At numerous LAN parties, my friends and I have pondered the problem of cabling the PCs. You have to crawl under desks, feed cables up for friends to grab, generally perform uncomfortable fiddly tasks.

During one of these sessions, after a great deal of sugar, caffine, Jaffa Cakes and Action Quake 2, a solution was proposed: The Cable Monkey.

Through selective breeding, cloning, and other advanced genetic engineering techniques, a new breed of monkey could be created. The monkey would have excellent colour and shape matching abilities, giving it the requisite skill to wire up a PC in seconds. Due to it's small size and flexible body, crawling around under desks would be no problem.

The only real stumbling block I can see is the problems of identical, non-coloured sockets. If the PC industry is willing to play ball with this new arboreal technology, then this could be no problem. Failing that, or for companies that have to deal with legacy technology, the monkey's learning would have to be adaptable - perhaps a cattle prod could be bundled in with the "Professional" model.

I got as far as proposing a patent. Then someone threw a bagel at me.

"One word: interns."


I'll prove them wrong one day...
A Cable Monkey is a person, often an intern or student system administrator, whose second duty is to run cable (power, twisted pair, what have you) from one part of the machine room to the other. In nifty setups, this involves removing floor tiles, which allows access to the sub-floor and the cabling beneath. It is arranged as follows:
                     |             |
                     |  Machine    |
                     |             |           
====+========+========+==o=====+========+========+========+===
    |        |        |  o     |        | Duct sp|ace     |
oooo|oooooooo|oooooooo|oo      |        |        |        |
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
where:
ooooo
is a cable
========
is a floor tile
+
is a floor tile intersection piece
|
is a pole supporting the raised floor tile structure
////////
is the actual floor
Today, it was my turn as the student system administrator present, to play cable monkey. I was to move two power cables from where they were currently located to a new location.
Let me tell you, pulling cable is very, very annoying. The fact that the tiles are removable is nice, but it's still annoying. The cables get caught on other cables, support pipes, other pipes, or get twisted up under the floor. Laying cable under a floor, on the other hand, is a breeze. That was actually kind of fun.

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