‘Twas the night….

An ‘original’ poem by Larry Bolhuis …

‘Twas the night before Christmas in the IBM i house
Not an admin was worried nor even a spouse.

Their systems ran smoothly not so much as a care.
Secure in the knowledge no virus would hit theirs.

The sysops were talking about gifts of toy sleds
While visions of happiness danced in their heads.

When down in the rack there arose such a clatter,
The sysops went running to see what’s the matter.

It was windows they saw, gone down in a crash,
A screen full of blue made them mad in a flash.

The blue that they saw lit the whole server row
screen after screen they were all in a glow.

They called in the expert, begged him to appear,
he came in quite quickly for he had been near.

He opened his bag, whipped out a key-stick
Stuck it into a server and booted it quick.

He watched for the drivers calling each one by name
Memory Disk, video LAN, each in turn up it came

One by one each was started and it loaded them all
But the server yet failed and the tech hit the wall.

He turned to the sysops and asked what all was down?
They looked at each other and checked all around.

Each thing after the other was working just fine
So happy they were that they toasted with wine!

The tech he was puzzled. “It’s all working, But why?”
The sysops all in chorus: “Because we run IBM i!”

“Those things with blue screens run unimportant stuff now
We’ve learned not to trust them as they oft’ let us down.”

He shook his head slowly as as he walked out the door.
The sysops they taunted which frustrated him more.

“On iStar on sStar, on POWER, on Blades!
The best ever selection of servers we made!”

Yet they they heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”

(with apologies to Clement Clarke Moore)