Friday, May 29, 2015

Introducing the Adventures of Conan, the Engineer

At work, I have root access to all machines.  I abuse this by annoying one of my colleagues.  There is a feature in linux, whereby one can leave messages for all users on login by editing the message of the day file (motd). I have begun narrating the Epic Adventure of Conan the Engineer entirely through login messages.  Here's what I have so far, and yes, the line spacing looks weird in html because I was writing it to fit my terminal.  

Lo!  Ere the rosy-fingered dawn had wiped the sparkling dew
 from the keyboards, Conan the Engineer was striding
through the boundless plains toward the wine-dark sea in
quest of the God of the Machine, from whom he was resolved
to wrest the secrets of the failure of the dbsync scripts.


It came to pass, as Conan the Engineer strode across the boundless paging files that he came upon a flock of long-running queries grazing upon the system resources.  Ever the opportunist, Conan
paused in his quest to find the God of the Machine in order
to smite the queries. Howsoever, as he brought his poleaxe down
upon the neck of a query, it cried out and cursed him with a great
curse:

"May owls nest in your inner joins!
May your perl libraries never compile!
May your hardware never be upgraded!
May your code be lost in merge conflicts!
May all you love wither and die in the bowels of the Jira borg!"

And lo, Conan was sore afraid.

Shaking off his unmanly tremors at the great curse of the long-running
query, he strode on through the boundless paging files for days unending.
At long last, however, even Conan the Engineer grew weary and sank to his
knees upon the mossy sward.  But hark what aromatic smell greeted him!
And zounds, what hot black liquid was this bubbling up to stain the exposed
thews of his mighty calves!  He dipped his massive and calloused axe hand
into the dark trickle and brought it to his lips, for a wise man had once
said unto him "if you can't tell what it is, try licking it."

Lo!  What miraculous elixir was this that brought life to his weary
limbs! The very scent aroused his weary brain with a will to smite! Conan
leaped again to his feet, determined now to find the source of this
wonderful and life giving stream.  Lithe and agile as a gazelle he bounded
forward following after the balmy fragrance even as a bee drawn to a lily,
singleminded and prepared to wreak stinging vengeance upon any in its
path.


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