The Net Before Christmas
by Rick Wyatt (rwyatt@crl.com)

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house,
Not a feature was active, not even a mouse.
A stocking was hung from a drive bay with care
In the hopes that some new software soon would be there.

The children were offline, asleep in their beds
While visions of pirate sites danced in their heads
And I, in my undies, booted up, checked the line,
Had started up Netscape to get me online,

When out of my modem arose such a squeal
That I ran McAfee to see what was the deal!
Then, knowing this foulup would anger my wife
I turned on a trace so she'd spare my poor life.

The light from the monitor in my direction
Gave a luster of gray to my anxious reflection,
When what should appear but a manifestation
Of a miniature Cray and eight corporations

With a smooth operator, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick!
More swiftly than burst mode his software firms came,
and he zipped up their programs and called them by name.

On Claris!  On Novell!  On ID!  IBM!
On Microsoft, Maxis, EA, Origin!
To the top of the cache!  To the start of the call!
Now hack away, hack away, hack away all!

As downloading protocols fix on the fly,
When they meet with an error, back up and retry,
So onto my hard drive the programs they flew
With a bundle of files and St. Nicholas, too.

And then in a spurt commands came through my modem,
My display flared bright as Nick started to load 'em,
As I reached for the contrast to turn the glare down,
Straight out to DOS St. Nick shelled with a bound.

He was wired on Jolt Cola, Twinkies, and Fritos,
His clothing was covered with crumbs of Doritos,
CDs by the score were stuffed tight in his sack,
And he looked like a hacker just starting a crack.

His eyes were like roadmaps, his pimples like berries,
Even in VGA he looked pretty darn scary!
His poly-knit pants were drawn up to his shins,
And his oxford-cloth shirt was as white as his skin.

A plastic protector rode in his shirt pocket,
Hair stood from his head like he'd licked a live socket,
He had a pale face that wore tape-repaired glasses,
And he shook like a drive right before the thing crashes.

He was clumsy but nice, for a nerd he was swell,
And I laughed when I saw him in spite of the smell.
The look in his eyes and a terrible stutter
Soon gave me to know he had nothing to utter.

He said not a word but went straight to my files
And filled all my disk space, then turned with a smile,
Formed a keyboard of pixels and typed in "EXIT",
And, hitting RETURN, back to Windows he quit.

He sprang to his Cray, to his team gave a whistle,
And they flew through the net like a routed epistle.
But I heard him exclaim as he soared through the line,
"When the SPA calls, tell them you'll pay the fine!"