Network Management

IT Managers on Survivor

This edition: Why your IT Manager will never meet Richard Hatch; Animatronic Talking Fish.

March 26, 2004

6 Min Read

THANKS TO TINA BOOTH, SCOTT CAVNER, ERIK DAUPLAISE, SAM FARRIS, STEVEN BARRON GRAFING, KRIS PREWETT, HENRY ROHLFS, CAL RUBY, ED SLOOK AND BOB VANDENBERG FOR THEIR SUBMISSIONS. READ THE COMPLETE SET OF SUBMISSIONS.More Choice reader submissions from "Top 11 Reasons your IT Manager Will Never Win on Surivor."

jeff meadows -- If they held survivor in my server room no one would come out alive.....
Sam Farris -- Would immediately slip into coma after 8 hours with no Mountain Dew...
Steven Barron Grafing -- Waddya mean I can't bring my back ups?? I AM the hot site!!
Bob Vandenberg -- Duh..you can't make fire from a WiFi connection.
Steven Barron Grafing -- No one wants to see a server admin cry.
Steven Barron Grafing -- Producers were really turned off by the PDA converted into IP-enabled coffee maker.
Erik Dauplaise -- Because we've all signed up to be on Average Joe.
Steven Barron Grafing -- 'Cause Milton threatened to burn the island down ("but i was told I could keep the tribal drumming at a reasonable level...")
Mary Moewe -- THeir PDA batteries wouldn't last and they wouldn't be able to schedule their departure without it.
K. Prewett -- The world just isn't ready for a steam powered computer running a solar powered internet connection.
dave bachand -- IT people are so accustomed to working in strange places, eating unidentifiable things and dealing with obnoxious people that non-IT people wouldn't stand a chance. Where would be the entertainment value in that?
Ed Slook -- Just another user acceptance meeting.
Tina Booth -- What do you mean - "Restarting" won't win an immunity challenge?!
David Franklin -- Lets face it. No one wants to see Bill Gates in shorts, or get another Million.
joe baron -- who wants to see anyone in I.T. in the nude? can you see it black hornrimmed glasses with a taped nosepiece and nothing else!
Wayne Maurer --
- I survived a blue screen of death - after that surviving on a tropical island seems like child's play.
- I deal with enough computer bugs all day no sense sleeping with them.
- "What's Survivor?"
- We can handle irate users all day long, seems like we could deal with a few bozos on an island.
- We're overqualified ! ! !
- We deal with more problems in a single hour then these guys see in the entire series.
- They only play it - we live it!
joe baron -- when they ask you to climb a tree and pick apples, you say apple's don't grow on tree's.
Bobbi Foster -- Actually someone from IT already has been on Survivor. Ted Rogers, Jr. (Survivor Thailand) is software development manager. I remember because his team was losing all the challenges until they were given the Tower of Hanoi. Since most programmers write an algorithm for it at some point, I thought they were stacking it in his team's favor. They won, naturally.
Donn Swedenburg -- We're ineligible because of too much practice - we have to survive every day for a living.
Dave Baldwin -- What's 'Survivor'?
Burzin Sumariwalla -- What do you mean there's no place to plug in my laptop?
Burzin Sumariwalla -- No, no, Survivor isn't for me, I get C sick.
Henry Rohlfs -- Always confusing "CBS Network" with "Constant Bandwidth Server for Linux."
Scott Cavner -- Coconut PC + www.pizzahut.com + 30 minutes or it's free = pizza's for everyone and immunity from everything.
Dave Newman -- 39 days with no cell phone, PDA, IM or Internet access? Who could survive that?
Dave Newman -- We'd get voted off right away for spending too much time convincing the producers to move to Linux to improve the performance of "tree-mail"
Patrick Pimentel -- We wouldn't have anybody intelligent to conspire with.
Cal Ruby -- Too many years spent in sub 70 degree pressurized rooms, our lungs would collapse from the strain.
Charles Ashbacher -- No IT person could ever survive even a week without caffeine.
Doug Colby --
- They don?t allow pocket protectors on the series
- If they had someone around that could calculate the odds of this stupid stuff happening they would be forced to realize how contrived it looks.
- No electronic devices are allowed (PDAs Phonesetc)
- Because anybody with half a brain wouldn?t want to be involved.
- Nobody from IT would be able to be away from the internet and there job long enough to be part of the series.
- Under the present regime our jobs are so hard to find no one would be willing to chance being away for more than a couple of days for fear of being replaced.
Les Moyer -- Without a GPS and without Batteries and without GPS to Cell connections ...How could I ever tell what the correct time was?
Scot Templeton --
- IT would figure out a way to convert the sand into a fiber link between the tribes and create a satellite uplink to the web... other Survivor players would spend too much time on eBay bidding for "comfort" items and food
- "Outside? There's an outside?"
- ITs idea of excitement is to repeatedly reinstall and validate the "thoroughly tested [and therefore] most secure" operating system (Per Bill Gates on Windows Security).
- Swimming around the islands is not dangerous enough (no viruses and spyware)
- IT does too well being isolated in the dark and hidden away from "real people"... you would never see them again.
- No interpersonal skills (enough said)
- IT would be too interested in fixing the production problems and consider that the luxery reward
- No electricity on Survivor... no computers.
- Jeff Probst has had "a bad incident" with IT at CBS... promises "the geeks would never win the money"
- If Arnold Schwarzenegger can become Governer, then why not
Frank Starr --
- Enter the production area and you are out of the game! ?But there?s got to be something digital over there ? I just know it!?
- The castaways may be given a single phone call home as a "luxury reward." A great time to test your new VoIP program, but not enough tears for Prime Time television!
- After being voted out, the castaway makes one final comment to be aired during the credits of the show. Is there anyone out there who doesn?t already know how inefficient Tree Mail is?
- Given a challenge to eat a bug, Survivor ?IT? would prefer to quarantine it instead for future study.
Drew -- No one has yet seen that this is a perfect opportunity to move to a 3rd world country where there current job is being outsourced during their 30-day stint.
Bill Kannawin -- Secert meetings are too slow against IMs
Damien Grintalis -- What do you mean I can't check my email?

Forget hacking your Xbox or TiVo. That's so 2003. The next frontier is cheap animatronic fish. Take Ben Harris' recent Big Mouth Billy Bass Hacking in Linux Project, which teaches Billy to lip-synch anything--even Richard Nixon's historic "I am not a crook!" line. Nice work, Ben. See bigmouth.here-n-there.com.

Sure, numerology can help you win Lotto or find a perfect mate, but can it help you find the right 1U blade server? Using the venerated Pythagorean theorem, as well as some Arabic, Phoenician and Egyptian science, we've compiled a brief IT numerology.

Windows 2000, born Feb. 17, 2000Birth number: 8. Loves to learn new things. Confident, independent and competitive. Considers material success important. Likes to be recognized as an achiever. Does well in business and possesses good organizational skills. Status-conscious.
Mac OS X, born March 24, 2001
Birth number: 6. Symbolizes nurturing, caring, harmony--the Mother Earth type. Rarely selfish; shares others' sorrow needlessly. Health-oriented and loves tradition. Home is the best place for No. 6. Ruled by the planet Venus and bestowed with good looks.
Red Hat Linux 1.0, born Nov. 3, 1994
Birth number: 3. Imaginative, peace-loving. Optimistic and fun-loving, and strives to improve the environment. Energetic, youthful, enthusiastic, childlike. Sociable, creative, expressive.Thanks to the folks at www.india4u.com for letting us borrow their calculators.