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michael
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An anonymous reader writes "On the german Thinknerd-website i found some funny pictures from rooms where geeks and nerds are at home (hardware, hardware, hardware). Check out the pictures and tell us how your room looks like. :-)"
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why is there this stereotype that a 'geek room' has to be messy and fully of crap?
what about the 'neat geek' ?
i spend endless time at this desk tinkering and working on the computer. i use a soldering-iron, i've etched my own circuit boards, disassembled computers and CRTs (replacing analogue boards on a Mac+), and soldered together with resin-core solder and built a theramin, written code, built web-sites, ripped tunes, made mixes, read slashdot faithfully, spent endless hours downloading, archiving, and organising data; and in every manner possible, have tried to fully integrate technology in a fully artistic way into my living - there is not a single component that hasn't had thought put into it -- all here:
the apparent simplicity and cleanliness of this space belies the inordinate amount of work that goes into making a well-used geek-room so spare and uncluttered. there's several hundred CD's, a firewire hard drive, burner, audio-amplifiers, with USB hubs and surge-protected powerbar hidden behind the desk (with cables bound together with elastics). there's a high-power HeNe Laser power supply, coils of wire, soldering iron, toolkit, VOM and DMM, a scanner, boxes of data CDs and ZIP disks. the hard drive and burner are neatly stacked in the left and right flanking drawers under the desk. and to either side are a pair of loudspeakers for audio work and listening to MP3s. when i undertake to dissassemble a machine, and get the parts all spread over the desk - the whole METHOD of doing so is well thought-out, and done with care, so that even in the procedure, everything is done neatly.
so once again, just because its messy, doesn't make it geek.
there are neat geeks too, which are just as devoted to technology, and do just as much tinkering as any of you.
Side note, and definately OT... we currently have 3 cats in the house. Two are a few years old, but this year we adopted a kitten... and my girlfriend taught the damn cat how to fetch. I'm doing this as I type... with pipe-cleaners. Toss the pipe cleaner (I wrap it into a helix around my finger so I can get more distance) and the cat runs, graps it, and immediately comes back. A fetching cat. I'd be curious to see if anyone else has a cat that will fetch?
Yep - I have one - he discovered this scourer thingy, and liked to throw that up in the air an chase it, and I discovered that I could throw it to him, he would run, jump, catch, throw, jump, catch, run, drop at my feet. And then whinge if I didn't repeat.
Back almost not off-topic, recently he discovered a toy koala that grips onto pencils, in my electronics room, and picked it up and played with it. I took it off him and put it back on the pencil, because I don't want it covered in cat slobber, so he went back to the pencil to pick it up again. Then I hid it in a jar, and he put his paws down the jar, and picked it out. Very skilled. So I hid it elsewhere, etc, etc, etc. Darn cat. Steals all my wire too. I lost some batteries, pens, and most annoyingly, a peice of plastic off a monitor I was fixing, then discovered him pawing under the fridge, so I looked under the fridge and found his stash. All, except for one button-battery! Probably ate the darn thing - he did stop eating for a week at one stage.....
Many in this community are dog people, but is it my imagination that a higher percentage of geeks are cat people? It's either a startling coincidence or my life represents a real Nielsen-style rating as to the percentage of computer volken who like the furry little beasts...
This observation began for me when once I lived in an apartment complex with an exclusive population of nerds. It was the mid 90s at that time. Before I got there it was just a couple of Mac II-Ci's with phone-net (!!!) flowing out of the windows. I'm pretty sure we had the first network in the little beach-town of Seaside Park, NJ. [seasideparknj.com]
Eventually, there were 7 units each with Ethernet dangling from window-sill to window-sill. And only 500 feet from the beach! With a tremendous view of the Ocean from a kickin' deck upon which we would regularly grill mahi-mahi and the like whilst imbibing on food-breaks from endless network gaming and hacken (and more imbibing). It was bloody Nirvana!...but I digress.
All were tiny little cracker box apartments (we were beginning our tech careers at that point) that at the peak of geek occupancy housed a motley collection of Macintoshen, NT boxen, 1 NeXT machine (mine, a slab serving a 400dpi laser printer and also playing the part of a shuh-WEETNIS server), a couple of Linux box0rz and an Amiga 2000. PowerBooks galore. All nic'd and sharing the the love.
Nearly every apartment was populated with at least one cat, and in one case at least a bloody-stinkin' (emphasis on the "stinkin'" pheeeyew!) cat colony! I, resident mac-geek with a love of code and 3-d, had two...Lumpy and Jake. Neighbor James, who was an NT tech with a penchant for work-related travels to Kazakhstan [cia.gov] on occasion, had two as well...Simba (a 22 pound orange basketball with legs and a tail) and Mim (tiny little fucker, even as a full-grown feline).
My friend Ian had a cat named Mr. Beau... Mr. Beau's special talent was vomiting on technology. Yup. If the thing flipped bits in some manner, and it was in Ian's apartment, that shit was getting vomited on. No negotiations. Also, beer was likely to have been spilled on said equipment at some point, but that I believe was (mostly)the fault of the humans about the place.
My friend Mark who also lived there was a 300lb pro wrestler who could lift full grown men over his head in addition to his impressive geek abilities. Adding to those formidable(and imposing)wrestling talents was a steady gig as Mac/NT/Network tech. The guy was also a 3-d rendering guru who made valuable additions to the old Ambrosia [ambrosiasw.com] game Escape Velocity [ambrosiasw.com]. He and his (then pre-) wife housed the afore mentioned (sHt1nKeN!) colony of kitties who (despite their numbers...and lovely odor!) managed to not vomit on the tech nearly so often. All the other guys had cats too. Not nearly as smelly.
