Return-Path: corwin@ATHENA.MIT.EDU

            UNIX Wizard
                  (with apologies to The Who and Ambar)

Ever since I was a young boy,
I've hacked the ARPA net,
>From Berkely down to Rutgers,
Any access I could get,
But ain't seen nothing like him,
On any campus yet,
That deaf, dumb, and blind kid,
Sure sends a mean packet.

He's on my favorite terminal,
He cats C right into foo,
His disciples lead him in,
And he just breaks the root,
Always has full SYS-PRIV's,
Never uses lint,
That deaf, dumb, and blind kid,
Sure sends a mean packet.

He's a UNIX wizard,
There has to be a twist.
The UNIX wizard's got
Unlimited space on disk.

How do you think he does it?
I don't know.
What makes him so good?

Ain't got no distractions,
Can't hear no whistles or bells,
Can't see no message flashing,
Types by sense of smell,
Those crazy little programs,
The proper bit flags set,
That deaf, dumb, and blind kid,
Sure sends a mean packet.

================
GIRLS JUST WANNA DEFUN

I can't wake up, in the morning
Cause of what I've been doing for most of the night.
Teacher don't you know my program is done?
And girls just wanna defun.

The phone rings, in the middle of the night
Advisor screams, "Watcha gonna do with your life?"
Patrick*, how I relish double-oh-one**!
And girls just wanna defun.

They just wanna, just wanna, yeah
Girls just wanna defun.

Some people say
A beautiful girl can't tool all night like
The rest of the world.
I wanna be the one to welcome the sun.
And girls just wanna defun.

*Winston, ai professor, MIT
**6.001, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

================



            Sing this one to Michael Jackson's "Beat it"

    You're processing some words when your keyboard goes dead,
    Ten pages in the buffer, should have gone to bed,
    The system just crashed, but don't lose your head,
    Just BOOT IT, just BOOT IT.

    Better think fast, better do what you can,
    Read the manual or call your system man,
    Don't want to fall behind in the race with Japan,
    So BOOT IT,

    Get the system manager to
    BOOT IT,     BOOT IT,
    Even though you'd rather shoot it.
    Don't be upset, it's only some glitch.
    All that you do is flip a little switch.
    BOOT IT,     BOOT IT,
    Get right down and restitute it.
    Don't get excited, all is not lost.
    CP/M, UNIX or MS/DOS
    Just BOOT IT, boot it, boot it, boot it...

    You gotta have your printout for the meeting at two,
    The system says your jobs at the head of the queue,
    Right then the thing dies but you know what to do,
    BOOT IT.

    You always get so worried when the system runs slow,
    And when it finally crashes, man you feel so low,
    But computers make mistakes (they're only human you know)
    So BOOT IT,

    Call the local guru to
    BOOT IT,     BOOT IT,
    Go ahead re-institute it.
    If you're not lucky, get the book off the shelf,
    But if you are, it'll do it itself.
    BOOT IT,     BOOT IT,
    Then go find the guy who screwed it!
    Operating systems are built to bounce back,
    Whether it's a Cray or a Radio Shack.

    BOOT IT!     BOOT IT!

                         ==============
>From: ggerke@unocss.UUCP (Greg Gerke)
Newsgroups: rec.humor
Subject: A revision of an old favorite ...
Date: 8 Sep 88 13:15:40 GMT

                          DP Man
         (sung to the tune "Piano Man" by Billy Joel)

   It's eight o'clock on a Monday,
   The programming crowd staggers in,
   There's a user by my terminal,
   With drool running off of his chin.
   He says, "Son, can you code me some processing,
   I'm not really sure what I want,
   But it's short and it's sweet and it's NP-complete
   And it has to be finished by lunch."

     Chorus:

     They say, "Write us some code, you're the DP man,
     Write us some code today,
     'Cause we need this report for the CEO,
     And he wants it by yesterday."

   Now, Tim at the console's a friend of mine,
   He bumps up my priority,
   And he'll bum me a smoke or some Twinkies and Coke,
   But there's someplace that he'd rather be.
   He said, "Paul, I believe it's a dead-end here,"
   As the smile ran away from his face,
   "But I'm sure I could find work with IBM,
   If I could get out of this place."

   Now, Mark is a frustrated racing man,
   Whose license is riding on luck,
   And he's talking with Jeff who scares mopeds to death,
   With those forty-inch tires on his truck.
   Well, it's pretty good code for a Monday,
   And my team leader gives me a smirk,
   'Cause he knows that it's me they'll be coming to see,
   When they find out that it didn't work.

   And the keyboard, it clicks like a tickertape
   And the CRT screams like a jet,
   And they walk by my cube and throw pens at my tube,
   And say, "Man, ain't they fixed that thing yet ?"
   And the old hands are screaming to standardize,
   As the patches and kludges pile up,
   'Cause this place is a hacker's own paradise:
   It's a string-handling-in-Fortran shop.

