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
and waited for the disk to store,
Only this and nothing more.

Deep into the monitor peering, long I sat there wond'ring, fearing,
Doubting, while the disk kept churning, turning yet to churn some
more. "Save!" I said, "You cursed mother! Save my data from before!"
One thing did the phosphors answer, only this and nothing more, Just,
"Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

Was this some occult illusion? Some maniacal intrusion?
These were choices undesired, ones I'd never faced before.
Carefully, I weighed the choices as the disk made impish noises. The
cursor flashed, insistent, waiting, baiting me to type some more.
Clearly I must press a key, choosing one and nothing more, From
"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
Timidly I pressed a key.
But on the screen there still persisted words appearing as before.
Ghastly grim they blinked and taunted, haunted, as my patience wore,
Saying "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

I tried to catch the chips off-guard-
I pressed again, but twice as hard.
I pleaded with the cursed machine: I begged and cried and then I
swore. Now in desperation, trying random combinations, Still there
came the incantation, just as senseless as before. Cursor blinking,
angrily winking, blinking nonsense as before. Reading, "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 dreadful sight: a lightning bolt cut through the
night. A gasp of horror overtook me, shook me to my core. The
lightning zapped my previous data, lost and gone forevermore. Not
even, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

To this day I do not know
The place to which lost data goes.
What demonic nether world is wrought where data will be stored,
Beyond the reach of mortal souls, beyond the ether, into black holes?
But sure as there's C, Pascal, Lotus, Ashton-Tate and more, You will
one day be left to wander, lost on some Plutonian shore, Pleading,
"Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

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Outside of a dog, a book is a mans best friend. Inside of a dog, it's to dark to read. Groucho Marx

Oops, wrong Po...

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You know, when Comedy Central asked us to do a Thanksgiving episode, the first thought that went through my mind was, "Boy, I'd like to have sex with Jennifer Aniston."

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The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.
--George Carlin
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