Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary,
\nSystem manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
\nLonging for the warmth of bed sheets, still I sat there doing spreadsheets.
\nHaving reached the bottom line I took a floppy from the drawer,
\nI then invoked the SAVE command and waited for the disk to store,
\nOnly this and nothing more.<\/p>\n
Deep into the monitor peering, long I sat there wond’ring, fearing,
\nDoubting, while the disk kept churning, turning yet to churn some more.
\nBut the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token.
\n“Save!” I said, “You cursed machine! Save my data from before!”
\nOne thing did the phosphors answer, only this and nothing more,
\nJust, “Abort, Retry, Ignore?”<\/p>\n
Was this some occult illusion, some maniacal intrusion?
\nThese were choices undesired, ones I’d never faced before.
\nCarefully I weighed the choices as the disk made impish noises.
\nThe cursor flashed, insistent, waiting, baiting me to type some more.
\nClearly I must press a key, choosing one and nothing more,
\nFrom “Abort, Retry, Ignore?”<\/p>\n
With fingers pale and trembling, slowly toward the keyboard bending,
\nLonging for a happy ending, hoping all would be restored,
\nPraying for some guarantee, timidly, I pressed a key.
\nBut on the screen there still persisted words appearing as before.
\nGhastly grim they blinked and taunted, haunted, as my patience wore,
\nSaying “Abort, Retry, Ignore?”<\/p>\n
I tried to catch the chips off guard, and pressed again, but twice as hard.
\nI pleaded with the cursed machine: I begged and cried and then I swore.
\nNow in mighty desperation, trying random combinations,
\nStill there came the incantation, just as senseless as before.
\nCursor blinking, angrily winking, blinking nonsense as before.
\nReading, “Abort, Retry, Ignore?”<\/p>\n
There I sat, distraught, exhausted, by my own machine accosted.
\nGetting up I turned away and paced across the office floor.
\nAnd then I saw a dreadful sight: a lightning bolt cut through the night.
\nA gasp of horror overtook me, shook me to my very core.
\nThe lightning zapped my previous data, lost and gone forevermore.
\nNot even, “Abort, Retry, Ignore?”<\/p>\n
To this day I do not know, the place to which lost data go.
\nWhat demonic nether world us wrought where lost data will be stored,
\nBeyond the reach of mortal souls, beyond the ether, into black holes?
\nBut sure as there’s C, Pascal, Lotus, Ashton-Tate and more,
\nYou will one day be left to wander, lost on some Plutonian shore,
\nPleading, “Abort, Retry, Ignore?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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, I then invoked the SAVE command and waited for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[406,1172,1232,1284],"class_list":["post-701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","tag-computer","tag-poetry","tag-raven","tag-save"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joke-archives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joke-archives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joke-archives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joke-archives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joke-archives.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.joke-archives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joke-archives.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joke-archives.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joke-archives.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}