Since those days, I've worked with a fair number of techs and the sampling of overlap between the cat-ownership and tech communities seemed to grow larger with the more tech-geeks I've met as time passed.
If I might posit a guess, I'd say it had something to do with the independant nature of both beasties. Here I speak of techie cr3tins (myself included) the race of kitt33z. Both seem to have a strongly independant sense of self. The solitary nature of bit-dribbling andromorphs is evinced most strongly by the the noticeable high percentage of said who also play musical instruments. When you think about it, in order to develop ability in either (music or tech), you have to spend a lot of time with yourself thinking, playing, experimenting. Cats, while not much on the thinking or tip seem to be quite competent at being on their own. Far more than dogs anyway in that respect...
If you still have any of those thinkpads, drop me an email. I'm not too concerned about price, I just need a 233 or something. I'm in buffalo, and can probably give you a decent deal on it. If you have anything faster, tell me.
That's nothing. Honestly. My dad's been an amature radio operator for about 60 years and his entire basement is loaded with O-scopes, radio receivers, parts of analog computers, early digital computers, and manuals. Shelves and shelves of manuals. At least 4 workbenches and more boxes of electronic parts than you could shake a Weller soldering gun at.
I just attended the Findlay, OH hamfest for the 30th time (only coming away with a few odd bits and a working Elsa Gloria XL and a non-winmodem 56k) I think we financed Heath for a few years, as he's got several nice powersupplies, etc. and... we had one of the first microwave ovens in town, he put it together as a Heathkit.:-)
Our basement and first floor of our building was and probably still is about a million times more crowded. We have WALLS of hard drives, WALLS of power supplies, stack after stack after stack of old motherboards and cases. Don't even get me started on keyboard and mice!
That's not to say there wasn't at least some organization -- there was, but it was always a little humbling to go down into a basement where the weight present in IDE cables alone exceeded your own weight.
Not too bad. BTW, I noticed in your one shot (the big ass Dell box full of laptops on the shelf) that you seem to have a 1xx-series PowerBook. If it boots, you'll probably be able to get a few bucks for that on eBay as a collector's item.
...Christ, I thought I was bad with 6PCs and 2 laptops! Thanks for this - I can show these pictures to girlfriends and family members when they question my sanity from now on;-)
One of my computer science professors, whom I will not name, had a collection much similar to that in his shed -- it was something like 30 lousy computers with monitors, all from the 386/486 era, that he had absolutely no use for and just had to have.
Then, on a stormy night, the ungrounded shed was hit by lightning, and it caught fire. While he was asleep, the computers began melting under the heat and released some very toxic gas -- which blew through the neighborhood, and killed the professor's dog along with a few other animals, and made a few residents hospital-bound.
Because of it, he was sued for quite a hefty bit, though he avoided jail -- so rethink stockpiling all those useless computers for itself, and give them away to charity.
ahh, todays society. If your computer gets fried by lightning - you get sued. If your house gets fried, the insurance company say "It's an act of god".
Why must people sue at every possible thing? It ends up with everyone suing everyone, and the only winners are lawyers.
Hang on, my S.O. is a lawyer - well will be in august. Forget that, sue everyone!
Was he successfully sued? That is, he lost? He should have promptly sued the manufacturers of the computers for compensation and the victims probably should have done the same, as it was the negligence of the manufacturers to use such dangerous products without informing the customer (can you imagine new computers with a big yellow warning label like new cars with airbag labels?).
Of course, that's what I'd do if I was a lawyer. I'm shaking my head at the whole thing -- lawsuits are getting to be too much these days.
third sunday of every non-winter month at Albany street.
your post says you're in franklin, so get another uhaul and don't drop so many this time! tons of people in your position have offloaded all their shit (working and not) there. only costs $17 (plus $12 for each additional space, you'll probably need ~3 spaces). you set up at 7:15-9am and buyers swarm in at 9am (most sales are done in that hour, the good stuff goes in the first ten minutes). most sellers leave before noon, but (i think) it lasts till about 1:30.
there's lots of cool stuff there, all related to computers, wireless/radio, or 'cool gadgets.' stuff i've bought there include: door sensor, computer remote control, TONS of cables and connectors, cdrs, ropelights, my palm pilot, floppy drives, led's, movies, and tons of stuff the i have forgotten about. it's all dirt cheap too... floppy drives ~$2, rj45 eth cord ~$1, and so on. there are tales of "the one buck guy"... a friend of mine bought two complete computers (120mhz and 90mhz) for two bucks, but he only made one appearance at the flea and was sold out by the time i arrived at 9:30am.
one seller once told me "swapfest! get yesterday's technology today!"... don't go there looking for something released in the past few months. can't find edo ram, pentium pros, a complete (~200MHZ) computer for under $100, or some strange connector? this is the place for you!
Not sure if you are a troll, but, notice that he mentions his involvement in Team Vodka Martini [nd.edu] These guys were mentioned on/. a while back (I don't feel like looking for the article). Although he says none of the computers pictured are used in the contest, someone named Jerkychew clearly has a lot of computers at his disposal. I doubt this is a hoax.
I will not be posting any new pictures of my geek pad, as it is currently ablaze in a three alarm fire after my website was slashdotted the AMD without heatsink that I was running spontaneously combusted.
They should really release those things with a Slashdot warning. -_^
Well, what can I say... I guess I am the steriotypical nerd. The side of computer case is perpetually unscrewed and leaning against the tower. I have a really big bookcase for all my DVDs, sci-fi books and CDs. Got a log box 'o parts for when I need to make a connection or repair somewhere. I have papers for various projects and ideas spewn about everywhere. That's about it. I would have more, but this is just the stuff I took with me to college. The rest is filling another room at home.:)
Just a few weeks ago I just moved all of my non-desktop/notebook PC equipment out of my room and into the hallway. Before the move, my room was well, very loud -- about equal to a small car engine actually, and very hot -- 15 degrees hotter then the rest of the house.
