Memories From The Inbox


"Bits Bytes Chips Clocks
Bits in bytes on chips in box ..."

I found the Dr. Seuss style poem on the web again after forgetting for several years. Now, reading it again, so many things come back into my head...

"Now we come to ticks and tocks, sir.
Try to say this by the clock, sir.

Clocks on chips tick.
Clocks on chips tock.
Eight byte bits tick.
Eight bit bytes tock.
Clocks on chips with eight bit bytes tick.
Chips with clocks and eight byte bits tock."

The words still seem so familiar after all these years. The first time I saw the poem it was cut in half and given a different title. There was no credit given to the original author. The cut up version I saw was called, "If Dr. Seuss Were A Technical Writer." I was still somewhat new to the intenet when this poem found it's way to my email box. My mother had just passed away and I was back home after spending a couple of weeks up at her house with my brother and sister. My mother's old computer had become mine .. well, actually it was one of the few things that belonged to her that I took for myself. She had intended to give me the CTX computer anyway because she was going to get herself a new computer with Windows 98 and a Pentium III processor. So I had no problem with taking the CTX home with me and giving my computer to my nephew .. well it was supposed to go to my nephew cause that's the way my mom wanted it but it wound up becoming more my sister's computer than my nephews computer.

I still remember how it felt to come home and set my mom's computer up on my old computer desk. Looking at the big monitor instead of my small monitor. Using the natural keyboard instead of my keyboard. It seemed so out of place sitting here instead of up at my mom's house. It made me miss her even more. Instead of being used to scan things for her friends, her scanner was now being used to scan pictures of her to be printed for family and friends ... and her printer was no longer being used to print up the things that she used to print from the internet .. it was being used to print her picture and her obituary. It seemed so wrong.

One thing that got me through those first few weeks was the emails that I recieved from my friends and my mom's friends. These emails that I was recieving brought a lot of comfort when I felt so lonely. They gave me a line of communication from friends that I would probably not have had any communication with otherwise. I was used to being somewhat isolated back then. I was pretty much afraid of people so it was difficult for me to make friends. But the emails let me know I had friends. Friends that cared to pass things on to me that made my day a little brighter or just gave me a laugh. The internet still seemed very new to me and I had fun going to pages of smiley faces, Dancing Tommy Pickles, cute kittens, happy music, inspirational sites and other fun stuff people would send me.

"If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory
makes your floppy disk abort
then the socket packet pocket
has an error to report!"

The poem found its way to my email box during one of the difficult times and it was exactly what I needed to make me laugh. I kept it in my email box for a couple of weeks and then, I cannot remember exactly why, I had to reformat my computer. I wanted to get another copy but the person who had sent it to me no longer had it on her computer. So I went to the search engines and typed in, "If Dr Seuss Were A Technical Writer". That was when I found my way to the Digital Clocktower and the full version of the poem, "A Grandchild's Guide to Using Grandpa's Computer". I kept the link on my computer but one day the site disappeared and, after some time, I forgot about it.

A lot of time has passed and many things have changed. The old CTX computer is gone. The days of the internet being sort of a new adventure to me have gone. Everything my computer does has sort of melted into a routine. I still check emails every morning but I no longer get the same types of emails. But, two days ago, the poem appeared in my email box again. This time it was called, "Why Computers Sometiems Crash by Dr. Seuss".

"If your cursor finds a menu item
followed by a dash,
and the double-clicking icon
puts your window in the trash,
and your data is corrupted cause
the index doesn't hash,
then your situation's hopeless,
and your system's gunna crash."

The memories flooded back to me as I read the still familiar verse. Those mornings when I felt so lost and the email would bring a smile to my face. Those days when I didn't know what to expect next from a life that had taken a sudden turn down a frighteningly unfamiliar road. Those days when friends were only an email away. The strange thing about those days is that, even though I felt so lost and worried about what the future might bring, I still felt a sense of freedom ... a sense of adventure -- of many directions being opened up to me and wanting to travel each new road. That sense of adventure has become faded against the pressures of day to day living.

I did a search for the Digital Clocktower and found that the site was back up and running. Reading the poem in its full version still brings a smile to my face. The feelings from those days flood back to me. Maybe this email is again just what I need ... a reminder of that sense of adventure ... that feeling of so many directions I want to travel in. Maybe it's time to finally move forward instead of standing still.

____________________________________________________________
This is the original poem written by Gene Ziegler.
It can be found on his website, The Digital Clocktower

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A Grandchild's Guide to Using Grandpa's Computer

Bits Bytes Chips Clocks
Bits in bytes on chips in box.
Bytes with bits and chips with clocks.
Chips in box on ether-docks.

Chips with bits come. Chips with bytes come.
Chips with bits and bytes and clocks come.

Look, sir. Look, sir. read the book, sir.
Let's do tricks with bits and bytes, sir.
Let's do tricks with chips and clocks, sir.

First, I'll make a quick trick bit stack.
Then I'll make a quick trick byte stack.
You can make a quick trick chip stack.
You can make a quick trick clock stack.

And here's a new trick on the scene.
Bits in bytes for your machine.
Bytes in words to fill your screen.

Now we come to ticks and tocks, sir.
Try to say this by the clock, sir.

Clocks on chips tick.
Clocks on chips tock.
Eight byte bits tick.
Eight bit bytes tock.
Clocks on chips with eight bit bytes tick.
Chips with clocks and eight byte bits tock.

Here's an easy game to play.
Here's an easy thing to say....

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory
makes your floppy disk abort
then the socket packet pocket
has an error to report!

If your cursor finds a menu item
followed by a dash,
and the double-clicking icon
puts your window in the trash,
and your data is corrupted cause
the index doesn't hash,
then your situation's hopeless,
and your system's gunna crash.

You can't say this? What a shame, sir!
We'll find you another game, sir.

If the label on the cable
on the table at your house
says the network is connected
to the button on your mouse,
but your packets want to tunnel
on another protocol,
that's repeatedly rejected
by the printer down the hall,
and your screen is all distorted
by the side-effects of gauss,
so your icons in the window
are as wavy as a souse,
then you may as well reboot
and go out with a bang,
cause as sure as I'm a poet,
the sucker's gunna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's
getting sloppy on the disk,
and the microcode instructions
cause unnecessary risc,
then you have to flash your memory
and you'll want to RAM your ROM.
quickly turn off your computer
and be sure to tell your mom!


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Special thanks to Gene Ziegler for permission to use his poem on this page.

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