Karl Does The Chicken Dance <OR>
Karl vs. the Chickens

My old buddy Gail was on the phone, and she asked me the strangest question: "Karl, how do you feel about chickens?"

"Is personal cowardice a problem in the computer business, Gail."

"No, I mean real chickens. Lots of them. In fact, lots of dead ones. You see, I have this customer ..."

The next morning I entered the local processing plant for Freddy Bob's Fowls, a regional poultry concern. The sky above my head felt crowded with 30,000 chicken souls winging upwards every hour. The ground under my feet was a different story, with all sorts of chicken residue sticking to my shoe.

Gail met me at the door and pulled me aside. "Biff is our contact here, but he has a weak grasp of technological issues."

"How did he get to be MIS Manager?" I asked.

"He married Freddy Bob's third and ugliest daughter."

Biff rounded the corner and started on me immediately. "The system goes down for no reason. I think the software is no good," he said, glancing at Gail.

We started the tour, and things were all done fine, except for the wiring. The main server was in the other building, so we headed there.

"Where is the conduit?" I asked. "How does the wire get from one building to the other?"

Biff looked confused. "Conduit?  Don't know about conduit. See those big motors? They're 1000 horsepower electric motors for the refrigeration and ice making machines. Isn't that neat?"

We went through a processing portion of the plant, with dead chickens everywhere. Taking a back stairway, we went up to the roof.

"There's the wire," said Biff, pointing to a cable loosely looped around a water pipe between the buildings. We found our way down into the second building, passing chicken carcasses piled to the ceiling.

"Tell me, Biff," I asked. Does the system go down a lot during rainstorms?"  Do you ever notice any motors in the plant starting up when the server goes down?"

"Come to think of it, I do," said Biff. "Here we are - the patch panel. Finest silver-satin patch cords available."

"Biff, the T in UTP stands for twisted, and silver satin cords are not twisted. Running wire, especially UTP wire, outside without protection is a big no-no."  I could hear Gail murmuring 'not my software, told you so' under her breath.

We headed back to the main building, and Biff announced, "Let's take this shortcut." He opened big doors, beyond which hundreds of chicken carcasses swung slowly from hooks. The overhead conveyor belt formed a twisted, winding conga taking chickens to The Colonel.

"Watch your step," said Gail. Too late: my shoes hit some chicken guts, I lurched sideways into the chicken conga line, then I lurched backwards. That did it. I smacked my head on a chicken box and smeared my suit with chicken innards galore as I landed on the floor.

"My grandmother studied witchcraft, Karl, and I can tell the future by reading chicken entrails," said Gail, laughing for all she was worth. "Your future is to buy a new suit!"

James: Another reality-inspired story. There really is a huge chicken processing plant not far from downtown Dallas, and my friend Gail (who is short and blonde rather than tall and brunette, but Randy didn't know when he drew the picture) called me for help. She didn't like me writing about this, because she was afraid the customer would read it and get mad. They didn't, and Gail still talks to me now and then.