Once upon a time, there was a site with a small UNIX system. The forces of darkness ruled the land. The users were oppressed and afraid. Vi was the dragon and whip used to beat once proud scientist into fear slaves.

The "smart" users fled and ported their apps to MS Windows. For those who wanted to gaze at the real world through vi and elm - there was no choice - it had to be done through UNIX. VI was not the only problem, the cruel fascist/nazi mafia who had written UNIX put the "slash" around the wrong way; dir was there but the "ls" caused fear and trepidation. The infamous "." maimed many.

The GOD of this system began to undergo a subtle change - - he needed something more - so then he left to join the UNIX mafia in another division - he lived happily ever after. This old GOD had a little helper who gave part of his time to do work with PCs - the old GOD would not soil his hands on such lowly things. On the last day of work for the old GOD, he gave his little helper the "sacred word" - the little helper had now become an "SU" (Super User - Dah Dahhhhh) He also gave one piece of advice, "everything works, don't touch it or you'll screw it up". (It only took admin 6 months to hire another full time sys manager - they work fast here). The "SU" did not let this new power go to his head.

His quota only increased 8 fold and he now had a nice collection of high quality Gifs with a console to display them on - and no - he was not part of that deviate lot who use 50% of the Australia/USA bandwith link to bring porn onto their systems. He could refuse requests to write or patch code with a clear conscience because he didn't have any programming skills ( he was only holding the fort!). And the fact that hardly any makefiles he got via ftp ever compiled - well - luckily he didn't want to become part of the UNIX mafia - he wanted (at heart) to stay a human being. The fact that the UNIX GODS in the USA (and OZ) were very nice and sent him UNIX binaries made his life easier.

Almost every night he rebooted the main Solbourne server so it could start the day anew - giving it the healthy living that a PC gets. This made the users happy as they knew how the boogy-men and bogons accumulate over time in the UNIX memory. (Why don't the UNIX realize this??) It also made the users relieved when the "SU" would say "don't worry I rebooted the system last night to fix everything up" or "don't worry I'll go and reboot the system right now and fix everything". Did I say the old GOD lived happily ever after - I lied - he suffered.

Why? Because ever day a certain "SU" would ring him with questions like:- elm won't send mail; nn says "no news recieved for 19 hours"; how do I add a newuser; the news partition has run out of inodes; this binary I recieved says some library is too old what can I do?; print won't work - I've rebooted 5 times and turned the printer off 12 times and nothing is improving - what do I do?

Even though the system was never down for more than a day or two, the new "SU" could still see that the users were suffering. And being such a nice "SU", he decided to do something about it. The biggest problem was vi. Everyone (except me and a few other weird people) hated it. With the old GOD long gone, vi was not content to be the same old bland "stealer of souls", Vi started to lay waste to labs, biting babies head off, etc - the usual stuff vi gets up to on other sites. With the luck that comes to the pure of heart, I heard of the UNIX Holy Grail - Its name was PICO and it was reputed to be a user friendly editor.

It was rumoured that "farcical aquatic cerimonies" (aka King Arthur) were not neccessary to get it to installed - hmmm - could be a goer thinks this new "SU". What followed was a REAL religious experience (Refer Appendix 1) and this is what this post - indirectly - is about. But we continue the story:- With PICO, the baby eating dragon that was vi (bland stealer of souls) was dismembered by the purity of this PICO user friendly editor -

USERS/PEASANTS:- Yaaayyyy!

- but I did not slay it -

USERS/PEASANTS:- Boooohhhh!!!

- in respect for the $$$$thousands$$$$ spent on me in sys manager courses to learn this most wild of editors.

I became a UNIX "Lord of Chaos" - user of vi (sort of - it doesn't bite my head off) There was still much UNIX evil afoot that had to be fought:- "The Users come first" - (I know - I don't have much chance of joining the UNIX mafia with silly ideals like this) There was :- the "slash" (/) (pause for effect> the "ls" *sound of a distant shreek* and the infamous ".*gnashing(sp?) of teeth* The new SU was thinking of Xtree for UNIX but the evil ones did something to the demo tape such that it didn't work. Again an American GOD(DESS) throws inspiration across the Pacific - utree is its name. It looks like xtree for DOS, it feels like xtree for DOS, it works on any text terminal and costs nothing. This is a recent development for the "SU". The slash, ls and the infamous "." are know about to be history - the world is saved.