> We made the mistake of NOT sacrificing a chicken when we opened our new > datacenter two years ago. Been paying the price ever since!
When I was 14 I worked at a Kentucky Friend Chicken stand in Wisconsin. One summer night a few of us who worked there went up on the roof with a few six-packs of beer (it was one of those flat roofs with a knee-wall around it). Well, one thing led to another, and we decided to incarnate "Franken-chicken"--we got the requisite chicken parts from the walk-in, stapled them together again with a staple-gun in a rough semblance of an actual chicken, and wired the whole mess to the lightning-rod. We thought all this was highly amusing (ah, youth). A few months later, a buddy of mine suddenly remembered Franken-chicken. As soon as the shop was closed we scurried off to the roof, and found a small charred lump where we'd left the Monster. It hadn't come to life as planned, but, at least at some point in its decomposition, it had indeed been struck by lightning. And a related story: a few years ago I was driving from Illinois to Michigan with my son, going "over the top" (i.e., of Lake Michigan). I hadn't been to the town where I grew up in years, and I drove my son around to some of my old haunts. There was a McDonald's where the old Kentucky Friend Chicken had been, and we stopped there for dinner. As I was ordering, still flushed with sentimentality from my old-home meanderings, I asked, "So how long has this been a McDonald's?" The girl just looked at me. "Sir, it's always been a McDonald's." "Well, no it hasn't," I said, "before it was a McDonald's it was a Kentucky Fried Chicken." "Before it was a McDonald's," she answered, "it was a parking lot." Starting to get just a tad exasperated, I said, "Well, before it was a parking lot, there was a Kentucky Fried Chicken right on this spot. I can tell you that for sure, because twenty years ago I worked there." Her eyes widened a bit, she stopped chewing her gum, and she looked at me for a long minute. And then, in an indescribably bored voice, she said, "Sir, twenty years ago I wasn't even BORN." So much for my journey through the past! --Mike
