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plonqI was going through some of my old stories this evening and I stumbled onto this one from a few years ago. I only vaguely remember writing this one, but I remember the endless Y2K testing we were doing back then. I came to hate those three letters over time.
While I'm tempted to fix this one up, other than fixing the formatting and adding a couple of missing words, I'm going to let it stand as written. My writing back then had a certain charm to it. I think my writing now is a bit more sophisticated, but it's lost a bit of the sharp wit.
From: Plonq <snowcat@removethis.total.removethistoo.net>
Subject: Y2K
Date: September 27, 1998 11:10 PM
Inspired by RL events (of course). If I hear any combination of Y 2 and K again any time next week, I think I will vomit.
This one probably needs some editing, but that can come later.
Enjoy.
8<---
There was a polite knock at the door.
"Hrm?" mewled Plonq, rising from the table to answer the summons. In truth, he was not disappointed by the opportunity to pry himself away from the Y2K meeting. He opened the door to reveal Olga, the slug morph, pushing a refreshment cart.
"Here's the coffee you ordered," she droned unenthusiastically. "There were Danishes too, but I ate them on the way here."
The snow leopard blinked.
"Coffee?" he said, "I didn't order coffee." He turned back to the table where the IS morphs were busy folding system analysis reports into origami animals. "Did any of you furs order coffee for this meeting?"
"Ahem," coughed the slug politely, "you ordered it on Thursday."
"Hrm? That was TWO meetings ago!"
"It's a long way from the coffee room, you know," she scowled. "So didja want the coffee, or no? I can take it back..." she added, with a sigh of longsuffering.
Plonq shrugged, and pulled the cart into the room. The meeting had already dragged out for over two hours and, much as he hated the thought of prolonging it with coffee, the beverage would be welcome addition.
The snow leopard grabbed the Coffee Butler from the cart and toddled back to his place at the table, holding it protectively under his arm.
The IS lemmings watched him approach, and when it became obvious that he had no intention of putting the coffee on the table, one of them squeaked, "Do you plan on sharing that coffee with... um, never mind," he added when Plonq hugged the decanter tightly and growled. "Let's just return to the task at hand, shall we?" He pulled up a sheet of cryptic source code. "Do you know what this program does?"
The snow leopard said nothing at first, simply making "gluk" sounds as he poured back tepid liquid directly from the Thermos. He lowered the coffee and glanced at the Sanskrit-covered sheet.
"Nope," he mewled. "Don't recognise it."
"Okay," said the lemming. He crumpled up the sheet and made a notation on his checklist. "We'll mark it as non-critical then."
"That was easy," purred Plonq. "Would it speed this meeting up if I just said that I don't recognise ANY of those programs?"
"Oh definitely," enthused the lemming. "It would go a lot easier on our budget, too."
"Not that our budget is a problem," added one of the other lemmings, "in fact as soon as this meeting is over, we plan to head out and buy a restaurant for lunch."
"I vote that we declare all the programs here non-critical and adjourn this meeting," said the first lemming.
"Sounds good to me," said another lemming.
"And me," echoed the third. "Why don't we all go for lunch?"
"I gotta work," said the snow leopard sadly.
"I didn't mean YOU," clarified the lemming, as he and his IS mates gathered up their papers and shuffled toward the door. "You have been an immense help. Thank you for attending this meeting."
Plonq hugged his Thermos of lukewarm coffee and toddled out the door after the lemmings. As they chattered amongst themselves and made a beeline toward the exit, he turned back toward his workstation. He stopped short when he spied a pair of IS hardware moles poking around his computer.
"Ack! What are you doing to my machine?" he demanded. It seldom bode well when hardware moles got at one's computer. One of the morphs turned and regarded him, its nose twitching disdainfully.
"Upgrading it."
"Making it Y2K compliant," said the other.
"Replacing it."
"Giving you a better one."
Plonq ogled at the new box sitting where his old computer had resided.
"What about all of my files?" he mewled in consternation. "I had a lot of work saved on that machine. All of my WordStar files."
The first mole picked up an eight and a half-inch floppy form the desk and waved it carelessly at the cat.
"We backed it all up for you," he said, "and have even included a .9 beta version of WordPurrfect on the disk. But you had some pretty strange file names. What are 'yiffybabe', 'otter69' and 'killboss' for instance?"
"Work related," growled Plonq.
"Well they didn't follow standard IS naming conventions," chided the mole.
"You know the rules on naming files," said the other mole.
"No less than eight characters of mixed case, containing no less than four numbers."
"We took the liberty of renaming all two hundred of your files when we copied them across."
"What?" yowled the feline. He snatched the diskette out of the mole's hand and held it up dubiously. "I had a lot of important data saved on my old computer. What kind of computer are you giving me now? Will it read all of my old WordStar files?"
The other mole patted the new CPU.
