Top 11 Signs Times are Tough in your IT department
11) You bump into your CIO at a night-school MCSE class
10) The new equipment for the CAD department? Etch A Sketch
9) The only Linux distribution you can afford is "Bob and Ted's Excellent OS"
8) You can't purchase any more CD-Rs at Best Buy because you've already redeemed a rebate in every employee's name
7) Interns are supposed to use serial line UUCP, but I may just have a spare ARCnet card somewhere...
6) The latest hire is a full-time outplacement adviser
5) It costs that much for CAT5e? How much is, say, CAT1?
4) IPX and DOS still rule 80 percent of your network
3) You've been asked to find a way to profit from incoming spam
2) The helpdesk asks if you want fries with your support call
1) Your corporate e-mail address is now SxyBldGuy69@yahoo.com
Thanks to Guy Bass, The Dave, Joe Dial, Jorge Gimenez, Norma, Bob King, Bill Ward, Miles O'Neal and Scot Templeton for their submissions.
See unpublished submissions at www.nwc.com/go/t11-tough.html.
Six Degrees of Wil Wheaton
Forget Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. With Leonard Richardson's Downhill 1.2 you can quantify the ephemeral connections between disparate bloggers. Consider, for example, how many links it takes for IT publication blogs to get to Star Trek TNG's Wil Wheaton:
NWC Daily Blog (4 Degrees of Separation)
- Blogger
- HGH Experiment
- Thumper's Thoughts
- Wil Wheaton
InfoWorld's Jon Udel's Radio Weblog (3 Degrees of Separation)
- Burton Group Weblogs/Jamie Lewis
- HGH Experiment
- Wil Wheaton
Network World's Compendium (2 Degrees of Separation)
- Matt Croydon::postneo
- Wil Wheaton
We humbly concede the battle for Mr. Wheaton to Network World.
Try Downhill yourself
Our Very own Star Wars Kid
By now you may have heard of the Star Wars Kid, the
15-year-old Canadian who became an instant Internet celebrity this spring. The theater student and apparent junk food enthusiast, identified only as Ghyslain, videotaped himself acting out a battle scene using a golf ball retriever as a two-sided light saber. A classmate posted it online, and Kazaa distributed it worldwide. The video, along with special versions enhanced with sci-fi effects and sounds, is said to have been downloaded a few million times.
We wonder what all the hubbub is about. Network Computing's own Mike DeMaria filmed himself in a similar scene a full two years ago. He didn't even need third-party enhancements to construct a lifelike light saber--he built one himself.
What he needs is a good publicist. Meantime, see Mike's video clip at www.nwc.com/go/starwars.html.
Find more Last Mile items and submit your entries for upcoming issues at www.nwc.com/go/lmile.html.
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