Delivered by Brother I/O at the December PULSAR meeting.

                    THE SERMON ON THE MONITOR

    Dearly C-loved,  we are basically assembled here today
because PCing is believing. We're here to console you; ASCII
and ye shall receive.  We say there is a life worth debugging!
Data, data everywhere, but  not a thought to think, that is the
problem...Dear friends, perhaps  you've interfaced with someone
out there with a terminal illness, some poor hacker with
bloodshot eyes in data distress who's been attacked by the evil
one, Glitch, and his wicked helper, Crosslink; someone whose
FAT is truly in the fire. Even if your data has  been blown all
to HAL and it's your cluster's last stand,  there's not a thing
we can do to bring it back. But, we can solace you in your hour
of need.

    And that is why the Giver Of Data has downloaded to me,
from his heavenly host mainframe, at 9,600 baud error-free, the
Keyboard Prayer for the data distressed. Now let us make the
sign of the monitor, (trace a square with your finger in the
air)  bow our heads, and pray in parallel.

                       THE KEYBOARD PRAYER

    Our program who art in memory,
    HELLO be thy name.
    Thy keyboard hum,
    Thy work be done,
    On disk as it is in memory.
    Give us our data
    In key-field order
    And forgive us our I/O errors,
    As we forgive those with faulty logic circuits,
    And lead us not into frustration,
    But deliver us from power surges.
    For thine is the algorithm,
    the application and the solution,
    looping forever and ever.
    Return!



   Author Unknown


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