ANIMATION MUSIC

Snailmail help to Kent Steadman; 425 S. 156th Street; #119A; Seattle, WA; 98148

COOKIE FOR SANTA

'Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house,

Not a peripheral was stirring, not even a mouse;

The modem was hung by the keyboard with care

In hopes that a download soon would be there.

The pirates were nestled all snug in their beds

While visions of unprotects danced in their heads

And Kathleen in her kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled down for a long winter's nap

When up on the hard drive there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter!

Away to the monitor I flew like a flash

Sat down at the keyboard, gave the spacebar a mash.

The sight on the screen, a'flicker with snow,

Gave the luster of power surge to the menu below.

When what to my wondering eyes should appear,

but an autoexec.bat that seemed rather queer.

With a little print driver so lively and quick

I knew in a moment I had seen a new trick!

More rapid than eagles my cursor it came;

my voice box whistled, and shouted, and called me by name.

"Now format, now rename, now copy, and enter!

On num lock, on caps lock, on scroll lock and printer!

To the top of the page, to the top of the doc,

now tab it and hold it and merge it and block."

As utilities that build up the CPU speed

Clash with just the programs I need

So up to the screen top the cursor it flew

With a RAM full of memory and an extension board too.

And then, in a twinkling I heard on the speaker,

The grinding of the hard drive growing much weaker.

As I tried to reboot and turn it around

The attributes changed from blue into brown.

I hit the control, the alt, the delete.

The message it gave me, I cannot repeat.

It asked me to ignore, retry or abort.

It told me the parallel had become the comm port.

It's lights how they twinkled; it's pixels how merry.

It's prompts were all scrambled, like a bowl full of cherries.

It sounded just like it wanted to blow;

the screen was suddenly white like the snow.

It scrolled the directory before my very eyes

With programs I did not even recognize.

It wouldn't see D, It wouldn't see E.

I couldn't get out of B into C.

Norton's tried to read it;

It finally found the FAT;

But alas, the disk was faulty,

and could not reformat.

Away flew the DBase;

Away flew the DOSes;

Away flew the Wordstar;

Right out with the Windows.

The spreadsheets were spreading;

The footers were heading;

What once had been memory

Was close to forgetting.

When the grinding was over

And the smoke had all cleared,

I looked at the unit

And it was just as I'd feared.

The 40 Meg wonder had crashed in the night.

I'll never be able to block out that sight!

So tell everyone to avoid my plight....

Back up! Back up! Merry Christmas, and good night!

The End!!!