Since it is in fact, The Night Before Christmas, I thought I would bring this to the top!



Please bear with me. I am not a poet at all which you will soon be able to tell, but I thought this would be fun none the less. I know that it sometimes lacks in Iambic Pentameter, but like I said, I am not a poet.



Anyway, I was in my Advanced TCP/IP class in college, bored out of my mind when I decided to write this. I hope you like it, and it gives you a good chuckle! -EDP











An Admin's Night Before Christmas

By Paul Bauer

(AKA: El Di Pablo)



'Twas the night before Christmas

and all through the LAN.

Not a problem apparent.

All is right with the SAN.





I in my P.J.'s

and XBox in front of me

had just settled down to play Halo 3.





Then my Blackberry

with buzzing and clatter

signaled via SMS

that something was the matter.





A server is down.

Not responding, can't ping.

Can't RDP, SSH, iLO or VNC.





After acknowledging the alert

I hopped in my car.

With only a quick stop

for some Jolt and a Snickers bar.





Minutes later at the data center

I arrived out of breath.

Soon to find my server

with a blue screen of death.





An automatic update

which my server did not agree,

was the cause of my shiny, new blue screen.





A system restore

brought the server online.

I logged in and disabled

updates this time.





After closing the ticket

and feeling thrown under a bus,

I made plans for after Christmas

to configure WSUS.





2:00AM, back at home

I checked once more

for alerts on my phone.





All appears well

I drank a cap full of Maalox.

I laid my head down

and dreamed of Linux.





Merry Christmas!