Electronics World articles Popular Electronics articles QST articles Radio & TV News articles Radio-Craft articles Radio-Electronics articles Short Wave Craft articles Wireless World articles Google Search of RF Cafe website Sitemap Electronics Equations Mathematics Equations Equations physics Manufacturers & distributors Engineer Jobs LinkedIn Crosswords Engineering Humor Kirt's Cogitations RF Engineering Quizzes Notable Quotes App Notes Calculators Education Engineering magazine articles Engineering software Engineering smorgasbord RF Cafe Archives RF Cascade Workbook 2018 RF Stencils for Visio RF & EE Shapes for Word Advertising RF Cafe Homepage Thank you for visiting RF Cafe!
MECA Electronics

T'Was the Night Before Startup


Twas the night before start-up and all through the net,
Not a packet was moving; no bit nor octet.
The engineers rattled their cards in despair,
Hoping a bad chip would blow with a flare.
The salesmen were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of data nets danced in their heads.
And I with my datascope tracings and dumps
Prepared for some pretty bad bruises and lumps.
When out in the hall there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter.

There stood at the threshold with PC in tow,
An ARPANET hacker, all ready to go.
I could see from the creases that covered his brow,
He'd conquer the crisis confronting him now.
More rapid than eagles, he checked each alarm
 And scrutinized each for its potential harm.

On LAPB,
On OSI,
X.25!
TCP,
SNA,
V.35!

His eyes were afire with the strength of his gaze;
No bug could hide long; not for hours or days.
A wink of his eye and a twitch of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had little to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
Fixing a net that had gone plumb berserk;
And laying a finger on one suspect line,
He entered a patch and the net came up fine!

The packets flowed neatly and protocols matched;
The hosts interfaced and shift-registers latched.
He tested the system from Gateway to PAD;
Not one bit was dropped; no checksum was bad.
At last he was finished and wearily sighed
And turned to explain why the system had died.
I twisted my fingers and counted to ten;
An off-by-one index had done it again...

 
...from the rfc-editor website
 
Triad RF Systems withwave microwave devices - RF Cafe
RF Electronics Shapes for Visio by RF Cafe
 LOTUS Communications Systems Modular RF Component Building Blocks - RF Cafe
About RF Cafe
Kirt Blattenberger - RF Cafe Webmaster
Copyright: 1996 - 2024
Webmaster:
    Kirt Blattenberger,
    BSEE - KB3UON

RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling 2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps while typing up your telephone line, and a nice lady's voice announced "You've Got Mail" when a new message arrived...

All trademarks, copyrights, patents, and other rights of ownership to images and text used on the RF Cafe website are hereby acknowledged.

My Hobby Website:  AirplanesAndRockets.com

spacer

Please Support RF Cafe by purchasing my  ridiculously low−priced products, all of which I created.

These Are Available for Free