====

[This next one is like the Blake poem, "Tiger, tiger, burning bright".]

Bunsen Burner burning bright,
On the lab bench of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful chemistry?

In what distant reactions,
Burnt the fire of thine actions?
On what ring stands dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what structure, and what bonds,
Could twist the sinews of thy electrons?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What reaction formed thy heat?

What the test tube?  What the mole?
In what furnace was thy soul?
What the funnel?  What the flask?
Dare its deadly ketones gasp?

When the stars threw down their radiation
And watered the world with their elation:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made Physics made thee?

Bunsen Burner burning bright,
On the lab bench of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful chemistry?

                               Bill Bretschneider  (lafcol!bretschw)

                       "The Worm Before Christmas"
                            by Clement C. Morris

            (a.k.a. David Bradley, Betty Cheng, Hal Render,
                        Greg Rogers, and Dan LaLiberte)

        Twas the night before finals, and all through the lab
        Not a student was sleeping, not even McNabb.
        Their projects were finished, completed with care
        In hopes that the grades would be easy (and fair).

        The students were wired with caffeine in their veins
        While visions of quals nearly drove them insane.
        With piles of books and a brand new highlighter,
        I had just settled down for another all nighter ---

        When out from our gateways arose such a clatter,
        I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter;
        Away to the console I flew like a flash,
        And logged in as root to fend off a crash.

        The windows displayed on my brand new Sun-3,
        Gave oodles of info --- some in 3-D.
        When, what to my burning red eyes should appear
        But dozens of "nobody" jobs.  Oh dear!

        With a blitzkrieg invasion, so virulent and firm,
        I knew in a moment, it was Morris's Worm!
        More rapid than eagles his processes came,
        And they forked and exec'ed and they copied by name:

        "Now Dasher!  Now Dancer!  Now, Prancer and Vixen!
        On Comet!  On Cupid!  On Donner and Blitzen!
        To the sites in .rhosts and host.equiv
        Now, dash away!  dash away!  dash away all!"


        And then in a twinkling, I heard on the phone,
        The complaints of the users.  (Thought I was alone!)
        "The load is too high!"  "I can't read my files!"
        "I can't send my mail over miles and miles!"

        I unplugged the net, and was turning around,
        When the worm-ridden system went down with a bound.
        I fretted.  I frittered.  I sweated.  I wept.
        Then finally I core dumped the worm in /tmp.

        It was smart and pervasive, a right jolly old stealth,
        And I laughed, when I saw it, in spite of myself.
        A look at the dump of that invasive thread
        Soon gave me to know we had nothing to dread.

        The next day was slow with no network connections,
        For we wanted no more of those pesky infections.
        But in spite of the news and the noise and the clatter,
        Soon all became normal, as if naught were the matter.

        Then later that month while all were away,
        A virus came calling and then went away.
        The system then told us, when we logged in one night:
        "Happy Christmas to all!  (You guys aren't so bright.)"

        [ Note:  The machines dasher.cs.uiuc.edu,
          dancer.cs.uiuc.ed, prancer.cs.uiuc.edu, etc. have
          been renamed deer1, deer2, deer3, etc. so as not
          to confuse the already burdened students who use
          those machines. We regret that this poem reflects
          the older naming scheme and hope it does not confuse
          the network adminstrator at your site.  -Ed.]

====

From: damartin@sage.LCS.MIT.EDU (David Martin)

           American Pie --- Hacker Style

        Long, long, time ago, I can still remember
        How UNIX used to make me smile...
        And I knew that with a login name
        That I could play those unix games
        And maybe hack some programs for a while.
        But February made me shiver
        With every program I'd deliver
        Bad news on the doorstep,
        I couldn't take one more spec...
        I can't remember getting smashed
        When I heard about the system crash
        And all the passwords got rehashed
        The Day That UNIX Died...
        And I was singing:

        Bye, bye, nroff, rogue and vi
        Gave my program to Phil Levy but Phil Levy was high,
        The boys on the board were sayin' "fuck this, goodbye."
        Singin' this'll be the day that I die...
        This'll be the day that I die

        Did you write the new games shell
        And do you have faith in the manual?
        If b:dennie tells you so...
        Well, do you believe in UNIX C
        Can hacking save you memory
        And can you tell me why vi's so slow
        Well, I know that you're in love with C
        'Cause I saw your code on UNIX B
        You just kicked off your shoes
        Man, you cleaned up every kludge!
        I was a lonely young computer geek
        With a program due 'most every week
        But I guess that I was meant to freak
        The Day That UNIX Died
        And I was singin:

        (chorus)

        Well, for ten weeks we've been in this class
        The professor really is an ass.
        But that's not how it used to be...
        When Ira Pohl taught in CIS 12
        And user limits could go to hell
        And there was still space on UNIX C.
        And while the board was looking 'round
        The Chancellor brought the budget down
        The classes were adjourned
        Evaluations weren't returned
        And while Huffman read a book by Pohl
        The CIS board made some prof's heads roll
        And we wrote programs that weren't whole
        The Day That UNIX Died
        And we were singin'...

