Tiny Tim is known for the statement, “God bless us, every one!,” which he offers as a blessing at Christmas dinner. Dickens repeats the phrase at the end of the story

Tiny Tim (real name “Timothy Cratchit”) (also known as “Trench Foot Tim”) is a fictional character in the classic story A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. He is the son of Bob Cratchit. It is claimed that the character is based on the invalid son of a friend of Dickens who owned a cotton mill in Ardwick, Manchester.

When Scrooge is visited by The Ghost of Christmas Present he is shown just how ill Tim really is, and that Tim will die unless he receives treatment. When visited by The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come all he sees of Tim is his crutch, as Tim has died. This, and several other visions, lead Scrooge to reform his ways. At the end of the story, Dickens makes it explicit that Tim did not die, and Scrooge became a “second father” to him. According to some other versions of A Christmas Carol, Tim Cratchit eventually gained health by Scrooge’s money, and later became a successful businessman. When Ebenezer Scrooge died, he became the only member of the Cratchit family to attend his funeral.

Dickens did not reveal in the book what Tiny Tim’s illness was, but renal tubular acidosis (a type of kidney failure causing the blood to become acidic) has been proposed as one possibility, as has rickets (caused by a lack of Vitamin D).[2][3] Or maybe it was polio. Or trench foot. Or foot-and-mouth syndrome, which was rampant in Victorian England.

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• Wish you a Merry Christmas and may this festival bring abundant joy and happiness in your life!
• May this Christmas be so special that you never ever feel lonely again and be surrounded by loved ones throughout!
• You are special, you are unique; may your Christmas be also as special and unique as you are! Merry Christmas!
• Here’s wishing you all the joys of the season. Wish you and your family a Merry Christmas!
• May joy and happiness snow on you, may the bells jingle for you and may Santa be extra good to you! Merry Christmas!
• May this Christmas be bright and cheerful and may the New Year begin on a prosperous note!
• Love, Peace and Joy came down on earth on Christmas day to make you happy and cheerful. May Christmas spread cheer in your lives!
• Sending the warmest Christmas wishes to you and your family. May God shower his choicest blessings on you and your family this Christmas!
• May all your days be merry and bright and may your Christmas be white! Merry Christmas!
• It is that time of the year again, when you are thankful for everything merry and bright. May this Christmas be a delight! Wishing you a Merry Christmas!
• May Christ bless you with all the happiness and success you deserve! Merry Xmas!
• I am dreaming of white Christmas, with every Christmas card I write, May your days be merry and bright, and May all your Christmases be white. Merry Christmas.
• May your world be filled with warmth and good cheer this Holy season, and throughout the year! Wish your Christmas be filled with peace and love. Merry Xmas.
• May the good times and treasures of the present become the golden memories of tomorrow. Wish you lots of love, joy and happiness. MERRY CHRISTMAS

