The Sun was compiling gcc,
Compiling with all his might:
He did his very best to make.
The errors few; It's right!
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
The mon. was flashing sulkily,
Because she thought the Sun
Had got no bus to be there
After the user was done--
"It's very rude of him," she said,
"To bug and spool the perlfunc!"
Shell C was net as net could be,
Silicon tty.
You could not see a route, because
No route was in vi:
No crons were running overhead--
There were no crons to run.
The Admin and the Engineer
Were coding fast a cron;
They script like anything in C
quotaoff silicon:
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "Who's Millikan!"
"If seven aids with seven flops
greped it for a MIPSyear.
Do you suppose," the Admin said,
"That they could grep it, sure?"
"I doubt it," said the Engineer,
And sshd a bitter toor.
"O Users, come and twalk with us!"
The Admin did kswitch.
"A pleasant twalk, an appletalk,
Along the tiny ash:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give OS a patch."
The eldest user looked at him,
But never a word he'd waste:
The eldest user's cursor blinked,
left not a single trace--
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the user space.
But four new users hurried up,
All eager, flagged edges:
Their notes were rushed, their logins ssh,
Their codes clean, just pledges --
And this was odd, because, you know,
They had no privileges.
Four other users followed them,
And yet another, well;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, to tell--
All pinging through the matrixes,
And scrambling in the shell.
The Admin and the Engineer
twalked on a while, you know,
And then they halted on a fsck
Conveniently slow:
And all the little users stood
And waited in a row.
'The time has come,' the Admin said,
'To talk of many things:
Of sudoers - and chips - and classic Macs -
Of NuBus cards - and strings -
And why the source is compiling, not -
And whether sigs have meanings.'
"But sticky bit," the users cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some are out of memory,
And all binaries fat!"
"No urid!" said the Engineer.
symlinked his files for that.
"upload the thread," the Admin said,
"Its what we chiefly need:
sushi and fdisk besides
Are very good indeed--
Now if you're ready, users dear,
We can begin the feed."
"But not to us!" the users cried,
"the screen of death is blue!
After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!"
"The night is fine," the Admin said.
"Do you admin here too?"
"It was so kind of you to code!
And you are very nice!"
The Engineer said nothing but
"launchd another slice:
I wish you were not quite so df--
I had port-scanned you twice!"
"It seems a shame," the Admin said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them groff so quick!"
The Engineer said nothing but
"The sputter's thread to hdik!"
"Threads sleep for you," the Admin said:
"thoroughly optimized."
With jobs and toors he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket admin guide
Before his streaming UIs.
"O users," said the Engineer,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be cding home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd deleted every one.
for Tom and da boyz
adapted from Lewis Carroll