The Backhoe Song
Steve Simmons
Systems Administration (LISA) Conference last week. Steven Levine was
in the audiece and sent us these words. They are posted here with his
permission. It's to an original tune by Steven; I've not heard it sung.
Steven also wrote `I Built A Better Model Than The One At Data General.'
Steve `not Steven' Simmons
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The Backhoe Song
----------------
by Steven Levine
Charlie said, "Fred, hey get out of bed,
Don't waste your time in yawning.
There's a world of work that lies ahead
And a bright new day is dawning.
Forget your tractor, it's time to sell;
It's years since you last rode her.
We'll buy that Case 580L --
The backhoe front end loader."
So it's off we go on the old backhoe
And we'll never mind the weather or the winds that blow;
And the roaring sound when we dig up the ground,
Will be deafening the neighbors for a mile around.
We will shout and swear and we just won't care
When we come around and don't give any warning.
There's no finer way to begin the day
Than to ride the excavator in the morning.
Charlie arrived with a crash and a ding
At the foreman's introduction;
Did he know that the metro access ring
Ran right beside construction?
Soon half the city's links were out,
And the other half were queued up;
A single point of failure route
Means someone really screwed up.
So it's off we go on the old backhoe
And we'll never mind the weather or the winds that blow;
And the roaring sound when we dig up the ground,
Will be deafening the neighbors for a mile around.
We will shout and swear and we just won't care
When we come around and don't give any warning.
There's no finer way to begin the day
Than to ride the excavator in the morning.
Then Charlie drove in with a great big grin
Past the signs of "do not enter";
While the warning beeps made a raucous din
In the operations center;
Fred said "Charlie, come back if you please,
You're making me kind of nervous,"
While by degrees all the ISPs
Were reporting lack of service.
So it's off we go on the old backhoe
And we'll never mind the weather or the winds that blow;
And the roaring sound when we dig up the ground,
Will be deafening the neighbors for a mile around.
We will shout and swear and we just won't care
When we come around and don't give any warning.
There's no finer way to begin the day
Than to ride the excavator in the morning.
You can add more nodes to the network chain
On your longhaul backbone cable;
You can run all the daemons that maintain
A dynamic routing table;
To insist upon a protocol,
You can storm and make a racket;
But there's no such thing as a firewall
For a Fred and Charlie packet.
So it's off we go on the old backhoe
And we'll never mind the weather or the winds that blow;
And the roaring sound when we dig up the ground,
Will be deafening the neighbors for a mile around.
We will shout and swear and we just won't care
When we come around and don't give any warning.
There's no finer way to begin the day
Than to ride the excavator in the morning.
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--
Eric Raymond, on the likelihood of Elfs and Humans having similar sex
drives: ``... with those lifespans that *can't* be right, or Arwen would
have more mileage on her than a Liberian tramp steamer.''
--
`Have you noticed that, when we were young, we were told that "everybody
else is doing it" was a really stupid reason to do something, but now it's
the standard reason for picking a particular software package?' -- Barry Gehm
Larry Kirby
<s...@di.org> writes:
>But there's no such thing as a firewall
>For a Fred and Charlie packet.
I like this song...modern technology is helpless when we good ol' boys get
working...
Larry
I finally remembered how to change my sig
Aaron Davies
Great song.
> --
> Eric Raymond, on the likelihood of Elfs and Humans having similar sex
> drives: ``... with those lifespans that *can't* be right, or Arwen would
> have more mileage on her than a Liberian tramp steamer.''
BTW, isn't the proper plural of "Elf" "Elves", at lesat for Tolkein?
--
Aaron Davies
aa...@avalon.pascal-central.com
sig coming Soon(tm)
Martin DeMello
> The Backhoe Song
> ----------------
> by Steven Levine
*Wonderful*. I'd love to hear this sung.
--
Martin DeMello
kes...@attglobal.net
> BTW, isn't the proper plural of "Elf" "Elves", at lesat for Tolkein?
I think Tolkein would recognize legitimate variants. I seem to remember
that he himself pointed out that the proper plural of Dwarf should be
Dwerrows, or something like that, but (a) "Dwarves" was more likely to
be undersood by the readers and (b) given that the story's taken from
Frodo's account and hobbits are generally not very sophisticated in
their understanding of the other races...
(I wasn't fast enough to write down the exact quote, but the NPR game
show _Wait_Wait_Don't_Tell_Me_ mentioned that Tolkein was rather
embarassed by LOTR's run-away success. Something to the effect of "I
have written a monster which is not suitable for adults, and certainly
not suitable for children"...)
Harold Groot
>Aaron Davies wrote:
>> BTW, isn't the proper plural of "Elf" "Elves", at lesat for Tolkein?
>
>I think Tolkein would recognize legitimate variants. I seem to remember
>that he himself pointed out that the proper plural of Dwarf should be
>Dwerrows, or something like that, but (a) "Dwarves" was more likely to
>be undersood by the readers and (b) given that the story's taken from
>Frodo's account and hobbits are generally not very sophisticated in
>their understanding of the other races...
Of course, Disney used the simple "Dwarfs" in the Snow White movie.
Heather Rose Jones
As appearing in the transcript of this week's show at
<http://www.npr.org/programs/waitwait/archquiz/2001/011215.html> it reads:
"My work has escaped from my control, and I have produced a monster: an
immensely long, complex, rather bitter, and rather terrifying romance,
quite unfit for children (if fit for anybody)."
--
*********
Heather Rose Jones
hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu
*********