Admiral Ackbar

His ability to identify, locate, and alert others to the presence of a trap is a unparalleled.

Also, if you are ever in airplane wreck with him on top of the Andes and there is no food to eat, I bet those lobster arms are tastier than human butt meat. Just sayin'.

Geeky Furniture

Science Fiction (something else we'll be addressing...) is great. Really it is. It's where the future is great and people have woven technology into their lives completely and it actually works. Mostly.

Even better are the props. The iconic elements of Sci Fi are almost holy objects that don't really exist. Well, they DO exist because someone in the art department made it from foam and fiberglass but who gets their hands on this? The Executive Producer, Director or someone else from the studio but not you and I.

But sometimes the force is so strong with a person, they decide to just make their own. Either a carbonite table with Han Solo in it or a whole apartment that looks like a set from Star Trek. Or... Kirk's chair.

For most IT people, Digging the post where someone did it is enough but there's always the guy (because you know women have better things to do than to build this sort of stuff) who takes it this (too) far. We are both in awe and fear of these people. And rightfully so, they can make carbonite...

The Overengineered Home Network

It's hard to just throw out a SAN, server, Cisco router or switch, regardless of it's age. Knowing how expensive they were, sitting there in the rack quietly routing packets hither and yon, toiling for years only to be replaced by something that can run a cooler IOS load or hold faster, bigger drives.

Our hearts go out to those little workhorses. So, when finance finally gives the Ok to get new gear and the old stuff is off the books, of no use and is headed for the trash, they often take a detour to the trunk of the car. These old beasts of burden can enjoy their sunset days in the comfort of a small half-rack, also resurrected from the scrap heap.

What does a person need a 540GB NetApp for in their house, sucking down 1200 watts of power when a 1TB Western Digital external USB drive is now under $100? and doesn't need to be configured? It's so not about money, or usefulness, or even simplicity. For the same reason someone would buy a lift for their garage, install a 100" screen in the bedroom, or buy an old WW2 warbird, IT people build datacenters in their homes. Because it's fun, because it's cool, because it's challenging and that few other people could do it even if it occurred to them. Because, in a way it's wrong.

When gmail is more than enough for the vast majority of people, IT people will install Exchange (and even Spotlight on Exchange, which is so beyond overkill). When some home network storage is needed, why not take home that EMC cabinet sitting in the back of the warehouse? And who needs a Netgear router when a perfectly good PIX 515e is laying around waiting to go to the dump.

All sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

MAME - Your childhood on a thumbdrive

There is a recurring theme in S.I.T.P.L, old tech and new tech, melded together, becoming even cooler and more nerdy than previously conceivable.

IT People love technology but are very sentimental. Some hoard old Sparc stations and SGI workstations not only because they look cool, they are nostalgic about the "simpler times". *sigh*.

MAME ( Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator ) allowed IT people to play every arcade game ever made, on their PC. If it was made, it's out there. It wasn't enough to simply have the emulator on your PC, thats boring, what they really want is to stand up (or sit at the ropey bar-table version) and play it, like being in a "real" arcade. Without the being around other people part.

So, being makers by nature, cabinets were harvested or created and systems pieced together from old desktop computers and abandoned monitors. The great part is, the computing power of a 5 year old desktop is more than enough to run any MAME game if you consider the computing power available in 1984 to run Defender or Crysta Castles. MAME is only really properly set up if you have the entire collection of ROMs. Anything short of a comprehensive collection, even the esoteric outliers and regional versions, is just not good enough.

A MAME project is very much like a 1969 Camaro SS restoration project. It's new and old, it's problem solving and arcane documentation, it's resurrection and redemption. It's bragging rights and also slightly illegal in it's creation.