Roadkill on the Infobahn

Date: Sat, 9 Sep 95 10:24:00 EDT

From: David Cohn <cohn@psyche.mit.edu>

To: psinging@psyche.mit.edu

Subject: "Privateers" filk

As promised to the psinging gang, the unedited doggerel I imposed on

the group last night. Of dubious origin, so standard disclaimers

apply: some assembly required, batteries not included, do not play on

or around, any resemblance to a personal opinion is strictly your own

imagination...

-dac

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

(to the tune of "Barrett's Privateers")

Oh the year was 1995

How I wish I had a T-1 line!

When a memo came down and the boss said "Get

this company up on the internet"

refrain:

God damn them all, I was told

The software would be "plug and go"

Put in the disk, and turned it on...

Now it's a smoking mess and I can't log on

I'm roadkill on the infobahn

Boss said the code was set to run

How I wish I had a T-1 line!

'Cept a few routines that I'd have to hack

In FORTRAN on our Univac

The 1108 was a sickening sight

How I wish I had a T-1 line!

It had vacuum tubes and a punch card bin

And when you turned it on it made the lights go dim

I looked at the code that we'd been sold

How I wish I had a T-1 line!

It took 86 meg and a CD drive

And it ran on Windows'95

I found a path through ftp

How I wish I had a T-1 line!

But our modem ran at twenty four K

And to download the file took us two whole days

At last I got the code compiled

How I wish I had a T-1 line!

But the screen went blank when I hit return

The mainframe caught fire and began to burn

So here I sit as a sysadmin

How I wish I had a T-1 line!

I've seen more pain than a man deserves

And my boss just called up CompuServe...

-"Doc Pablo"