Since the move, I can hear myself think, and the whole level of the house is comfortably heated thanks to my server "farm" in the hall.
I consider it a interior decorating success story of the geeky kind!
I live in Whistler, BC, Canada (Home of the namesakes Whistler/Blackcomb/Longhorn) and it gets DAMN cold, but my heater in my room is constantly off and my equipment heats it to above room temperature throughout the year. In the summer I even have to keep my window cranked open (2 1/2' x 3') I think I'm turning deaf because of the noise, but I only seem to use my hearing for answering phones, and I don't even like doing that.
p133 - Slackware 8.0 - adsl router/dhcpd/irc server (irc. l uddite s. ca) pII 450 - Win2kserver - mp3 server celery 1.2 Slack 8.1 - Desktop #1 celery 1.2 Win2kpro - Desktop #2 (yes, I have two of these, no dual-boot) p74 - slack 8.1 - ISDN gateway & print server pIII 750 - slack8.0 (& bleeding kernel) - Laptop (& wlan finder)
I can't hear a damn thing. My room's right next to the kitchen and I have 5 non-geek roomates. They're allways walking past my room and hearing a "hhhHHHHUUUUUUUUUMMMMMmmmm" coming from inside the door, but to tell you the truth, I don't really notice it any more./rant
this is an act(s) (orgy?) of geek masturbation.. as there is nothing they like more then stroking their own egos.. especially in a collective such as this one =)
dislcaimer: the preceding is the expression of opinion based on observations as a life long member.
Supposedly I'm partway there - but after putting a pic [danamania.com] online - I'm told my room is just too tidy, and I have to redo Geek101: Coke cans and sticky notes.
Don't feel too bad. I was mocked for drinking diet soda. I kept getting the maxim quote, "Diet Pepsi doesn't make you gay, it just makes you look gay!" at least as a girl you can drink diet soda, it's ok if you've got tits, but if you're diabetic, you still look like a fag!
Nnnnnnice cabling! You are truly a master of the art, props to you.
BTW, good thing your dog seems to rather largish: small pets and 10" AC case fans don't mix well. Actually they do mix, but in a rather unexpected and unpleasant (for the pet) way.:-(
What we need are pictures of non-geek rooms so we can get some inspiration on how to decorate our place in the hopes that the next time a female comes over, they don't run in terror from the sheer volume of Star Wars memorabilia.
There are females out there whose rooms look nearly so bad. Until recently, my bedroom was done in bright red with Mario border--the relic of my younger brother's childhood, I swear to god--and LotR posters. And usually a lot of soda cans, the assorted wires that go with my laptop, etc. Plus I have another room with my currently nonfunctional desktop.
It's all in disarray because I'm remodeling, but... geek rooms are completely okay, in my book!
they don't run in terror from the sheer volume of Star Wars memorabilia.
I always wanted a Trek motif. Doors that slide open automatically when you walk near, a big-screen TV that turns on when I shout "Engage!", a captains chair, a young female Volcan communications officer in a short skirt. No, make that Klingon.
Then again, such tends to conflict with empty Domino pizza containers and Mtn. Dew cans.
ahem...that would be "on screen", not "Engage", please do not confuse the two. However, having a vibrating bed respond to "Warp speed X, Engage!" would just be too damn cool. And by cool I mean not cool at all, but nerdy, but nerdy in a good way.
Want to see a Star Trek motif? Try and arrange a tour of Ensemble Studios in Dallas, Texas. (Ensemble Studios are the developers of the Age of Empires series and Age of Mythology.) I hear one of the presidents is a huge Trekkie, and that's why the both of the floors for the offices are decorated and designed Star Trek-style. Not just decorated and lit but the entire office spaces were built to those specifications. I mean, they even have a Holodeck! (which, sadly, wasn't fully functional when I visited.)
Seriously though, totally awesome place, incredible offices. They even have their own futuristic elevator and all this awesome mood lighting in these super-cool futuristic little light fixtures. Great big arches, huge circular swooping desks, TV walls, etc. Walking in the first time felt like I stepped onto a spaceship. Totally outstanding atmosphere.
I don't really know how to get in other than either knowing someone there (which I did) or going on a tour of there with the Art Institute of Dallas as a prospective student (which I did again three days later). Awesome bunch of people, great offices, great games, worth checking out if you can.:)
... then I got married. It was an efficiency apartment, and all available horizontal areas were covered either with clothes (the floor and dresser), dishes (the kitchen), or breadboards, chips, and discrete components. My last project was a little quickie 555 circuit. I hooked it up to a counter and some LED's to make a simple bounce back-and-forth effect.
My new wife wanted me to make something blinky that would go around a license plate frame. I started getting nervous... that would be a Real World design! Then, we needed the table for dinner (what was wrong with sitting on the bed, I wondered?). And within a couple of weeks, I realized that having more than one room is a Good Thing... when we moved to a one-bedroom apartment, the Geek Room was no more.
But there's hope for the next generation... my 12-year-old daughter just wrote her first Visual Basic program today. You click the button and a MsgBox pops up that says "THIS IS BORING".
I was just wondering but why "THIS IS BORING"? Did you ask her to write the program in Visual Basic, or did she actually want to? If you ask her to make stuff in Visual Basic because you'd like a daughter that is a programmer, then she's not going to get very good, she's just going to get very bored with it and give up. I really hope she decided to try programming on her own (although Visual Basic isn't a good thing to start with.)