"This one will blow the doors off your old Z80. It's got a genuine Intel 8086 that really kicks ass. We've cranked up its clock to run at speeds that the manufacturer never intended."
"Don't leave any important papers lying too close to the case," said the first mole.
"This one has two floppies, to the single one on your old machine, and though they are three inches smaller than your old disk drive, combined they give you an additional two and a half-inches of drive space! We've also replaced your old 300 baud modem with a 1200 baud one," he enthused, "which is four times as fast!"
"Ooh," said Plonq, who was harbouring visions of surfing the web. He peered happily at the dual floppies in the machine, appreciating the ingenuity of the techs, who had used cardboard shims to fit the pair of half-height drives into a full-height bay.
"This machine also has DOS 2.01 in firmware, so no more waiting for your machine to boot up. This puppy will go from zero to full speed in less than a minute!" The tech hesitated, and added, "but we couldn't use your old 10meg hard drive, and we were right out of the regulation 120meg ones."
"Ack!"
"So we had to drop in a 12gig one," said the other mole. "We partitioned it down until we ran out of drive letters. What you can't use, you don't need anyway." The two techs stepped back from the machine and bowed graciously. "Enjoy, and don't hurt yourself."
Plonq wrung his hands together in glee, and slid himself into position in front of his new machine as the two moles sauntered away. He toggled the ON switch, and chortled,
"Houston, we have lift-off!"
He listened with unbridled delight as his new power-toy whined and gronked to life. Plonq heard the pad of otter feet approaching over the sound of the machine booting up, and turned to find Giblet enviously eyeing his new computer.
"New hardware?" said the otter. "What makes YOU so special?"
"Some of us do real work around here," answered the snow leopard primly. "Oooh! The keyboard even has a bunch of extra buttons!"
"Lucky bastard," groused Giblet. He watched as Plonq made several aborted attempts to insert the eight and a half-inch disk into the five and a quarter-inch drive.
The snow leopard looked at the disk, then at the drive, and then at the disk again. "Urm," he mewled, "you don't happen to have any scissors on you?"
"Scissors?" barked Giblet, "you don't CUT a diskette. Yeesh, even I know that! Gimme that," he said, taking the floppy out of the other morph's hand. With a deft motion of his delicate mustelid fingers, he folded in the edges of the diskette and returned it to the cat. "Now try."
Plonq wiggled and jockeyed the disk until it finally slid home. The otter, meanwhile, walked back toward his own desk, entertaining the vain hope that he might find the techs installing a new machine at his own workstation. As he left, he overheard the snow leopard berating the computer.
"Retry you stupid machine! Ack! Retry again..."
* Plonq
While I'm tempted to fix this one up, other than fixing the formatting and adding a couple of missing words, I'm going to let it stand as written. My writing back then had a certain charm to it. I think my writing now is a bit more sophisticated, but it's lost a bit of the sharp wit.
From: Plonq <snowcat@removethis.total.removethistoo.net>
Subject: Y2K
Date: September 27, 1998 11:10 PM
Inspired by RL events (of course). If I hear any combination of Y 2 and K again any time next week, I think I will vomit.
This one probably needs some editing, but that can come later.
Enjoy.
8<---
There was a polite knock at the door.
"Hrm?" mewled Plonq, rising from the table to answer the summons. In truth, he was not disappointed by the opportunity to pry himself away from the Y2K meeting. He opened the door to reveal Olga, the slug morph, pushing a refreshment cart.
"Here's the coffee you ordered," she droned unenthusiastically. "There were Danishes too, but I ate them on the way here."
The snow leopard blinked.
"Coffee?" he said, "I didn't order coffee." He turned back to the table where the IS morphs were busy folding system analysis reports into origami animals. "Did any of you furs order coffee for this meeting?"
"Ahem," coughed the slug politely, "you ordered it on Thursday."
"Hrm? That was TWO meetings ago!"
"It's a long way from the coffee room, you know," she scowled. "So didja want the coffee, or no? I can take it back..." she added, with a sigh of longsuffering.
Plonq shrugged, and pulled the cart into the room. The meeting had already dragged out for over two hours and, much as he hated the thought of prolonging it with coffee, the beverage would be welcome addition.
The snow leopard grabbed the Coffee Butler from the cart and toddled back to his place at the table, holding it protectively under his arm.
The IS lemmings watched him approach, and when it became obvious that he had no intention of putting the coffee on the table, one of them squeaked, "Do you plan on sharing that coffee with... um, never mind," he added when Plonq hugged the decanter tightly and growled. "Let's just return to the task at hand, shall we?" He pulled up a sheet of cryptic source code. "Do you know what this program does?"
The snow leopard said nothing at first, simply making "gluk" sounds as he poured back tepid liquid directly from the Thermos. He lowered the coffee and glanced at the Sanskrit-covered sheet.
"Nope," he mewled. "Don't recognise it."
"Okay," said the lemming. He crumpled up the sheet and made a notation on his checklist. "We'll mark it as non-critical then."
