10) Didn't quite burn enough capital on that network-computer venture

9) His evil HR director made him do it

8) Tired of SCO grabbing all the headlines

7) To keep Al Gore off the board of directors

6) Cheaper than buying PeopleSoft licenses for Oracle employees

5) Misunderstood advice to "get people skills"

4) The sailboat needs a new sponsor logo

3) To give his lawyers some busy work

2) meg-a-lo-ma-ni-a (noun)

1) Buildings crunchy, people soft

Thanks to Michael Andrews, Marc Gartenberg, Ray Gauthie, Maria Gregorio, Alan Guilbault, Nicholas Hart, Dan Kwitchen, Jim Musto, David Salamack, Kenneth Urban and Michael Wilson for their submissions. Check out our supersized, Gordon Gecko-esque list of unpublished entries.



IT Mysteries Solved
From the files of our resident BOFH, Steven J. Schuchart Jr.

1. Printer jam: User has kept paper under a brick for a year.

2. Hello? Hello?: That Ethernet jack looks a lot like a phone jack, so a phone cord should work, right? Wrong.

3. Mouse/keyboard inoperative: User has been eating at his desk for three years, and there are enough crumbs in the mouse and keyboard to make a casserole.

4. CRT monitor is reddish at the top: Remove the latest magnetic knick-knack from the monitor. Degauss the unit.

5. Password no longer works: User's kid changed the password and can't remember it.

6. Odd software errors: User's house was built in the Victorian era, and the wiring hasn't been updated since then.

7. Strange, intermittently blinking light that the user doesn't remember seeing before: Most likely the hard-disk activity light.

8. Monitor completely dark: User has changed all default colors to black on black.

9. Keyboard and mouse unresponsive: User didn't like the excess length of the mouse or keyboard cable, so he cut them and spliced them back together with electrical tape.

10. System is flaky, and something smells "hot": User didn't like the noise the desktop PC makes so she encased it in a big Tupperware container.



Caution: Editor Detected!
Tired of your server-room Siamese taking over your terminal connections? Looking for a surefire way to keep your Havana Brown away from questionable chat rooms? Look to BitBoost Systems' PawSense (bitboost.com/pawsense/). In a nutshell:

"PawSense analyzes keypress timings and combinations to distinguish cat typing from human typing. PawSense recognizes a cat on the keyboard within one or two pawsteps. ... Once a cat has been recognized, PawSense blocks the cat's keyboard input."

We think this ingenious tool should be extended to protect against other keyboard troublemakers, including

• Doom and Warcraft enthusiasts

• Overly caffeinated editors

• Lab assistants

• Visiting vendor reps