Speedcabling - Untangling For Fun and Profit

ibnsuleiman writes "A new competitive sport is emerging amongst IT professionals and hobbyists. Speedcabling tests the ability to untangle the rat's nests that grow inside and outside of the beige boxes that pervade todays homes and workplaces. The first public competition was held in an LA gallery for a $50 gift certificate to a local Italian restaurant. The winner, LA web developer Matthew Howell, had to untangle a dozen ethernet cables in record time leaving them in working order to win."

Comments

snapping off the locking tabs

[hedley]

My normal failure mode with a cable jumble, that reassuring crack as it breaks off ensuring a lurking connectivity problem when its used in the future. I suppose those tabs need to be maintained in the contest FTW no?

his secret?

[Sidlon]

I hear he spent a lot of time training with this.

This isn't going anywhere...

[rickb928]

...since this is precisely what I do in my sleep, after all the MCSE weenies who weren't allowed to touch the cables in class have left for the day.

Now, a hunt for the loose terminator in a Thinnet network, or the forced-duplex port in your Cisco stack, or the one Linksys VPN router with different firmware out among the 50+ telecommuters, or even the splitters over the ceilings in your Localtalk network at the elementary school, or any number of real-world-ish scenarios.

Bah. Like playing pool for money. Too much like real work. And playing for beer makes you pee too much.

Re:I was nearly with you until...

[afidel]

When we did our computer room expansion several years ago we literally used hedge clippers to cut out the old cables from the raceway. We went from having 3 random colors for cables to having one color per cabinet with pre-labeled bundles. It makes it MUCH easier to maintain and I have some fun photos for a portfolio =)