"That was easy," purred Plonq. "Would it speed this meeting up if I just said that I don't recognise ANY of those programs?"
"Oh definitely," enthused the lemming. "It would go a lot easier on our budget, too."
"Not that our budget is a problem," added one of the other lemmings, "in fact as soon as this meeting is over, we plan to head out and buy a restaurant for lunch."
"I vote that we declare all the programs here non-critical and adjourn this meeting," said the first lemming.
"Sounds good to me," said another lemming.
"And me," echoed the third. "Why don't we all go for lunch?"
"I gotta work," said the snow leopard sadly.
"I didn't mean YOU," clarified the lemming, as he and his IS mates gathered up their papers and shuffled toward the door. "You have been an immense help. Thank you for attending this meeting."
Plonq hugged his Thermos of lukewarm coffee and toddled out the door after the lemmings. As they chattered amongst themselves and made a beeline toward the exit, he turned back toward his workstation. He stopped short when he spied a pair of IS hardware moles poking around his computer.
"Ack! What are you doing to my machine?" he demanded. It seldom bode well when hardware moles got at one's computer. One of the morphs turned and regarded him, its nose twitching disdainfully.
"Upgrading it."
"Making it Y2K compliant," said the other.
"Replacing it."
"Giving you a better one."
Plonq ogled at the new box sitting where his old computer had resided.
"What about all of my files?" he mewled in consternation. "I had a lot of work saved on that machine. All of my WordStar files."
The first mole picked up an eight and a half-inch floppy form the desk and waved it carelessly at the cat.
"We backed it all up for you," he said, "and have even included a .9 beta version of WordPurrfect on the disk. But you had some pretty strange file names. What are 'yiffybabe', 'otter69' and 'killboss' for instance?"
"Work related," growled Plonq.
"Well they didn't follow standard IS naming conventions," chided the mole.
"You know the rules on naming files," said the other mole.
"No less than eight characters of mixed case, containing no less than four numbers."
"We took the liberty of renaming all two hundred of your files when we copied them across."
"What?" yowled the feline. He snatched the diskette out of the mole's hand and held it up dubiously. "I had a lot of important data saved on my old computer. What kind of computer are you giving me now? Will it read all of my old WordStar files?"
The other mole patted the new CPU.
"This one will blow the doors off your old Z80. It's got a genuine Intel 8086 that really kicks ass. We've cranked up its clock to run at speeds that the manufacturer never intended."
"Don't leave any important papers lying too close to the case," said the first mole.
"This one has two floppies, to the single one on your old machine, and though they are three inches smaller than your old disk drive, combined they give you an additional two and a half-inches of drive space! We've also replaced your old 300 baud modem with a 1200 baud one," he enthused, "which is four times as fast!"
"Ooh," said Plonq, who was harbouring visions of surfing the web. He peered happily at the dual floppies in the machine, appreciating the ingenuity of the techs, who had used cardboard shims to fit the pair of half-height drives into a full-height bay.
"This machine also has DOS 2.01 in firmware, so no more waiting for your machine to boot up. This puppy will go from zero to full speed in less than a minute!" The tech hesitated, and added, "but we couldn't use your old 10meg hard drive, and we were right out of the regulation 120meg ones."
"Ack!"
"So we had to drop in a 12gig one," said the other mole. "We partitioned it down until we ran out of drive letters. What you can't use, you don't need anyway." The two techs stepped back from the machine and bowed graciously. "Enjoy, and don't hurt yourself."
Plonq wrung his hands together in glee, and slid himself into position in front of his new machine as the two moles sauntered away. He toggled the ON switch, and chortled,
"Houston, we have lift-off!"
He listened with unbridled delight as his new power-toy whined and gronked to life. Plonq heard the pad of otter feet approaching over the sound of the machine booting up, and turned to find Giblet enviously eyeing his new computer.
"New hardware?" said the otter. "What makes YOU so special?"
"Some of us do real work around here," answered the snow leopard primly. "Oooh! The keyboard even has a bunch of extra buttons!"
"Lucky bastard," groused Giblet. He watched as Plonq made several aborted attempts to insert the eight and a half-inch disk into the five and a quarter-inch drive.
The snow leopard looked at the disk, then at the drive, and then at the disk again. "Urm," he mewled, "you don't happen to have any scissors on you?"
"Scissors?" barked Giblet, "you don't CUT a diskette. Yeesh, even I know that! Gimme that," he said, taking the floppy out of the other morph's hand. With a deft motion of his delicate mustelid fingers, he folded in the edges of the diskette and returned it to the cat. "Now try."
Plonq wiggled and jockeyed the disk until it finally slid home. The otter, meanwhile, walked back toward his own desk, entertaining the vain hope that he might find the techs installing a new machine at his own workstation. As he left, he overheard the snow leopard berating the computer.
"Retry you stupid machine! Ack! Retry again..."
* Plonq