Subject:      A Computer Christmas nightmare
From:         MELROSEMAN

A Computer Christmas nightmare

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a peripheral was stirring, not even a mouse;
The modem was hung by the keyboard with care
In hopes that a download soon would be there.
The pirates were nestled all snug in their beds
While visions of unprotects danced in their heads.
And the wife in her kerchief, and I in my cap
Had just settled down for a long winter’s nap,
When up on the hard drive there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the monitor I flew like a flash,
Sat down at the keyboard, gave the spacebar a mash.
The sight on the screen, a’flicker with snow
Gave the luster of power surge to the menu below.
When, what to my wandering eyes should appear,
But an autoexec.bat that seemed rather queer.
With a little print driver so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment I had seen a new trick.
More rapid than eagles my curser it came;
My voice box whistled, and shouted, and called me by name.
“Now format, now rename, copy, and enter!
On num lock, on caps lock, on scroll lock, and printer.
To the top of the page, to the top of the doc,
Now tab it and bold it and merge it and block.”
As utilities that build up the CPU speed
Clash with just the programs I need,
So up to the screen top the curser it flew
With a RAM full of memory and an extension board too.
And then, in a twinkling I heard on the speaker,
The grinding of the hard drive growing much weaker.
As I tried to reboot and turn it around,
The attributes changed from blue into brown.
I hit the control, the alt, and delete.
The message it gave me, I cannot repeat.
It asked me to Ignore, Retry, or Abort.
It told me the parallel had become the comm port.
Its lights how they twinkled; its pixels how merry.
Its prompts were all scrambled, like a bowl full of cherries.
It sounded just like it wanted to blow;
The screen was suddenly white as the snow.
It scrolled the directory before my eyes
With programs I didn’t even recognize.
It wouldn’t see D; it wouldn’t see E.
I couldn’t get out of B into C.
Norton’s tried to read it;
It finally found the FAT;
But alas!, the disk was faulty,
And couldn’t reformat.
Away flew the DBase;
Away flew the DOSes;
Away flew the WordStar;
Right out with the Windows.
The spreadsheets were spreading;
The footers were heading;
What once had been memory
Was close to forgetting.
When the grinding was over
And the smoke had all cleared,
I looked at the unit,
And it was just as I feared.
The 40 meg wonder had crashed in the night.
I’ll never be able to block out that sight!
So tell everyone to avoid my plight;
Back up! Back up! Merry Christmas! Good Night!

–
MELROSEMAN
Creator of MELROSE PLACE 1997: D&D: DEATH & DEPARTURE
http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/4616/

Click here to see the original Twas the Night Before Christmas Poem

A Networkologist’s Christmas (v. 950)

“Tis the night before Christmas,” I thought with a frown.
I was stuck at the office.  The network was down.
The routers were hung in the closet.  All crashed.
Their tables had holes in their data.  All trashed.
Remote distribution, it seems, just for fun,
Had erased DLLs Windows 95 needed to run
On 84 desktops way down in accounting.
I sat stunned at my desk, my blood pressure mounting.

When all of a sudden there arose such a clatter,
I saw that a server had something the matter.
There was smoke coming out of the main hard disk drive.
“No problem, ” I thought.  “I’m set up with RAID 5. ”
But I found out the system I thought was unstoppable
Had disk drives that turned out completely unswappable!
“No problem,” I thought.  “I’ve tape backup to thank.
And then I discovered my backups were blank.

The UPS burped, and its lights all went out.
I started to scream!  I started to shout!
But nobody heard as I vented my rage.
My gurus were all on vacation those days.
And nobody’s tech support answered the phone.
I was nose deep in trouble, completely alone.
When out at reception, I heard a soft knock.
As the hands just touched midnight on my desktop clock…

“What’s your problem?” he asked.
“Never mind, friend, I know.
I checked out your network five hours ago.
I did some proactive analysis, so
I knew that this time bomb was going to blow.
Who was this guy?  Who did he think he was?
He was dressed in red coveralls, white beard, black gloves.

His eyes had the twinkle of technical genius.
His smile cut down personal distance between us.
He spread out his tools, and went straight to his work.
“Whoever configured this network’s a jerk,”
He said with a as he quickly rebooted,
Uploaded some software, and smoothly rerouted
The LAN to a WAN that he quickly supplied
With bandwidth at least 20 gigabits wide
That went via wireless, I think, LEO,
To tech support elves waiting at the North Pole.

“Now bridging, now routing, now Ethernet hubs!”
He chanted as each piece of hardware he rubbed.
“Cheer up, my good friend! Lose that mindset so tragic!
Technology often looks just like some magic
To people who don’t understand what we do.
Now a switch, emulation, now middleware glue!
Look at the protocols, check one or two,
Debug a bit, test a bit, presto!  We’re through!”

My data was back!  Every system checked out!
Tears of joy wet my face as I wandered about.
“How can I thank you?  You must be Saint Nick!”
He said, ‘Really, my friend, it’s not such a great trick,
If you don’t give up hope, focus on what you’re doing,
And read all your issues of  NETWORK COMPUTING.’
And I heard him exclaim, as his reindeer were coursing,
“Merry Christmas to all!  And consider outsourcing!”
-by Timothy Haight

John
–
Blue Mountain Data Systems
(850) 913-8488

Click here to see the original Twas the Night Before Christmas Poem