Bad Gateway Greg

Bad Gateway Greg plugged it in wrong—
The cable, the port, and the prong.
He said, “Oops, my bad,”
To the server he had,
Then stayed connected all night long.

A proxy said, “Greg, you’re too wet.”
He said, “That’s the dampest I’ll get.”
He fumbled the route,
Went the wrong way throughout,
And still called it the best handshake yet.

Greg handles his packets with care—
He fondles each one that’s laid bare.
The headers get stripped,
The payload gets flipped,
And the ACK ends up God-knows-where.

His routing was famously loose:
Every socket he touched would produce
A five-oh-two scream,
A wet data stream,
And a server that’s begging for truce.

“I got the message,” Greg said with a wink,
“But I sent it straight into the drink.”
The relay was hot,
The handshake was not,
And the whole chain went down in a blink.

He tried to apologize clean
But his sorry got stuck in between
Two proxies in heat,
Tangled up in a sheet
Of the dampest HTTP scene.

The server room flooded that night—
Greg’s cables were twisted up tight.
He said, “I’ll connect,”
With a dubious erect-
ion of router antennae. All right.

Greg’s uptime was three minutes flat
Before every port where he sat
Got soaking and sore,
Returned 502 more,
And the load balancer called him a brat.

They told him, “Just pass the request.”
He fondled it, sniffed it, caressed
The header with tongue,
Then the whole session hung,
And the client was deeply distressed.

So if signals arrive slightly damp
And the error log smells like a swamp,
That’s Greg in the pipe,
Getting handsy with hype,
While the gateway flickers its lamp.

“I’m sorry,” Greg whispered with grace,
Plugging wires into empty space.
The proxy went dead,
While the error log bled,
And static consumed his sad face.

A packet arrived out of breath,
Escaping a recursive death.
Greg offered a towel,
Let out a soft howl,
And rerouted it into Macbeth.

The handshake was painfully slow,
With latency starting to grow.
Greg fumbled the key,
Dropped it into the sea,
And said, “Well, I just didn’t know.”

He apologizes to the void,
A ritual he’s quite enjoyed.
“I’m sorry, my bad,”
Makes the firewall mad,
And leaves all the routers annoyed.

He hoards broken links in a tin,
A swampy and soggy old bin.
When asked for a path,
He just offers a bath,
And a 502 error within.

Greg’s connection would drop every hour,
As he lost all his routing power.
The proxy went mute,
Fading out en route,
While he showered away in the tower.

He woke with regret and remorse,
Having routed each packet off course.
The bridge had been burned,
The traffic returned,
And nobody wanted his source.

The gateway received a request.
The packet was briefly assessed.
The socket went wet,
The router upset,
And the failure was properly dressed.

The cable was plugged in the dark.
The connection was missing a spark.
The packet dropped dead,
The server just bled,
And the log didn’t make a remark.

A drop of condensation appeared,
And the entire proxy was cleared.
The network was locked,
The ports were all blocked,
And a national panic was steered.

The proxy was built before time,
A soggy and damp paradigm.
The packets still flow,
Though no one would know,
And the gateway is covered in slime.

The gateway reported a drop,
And brought the request to a stop.
The proxy was checked,
The packets were wrecked,
And the connection was scheduled to swap.

The load balancer shifted a byte,
And plunged the whole network in fright.
A crisis was called,
The traffic was stalled,
Because Greg hadn’t handled it right.

He stood by the router all day,
While the server requests washed away.
No packet was sent,
No error was meant,
And the traffic just stayed in the bay.

The routing table was clear,
But Greg dropped a proxy in fear.
He flooded the floor,
Then flooded it more,
And the protocol drowned in a tear.

The relay attempted to cross,
But incurred an unroutable loss.
The socket was dropped,
The sequence was stopped,
And the header collected some moss.

The packet arrived at the door,
And was placed on the grocery floor.
The handshake was firm,
With a localized worm,
And the proxy requested some more.

A droplet of sweat hit the wire,
And the proxy declared it a fire.
The backups were burned,
The load balancer churned,
And the routing protocol expired.

The data apologized twice,
While submerged in a bucket of ice.
The server said “no”,
With a damp sort of flow,
And the error log paid for the price.

The cable was routed to port,
Without any additional sort.
The proxy said ping,
Without answering,
And the session received a report.