It doesn't look too bad... but the two main computers make it sound like a freakin airport in here. I wish I had a digital camera to take a pic. I'll try to summarize though.
Two desks. The main one has my tower sitting next to it with a 19" monitor on top. On top of the monitor is my Ximian monkey.. next to the monitor on either side are speakers. A sub sits under the desk. Phone, printer and a pair of lamps also take up space on the desk.. oh, keyboard, optical mouse and calculator as well as too many papers and other shit are on the desk. Next to this desk is another desk with pretty much the same setup. That tower is black, mine is blue. Next to that desk (that's my lady's desk) is a third desk that has been converted into a bookshelf. Bunch of programming/tech books sit on that. Then the rest of the room is occupied by various parts that I haven't found a use for yet. Several zip drives, cd-rom drives, a couple of dvd drives, sound cards, modems, God knows what else... yea maybe I should clean up this dump.
This is depressing... I think I show go get some food and quit thinking about what a freakin pig pen my office is.
You have to speak up to be heard over the blower noise.
there are burn marks on the walls from electrical fires.
When people ask about heating in the winter, I just laugh.
six printers
two cisco switches
four routers
six servers
two racks
11 monitors
three workstations
two kvm switches
toeknring
and all the cables to with them
30 amps and not one mA available
carpet? I have a carpet?
girlfriend? no such luck:P
Just a friendly word or two. Now imagine for a moment that room, cleaned up, only a desktop or two, and a single monitor. No networking hardware, no rackmount shit, no cables strewn all over the floor. And imagine that you bring your domicile up to the relevant fire codes, and repaint the burned walls, and put in some carpeting, or at least an area rug. Now imagine that you shower and shave (I know, it's tough going, but just bear with me here), and maybe even go to the gym a few times a week.
Now imagine a gorgeous woman having sex with you every night in your new, socially acceptable domicile. See what I'm talking about? That could be you. Just something to think about.
I know living in a geek-o-rama pigsty is cool and everything when you wanna have a Counter-Strike LAN party on your bare concrete floor, but you can be a geek and still have hygiene and a relatively normal residence, and those girlfriends will start banging down on your door. Then you won't need the 11 monitors and surround-sound pr0n.
When people ask about heating in the winter, I just laugh.
I have to laugh at this one because I have the same situation (luxery?). With 11 computers in my extra "server" room and a nice PC with two monitors in my own bedroom, it's always nice and toasty.
I'm just glad to know I'm not the only one with a server farm in their house. And you know what, despite what everyone may say about being a geek or having a life, I love it!:)
A room full of computers and related stuff is a lot of fun... for a while. I got tired of the clutter, the boxes of CDs, the old disk drives, tape drives, power supplies, all the crap lying around all the time. All the junk just got in the way. But above and beyond all that, I got tired of my room looking like a geek's room - I wanted something a little bit more... tasteful.
(When did I get a sense of "taste"? I don't know it just happened to me - I didn't mean for it to... honest.)
So last year, when we bought a new house, I claimed the large upstairs bedroom and turned it into my study/library/computer room. I put up shelves to neatly store all my books - not just the computer manuals, but also the sci-fi novels, the old textbooks, the old albums, the artsy-fartsy books, the Edward Gorey books, and all the other books in my "collection".
I put a black leather couch by the windows, with a nice wood-and-glass coffee table set in front. I bought a bunch of Ikea bookshelf modules with internal lighting, some glass doors, some opaque doors, and built a wall of cubbies to hold the stuff I need near me. I set out a bunch of knick-knacks, plants, vases, even a couple of antique radios. I painted the walls a warm brown color. I bought and set out a couple of nice lamps. I even bought an on-stage stand for my Ibanez six-string.
Best of all: the room has a big walk-in closet. In there I put the nasty old bookshelves that used to sit out in the room. On them are all the computer manuals, the archive CDs, the stuff I don't need on a daily basis. On the other shelves are all the office supplies: printer paper, spare ink cartridges, backup tapes, and all that kind of stuff. In there I keep the crappy old stuff I don't use any more, but can't bring myself to throw away: old video cards, old disk drives, old cables, wires, etc., etc. The closet contains the ancient 233-MHz pentium system that serves as my Internet gateway. It also has the two filing cabinets that keep all the family papers. In short: all the ugly stuff is hidden away in the closet.
I still have some computer stuff in the room, but it's just what I need and as neatly arranged as I can get it. The full tower PC sits pretty much hidden behind the antique library table that serves as my desk. My trusty old HP 5L printer sits by it on the Ikea modules. On the desk are just the monitor, mouse, keyboard, and telephone. I have enough room to open up a couple of books without having to move a bunch of computer crap out of the way.
The clutter and crap that I do need on a daily basis is hidden behind the opaque doors of the Ikea modules, so I can close the doors and hide it most of the time. I have to make an effort not to let the Dr Pepper cans stack up, but aside from that it's pretty easy to keep my room neat and clutter-free. I know this is the opposite of the geek ideal, but I like it much better than piles of computer crap and clutter. My study is a pleasant, even peaceful, place to sit and hack, watch TV, listen to music, strum the guitar, or just sit and read. Highly recommended, if you've got the room for it.
Don't worry Jim. From what you write down, taste is the last thing that could be associated with you. Honest.:) I mean, black leath couch with glass table? Is there anything else that shouts more 'a geek lives here and BTW he happens to have some money...' Don't worry, you are still geek, just older:)
Real geeks don't brag about how much of a mess their Geek Room is --
Real Men Have Racks(tm).
