Automation Inspired Poetry

Here:

• IF by John Pietila
• Ode to a Maillist by Eoin O'Riain
• Song of the Year 2000 by Martyn Thomas
  

Elsewhere:

• Jim Pinto's automation related poetry (and other writings)

IF

by John Pietila

If you can keep your head when the control system
Has gone berserk; they're blaming it on you,
If you can trust the algorithm when all "them" doubt you,
But (just in case) you've thought of Plan Two

If you can tune a PID algorithm in half the time an auto tune can do,
If you can size a valve or check another's
In case they've made a slip up,
As 'ere you used to do

If you can spot in someone's I/O listing
Incompatible signals, before it is too late,
You're on the way to understand the system,
While others falter, perhaps walk out the gate

If you can trust the plant and data given
Though something tells you it is all so wrong
In checking it, you're not to wall be driven
And when you're through, still raise a cheerful song

If connectivity and baud rate fit your jargon
Which last year you had hardly heard at all,
Stand up, be counted, you're on the way to bargain
A salary increment (or overshoot) not small

If you can match each minute of laser printing
With, 60 seconds worth of distance run,
Yours is the system, and everything that's in it
But more than all, you're engineer, top gun

Ode to a Maillist

by Eoin O'Riain

As I was feeling rather bet
I checked on in the Internet,
I rather like the sense of Hype
I seem to get from down the pipe.

The comments, they were rather droll
With Action Pinto in leading role.
The Dinosaurs of DCS
V PLC, are they the best?
Jurassic themes were well mantained
with stone age arrows surely aimed.
The software giants were far from soft
The hardware buffs held flag aloft.
The customers looked on aghast
To see each worthy fire a blast.
Their feelings were not best allayed
To see how well they wield a blade
From ProfiBus and WorldFIP too
This great confusion they must rue.
"I do not give a bloody fig
I only want to drive this rig."

So wearily I turned to go
When suddenly down there below
The Irish Pub with all its chat
Where human life is always at.
The Signpost, Instrument Control
Thinks always of the human soul.
Look in at iol stroke tilde
readout stroke* and watch them fill de
Glasses to the very brim.
To ease a lot that can be grim,
With dark and silky headed brew
There's one for each man in the crew.

So drink with me with glasses raised
To internet besotted, crazed
The square eyed boggled humourous folk
Who spend, yes hours, before this yoke.

* Poetic licence is used here it should read "iol.ie/~readout/"

Song of the Year 2000

by Martyn Thomas

"What did you do in the Great War, Daddy?
When the chips were down
and fortunes made and lost?"

"I re-engineered the enterprise, with
strategies, and leadership, and SAP
and never mind the cost!"

"But what did you do when
computers started saying
that the date was 1900
and the databases wrong?"

"I took a bear position
as the markets started falling,
and acquired some assets going for a song."

"So were you with the heroes
as they fought to change the systems,
so the hospitals kept working
and the people wouldn't die?"

"I had to strive for synergy,
and leverage and profit-
and besides, the litigation risk
could blow us to the sky!"

"Then what were your priorities
when businesses were failing?
When the systems you had sold them, stopped
and brought them to their knees?"

"I passed them to a partner skilled
in corporate recovery
who asked for bank securities
to guarantee his fees."

"But Daddy, when the programmers were
working nights and weekends,
to find and fix the problems and
to think out what to do,
you were working there beside them, weren't you?
Rescuing the clients?
I have told my friends at school I know
that you were fighting too!"

"My child, you must remember, I'm
a Management Consultant!
My time is too expensive to
be spent on such affairs.

I leave such work to engineers
--their time is less important.
Now, clean your teeth and go to bed
--and mind you say your prayers!"