applications
> > tied together seemingly at random to consume the greatest possible
> > percentage of memory and CPU while still providing the false hope of
> > usability.
> >
> > (6) Vice President. ie: any senior manager that shouldn't be making
> > technology decisions, but feels empowered to do so.
> >
> > (7) Fault Tolerant (system). A term that no longer has any meaning
> > outside of mainframes and some clustered environments. A system with
> > sufficient redundancy and fail-over capabilities that it can continue
> > running uninterrupted even when a major component fails. There is no
> > such thing as a FT system running Windows. There are "High
> > availability" (HA) Windows configurations, but this just means that if
> > one node dies, you lose your session and pick up again on another node.
> > (ie: Who cares if one of the twins dies? We've got a backup.) In an FT
> > environment, you wouldn't even notice the failure.
> >
> > (8) "PC Week" is meant to encompass the entire gamut of publications
> > that managers somehow get their hands on during long business trips.
> > (search for "Management by In-Flight Magazine") PC Week is not, in and
> > of itself, a bad thing. It's just that these magazines dumb down the
> > technology far enough that managers believe themselves to be computer
> > literate and subsequently start making technology decisions without
> > understanding (or even caring about) the implications.
> >
> > (9) North AmeRican Air Defence. NORAD isn't actually stupid enough to
> > trust Windows with anything beyond a game of Minesweeper or Solitaire.
> > This verse is just poetic license
> >
> > (10) Blue Screen Of Death - The blue screen that indicates that Windows
> > has crashed. I've actually seen monitors on servers with the page fault
> > message burned into them (since the screen saver cuts in during normal
> > operations, but a Page Fault stays on-screen until reboot.)
> >
> > (11) The US Department Of Justice declared Microsoft a Monopoly (no
> > kidding, Sherlock....you could have asked anyone in IT and you would
> > have found that out in a matter of minutes)
> >
> > (12) This is not an exaggeration. At the Windows 2000 launch in Feb
> > 2000, the audience actually applauded when Gates indicated the Windows
> > NT 4.0 ran (on average) for a week without a reboot. If IBM told
> > companies that they'd have to reboot their 370's every week, there'd be
> > hell to pay.
> >
> > (13) It was actually a Pyramid, but Sun fit the cadence better. I've
> > had NCRs SUNs and AT&T 3B2 systems that have run literally for years
> > without ever *requiring* a reboot (excluding administrative reboots for
> > kernel tuning or to install new hardware)
> >
> > (14) Yeah...I know it doesn't jive with the original song, but I wrote
> > it, liked it and then realized that it was the wrong verse. Tough. If
> > you don't like it, you're entitled to double your money back.
> >
> > (15) See #12.
> >
> > (16) I originally had Kernigan, Ritchie and Torvalds. But since the
> > Open Source movement and not Unix per se, is really the nail in
> > Microsoft's casket, I thought that I'd update it.
> >
>
>

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