I got tired having 10 PCs lying around on the floor. For real MIPS per square foot, you need a rack. I now have 4 dual P3 servers, 2 Cobalt servers, 2 480Gb NAS servers, and another 720Gb of RAID drives (along with the obligatory UPS, network routers/switches, KVM switch, etc) in 6 sq. ft. of floor space in a closet.
It's in me to be this kind of packrat. It runs in the family. But I've fought it like no other. Life ruled by your stuff is no way to live. You have to think about it, store it, fix it, trip over it... etc. MINIMIZE!
Computing is pretty central to my life, so it's reasonable that it's front and center in my space. BUT, it doesn't overwhelm everything else in life, so it doesn't overwhelm my space.
I had the 10 monitors, 20 cases, 286 in the corner life. Eventually, I said "WHY??". Couldn't quite throw it out, but I stuck the approx 100 kilos of crap in the basement of my office building with a note saying "FREE. TAKE.".
Down to one desktop PC (dual-boots) and a BSD nat and filestorehouse server. That's it. Not keeping and buying crud means I can have good components. I don't need 5 keyboards "just in case". I have a Kinesis, and it's bulletproof. I don't have a parallel printer. Don't think I'll ever have another. Well then, I don't need to keep parallel cables, do I?
I think a lot of people, geeks and non geeks, could learn a lot from backpacking or bicycle touring. 25 pounds of stuff is usually enough. Really. Buy less junk, live smaller, and be happier, guaranteed!
Dude, you aren't a packrat. You can justify everything you keep (ie/ "I am rough on keyboards so I keep extras around" or "I have a couple of DECstations cuz their k3wl") but you don't just horde pc junk. I think what you said agrees w/ parent post.
Personally, whenever I get a new PC, I throw out an old one, so I only have 3 at a time (incidently only running one right now). I don't need anymore than that, so I don't keep em. And as for spare parts, I just have a plastic tub filled with em - if the tub fills up, I go through it and throw out the stuff I don't need.
My geek room is... well... I guess I'll start from the door and go counterclockwise...
Two cardboard boxes full of stuff that my wife and I haven't looked at since we moved here. (Yeah, I got a geek wife... geophysics major, woohoo!)
Next, a SparcStation 10 with external 4-drive SCSI box and a 20" monitor.
A CD rack with an assortment of blanks, burns, and originals, no music here.
A Calcomp digitizer pad.
This spot is the first corner we come to...
My computer desk, which currently has my homebuild K6-III/450 system (which runs great, thank you) and a 17" monitor. External modem, zip drive, and tons of cables, running Linux.
A bookshelf with some cardboard boxes in front of them. These are piled with things like floppy drives and I think there's a Macintosh in there somewhere...
In the next corner is an old coffee table with some actual living plants on it, and two windows that you can see out of. Underneath is a UPS, a power strip, several ethernet cables and a couple pairs of military boots that I haven't used since I was in the Army.
Next in line is a wooden cabinet with a Cisco ethernet switch and an HP DeskJet on top. The DeskJet is plugged into the network via a Lantronix print server.
Then comes my wife's K6-II/350 system running Win98SE, on a desk. To the left is a flatbed scanner.
Next is a bookshelf with technical manuals and a shelf full of SCSI cases.
The next wall contains a closet that is inaccessabled, but is full of things ranging from spare circuit boards to rifles.
The closet is inaccessable due to a pile of stuff that I need to get rid of before my wife complains too much, but consists of
+ Several Apple IIgs's + More apple stuff + Tons of 5 1/4 inch floppies + All kinds of crap...
I stand in awe of all the uber-nerds on this board. I'm nowhere comparable to some of the people on this board (I've only got 6 computers at home) but I'd just like to add my two bits. I seem to accumulate hardware in any available drawer. I have drawers full of Riva 128s, Voodoo 2's, SB 16's, cables, etc. I've got a Celeron 366 motherboard + cpu combo sitting in the chest of drawers behind me (right next to a blanket and a couple of table cloths) and I've got RAM in random nooks and corners around the room. I've only been in my dorm room for about two months now, and I've already got a PIII-850, a PIII-667, and two 10,000 RPM Cheetahs sitting in the drawer next to me.
I have an old 3-bedroom house, but with 200 amp electrical service. Which is good, because 1 bedroom is for my wife and I, one is for our baby, and the third is my geekroom. I used to put photos of it on my website, but they're really out-of-date. Guests to our house either get a fold-out sofa or go to a hotel nearby that a friend of ours manages - they get a real cheap rate. We used to have a guest room but that's where the baby lives now.
The geekroom has two desks, two bookcases (tech stuff only - other bookcases in the house handle "real" books), and a big old metal shelving unit that holds a 16-port switch, three UPS units, a monitor, my Epson Stylus Photo, my current server (a little FlexATX box running e-Smith), a monitor, and a second PC that runs Mandrake and usually sits open because I'm always swapping stuff in and out of it. There's also a third PC on the rack that I just got - a Mini-ITX box that I'm going to run my server on because it's even smaller and quieter than the existing server. They're all on a 4-port KVM switch.
Then on the first desk, next to the rack, I keep my PowerBook G4, along with all it's gadgets (Palm cradle, Griffin powerMate, CF/Smartmedia reader, Keyspan serial port, iPod). I've got a Newton 2100 on the desk, too - I'm turning it into a web server soon and when I do it goes on the rack. My HP laser is on a stand next to the desk.
The next desk over holds my P4 system - I run XP on it and use it for gaming. I built this one over the summer. Wedged between the two desks are about 200 CD's that contain either software or backups of some sort or another.
