I remember helping a new, very young tech at the law firm when I worked there. A new lawyer came in and the kid went up to set up his computer. He called the desk about 45 minutes later because in his words "I have no idea what's wrong but the computer just will not connect." I had a feeling it was SOMETHING to do with the cable so I grabbed a new 10 ft CAT5 and headed up. I got into the office and looked at the wall jack and the connectivity light was amber. The lawyer was not in the room so the kid wasn't going to be embarrassed when I explained the problem. I plugged in the new cable and it came right up. When we got back to the desk I sat him down and showed him the two cable ends side by side and showed him how pin 3 and pin 6 were swapped, and that he could tell because blue faced blue and green faced green, and that blue had to face green when you lay the connector side by side, and blue had to face blue when you laid them contact to contact.. I explained that this is why you ALWAYS take a new cable, because as luck would have it he managed to pick up a crossover cable out of a big box of cables. I had to explain transmit and receive and all of that, how using the crossover cable would result in transmit in the cable being connected to transmit on the wall jack and that it had to connect to receive. I frankly don't know how he could have been hired as an IT guy and not know the basics of how to wire CAT5 cables. But he never made that mistake again, so...


I smashed the hell out of my car today. When the cops came I told him "Officer, that guy was BOTH texting and drinking a beer." The cop said "Sir, he has every right to do that. I mean, it's HIS living room..."