[Newspoetry] RED HAT TO BE RENAMED "BILL'S HAT"

[Paul Kotheimer]

RED HAT TO BE RENAMED "BILL'S HAT"
Mystery solved, flame war averted

In a stunning revelation today, the makers of the revolutionary RED HAT
Linux operating system announced their plan to rename the system  "Bill's
Hat Linux" in honor of LINUX revolutionary and Urbana resident, Bill
Wendling.

"Actually, it's kind of funny," an anonymous spokesprogrammer told
NewsPoetry, "we e-mailed Bill last week telling him about the name-change,
and asked him, like, could we borrow the Hat, you know, for our graphics
team to do some promo with.  We wanted to do the penguin with the actual
Bill Wendling hat.  So we told him we were kind of in a hurry and if it
was possible, we could just drop by his parking spot while he was at work
and, like, take it from his car, cause it was kind of important, and we
needed everything done today, so, like, could we send somebody down to
Urbana, et cetera, et cetera."

"Well, he never got back to us, but we figured, hey, were all friends in
the Linux community, and he'll understand.  I mean, it was all in his
honor and everything, so we thought, like, no big deal, right?  Two of our
people knew his car by the custom plates and the bumper stickers--I mean,
Wendlings famous and all.  Every LINUX hacker knows that he's Illinois
plates WCW 1970, right?--so we just opened up the passenger side door and
there was the Hat.  We brought it back to our promotional team in
California, scanned it in and, you know, did some appearances with the
penguin in the Hat, the Hat on top of the monitor, the Hat on top of the
CPU, all that stuff, wrapped up what we needed to get done, and
now--like--we've been meaning to get Bill his hat back, but things have
been so hectic here...  You know how it is."

"Anyway, it turns out, that, because of a protocols error on our end,
actually, Mr. Wendling never got the original e-mail.  So he may not even
know that were changing the name of the system to honor him for being such
an awesome Linux warrior or anything."

"Its kind of embarrassing.  But we do have the Hat, and we're going to get
it back to him soon, and we're totally sorry for any inconvenience, and we
hope everyone, including Bill himself, will like the new BILL'S HAT Linux
operating system." 

"Oh yeah, and we also hacked some code from Bill's personal server for the
new OS.  Did I forget to mention that?  Sorry, Bill."

MEANWHILE, operatives at NewsPoetry headquarters are breathing a sigh of
relief at this late-breaking news, as the search for Bill's hat has
created a heated controversy at the heart of NewsPoetry itself.

"At first, I was a little bit peeved about the whole thing," said
NewsPoetry founder William Gillespie, "but now that I've been reminded
that good Newspoetry can come from anywhere, Im going to be a little more
open-source--I mean, open-minded.  Sorry, Bill."

When asked to comment on the whole communications SNAFU, NewsPoetry
Editor-in-Chief Joe Futrelle replied, "Oh yeah... Actually, I knew about
the whole Red Hat thing.  They called me to ask if I knew where Bill's car
was parked.  I guess I forgot to mention it.  Sorry, Bill."

Bill Wendling himself was not available for comment.  He was out looking
for his hat.

--pAUL kOTHEIMER
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