In the corner of the room is an Athlon 700 that's currently semi-disassembled (I had to grab a couple of parts out of it for the P4), but used to be my gaming rig. Finally, the geekroom has some space allocated for short-term comic book storage. My workbench is in the cellar, along with virtually all my tools and the bulk of my comics (I built a moisture-controlled storage closet down there).
Geeky, but non-tech items in the geekroom include all my photo gear and slides, a small collection of stuffed toys, a 30-year-old (but still working) shortwave receiver, and a bass guitar.
Currently out on loan to my office is my Athlon 650 that I run Solaris X86 on. I'm testing some stuff for work on it, and it was handy to grab. We also have two other computers in the house - my wife has an iMac widescreen that she keeps on a small desk in our bedroom, and I have a hacked iOpener that we keep in the basement. Also in the basement are the DSL modem and my router.
This sounds worse than it is, though - my one geekroom is a disaster, admittedly, but the rest of the house looks like Martha freaking Stewart had her way with it. It's a good arrangement. I don't interfere with the rest of the house, and I'm allowed my one room to do as I see fit.
Unless, of course, we have another child, in which case my butt is banished to the basement. Good thing we had it finished this past winter...
My bedroom: Beige Power Mac G3, upgraded to G4/400, with 17" and 14" CRT monitors. iBook 500MHz Home-built Duron 850 tower dual-booting XP Pro.and 98SE (shares keyboard, mouse and 17" monitor with the Mac via KVM). Apple LaserWriter Select 360. MicroTek ScanMaker IISP. Series 1 TiVo with 120GB HDD upgrade.
My server room: Two Power Mac 7600s, both with G3/400 upgrades-- one handles routing/firewall/mail/file/web/DNS/print, and the other runs the house via all those wonderful X10 modules and other things. They're named "Guardian" and "Colossus," respectively. Cobalt Qube2, hosting the site of my friend the aspiring model [tiffanyschmid.com] (you might have seen her on Blind Date the other night). NeXTStation Turbo with 17" black & white display. AirPort Base Station.
Also in the server room, all functional but not part of the LAN: Macintosh 128K. IBM PCjr. Macintosh Color Classic. TRS-80 Model 102 laptop. Newton Original MessagePad. Newton MessagePad 2000.
Basement: Power Mac G4/733/1.12GB RAM/40GB & 120GB HDD/SuperDrive (being prepped to replace the old G3 in my bedroom in January, when my bonus check buys the two huge LCDs to go with it). Power Mac 6360, being prepped to be the backup server for everything in the server room. Sony external SCSI AIT2 drive, to be hooked up to the backup server. Homebuilt Athlon 750, used to test various equipment. Two whiteboxes in slightly less than operational condition. Two PowerBook 170s (one for my collection, and one to sell as a collectible). PowerBook G3 Lombard, semi-operable, soon to be sold on eBay as a parts machine. PowerBook Duo 270c, for my collection. Two 'platinum' Commodore 64s with 1541 floppy drives & 1 1702 RGB monitor. Two 3Com Audreys destined to become the control panels for the web interface of my home-automation setup. Coleco ADAM. Vectrex + shitload of games. Sega Genesis + shitload of games. Sega Saturn + shitload of games. Atari 5200 + shitload of games. Atari 2600 + shitload of games. ColecoVision + shitload of games. NES + shitload of games. Panasonic 3DO + shitload of games. GE DVD/CD/MP3CD/VCD player with region-selection mod. Arkanoid II: Revenge of Doh coin-op. Zookeeper coin-op.
On loan to aspiring model friend until she can afford a computer: Netpliance i-Opener hacked to run Win98SE with an internal 20GB HD and cooling fan.
It's midnight on a Friday and you have a modded up post that has the words "aspiring model" in it.
I will send a priest over to give your server the last rites. And you can bring your "friend" over I'll let her cry on my shoulder about the death of her website.
I linked to my bedroom [vampy-alumni.org] before, but this is probably the best place for me to post the link again.
Harware in the bedroom: G4/933 hooked up to a 17" Studio Display, a 15" NEC LCD, and a 14" VGA CRT. Apple PowerBook Duo 2300c with DuoDock II. Headless at the moment. These two are hooked into a 5 port 100Base-T switch. The G4 is hooked (via another port) to a 100Base-T Internet connection. Also hooked up to the G4: CompactFlash drive, MemoryStick drive, Cambridge Soundworks speaker system, a Sony Clie T665c, a Canon S200 digital camera, and a Keyspan Digital Remote Control.
In the closet, I have an Apple//gs with monitor. At one time I had a UMAX S900/200DP hooked up as well [vampy-alumni.org] That is loaned out, as is a Macintosh Centris 610.
I am looking to add a Athlon-based PC to the mix (via KVM switch to the keyboard and the NEC monitor) to learn FreeBSD on. I am also looking at buying one of the new iBooks to replace the very aging PowerBook Duo.
:::tossing his pittance of geek cred out the window...:::
OK, here in the real (i.e., married with non-geek friends) world, we have to hide this stuff. We do this because:
There is a direct correlation between the visible amount of free-range Cat-5 wiring and the frequency of spousal sex.
It's ok to have stuff lying about when you're tinkering with it (and there's always one deconstructed boxen lying around), but the stuff that's up and running needs to be protected from dust, pets and people with large feet who trip over things.
I pay too much for my mortgage to have the house look like my old dorm room.:)
Here are the mantras in our house:
KVM is your friend. You saw some of these photos -- a one-to-one computer/monitor ratio is just silly unless you're herding iMacs.
