The Night Before Thanksgiving: An IT Nightmare

'Twas the night before Thanksgiving, and all through the LAN, 

Not a server was stirring—wait, hold on, what the heck’s that? 

The firewalls were patched with some duct tape and prayer, 

In hopes that the hackers would stay unaware. 

The admins were nestled all snug in their chairs, 

While visions of uptime danced through the air. 

And Dell in her PJs, and I in my hoodie, 

Had just fired up Wireshark to check for a baddy. 

When out by the modem there arose such a clatter, 

I sprang from my desk to see what the matter was. 

Away to the router I flew like a flash, 

Tripped over a cable and crashed into a cable stash. 

The glow from the screen on the network switch's face 

Gave the luster of mid-day to that poor, fried old base. 

When what to my wondering eyes should appear, 

But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer— 

No, wait, that can't be right; it's a phishing alert! 

A trojan from "TurkeyHackers" making my stomach hurt. 

With a little old driver, so lively and quick, 

I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick— 

Or was it St. Malware? His eyes, how they glowed! 

Like LEDs flashing in error-code mode. 

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a grin, 

And the beard on his chin was as white as a spin— 

Disk, that is. He was dressed all in flannel, from head to his boots, 

And his clothes were all tarnished with gravy and fruit. 

A bundle of logs he had flung on his back, 

And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. 

His eyes—how they twinkled! His dimples, how merry! 

His cheeks were like routers, his nose like a cherry— 

Wait, cherry pie? No, a red packet flood, 

Causing latency spikes that no ping could elude. 

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, 

And filled all the inboxes with spam from the berk. 

He patched up the VPN, and fixed the Wi-Fi, 

Gave the cloud a reboot, and gave out a sigh. 

Then giving a nod, up the coax he did climb, 

To the roof with his sleigh, reindeer in tow—wait, that's not right this time. 

It was drones! Delivery bots hauling pies through the night, 

Dodging 5G towers and low-flying kites. 

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight— 

"Happy Thanksgiving to all, and to all a good byte!" 

(Moral of the story: Always enable two-factor on your stuffing recipe shares. Gobble gobble, and may your bandwidth be merry!)