Humor: What to Do When Riding a Dead Horse?

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from one generation to the next, says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.

However, in modern business, because of the heavy investment factors to be taken into consideration, often other strategies have to be tried with dead horses, including the following:

· Buying a stronger whip.

· Changing riders.

· Threatening the horse with termination.

· Appointing a committee to study the horse.

· Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.

· Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.

· Appointing an intervention team to re-animate the dead horse.

· Creating a training session to increase the rider's load share.

· Re-classifying the dead horse as living-impaired.

· Change the form so that it reads: "This horse is not dead."

· Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

· Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.

· Donate the dead horse to a recognized charity, thereby deducting its original cost.

· Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.

· Do a time management study to see if lighter riders would improve productivity.

· Purchase an after-market product to make dead horses run faster.

· Declare that a dead horse has lower overhead and therefore performs better.

· Form a quality focus group to find profitable uses for dead horses.

· Rewrite the expected performance requirements for horses. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

Quick Tech Tip : Metropolitan Area Networks - MANs

A metropolitan area network, or MAN is basically a bigger version of LAN. MAN is a computer networks usually spanning a campus or a city, which typically connect a few local area networks using high speed backbone technologies. A MAN supports both data and voice. A MAN just has one or two cables and does not contain switching elements.
A MAN is optimized for a larger geographical area than a LAN, ranging from several blocks of buildings to entire cities. MANs can also depend on communications channels of moderate-to-high data rates. A MAN might be owned and operated by a single organization, but it usually will be used by many individuals and organizations. MANs might also be owned and operated as public utilities. They will often provide means for internetworking of local networks. Metropolitan area networks can span up to 50km, with the devices being used such as modem and wire/cable devices.
The standard that has been adopted for MANs is called DQDB (Distributed Queue Dual Bus). DQDB consists of two unidirectional cables or buses to which all other computers are connected. Each bus has a head-end which initiates transmission activity.
There are three important features which discriminate MANs from LANs or WANs:
1. The network size falls intermediate between LANs and WANs. A MAN typically covers an area of between 5 and 50 km range. Many MANs cover an area the size of a city, although in some cases MANs may be as small as a group of buildings.
2. A MAN, its communications links and equipment are generally owned by either a consortium of users or by a network service provider who sells the service to the users.
3. A MAN often acts as a high speed network to allow sharing of regional resources. It is also frequently used to provide a shared connection to other networks using a link to a WAN.

The Orphaned Bunny and Orphaned Snake

Once upon a time, in a nice little forest, there lived an orphaned bunny and an orphaned snake. By surprising coincidence both were blind from birth. One day, the bunny was hopping through the forest, and the snake was slithering through the forest, when the bunny tripped over the snake and fell down. This, of course, knocked the snake about quite a bit. "Oh, my," said the bunny, "I'm terribly sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. I've been blind since birth, so, I can't see where I'm going. In fact, since I'm also an orphan, I don't even know what I am."
"It's quite OK," replied the snake. "Actually, my story is much the same as yours. I too, have been blind since birth, and also never knew my mother. Tell you what, maybe I could slither all over you, and work out what you are, so at least you'll have
that going for you." "Oh, that would be wonderful," replied the bunny.
So the snake slithered all over the bunny, and said, "Well, you're covered with soft fur; you have really long ears; your nose twitches; and you have a soft cottony tail. I'd say that you must be a bunny rabbit." "Oh, thank you! Thank you," cried the bunny in obvious excitement.
The bunny suggested to the snake, "Maybe I could feel you all over with my paw, and help you the same way you've helped me." So the bunny felt the snake all over, and remarked, "Well, you're scaly and smooth, and you have a forked tongue, no backbone and no balls. I'd say you must be someone in senior management."