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THE STANDARD

The IOBA Standard is the journal of the Independent Online Booksellers Association and covers the book world, with a special focus on the online used, out-of-print, and collectible bookselling markets.

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Joyce Godsey

Ravings


IF NOT RUN BACKUP

RUN PROGRAM

RUN PROGRAM RUN

SEE PROGRAM RUN

SEE SYSTEM CRASH

GOTO SEE PROGRAM RUN

SEE SYSTEM CRASH AGAIN

LOOP UNTIL OPERATOR CRASHES

SEE COMPUTER TECH

PAY COMPUTER TECH

RUN PROGRAM

SEE SYSTEM CRASH

GOTO SEE COMPUTER TECH

PAY COMPUTER TECH

LOOP UNTIL OPERATOR IS null

ELSE IF

RUN BACKUP

RUN PROGAM

SEE PROGRAM CRASH

SEE PROGRAM CORRUPT DATA

RESTORE DATA FROM BACKUP

RUN PROGAM

SEE PROGRAM CRASH

SEE PROGRAM CORRUPT DATA

LOOP UNTIL ALL DATA IS CORRUPTED

LOOP UNTIL

OPERATOR IS null

SYSTEM IS CRASHED

ALL DATA IS CORRUPT.


The preceding program has been brought to you by our sponsors: MicroSquish: “We aren’t better, we are just all there is.”

 

Sure you’re laughing now, but it’s not so funny when it’s your data in the hot seat.  Just when you think your system is running great, you come over all ambitious and think, “hey, if it’s running this good, I could stick another ram chip in there and it would scream.” [Uh-huh. . . and you though this was a good idea why?] So, you stick another stick of ram in there and since you already have it opened up you upgrade the video card, just because you can. And the MOMENT you get it home and plug it all back in again, what happens? It crashes, it’s running slower than before, it’s doing things it never did before you fiddled with it. So you suggest to ‘the guy’ that it’s the new pink bits that are causing all the fuss and ‘the guy’ looks at you like you got four heads, and just about to say “take your POS system and get out of my shop.”  Quickly you grovel and take it back, it must be all YOUR fault. You take it home again. You plug it all in again. You run every debugging program you own, you buy a few more and run those. You weep.


You drag it back to ‘the guy’. ‘The guy’ shakes his head and says “it must be all those crappy programs you keep loading.” He asks you if you have backed up all your data recently. Your heart falls into your stomach and starts to percolate.  He tells you to bend over and brace yourself. He then proceeds to scour your hard drive like a highway after a chemical spill. He hands you back an antiseptic system and tells you not to load all those crappy programs you own onto it.  You take it home, you start reloading all those crappy programs you own onto it. It crashes yet again and again and again.

You bring it back to ‘the guy’, you throw yourself on his mercy. He tells you to stop crying on his carpet and go home. You come back and he has Frankensteined your system into a new system. Turns out that the new pieces he sold you didn’t like the old motherboard that by the way he had also sold you. He hands you back your system along with a very large bill, which would have bought you an entirely new system if you hadn’t had the bright idea to tinker with your old system.


END RUN.

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