Last Mile: Intel's IT Manager Simulation

SPECIAL THANKS TO BILL BANIT, STEVE BREMMING, MARK HANNIS, GARY HOKE, GREGORY MAMAYEK, MIKE NICHOLS, NICK NIELSEN AND HILARIO MAGALLANES FOR THEIR SUBMISSIONS. IN CASE YOU'RE WONDERING WHAT ALL OF THIS IS ABOUT, BE SURE TO PLAY THE ACTUAL INTEL GAME (REQUIRES FLASH, BUT DEFINITELY WORK-SAFE).

When the Methodist Church of Great Britain launched a three-dimensional place of worship online last month--complete with personal, character-based avatars--it attracted 41,000 worshipers within the first hour of operation. Unfortunately, the church also attracted the Prince of Darkness, who took electronic form, transmigrated onto the site and addressed the congregation. Thank the Lord for sys admin powers, which can vanquish all forms of evil, as site editor Simon Jenkins discovered:

"Disguised as a normal worshiper, I came across him ranting in our pixillated pulpit," Jenkins said. "I was logged in as a church warden, who has a 'smite' button capable of visiting an Old Testament-style logout on the unrighteous.

'What are you doing?' I asked him.

'Who is this who dares approach the Evil One?' he demanded.'Well ... I'm the church warden,' I replied.

'Ah,' he said, before becoming disappointingly contrite."

See shipoffools.com/

Blogs: everyone's got 'em, but as we suspected, not everyone is posting. Here are some stats from a speech by Technorati CEO Dave Sifry at the recent Tokyo Technorati Meetup (www.technorati.com):

These numbers indicate that more than half of all blogs created each day will be sorely neglected. It also means you stand as good a chance of maintaining a long-term blog as you do of predicting the repeat path of an electron, finding oil off the Indonesian coast or avoiding an apocalyptic cataclysm (all about 50 percent). Still, it beats the 1 in 40,000 odds against making a hole in one. So blog away!