I've got your glory days. I worked for a smaller telco in the mid to late 90s. We in IT were treated like the wizards, the gurus, the kings of the company. Not only did every manager on staff know they wanted to keep us happy, they knew why. Keep your IT guys happy or your computer might stop running. When it stops running, you'll be on the bottom of our fixit list. These were the days of the TCP/IP code error so we could simply BSOD anyone that made us mad. Now we weren't jerks about it, and we demanded nothing, but for those managers that treated us bad we simply returned the favor. The joke around the office was that us "IT guys" could smell food on any floor of the building. The truth was, their manager always told us if and when they were bringing in food. Now I work for a large retail chain and IT is so isolated that we're often not invited to whole facility meetings.

If this is true then shouldn't new movies come with a date stamp on the case so you know you're buying a "fresh" copy? Sounds strange to me. I've got data and music CD's I made over 10 years ago that still work. Can't say I've been burning DVDs that long though.

How long is the run? Why is the ISPs box NOT in your server room? Isn't there a current Cat 5 or better cable run from that ISP to your server room? (sorry if any of these were already answered, I didn't see them) As stated above, YES you can make a good quality Cat5e or even Cat6 cable. A cheap tester is ok, but you won't know if any cable you've "made" is actaully good unless you've got an EXPENSIVE tester like a fluke.