Holes

The Abbess Jinyu was inspecting the state of the Laughing Monkey Clan. In the hall she came upon a half-drowned monk, soaked and shivering.

“Explain,” said the Abbess.

“The m-m-master commanded me to t-take his coracle out onto the r-r-river,” said the monk through chattering teeth. “When I was far from shore I discovered that it had m-m-many holes in the sides. M-most were plugged with corks but t-t-t-two had been overlooked. Had I not stopped them with my f-f-fingers I would have p-perished.”

The Abbess bowed and went in to see the Java master.

“Explain,” said the Abbess, indicating the monk.

“That monk was given the task of implementing the Shopping Cart for our new site,” said the master. “He discovered that if a particular database entry was not initialized, attempts to display the Shopping Cart would fail. So the monk found every page that offered a link to the Shopping Cart and attempted to initialize the database entry there. There were over a dozen such pages. Lamentably, two were overlooked.”

The Abbess struck the master with her cane.

“Next time,” she said, “Drill more holes.”