MacGyver Methods

Special thanks to Marcus Bolton, Chuck Church, Erik Dauplaise, Ken Graham, Gary Hoke, Mark Jass, Bob Kokinda, William Kujawa, Steve Matheson, David G. Miller and Delon Weuve for their submissions. For more techno-brilliance, see our extended list of reader submissions.

We asked you to pontificate and illuminate, to dispel the IT darkness with your own IT truisms. You did not disappoint. Wittgenstein, Sartre, Jung--they've got nothing on you. Here, we bring you our five favorite reader-submitted IT maxims:

"Whenever you have software controlling hardware, you're gonna have problems." --Brent Short

"No matter how many times you've saved the company tons of money in recovered data or uptime, the one time you got caught playing Quake will always come up during your salary review." --Jim Kiley

"We have a name for IT professionals who have not experienced a catastrophic loss of data: inexperienced." --John Crighton"The longer it takes a system to reboot, the more likely the problem you're working on will require a reboot after every step." --Davis Conley

"Fast, cheap, correct. Pick any two--then hope you get at least one." --Roy Harvey

Jump on over to the complete set of reader IT maxims.

For those who wield a mean Visio network diagramming palette, we have the perfect site: Rate My Network Diagram. Here your peers can view, vote and comment on your work of art.

We didn't want to be left out of the fun, so we employed the Ultra Fine Point Sharpie, Series No. 37000, to generate a high-resolution map of director of Internet operations Brad Shimmin's home network, then submitted it for public scrutiny.We invite you to cast your vote and to create and submit your own network diagram. Drop us a line with your URL ([email protected]), and we'll compile an ongoing listing of reader diagrams for your fellow readers.

Thanks to Mike Morrison for hunting down this rare delicacy.

Dave Lund: Take the batteries out of everyone's car and wire up a big AC inverter.

cesar pardo: Is possible to have a copy of the top 11 patch tools

Damon Duncan: 1 Pair of jumper cables and the IT director's Mercedes.Nick Nielsen: Create a galvanic pile using platters from old hard drives.

Gary Hoke: Replace 2000 watt UPS with a miniture nuclear reactor developed by your intern from a local university.

Gary Hoke: Clap On... {Clap} {Clap}

Gary Hoke: Make all the contractors take turns on the hand crank of the circa 1965 backup generator.

Gary Hoke: Daisychain 18 power strips together to make an extension cord. Don't forget to turn each one on!Marcus Bolton: A set of jumper cables, a good sized solor panel, and enough sun tan lotion to cover the human body twice over.

Dirk Hedlund

: Make a "chain" of interns from the server closet to the nearest power transformer. Hand the last intern a long metal pointer, and have him point out the secondary side of the transformer. (Also helps prevent flooding the IT job market with too many workers.)

David Durkee: Find Chevy 69 Impala, or other big car, with big alternator. Connect the jumper cables to the battery on your UPS. (To make the length, you may need to splice in a few extension cords to the Jumper cable). Fire up the chevy. Power restored. Alternative. If the closet has adequate ventilation, you could drive in a 2004 Honda Valkyrie Rune with a 1832cc flat six... especially if your jumper cables are too short. ;)

Ken Graham: Open a "health club" in the next room and attach small generators to the stationary bikes. Next build a a farm of Leyden jars made from discarded Starbuck's latte cups and the foil from the tops of yogurt cups. Lastly, carefully attach the Leyden jars to the servers and then to the generators (what ever you do, don't switch this step, it could be your last!) and open the doors to your "health club". I don't know about the people, but your servers will be healthy in no time.

Dominic Vadakkan: Pull up your car next to the building and jump start the server.Delon Weuve: Gather together about 5 of the hairy men you know, mix in about 300 balloons and shake well...

wayne maurer: - Use management's hot air to power steam turbine generator

- Create your own gas-fired generator by forcing employees to eat re-fried beans.
- Using the magnets from the hard drives and a few paper clips along with a childs top - presto a crude but effective power generator.

