Bobzeen > aesthetics > hungry h4x0r decryption
Sentimental Ode Upon a Hungry H4x0r
by Robert Rose-Coutré, 14 June 2012, Thursday, 4:38 p.m.This poem integrates obscure and esoteric Geek Computer History events, milestones, quirks, and other forgotten lore. The poem tells the epic adventure of a tragic geek and his heroic struggle through many trials on a quest to obtain lunch at a mythical internet café.
This is the "Clean" version — meaning, just the poem without any explanation of the esoteric references. If you want to see the esoteric references explained, scroll down to the full cluttered-with-detailed-explanation version below.
At lunch I went for a megabyte
at an Internet café
he couldn’t parse my kilobaud right
and tried to beam me away
I asked the B1FF cashier
for grubular-P intervention
but he either didn’t hear
or didn’t know the -P convention
so you want food for free
without an ObjectID
why didn’t you ASCII
At lunch I went for a megabyte
at an Internet café
I struggled with the neophyte
I was dying of bit decay
incompatible sustenance version
my hunger interrupt display
bound in a tail recursion
another Multics flag day
include, include, include
food, food, food
for a hungry h4x0r d00d
I pinged a virtual server
a wannabe, newbie, rookie
a Linux food converter inserted
crumbs from a third-party cookie
kibo
jello
those obsoleted balloonian variables
I declared granfalloonian parables
then I TANSTAAFL’ed their incorrect PC
I tried to call in my order
which was sent to eternal defrag
then tweaked by an uber-newb hoarder
playing infinite phone metatag
By now my image of hope
was an IBM assembly of SOAP
the image of a corrupted src
with coffee on a wireless ISP
and so my plug-n-pray went all out
on a qwerty mailto protocol of doubt
where dreams are commented out
but the server host was fake
the bboard was not condoned
the payware was an Itanic mistake
the posers were purely pwned
pwned the streaming packet of veeblefesters
via the elders, the asteroids, and the tempesters
I couldn’t get back to work
the breadcrumbs were all berzerk
It was a mockery
of lunchbreak ad-hockery
In retrospective, was it really ad-hoc
or just one mental geek code block
only a post-mortem will undead
the forum’s lamplight thread
in footer vAlign bottom defeat
I retired to forty-two l337 47r337
where I found div-rent in the sun
south of the border: none
Finally I died and avoided hell
via transitional xhtml
Instead I went to binary heaven
where 1 + 1 = 10
still, finally, after all the fuss,
4ll y0ur b4s3 4r3 b3l0ng t0 u5
At lunch I went for a megabyte
at an Internet café
dazzled by the panel blinkenlight
I woke and restarted my day
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NOTE ON THE TEXT:
Below the poem is repeated, only this time with a decryption of the poem.
The poem integrates esoteric Geek Computer History events, milestones, quirks,
and other forgotten lore. Below includes explanations of those references.
The poem tells the epic of a geek's struggle through several trials on a quest
to get lunch at an internet café.
Sentimental Ode Upon a Hungry H4x0r
by Robert Rose-Coutré, 14 June 2012, Thursday, 4:38 p.m.At lunch I went for a megabyte ("byte" pun on "bite" for lunch; mega = a lot)
at an Internet café (a 1990s phenomenon)
he couldn’t parse my kilobaud right (old days, modems were xK, e.g., 9.6K baud)
and tried to beam me away (obligatory reference to Star Trek)
I asked the B1FF cashier (B1FF prototypical newbie of, Usenet)
for grubular-P intervention (grub = food, so "grubular" = having to do with food; -P or hyphen P, converts statement into a question, per LISP convention [and see next 2 lines below])
but he either didn’t hear
or didn’t know the -P convention (question by appending '-P'; from the LISP convention of appending the letter 'P' preceded by a hyphen to ask a question)
so you want food for free
without an ObjectID (An attribute that contains a globally unique identifier [GUID] assigned by the FIM Service to each resource when it is created in or synchronized into the FIM Service database.)
why didn’t you ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange, character encoding, 1963)
At lunch I went for a megabyte
at an Internet café
I struggled with the neophyte (aka newbie)
I was dying of bit decay (the gradual decay of storage media or an explanation for the degradation of a software program over time, even if ‘nothing has changed’)
incompatible sustenance version ("incompatible" is a plague on all things software since time immemorial)
my hunger interrupt display (Operating systems communicate with the BIOS software, in order to control the installed hardware. This system of communication is called an interrupt. So my hunger was communicating with my BIOsphere.)