Bitchin' furniture often equals bitchin' rack space.We're in an old house and we have some antiques. We've found that a lot of old furniture (amoires, buffets, etc.) that can be picked up on the cheap does a great job of holding the equipment and keeping it out of sight. Remember: WAY back in the day (i.e., turn of the century), most rooms didn't have closets, so they were always thinking in terms of "where can I put this stuff?"
Spend a minute or two thinking about ergonomics, dammit. Nearly every photo on the original post is going to screw someone's back or wrists up.
The minute you own your own place, ditch the wires. OK, so you can't start running cable through the walls in your dorm or apartment. But once you actually OWN the walls, you sure can -- and life suddenly becomes a helluva lot more clutter-free. Wireless? Yeah, if you can live with the lower bandwidth.
Those shure are mostly german geek rooms. Wooden paneling, old walls, square 9cm pine beams from the "Baumarkt", 230 Volt powerconectors, suse stickers, 'Kaltgeräteanschlußkabel' (sorry, don't know the english word for that:-) )...
"How about posting a how-to on how to go out, do stuff, and maybe get laid every once in a while. At least this would help the (pathetic) state of affairs."
You don't need to go out to get laid, as long as you have a phone line and the Yellow Pages.
I can't compete with you, but... The BiOFHsphere [tank-grrl.com]. I'm moving out of the country so all I have left is the Cube, but this used to be my world.
No, we expect them to quietly fix any errors so that the submitter is not presented in a bad light. Do you think that the letters to the editor of Road & Track, The New York Times or any other respected, mainstream publication are published unedited? Of course not.
i should hope that they don't edit letters to the editor. if they do, they have to send them back to the writer and get their approval before publishing those letters. what if they mis-interpret what the original writer was trying to say? that would be libel, and they'd get sued left and right.
Second post and... (Score:5, Funny)
Yay slashdot, i guess i'll just look around my apartment for a while
Re:Second post and... (Score:5, Funny)
Agreed. Crap... we'll I guess I'll look around: beer cans, laptop, Seinfeld on the TV, unassemble stepper motor assembly, beer cans, random power supplies, clothes, candles, stereo, dishwasher, cat, cat, cat, cat toy, fishing rod, window, couch, chair, desk, desk, desk, VCR parts, motors, power supply, wires, soldering iron, solder, canned air...
Ack...
I need to clean.
I don't like to look around. I am now going back into introvert mode. Ahhh, yeah.... only the laptop screen exists... ahh... much better.
Re:Second post and... (Score:2)
Re:What about the Neat Geek? (Score:5, Insightful)
be messy and fully of crap?
what about the 'neat geek' ?
i spend endless time at this desk tinkering and working on the computer.
i use a soldering-iron, i've etched my own circuit boards, disassembled
computers and CRTs (replacing analogue boards on a Mac+), and soldered
together with resin-core solder and built a theramin, written code,
built web-sites, ripped tunes, made mixes, read slashdot faithfully,
spent endless hours downloading, archiving, and organising data;
and in every manner possible, have tried to fully integrate technology
in a fully artistic way into my living - there is not a single component that
hasn't had thought put into it -- all here:
GeekRoom-Front.jpg [earthlink.net]
GeekRoom-Side.jpg [earthlink.net]
the apparent simplicity and cleanliness of this space belies the
inordinate amount of work that goes into making a well-used geek-room
so spare and uncluttered. there's several hundred CD's, a firewire hard
drive, burner, audio-amplifiers, with USB hubs and surge-protected
powerbar hidden behind the desk (with cables bound together with elastics).
there's a high-power HeNe Laser power supply, coils of wire, soldering iron,
toolkit, VOM and DMM, a scanner, boxes of data CDs and ZIP disks. the
hard drive and burner are neatly stacked in the left and right flanking
drawers under the desk. and to either side are a pair of loudspeakers
for audio work and listening to MP3s. when i undertake to dissassemble a
machine, and get the parts all spread over the desk - the whole METHOD of
doing so is well thought-out, and done with care, so that even in the
procedure, everything is done neatly.
so once again, just because its messy, doesn't make it geek.
there are neat geeks too, which are just as devoted to technology,
and do just as much tinkering as any of you.
best regards,
john [earthlink.net]
Re:Second post and... (Score:4, Interesting)
Or on top of a warm laptop.
Side note, and definately OT... we currently have 3 cats in the house. Two are a few years old, but this year we adopted a kitten... and my girlfriend taught the damn cat how to fetch. I'm doing this as I type... with pipe-cleaners. Toss the pipe cleaner (I wrap it into a helix around my finger so I can get more distance) and the cat runs, graps it, and immediately comes back. A fetching cat. I'd be curious to see if anyone else has a cat that will fetch?
Anyone? Hello? Fetching cats?
Re:Second post and... (Score:2)
Yep - I have one - he discovered this scourer thingy, and liked to throw that up in the air an chase it, and I discovered that I could throw it to him, he would run, jump, catch, throw, jump, catch, run, drop at my feet. And then whinge if I didn't repeat.
Back almost not off-topic, recently he discovered a toy koala that grips onto pencils, in my electronics room, and picked it up and played with it. I took it off him and put it back on the pencil, because I don't want it covered in cat slobber, so he went back to the pencil to pick it up again. Then I hid it in a jar, and he put his paws down the jar, and picked it out. Very skilled. So I hid it elsewhere, etc, etc, etc. Darn cat. Steals all my wire too. I lost some batteries, pens, and most annoyingly, a peice of plastic off a monitor I was fixing, then discovered him pawing under the fridge, so I looked under the fridge and found his stash. All, except for one button-battery! Probably ate the darn thing - he did stop eating for a week at one stage.....
