On “Ask Slashdot” a reader asks about the possibility of traffic shaping to control his roommate’s Bit-Torrent hogging.

Of course, the Slashdotters were more than helpful – recommending that instead of traffic shaping, he simply set up a QoS policy on his consumer-grade router – and if his router didn’t currently support it, that he use replace the router firmware with something like Tomato, OpenWRT, or IPCop.

Others, seeking the “Russian Pencil” solution as opposed to the “NASA Space Pen” solution recommended that the roommate get a good talking to – and be persuaded, perhaps, to run the torrents during off-peak hours.

However, there are other solutions to this problem, and I’ve spent most of the morning thinking of them. (I love my job.)

Solution 1: Defeat the Matrix.

Step 1: Drink Tequila.
Step 2: Play Crystal Method at high volume.
Step 3: Rip the router out from the wall. Congratulations, you have defeated the Matrix. Declare this fact loudly.
Step 4: Dodge in slow-motion any objects that your roommate may throw at you.

Solution 2: Drown Him in Kittens

Step 1: Bailey’s Irish Crème
Step 2: Play Loituma at high volume
Step 3: Split the network and redirect all of his HTTP traffic to “Kittenwar.com”
Step 4: Hide the ammunition to your roommate’s shotgun. Oh, wait. That really should have been Step 2…

Solution 3: A Trip to Texas

Step 1: Drink half a bottle of Crown Royal. This will help you to see the Chupacabra in Step 3.
Step 2: Take the train to a border town in Texas. Listen to ZZ Top on your iPod.
Step 3: Capture a Chupacabra, using the other half of the Crown Royal as bait, and the bag to transport the Chupacabra. (See Fig. 1)
Step 4: Tell your roommate you will release the Chupacabra into his room if he doesn’t stop the bandwidth hogging.

Solution 4: It Makes Real Cupcakes

Step 1: Get a Sasquatch blind drunk on Hennessey.
Step 2: Watch Harry and the Hendersons
Step 3: Replace roommate’s computer with EZ Bake Oven.
Step 4: Replace roommate with Sasquatch.