bound in a tail recursion (tail recursion procedures call themselves to work towards a solution to a problem. In simple implementations this balloons the stack as the nesting gets deeper and deeper, reaches the solution, then returns through all of the stack frames. This waste is a common complaint about recursive programming in general.[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TailRecursion])
another Multics flag day (Any software change that is neither forward nor backward compatible. Named after a change to Multics scheduled for June 14, 1966, when the values of the ASCII character set were switched around.)
include, include, include (web include file for reuse on many pages)
food, food, food
for a hungry h4x0r d00d (leet speak typical “hacker dude”)
I pinged a virtual server (VM...so many issues!)
a wannabe, newbie, rookie
a Linux food converter inserted (Linux fanatics – everything is better in Linux, converters are necessity, e.g., fonts, file format, etc.)
crumbs from a third-party cookie (3rd party cookies usu. undesirable)
kibo (James Parry – Kibology – long signature – champion usenet prankster)
jello ([Usenet: by analogy with spam] A message that is both excessively cross-posted and too frequently posted, as opposed to spam (which is merely too frequently posted) or velveeta (which is merely excessively cross-posted). This term is widely recognized but not commonly used; most people refer to both kinds of abuse or their combination as spam.)
those obsoleted balloonian variables ([Commodore users; perh. a deliberate phonetic mangling of boolean variable?] Any variable that doesn't actually hold or control state, but must nevertheless be declared, checked, or set. A typical balloonian variable started out as a flag attached to some environment feature that either became obsolete or was planned but never implemented. Compatibility concerns (or politics attached to same) may require that such a flag be treated as though it were live.)
I declared granfalloonian parables (kurt Vonnegut “granfalloonian”)
then I TANSTAAFL’ed their incorrect PC (The Acronym = "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch")
I tried to call in my order
which was sent to eternal defrag (typical pc defrag, get rid of poorly organized sectors, takes a long time, usu. doesn’t accomplish much)
then tweaked by an uber-newb hoarder
playing infinite phone metatag (html page header terms to help search engines rank the page)
By now my image of hope
was an IBM assembly of SOAP (1954 IBM "Symbolic Optimal Assembly Program" to gain efficiency)
the image of a corrupted src (System Resource Controller—e.g., stopsrc, startsrc)
with coffee on a wireless ISP (wireless internet access)
and so my plug-n-pray went all out (from plug-n-play, no installation needed)
on a qwerty mailto protocol of doubt (standard keys, send a message, i.e., a prayer)
where dreams are commented out (do not display i.e., never make it to reality)
but the server host was fake (scam)
the bboard was not condoned (communication place)
the payware was an Itanic mistake (Intel’s $2 billion computer chip, the Itanium, that nobody wants + obvious reference to Titanic)
the posers were purely pwned (common miskey of owned spelled wrong intentionally by some 1337 633k5)
pwned the streaming packet of veeblefesters (born loser + allusion to obscure objects)
via the elders, the asteroids, and the tempesters (old upright games)
I couldn’t get back to work
the breadcrumbs were all berserk (trail back to work….upright game)
It was a mockery
of lunchbreak ad-hockery (sloppy one-off fix)
In retrospective, was it really ad-hoc (retrospective = post-mortem)
or just one mental geek code block (ref to geek code block)
only a post-mortem will undead
the forum’s lamplight thread (code lamplight project forums)
in footer vAlign bottom defeat (html code to align)
I retired to forty-two l337 47r337 (meaning of life—42, + leet street)
where I found div-rent in the sun (javascripty/htmly)
south of the border: none (a warm place and css for no ugly border)
Finally I died and avoided hell
via transitional xhtml (xhtml is heaven compared to old “html hell”)
Instead I went to binary heaven
where 1 + 1 = 10 (in binary, yes, it's true)
still, finally, after all the fuss,
4ll y0ur b4s3 4r3 b3l0ng t0 u5 (a famously poor translation for 1992 upgrade for 1989 Zero Wing arcade video game: "All your base are belong to us" — shown here in Leet Speak/1337 5P33K)
At lunch I went for a megabyte
at an Internet café
dazzled by the panel blinkenlight (Blinkenlights is a hacker's neologism for diagnostic lights on old mainframe computers, minicomputers, many early microcomputers, and modern network hardware)
I woke and restarted my day (get it? "reboot")