THE SYSOP'S NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

December 22nd, 2008

For those of you who've not known me for a long time, my name is Deon Attard. I started the business you would now know as Easy Internet Services in a bedroom of my parents Mt. Pleasant home in the early 1990's. It began as a Bulletin Board Service (BBS) that was then known as "Whitsunday Waves" - I operated this service for approximately 8 years, it was the largest BBS of its type in Mackay. I had many local and long-distance callers who would frequently dial-in to the service. Back then it was a very expensive long distance STD phone call if you wanted to use a BBS outside of your local area code. A BBS was the type of facility that people used before the Internet became common place and affordable in around 1996. The BBS allowed users to download files and programs, play online games (mostly text based) and exchange both local emails and FidoNet emails. FidoNet was the most common email system used during that period. It allowed you to write an email to a subscriber of another BBS which could have been within Australia or anywhere in the world, each night my BBS would dial Cairns and would send out as well as receive all of my customers emails (Much to my parents dismay as this was a long distance phone call everyday). The BBS in Cairns would then in-turn send all of its emails to a BBS in Brisbane and pretty quickly your message would be at its destination. If you sent an email from Mackay or Perth it would take about 2 days to get there - to the USA maybe 3 or 4 days.

A SysOp or "System Operator" was the title given to people who ran BBS services at that time and as such I was the SysOp of Whitsunday Waves.

Each Christmas I would place a version of the below poem online for my clients to read, it is a little old so the more experienced users will understand more of the terminology used than the younger folk.

However I hope you enjoy it and I would like to thank all of the clients of our Computer Store and Internet Service for their business in the current year and I wish everyone a very merry and safe Christmas and New Year period.

Our office will be closed from 12pm 24/12/08 until 8:30am 05/01/09 - if you are not on an automated billing method and you're worried about your account becomming due over this period please contact our office to ensure your account is in order to avoid it being suspended over the holidays.

THE SYSOP'S NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a peripheral was stirring, not even a mouse.
The modem was plugged to the phone line with care
In hopes that a download soon would be there.


Our pirates were nestled all snug in their beds
While visions of unprotects danced in their heads.
And Mama in her kerchief, and I in my cap
Had just settled down for a long winter's nap.


When up on the hard drive there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the monitor I flew like a flash,
Sat down at the keyboard, gave the spacebar a mash.


The sight on the screen, all a'flicker with snow,
Gave the luster of power surge to the menu below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But an autoexec.bat that seemed rather queer.


With a little print driver so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment I had seen a new trick.
More rapid than eagles the cursors they came;
My MIDI whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!


"Now Format, now Rename, now Copy, and Enter!
On Num Lock, on Caps Lock, on Scroll Lock, and Printer!


"To the top of the page, to the top of the doc,
Now tab it and bold it and merge it and block!"


As utilities that build up the CPU speed
Clash with just the programs I need,
So up to the screen top the cursors they flew,
With a RAM full of memory and an expansion board too.


And then, in a twinkling I heard on the speaker,
The grinding of the hard drive growing much weaker.
As I tried to reboot and turn it around,
The attributes changed from blue into brown.


I hit the control, the alt, and delete.
The screen message it gave me, I cannot repeat.
It asked me to Ignore, Retry, or Abort.
It told me the parallel had become the comm port.


Its lights how they twinkled; its pixels how merry,
Its prompts were all scrambled, like a bowl full of cherries.
It sounded just like it wanted to blow;
The screen was suddenly white as the snow.


It scrolled its directory before my eyes
With programs I didn't even recognize.
It wouldn't see D:, it wouldn't see E:;
I couldn't get out of B: into C:.


Norton's tried to read it, finally finding the FAT;
But alas! The disk was faulty, and couldn't reformat.
Away flew the DBase; away flew the DOS-es;
Away flew the WordStar; right out with the Windows.


The spreadsheets were spreading; the footers were headings;
What once had been memory was close to forgetting.
When the grinding was over and the smoke had all cleared,
I looked at the hard drive; it was just as I feared.


The 600 meg wonder had crashed in the night;
I'll never be able to block out that sight!
So tell everyone you know to avoid my plight;
Back up your files! Merry Christmas! Good Night!

Yours sincerely,

Deon Attard
Managing Director