The Ugliest Wiring Wins

Think you have a bigger mess hanging off your racks? If so here's a contest for. NOTE: Not my rack.

There is one trait that I’m famous for, having the messiest desk. It’s not really messy, it’s just in an order that the untrained eye can’t make sense of. If someone were to try to bring “their” form of order to it and straighten the desk up to suit them, I can’t find a thing. Period. End of story.

There is order in chaos and chaos in order.

James Gleick wrote a fantastic book about the science of chaos that is worth checking out some time. If chaos is a science consider the papers, books, thumb drives, DVDs, products waiting to be reviewed and computer screens on my desk to be the Super Collider of Chaos. Just wait until something brilliant arises from it.

My server rack is a different story. I want it every wire tagged, wrapped and flush to the cabinet. My reasoning behind that is something is always going to happen where ever you’ve got a lot of important data sitting on hard drives. Power surges, pipe burst, well meaning co-workers plug their laptops in to pull a report off or petty thievery. There is going to be a disaster with your server rack. If the rack is organized and diagrammed properly you can get back up in less time.

When I saw the a contest under way at Optimized Cable Company I immediately thought of a couple dozen locations that could be a contender. The discount cable outlet is searching for the messiest display of cables known to man. The winner walks away with a $100 store credit, which looking at their prices the prize money is enough to rewire a server room and a good sized office.  If you have a mess of cables, grab your digital camera and send your entry to Optimized Cable Company. I didn’t see that it was solely for networking and because they also sell home theater wiring, folks with a spaghetti factory hanging from the flat screens may be eligible too.