Doug, the Haiku Master

Stream unvisited—
An update is required.
I wait forever.

Okay, the above title is an exagerration, but let me explain. We are using a new version of the source control system in place at Kronos. (We switched to this new system—which is not a Kronos product—about six months ago, from VSS, which sometimes produced catastrophic problems, and was not living up to our needs). The latest release of this new product promised some highly beneficial new features, but, primarily because Kronos is pushing the product well beyond its typical implementation, there have been some “performance issues.”

After receiving a notice last week that performance was really slow, but the system was not locked up, instead of a whine, I posted back a quick Haiku. Haiku, at least as we learned it in high school, is Japanese poetry consisting of three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively. There are variations on the definition, especially when working in English, but the format tends to produce poetry that appears to be deeply insightful at best, and pithy at worst.

I received quite a few compliments on the e-mail, but didn’t realize how notorious I’d become until a co-worker who I do not believe I’ve ever even seen stopped me in the stairwell and asked, “You’re the guy who wrote that Haiku, aren’t you?”

Here are a few of the other comments:

• This is most masterful.
• Thanks Doug. This helps make the pain of [the source control product] more bearable.
• Very nice!
• {:-)
• This is great. (-:
  I’m sure you've seen all those “error message haiku” that have been circulating for years. Some of them are very funny as well. My favorite was:

  With searching comes loss
  And the presence of absence:
  “My Novel” not found.

• Congratulations tovarisch Doug Wilcox: you are now awarded the “Udarnik of the Month” title. Now write more haikus “sverx plana” before the end of October. (“sverx plana” means something like “above the required quota”).
• bravo!
• Excellent haiku of the day. Thank you!
• Excellent!
• LOL!!!

  How about:

  Jboss starting up,
  Machine useless for all tasks.
  Gaze at screen saver.

  To which I responded:

  JBoss now better;
  Standards can be pleasant:
  One Gig of RAM.

  OK, that one made my cat wake up when I laughed!

So am I popular, or notorious?