Sport IT-lustrated

11) Start meetings with Hank Williams Jr. singing, "Are you ready for some networking?"

10) Put an obstacle course between IT staff cubicles and the coffee machine

9) Play air hockey on the raised floor using old backup tapes

8) Hold tug o' war game using Cat 5 cable (be glad it's not fiber optic)

7) Phone toss: Farthest throw gets an extra vacation day6) Yell "Gooaaalll!!" after each resolved trouble ticket

5) Use hockey stick and puck to take slap shots into monitors of annoying users

4) Throw hometown parades after every successful server upgrade

3) Hire John Madden to critique presentations with the telestrator (Boom!)

2) Get Las Vegas to set odds on which user will be next to crash his or her PC1) Institute new method for resolving IT disputes: gladiator matches

Special thanks to Ken Graham, Greg Harshenin, Gary Hoke, Greg Lara, Chris Liu, Gregory Mamayek, Jim Poole, Henry Rohlfs, Greg Teltschik and Doug Whitaker for playing through the pain to get these suggestions into the end zone. Now get back to work or you'll miss the halftime show!

Fans of Matt Groening's cult favorite cartoon Futurama will be "Fryed" to see Bender alive and well, thanks to the ingenuity of computer hobbyist Jan Erik Vangen. Jan built a case mod based on the smart-mouthed, hard-drinking robot and documented his progress on the Web. No word yet on whether the unit will dispense Bender's poison of choice, the thirst-quenching Slurm. Check out Jan's progress.

It's a typical "Baywatch" episode: Pamela Anderson acts, David Hasselhoff sings, and a computer rescues a drowning victim. Wait a minute, that last one sounds just crazy enough to be true! In fact, a new computer system installed in a public pool in Bangor, North Wales, did save a young girl earlier this month. The Poseidon surveillance system, a set of underwater monitors tuned to scan the pool for motionless swimmers, detected the girl and alerted a human lifeguard. British papers hailed the computer as a hero. We can't confirm rumors that Hasselhoff was seen inviting the computer to dinner, leading to a whirlwind romance and a tearful breakup.