From the Mind of Trevor Stone

Google has several mailing lists where a very specific type of humor is considered on-topic. One of my favorite is dedicated to filk, parody lyrics to popular songs. I've archived my humorous songwriting and poetry, some of which has appeared previously on this blog. And of course I had to write a song about my own departure.

This song is called “Alice’s Algorithm”
It’s about Alice, and the algorithm
But “Alice’s Algorithm” is not the name of the algorithm
That’s just the name of the song
That’s why I call the song “Alice’s Algorithm”

You can send anything you want with Alice’s algorithm
You can send anything you want with Alice’s algorithm
Send a syn, you’ll get an ack
Two prime numbers are hard to hack
You can send anything you want with Alice’s algorithm

Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, two years ago, on Thanksgiving
When my friend and I wanted to send a message to Alice with an algorithm
But Alice doesn’t get mail through the algorithm,
She gets mail on a server running the algorithm,
In the home directory, with her copy of RSA and Carol the sysadmin
And livin’ in the home directory like that, they’ve got a lot of room in /var where the spool used to been
Havin’ all that room (seein’ as how they deleted all the spools)
They decided that they didn’t have to take out their garbage for a long time
( Read more... )

Context for non-computing folks: computer messaging protocols are often described with Alice, Bob, and Carol sending messages and Eve trying to eavesdrop. There's also a lot of Unix references in there.
Context for non-American-folk-music folks: Alice's Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie is one of the greatest satirical songs ever performed. Listen to it first to get the guitar portion rolling around your head while you read these filk lyrics.

My new phone message. Call 303-980-5148 to be amused... or just to laugh at me.

Picture yourself on a phone with a Trevor
With tangerine rings and marmalade cats
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A boy with kaleidoscope hats

Telephone callers of yellow and green
Cell tower over your head
Look for the boy with the sun in his heart
And he's not home

Lucy on the phone leave a message...