The Garden of the Blind

In the building where I work, there are three 4 port KVM switches. There are also three KVM cables. Since none were in use, I adopted one switch and two cables to connect a second computer at my desk to a keyboard and monitor, but that still left two switches and one cable.

I reflected on this and felt that it was the height of bureaucratic efficiency. Of what possible use can a KVM switch with a single cable be?

Then today someone asked me if we had a VGA extension cable. I have seen one of these, but only one, and I own it. I knew of a male to male cable, but that wouldn’t work. Then I remembered the KVM. If we plug the ridiculously short VGA cable in the conference room into the KVM, and plug the KVM cable into a visiting laptop, the KVM becomes a glorified female-female gender converter, and the whole system, while stupid, works.

This still leaves us with an unopened and unused 4 port KVM switch. I guess it will be good for generating blank stares when I tell people about it.