The Crash of the Ten and Eleven

The memories live on from the Tower on down
Of the time Jonny Day did endeavor
To save the accounts that were scrambled or lost
In the Crash of the Ten and Eleven.

Does anyone know where the users can go
When the systems are hopelessly tangled,
When the tapes and the disks are in snarls and twists
And the files are shredded and mangled?

The DEC men one day came down Baltimore way
On a routine maintenance mission.
And when they were through everybody would rue
The computer's down-hearted condition.

Pity ECAS when the entire class
Found only one block in the core.
When anyone logged in the whole system fell in
'Cause the Ten couldn't take any more.

Strange the commands of the SF crazed fans
When they came down to print out their songbook.
The Eleven got worse with each new obscene verse
Which brought many foul curses and long looks.

With terrible smiles they created new files
'Til the Eleven, it just couldn't take it.
Though Vandelinde swore, it would process no more
And not even Erol could make it.

So now JHU had possession of two
Computers that sat there and quivered.
And so Garland called over to Barton Hall
"From this fate we must all be delivered."

And there Jonny Day could find nothing to say
As his eyes gazed upward to Heaven.
He silently prayed to be whisked far away
From the Crash of the Ten and Eleven.

But brave Jonny Day knew there was much work to do
And he knew that he'd better get to it,
For the faculty had said they would have Jonny's head
 If by lunchtime he hadn't got through it.

So taking a look in his maintenance book
And turning to page forty-seven
In the hope it would tell of the magical spell
That would cure the Ten and Eleven,

He read of the way he could rescue the Day
And calm the neurotic computers.
The way to the core was a game of seawar
With the ships all manned by superusers.

Oh, the game that they had in the Undergrad Lab
Is a take that's worthy of singing,
For the echoing sound of each ship going down
Was the bells in their Tower a-ringing.

And so the DEC Ten, it was working again
And, too by the graces of Heaven,
Were the tapes and the disks that had been sorely missed
On the E.E. Department's Eleven.

The legend lived on from the Tower on down
Of Jon Day and the way he endeavored
To save the accounts that were scrambled or lost
In the Crash of the Ten and Eleven.