To serve man
Like echt-egyptologist Howard Carter eagerly popping open canopic jars in hopes of redeeming four millennia's worth of deposit money, The Gay Blade has channeled his long-standing attraction to tight, dark passages into a thorough exploration of the outlying twists and turns of his subterranean abode.
Caked with a thick black rind of compacted organic matter, spitting flecks of humus with the force of a confetti blower at Hillary Clinton's victory party, and reeking like Mississippi Senator Trent Lott after a July Fourth septic-tank bungie jump – it just doesn't get much better than this!
And besides, there's all this fabulous schwag! Among the sere goodies this implement has unearthed thus far: a jackal-headed, dik-dik ivory codpiece incised with the cartouche of Jean-Louis Gassée; the obsidian knife shamans apparently used to trepan former Apple Americas chieftain Jim Buckley after the Great Performa Drought of '93; and even a watertight basket containing the salt-cured skin of erstwhile Apple marketing vizier Satjiv Chahil.
And tucked behind a musty pyramid of desiccated Mac IIvx chassis, a real find: the long-rumored Version 2.0 of Mac OS X Server. Students of Stone Age cultures will recall that OS X Server, an early tool-bearing forebear of Apple's next-generation operating system, roamed the veldts of Cupertino before disappearing shortly after the emergence of the client OS' fourth developer preview.
What forced this robust if shambling server OS out of the spotlight? No one knows for sure, although some researchers have speculated that Apple's historical habit of eating its young might have reduced Mac OS X Server to so much long pork.
Gotta serve somebody
Take heart, Server fans! If the Blade is reading these hieroglyphics right (to left), the OS will rise again in time for Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in May 2001, albeit in a somewhat different form.
Reading between the icons, Mac OS X Server 2.0 will install atop the client version of the OS somewhat à la AppleShare IP and provide most of the same services as its progenitor, including Macintosh Manager; a remote-admin application; and a souped-up Apache Web server with some basic options that are accessible via a lickable Mac GUI.
The new release will also feature such niceties as NetBoot, QuickTime Streaming Server, WebObjects, a DHCP server and rudimentary security measures.
Sweet Anubis on a bed of unguent-saturated linen! The Blade thanks Osiris for the loose fit of today's caftans.
Unearthed a sacred Mac artifact of your own? Submit your monograph to The NMR Report, and a commemorative naked mole rat can be yours!