Packet Rat: Quel odeur! The Rat smells, well, a rat
'First we ate 'freedom fries,' ' the Rat growled. 'Now we've got congressional heartburn.'
Packet Rat: The cyberrodent gets keel-hauled
'That was almost as much fun as a visit from the inspector general,' the Rat grumbled as he arrived home after a night chasing down router problems at his agency. All sweaty and crusty from creeping through wiring closets, he had only time enough to caffeineate and shower before returning to the command bunker. Dawn's early light made him squint as he entered the burrow door.
Packet Rat: Homeland Security is short one red sweater
A great weight lifted off the Rat's shoulders when the ratlings returned to an almost normal school schedule. The blizzard of 2003 was melting with only a moderate flood in the lower reaches of the family digs.
Packet Rat: All orange, all the time
'Well, at least we can use all this plastic and duct tape Tom Ridge told us to buy,' grumbled the Rat as he covered another window to keep out the snow instead of the anticipated cloud of anthrax spores.
Packet Rat: The Rat ponders the extinction of species
'What's that, Dad?' asked one of the ratlings as the family scurried through the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History one recent weekend.
Packet Rat: The Rat's caffeine jag gives boss a jolt
Microsoft Corp.'s recent announcement that it will let government officials peek inside its Windows source code'if they come to Redmond, Wash., to scrutinize the last 3 percent'curled the furry one's whiskers.
Packet Rat: The Rat emotes about e-votes
The Rat usually votes by absentee ballot. It causes less uproar than a six-foot anthropomorphic rodent trying to enter the polls.
Packet Rat: Internet security needs a kick in the ICANN
Last month's concerted attack on the Domain Name System root servers elevated the Rat's paranoia to new heights. It also raised his hackles.
Rat has advice for AOL's big cheese
America Online Inc. was the Rat's hometown hero at one point, but lately he has been unable to muster much sympathy for the former
Packet Rat: California meets the dark side of the Force
Oracle Corp., through reseller Northrop Grumman Information Technology, sold the state $95 million worth of database software, seemingly more than the state could possibly need.
Packet Rat: Rat watches the Domino fall
The Rat has often had to bridge various IT vendors' credibility gaps, but never has a gap gaped so wide as IBM Corp.'s over the future of Lotus Domino and Notes software.
Packet Rat: Chairman Bill takes a seat
No, it wasn't an orchestra seat for 'The Producers,' and it sure wasn't a ticket to a Washington Wizards game. The hot show on the Rat's agenda last month was in U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's courtroom, where Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates had a reserved seat.
PACKET RAT
Last month the Rat glimpsed an article in which Air Force CIO John Gilligan complained about the security problems of Microsoft Windows. 'We're not leaving Microsoft in a week or six months,' he told InformationWeek, but he did suggest that dumping Microsoft Corp. products was an option.
Packet Rat: Plague of inefficiencies doesn't infect the Rat
The wired one was way overdue for a performance review'thanks to the inexplicable attrition rate of his managers'when his boss finally invited him to lunch at the Old Post Office.
Packet Rat: Network alert -- BOOM!
The Rat recently stumbled onto the next revolution in desktop computing by accident. He has seen the future, and it runs on Linux'or, rather, Final Fantasy X.
Packet Rat: Rat reforms the Olympics, tale first
The Rat sat spellbound by recent events in Salt Lake City. He hadn't seen anything of the magnitude of the Winter Olympics come out of that town since Ray Noorda's last hurrah at Novell BrainShare years ago. 'And I don't recall Ray doing a 'dinner roll' during the attendee ski, either,' he reflected.
Packet Rat: The smart money goes to bed
The recent rash of financial improprieties has renewed the Rat's interest in his favorite investment vehicle: the mattress fund. With billions in shareholder value disappearing faster than you can say, 'What surplus?' the paranoid rodent prefers to keep his assets where he can sit on them.
PACKET RAT
Idiotproofing has taken on a whole new meaning in the Rat household now that the whiskered one's youngest progeny, a month shy of her first birthday, has started walking.
PACKET RAT
The Rat has a new monkey on his back: a computer gadget that has unexpectedly turned into a time-sucking habit. It all started with Mrs. Rat's Christmas gift of a color Handspring Visor Prism handheld PC to replace the FrankenPalm he had been lugging around for months.
The Middle Ages had thumbscrews, the 20th century has OS/2
Rumors of the Rat's demise are greatly exaggerated. He hastens to explain that last month's West Coast Internet outage, blamed on a "fried" rat in some electrical generating equipment, in fact was caused by an unfortunate cousin who mistook a power grid for a T1. The Whiskered One is feeling fried these days for other reasons.
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