It's Summer in the Center

11) Wet bathing suits are drying on your switch racks

10) Your employees have more fans than your servers

9) Interns roam the aisles yelling, "Get your cold beer here!"

8) The climate-control system doubles as an ice maker

7) You're the only one who's not on vacation6) You can smell Star Wars action figures melting in the server room

5) CD trays are routinely converted into cup holders for icy beverages

4) Christmas lights hung in December are being reborn as tiki lights

3) Chicken rotisseries are being installed in the exhaust rows behind the servers

2) The ambient temperature in the data center now exceeds your CTO's IQ1) Big hardware purchase is awarded to the vendor that throws in an Icee machine

Special thanks to Nate Englund, Steve Harvey, Steve Hultquist, Gregory Mamayek, Steven Matheson, Wayne Maurer, Bret Pothier, Jacque Tang, Doug Whitaker and Larry Williams for their hot and sweaty suggestions. Now put down the magazine and put on your suit--let's all take a dip in the old water-cooled mainframe.

You may be a technical genius, but that doesn't mean you're not cool. You're fashion-conscious, and you care about the environment. How can you show your true colors? Why, techno-jewelry, of course! Fractal Spin, the Tiffany of techie accessories, is now offering a line of jewelry, handbags and other wear-ware made out of old diodes, capacitors, floppy disks and Cat 5 cable. Imagine how impressed your date will be when you build a mnemonic circuit out of your necklace or patch a faulty printer connection with your belt. Then when you say you're "connected," you won't be kidding. www.fractalspin.com

Wish you could be in two places at once? Well, hold on to your transporter. Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University are working on technology that would let users "teleport" solid 3-D replicas of themselves over the Internet. Once perfected, the scientists claim, it will let people maintain a physical presence in two locations simultaneously.Professors Todd Mowry and Seth Goldstein are working on "synthetic atoms" that could be taught to reshape themselves into any form dictated by a computer signal and then move as the "original" person or object moves. Essentially, if you're in Topeka, Kan., you could use the Internet to create a claymation replica of yourself in Akron, Ohio, and that replica would walk, talk or wrestle according to input from a series of cameras in the originator's room in Topeka.

We can only wonder what will happen when the technology inevitably goes awry, as the transporter so often did on Star Trek. Will we one day arrange a meeting with Bill Gates, only to find ourselves with Gumby and Pokey instead? And just how do you troubleshoot a crazed claymation replica? Only time--and your teleporter--will tell.

LOL

Have a IT-related Chuckle you want to share? Spotted some strange tech? Want to contribute to the latest Top 11 List? Drop on by the Last Mile Repository!0