Life Among the Geeks

[nonelvis]

columbina is assembling his new computer this evening, so I did a quick census of all the various working and non-working computers in this home. Officially, there are two computers for every man, woman, and cat in this household, and only two of us are equipped with the opposable thumbs necessary to use the machines.

All but two of the computers (an aluminum PowerBook with a fried logic board, and columbina's freshly dead Win98 WinMe machine) are still functional. If you count the various PDAs in the house, we have three more "computers," all of which are also still functional -- a Palm V, some newer Palm thingy, and the Newton 2100 MessagePad you will pry from my cold, dead hands. (I don't use it anymore, but neither am I willing to let it go. It has sentimental value.)

For those of you who may have lost count, that's eight computers, plus three computer-like objects, for two humans.

I don't even want to get into what the boxes full of cables look like, but at least I think I finally dumped the AppleTalk boxes a couple of years ago.

Comments

[platypus]

We haven't gotten too extreme, really. I recycled two computers a few years ago, and Ken still has his last one in the garage. He buys things so rarely that that covers him for the last decade. And, er, we might have one borrowed from UCSD in the garage, too, because the person who loaned it to us then left the university and we sort of don't know how to give it back now. And of course there's a Mac Plus, Classic and PowerMac in my parents' basement.

But don't get me started on the cable box. We have cables with connectors that haven't been used since the Dark Ages.

[nonelvis]

Col and I did a big cleanout of the cable box a couple years ago, which is why I'm pretty sure the AppleTalk connectors are gone. There are undoubtedly still SCSI cables in there, though, and I think we only have one computer left with a SCSI interface, and no SCSI peripherals.

But it might be useful someday! I swear!