        (chorus)

        Helter skelter in the summer swelter
        I went in the lab to find some shelter
        Ninety degrees and risin' faaaaaasst!!!
        C stayed up for ten whole days
        The hackers really were amazed
        Wonderin' how long it all would last.
        Well, both the forums were really great
        Nobody got us all irate
        We had a stroke of luck
        The system was not fucked
        'Cause the hackers kept their code real clean
        The UNDR-shell was really keen
        Do you recall what was the scene
        The Day That UNIX Died
        And we were singin...

        (chorus)

        Our programs were all in one place,
        UNIX had run out of space
        With no time left to start again...
        So, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick,
        Use every programming trick
        'Cause UNIX may soon crash again...
        And as I watched the system fill
        My login process would be killed.
        The system just went down
        Consternation up at Crown"!!!
        The hours went on into the night
        And all that we could do was rite
        I saw Dennie laughing with delight
        The Day That UNIX Died
        And he was singin'...

        (chorus)

        I met a girl who sang the blues
        And I asked her for some stat lab news
        But she just cursed and said "grow up"
        I went down through the stat lab door
        Where I'd learned of UNIX years before
        But the man there said that UNIX wasn't up
        And in the halls the students screamed,
        The majors cried and the hackers dreamed,
        But not a word was spoken
        The Vaxes all were broken
        And the three folks I admire most
        The Father, Frank, and a.g.'s ghost
        They caught the last train for the coast
        The Day That UNIX Died
        And they were singin...

        So bye, bye, nroff, rogue and vi
        Gave my program to Phil Levy but Phil Levy was high.
        The boys on the board were sayin' "fuck this, goodbye"
        Singin' this'll be the day that I die...

                        (with apologies to Don McLean)

----------------------------------------------------------------

              SYSTEM CRASH (to the tune of "The Monster Mash")
               ------------

I was working in the lab, late one night
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight,
Some smoke from our VAX began to rise
And suddenly, to my surprise...

[chorus]
(There was a crash)        There was a system crash
(A mighty crash)           I heard the disk heads smash
(A system crash)           It came down in a flash
(There was a crash)        A fatal system crash

The lab manager then appeared from his room,
Said: "I don't want to be a prophet of doom,
But we had one like this just the other day
Which blew up 4 megs and the SBA"

[chorus]

The system had just been booted, diagnostics had all run through,
When a power fluck made it all run amuck, then SCOTTY and IRVING blew too

So we'd lost all our VAXes in less than one night
When a VP came in and said: "hey, that's all right,
I'll loan you a Venus - here's what to do
When you call up Support, tell them Gordon sent you...

[chorus]

------------------------------------------------
 From: Kevin B. Theobald <THEOBALD@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>

 (...to be sung to the tune of "Hotel California")


 In a dark Boston airport, hot wind in my hair
 Foul smell of pollution rising up through the air
 Up ahead 'cross the river, I saw a great shining dome
 My heart grew heavy and my guts felt sick, this was to be my new home

 There they stood in the Great Court, I heard the students yell
 And I was thinking to myself, this can't be heaven, this has to be hell
 Then they held up their frat signs and they rushed me away
 There were voices down the corridor, I thought I heard them say:

        Welcom to the Hotel Massachusetts
        Such a nerdy place, such a nerdy face
        Not enough room at the Hotel Massachusetts*
        Any time of year, you can pay us here

 Their minds are hopelessly twisted, they got the Institute Screw
 They got a lot of heavy problem sets that they must do
 How they tool on the fifth floor**, 18.01
 Some tool 'cause they have to, some tool to have fun

 So I held up my meal card, "Please, what is this for?"
 He said we've had forced commons since the class of 1984
 And still those voices are calling from far away
 Wake you up in the middle of a class, just to hear them say:

        Welcome to the Hotel Massachusetts
        Such a nerdy place, such a nerdy face
        They're tooling away at the Hotel Massachusetts
        What a boring day, 'cause they must have 'A'

 Pipes on the ceiling, the greasy food on rice
 And they said, "We are all just prisoners here, of Paul Gray's device"
 And in the Student Center, the students come to eat
 They stab it with their plastic knives but they just can't cut the meat

 Last thing I remember, I was at the Registrar
 I had to get my transcript sent to a place where I'll go far
 "Pay up," said the Chanc'llor, "we will fine you if you're late.
 You can flunk out any time you like, but you can't graduate"


 * Historical context 1: This song was written in the Fall of 1980, when
        7 frosh were stuck in the basement of Ashdown because there
        wasn't enough housing.

 ** Historical content 2: The 24-hour library used to be in the fifth
        floor of the student center.

 Hotel Massachusetts was originally published in The Baker Letter, v. 34,
 no. 2, 4/9/81.