Reprinted from www.swynk.com
This week brings another traditional holiday celebration, and with it another opportunity for IT pros to ask in puzzlement: "what's a holiday?" Sure, we're vaguely aware that most of our friends and family members who chose different careers have days on which they actually don't work – a concept we find intriguing, if a little frightening.
Some of us (this does not include Norm the Neonatal Nerd in the next cubicle, who has "Born to Network" tattooed across his left hand) even have childhood memories of engaging in celebratory activities involving egg-laying rabbits, turkey and dressing dinners, and fat men with white beards wearing red suits. These activities were performed manually, without a shred of electronic data passing across a cable or circuit board.
Most of us, though, have repressed those memories and can't imagine doing something that has nothing to do with bits and bytes and calling it fun. However, since all those around us are going to be dressing up in strange clothing and gorging on candy Tuesday evening (something we do every day), it seems only fair that we come up with a way for high-tech workers to have a happy Halloween, without giving up our gadgets and gizmos. Thus, we offer here a few suggestions for celebrating:
1. Get a copy of Ghost. No, no, not the movie – the Symantec software package. Create clones of all your Windows 95 machines. Imagine these clones taking over the computer world, replacing the DNA of perfectly good UNIX computers and NetWare servers with their own. Even destroying their own, superior relatives, wiping out NT workstations and Windows 2000 domain controllers, turning them all into 16/32 bit hybrid beings. 95: it's alive. Now there's a scary thought!
2. Having hardware hassles lately? Soundcard suddenly stopped working? Getting memory errors? Intermittent problems with your SCSI devices? It might be evil spirits at work. But if you're really, really brave, on October 31, at the stroke of midnight, open up the case and venture into the frightening tangle of wires and jutting circuit boards inside, in search of the dreaded Socket Creep. Sometimes add-on cards will slowly rise out of their slots just like the undead rising from the grave. Don't be afraid to take action. Slam them back into the holes where they belong. You'll be glad you did.
3. Tombstone a few old WINS database records. Heck, it’s Halloween – create an entire WINS graveyard, with little tombstones scattered all over the place. You might even say the deceased records are “gone with the WINS…”
4. Find some thick coax cable and make a vampire tap into it. Enjoy the thrill of that first byte.
And the number one way for IT professionals to celebrate Halloween:
5. Download SATAN. Hey, the life of a network administrator is already hell anyway, so what do you have to lose? The System Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks (http://www.porcupine.org/satan/) might even make your job a little easier – WITHOUT having to sell your soul to the devil.
DEB SHINDER is an IT professional, a trainer, a writer, and a humorist – although not necessarily in that order. Being married to a doctor has taught her that laughter truly is the best medicine – especially when the network goes down and the deadlines loom and the only other alternative appears to be pulling one’s hair out. You can write to Deb at deb@shinder.net or visit the website at www.shinder.net .