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

[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 ...)

[nonelvis]

Well, like I said, the PowerBook has a dead circuit board; its individual components are still functional, but it will never run again unless I drop $1,200 on a new logic board, which is not going to happen.

In the case of the WinMe machine, the logic board is still fine, but the C drive finally failed, and many of the inner components of the system are close to being worn out.

I cannot explain your cats' mysterious preference for a Windows monitor over a Mac one. Perhaps they are trying to subtly shift you over to the Mac by shedding in the Windows monitor to kill it?

[anonuum.livejournal.com]

This one asks for a LOLcat poster, I guess: "Just shedding in your Windows monitors here!"

(I do not have suitable images at hand, since I have discarded the illustrations to the long ago "6 ways to sleep on a monitor" entries, the only one remotely suitable can only be titled as "Thanks for preferring the Windows monitor!" At least the cat looks suitable tired from the hard shedding work - understandable, as unlike Lynx Panther does not have thick underfur)

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/50797989@N00/271438602/)

[nonelvis]

IM ON UR MONITOR
SHEDDIN IN UR WINDOZE