Thursday, October 2, 2008

A Quirk In The Quark File (2003)

Ah, the daily setbacks on the job. No one’s fault. This is why a new quip came to surface. Remember the old one, “To err is human, to forgive, divine”? The information Age gave rise to an altered version, and appropriate it was. “To err is human; to really foul things up requires a computer.” And that it did. In the form of quirks and glitches. Glitches were random; quirks, a constant. Huh?

You know them. Glitches were problems in the system that would surface, then disappear. Infrequent in nature, you couldn’t call for service because you couldn’t rely on them to occur in the presence of the technician. Quirks, on the other hand, were problems that arose due to conflicts in the software. It wasn’t the software specifically, but in the transition from one location to another.

Quark was a ‘graphics’ software we were using at the time. So, files would be sent from one department to another. Glitches happened occasionally, preventing the file from being downloaded, or printed. The doc was resent, and/or the system acting as the brain, was rebooted. Glitches disappeared. Quirks, on the other hand, were glitches that remained as a constant. They were something in the file that would prevent its execution. And not disappear after repeated submissions.
So, in an attempt at humor, to commemorate the situation, I wrote a poem about it. Of course, you have to have background knowledge of Star Trek, past and present. Don’t forget the sub-atomic, molecular, particle breakdown and all of its components, as it were, in Science. Like to hear it? Here it goes…

A Quirk in the Quark File
2003

how many quirks make up a Quark?

Quark seems larger than a quirk.
Quark is capitalized,
quirk, on the other hand, is in lower case.

so it only seems fitting that there be a number of quirks per Quark
rather than a quirk made up of Quarks...
besides, the variables here are ‘a’ and ‘i’ and ‘a’ comes before ‘i’…

of course the argument could be made
that quirks came before Quarks…
so how many Quarks make up a quirk?

Captain Quirk came first before Deep Space Nine’s Quark,
who, ironically, was quirky,
but where did the little quirks come from?
the captain produced no little ones…or did he?
the captain was always involved with aliens…
would that make Quark the illegitimate son of Quirk?

Quark is singular while quirks are plural…
which gives the impression that quirks came from Quark…
making them appear related…

Quark could be the parent…
after all, Quark rhymes with patriarch and matriarch…
and kids are quirky…
King Quark and the Quark Queen ruling a kingdom of quirks…
maybe Quark is half a quirk and half a glitch…
quirks are random and glitches are constant…
both make the Quark stable…
take one part out and it becomes the other…

or maybe it isn’t…
quirks are not good, and glitches are even worse…

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