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

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

We have twelve? for three adults. Plus three PDAs or equivalent. But four are mine, six are Indy's, and two are T.'s from work. All of mine work, and both of T.'s, but Indy has 3-4 working and definitely two broken. Sysadmins skew the numbers, it's not really fair.

Does that make you feel better, or not at all?

[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.

[anonuum.livejournal.com]

As for non-geeks, what part of the combo that makes up a PC would be called a non-working computer? (as far as I know there are no non working monitors around and probably no more than one outer shell, but it is possible to assemble couple of working ones other wise from the available parts).

The working computers - those we have 9 of (I had at first forgotten the one that just runs the network server).

The cats, though, have to be without (interestingly enough, they never sleep on the one that runs Mac - I wonder why, as the monitor does not look different from the Windows running ones that do not have flat monitors ...)

[profrobert.livejournal.com]

I have three (unless you want to count my Motorola Q, too), though I usually keep one in my midtown office. But what's truly fun is that one of them is my 1985 Mac Plus, which still runs. I just had an adventure with it, but I'll post it over in my journal with pics when I come up for air and the story gets resolved (so far the Genius Bar geeks at the Apple Store haven't succeeded in accessing my files of my same-vintage 3 1/4" floppies, but they haven't given up yet).