David G. Miller: Grab all of the key-chain flashlights from the marketing swag, wire 'em in series, run the output through an inverter and voila: power.

Erich Huemoeller: It's built into our health plan - generators hooked up to the exercise bikes in the workout room.

Mark Jass: Make a loaf's worth of buttered toast. Tie each slice to the back of a cat. Drop each cat about 5 feet from the ground. The buttered toast will halt the cat from landing on it's feet, causing a gentle somersaulting or flipping motion. Connect the buttered-cat array to your UPS.Rob Stacey: Put a pedestal fan in front of the aircon unit and direct the cold air at the fan to drive the blades, using the fan's motor to generate the juice.

Erik Dauplaise

: 1. Hampster on an exercise wheel.
2. Perpetual motion machine built out of 3 paper clips, a rubber band and a pen cap.
3. Use the bathroom sink as a hydroelectric power source.
4. Cross-wire an oscillating fan to act as a windmill.

Nathan Morris: Sell e-mail server to buy lots and lots of AA batteries and some wire.

Ray Gauthier: a generator from the CIO's treadmill.

Ray Gauthier: Little wind-powered generators outside the cooling fans of the customers' pc's

Boyd Johnson: Capture all of the hot air coming out of Sales and run a steam Electrial generator off of it.

Brian David Matlock: Runner-up from the tour de france.

Dave Baldwin: Open a health club in the basement, with alternators connected to the exercycles. Hire as many people who are trying to lose weight as possible.

Gregory Mamayek: ~ Use static electricity.

~ Use the washer/dryer cable. After all, 240v is twice as much.
~ Hotwire the electrical wire. It works for cable.

~ Hook the server closet up to monster truck.

~ Relocate server room to Hoover dam (infinite power supply, nevermind the moisture).

Eric Vilhauer: Run an extension cord from the voltage inverter in the President's Lexus SUV.

Jonathan Strine: Put all those interns to work on a giant hampster wheel
Jumper right to the CEO's car battery

Make a Jolt-powered generator

Burn accounting's files to turn the fans in the server and generate reverse current

Arnold Febre: Rigging all the Segway human transport machines onto a treadmill that turns a small generator, which in turn powers up all the servers. Imagine the sweat induced from the people who have to stand on the Segways and 'run' it. Whew!

Bob Kokinda: Interfacing the auxillary gerbil wheel with the uranium pu-36 explosive space modulator, via usb 2.0 cableJaime Villarreal: Just gang about a dozen outlet strips together to reach the room.

Steve Matheson: Use IT market rebound spin to power generators.

Bill Goodman: Duct Tape...what else?

Herb Hamilton: 1. Reconnect power to the ups that was unplugged and drained dry by the big screen tv used to watch football by the night crew.

2. human sized gerbil wheels (added as part of company's new exercise program)
3. reset the circuit breaker(s)

4. you use some duct tape, a piece of wire, three cats, a piece of string, and a fur brush

William Kujawa: Connect the help desk phone directly to the UPS battery. Every time the phone rings it will help to recharge it.

Chuck Church: Plug UPS into itself, so that it's constantly recharging. Run this plan past management, to see if they're on board with it!

tOM Trottier: 1. Treadmill for gays still in the closet
2. Treadmill for husbands who like to watch from the closet
3. Fool cells

4. Burn backup CDs to generate power
5. Link batteries from all pagers and cell phones. Then leave.
6. Windmill in CEO officeDavid Gula: Wrap your deceased company founder in wire, replace the headstone with a magnet, and harness the enery from him spinnning in his grave because of your current business model.

James L Thomas: "New perk" treadmills off the Lunch room, Think of all those ready kilowatts.

Bob Vandenberg: Minature generators on trackballs...imagine the power generated by shoppers at ebay?

John Patrick: Using copper and zinc plates, turn each urinal into a battery cell. For high-power usage, implement a new policy that employees must drink 16 oz of water every two hours.

Donald Boyd: Finally a way to use all of those old notebook batteries, string em together as a UPS.0