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 icons put 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 gonna crash!
If the label on your cable on the table at your house,
Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
But your packets want to tunnel by 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 gonna 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!
—Gene Ziegler, 1994
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A few weeks ago I dealt with my deceased Grandfather’s computer. He passed 12 years ago and once Grandma passed, there was no reason left to shrine it all off. He was a prolific artist. Played the piano, French horn and oboe. Painted, did etchings and lithographs, drawings.
He filled up the HDD on his first PC, a 2006 Dell Optima IIRC, and was on his way to filling up a spool of CD-RWs and his 2010 Dell Inspirion when he passed. Pulled the hard drives and connected them to pull what was on there. One part the mind of an artist - folders of 200 pics of clouds and rocks and mountains, paintings and works from the 60’s and 70’s propped up in the front yard (great light!), random pictures of cacti. Then, the mind of a grandparent - my cousins as babies, my youngest aunt younger than I am now writing this, baseball games and holidays. Most taken a decade closer to Gene Ziegler’s words than today. Saved and copied and backed up and copied again and uploaded for one more incarnation.
you may as well reboot and go out with a bang
Great work! Also, degaussing gives me major throwbacks… I had absolutely no clue what it did but really enjoyed the look of the screen wobbling around and even the sound of the thunk. I think I liked to do it so often enough for shits and giggles, that I never saw what gaussing is
I can only imagine this was terrible for them, but we used to take earth magnets and rub them on the screens in the computer lab. You could really fuck up the image. Then hit the degausse button and watch everything zzzzrp back into place.
