GrandpasGuide

A Grandchild's Guide to Using Grandpa's Computer

review from ClifNotes, Nov 2006, permalink

 

From Clif:

I was reading the Hoax-Slayer premium newsletter and he'd mentioned that the poem below is often attributed to Dr. Seuss. This isnt' so. It was written by Gene Ziegler in 1994. I've shortened the poem up a bit, but you can see the whole thing if you follow the link at the end of the poem.

 

By the way, drop on by and visit the Hoax-Slayer website. It's a great place to find out the most recent email scams and you'll come away with a good laugh more often than not.

 

Quote from Gene Ziegler

This poem has probably received more attention and circulation than anything I have ever written. It was created in an hour, late one night in the fall of 1994 after my four year old grandson and his older brother had significantly rearranged the resources on my Macintosh.

 

 

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,

and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,

and the address of the memory

makes your floppy disk abort

then the socket packet pocket

has an error to report!

 

If your cursor finds a menu item

followed by a dash,

and the double-clicking icon

puts your window in the trash,

and your data is corrupted cause

the index doesn't hash,

then your situation's hopeless,

and your system's gunna crash.

 

You can't say this? What a shame, sir!

We'll find you another game, sir.

 

If the label on the cable

on the table at your house

says the network is connected

to the button on your mouse,

but your packets want to tunnel

on another protocol,

that's repeatedly rejected

by the printer down the hall,

and your screen is all distorted

by the side-effects of gauss,

so your icons in the window

are as wavy as a souse,

then you may as well reboot

and go out with a bang,

cause as sure as I'm a poet,

the sucker's gunna hang!

 

When the copy of your floppy's

getting sloppy on the disk,

and the microcode instructions

cause unnecessary risc,

then you have to flash your memory

and you'll want to RAM your ROM.

quickly turn off your computer

and be sure to tell your mom!

 

http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/elz1/clocktower/DrSeuss.html