Re:Second post and... (Score:4, Funny)
Aren't most geeks cat people? (Score:4, Interesting)
Many in this community are dog people, but is it my imagination that a higher percentage of geeks are cat people? It's either a startling coincidence or my life represents a real Nielsen-style rating as to the percentage of computer volken who like the furry little beasts...
This observation began for me when once I lived in an apartment complex with an exclusive population of nerds. It was the mid 90s at that time. Before I got there it was just a couple of Mac II-Ci's with phone-net (!!!) flowing out of the windows. I'm pretty sure we had the first network in the little beach-town of Seaside Park, NJ. [seasideparknj.com]
Eventually, there were 7 units each with Ethernet dangling from window-sill to window-sill. And only 500 feet from the beach! With a tremendous view of the Ocean from a kickin' deck upon which we would regularly grill mahi-mahi and the like whilst imbibing on food-breaks from endless network gaming and hacken (and more imbibing). It was bloody Nirvana!...but I digress.
All were tiny little cracker box apartments (we were beginning our tech careers at that point) that at the peak of geek occupancy housed a motley collection of Macintoshen, NT boxen, 1 NeXT machine (mine, a slab serving a 400dpi laser printer and also playing the part of a shuh-WEET NIS server), a couple of Linux box0rz and an Amiga 2000. PowerBooks galore. All nic'd and sharing the the love.
Nearly every apartment was populated with at least one cat, and in one case at least a bloody-stinkin' (emphasis on the "stinkin'" pheeeyew!) cat colony! I, resident mac-geek with a love of code and 3-d, had two...Lumpy and Jake. Neighbor James, who was an NT tech with a penchant for work-related travels to Kazakhstan [cia.gov] on occasion, had two as well...Simba (a 22 pound orange basketball with legs and a tail) and Mim (tiny little fucker, even as a full-grown feline).
My friend Ian had a cat named Mr. Beau... Mr. Beau's special talent was vomiting on technology. Yup. If the thing flipped bits in some manner, and it was in Ian's apartment, that shit was getting vomited on. No negotiations. Also, beer was likely to have been spilled on said equipment at some point, but that I believe was (mostly)the fault of the humans about the place.
My friend Mark who also lived there was a 300lb pro wrestler who could lift full grown men over his head in addition to his impressive geek abilities. Adding to those formidable(and imposing)wrestling talents was a steady gig as Mac/NT/Network tech. The guy was also a 3-d rendering guru who made valuable additions to the old Ambrosia [ambrosiasw.com] game Escape Velocity [ambrosiasw.com]. He and his (then pre-) wife housed the afore mentioned (sHt1nKeN!) colony of kitties who (despite their numbers...and lovely odor!) managed to not vomit on the tech nearly so often. All the other guys had cats too. Not nearly as smelly.
Since those days, I've worked with a fair number of techs and the sampling of overlap between the cat-ownership and tech communities seemed to grow larger with the more tech-geeks I've met as time passed.
If I might posit a guess, I'd say it had something to do with the independant nature of both beasties. Here I speak of techie cr3tins (myself included) the race of kitt33z. Both seem to have a strongly independant sense of self. The solitary nature of bit-dribbling andromorphs is evinced most strongly by the the noticeable high percentage of said who also play musical instruments. When you think about it, in order to develop ability in either (music or tech), you have to spend a lot of time with yourself thinking, playing, experimenting. Cats, while not much on the thinking or tip seem to be quite competent at being on their own. Far more than dogs anyway in that respect...
Yip! Geek Decore (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yip! Geek Decore (Score:5, Funny)
I'm serious. Paint the whole room white. Everything would have to be white.
Then paint something like "404: Server Busy" on the wall.
Amatures (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Amatures (Score:5, Funny)
Tb.
Re:Amatures (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Amatures (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Amatures (Score:2)
Re:Amatures (Score:2)
Re:Amatures (Score:2)
(Posting on
Re:Amatures (Score:2)
Amatures ... indeed! (Score:3, Interesting)
I just attended the Findlay, OH hamfest for the 30th time (only coming away with a few odd bits and a working Elsa Gloria XL and a non-winmodem 56k) I think we financed Heath for a few years, as he's got several nice powersupplies, etc. and... we had one of the first microwave ovens in town, he put it together as a Heathkit. :-)
Re:Amatures ... indeed! (Score:3, Funny)
[W]e had one of the first microwave ovens in town, he put it together as a Heathkit. :-)
Okay, I have to ask: how many {extra|missing} body parts do you and your siblings have? Any special powers? :)
I laugh! (Score:2, Informative)
Our basement and first floor of our building was and probably still is about a million times more crowded. We have WALLS of hard drives, WALLS of power supplies, stack after stack after stack of old motherboards and cases. Don't even get me started on keyboard and mice!
That's not to say there wasn't at least some organization -- there was, but it was always a little humbling to go down into a basement where the weight present in IDE cables alone exceeded your own weight.
Re:Amateurs (Score:2)
Hmmmmmmm...
I'm thinking Beowulf. Anyone else?
Re:Amatures (Score:2)
Not too bad. BTW, I noticed in your one shot (the big ass Dell box full of laptops on the shelf) that you seem to have a 1xx-series PowerBook. If it boots, you'll probably be able to get a few bucks for that on eBay as a collector's item.
~Philly
Jesus! (Score:3, Funny)
Be careful... Computers are a deadly fire hazard! (Score:5, Interesting)
Then, on a stormy night, the ungrounded shed was hit by lightning, and it caught fire. While he was asleep, the computers began melting under the heat and released some very toxic gas -- which blew through the neighborhood, and killed the professor's dog along with a few other animals, and made a few residents hospital-bound.
Because of it, he was sued for quite a hefty bit, though he avoided jail -- so rethink stockpiling all those useless computers for itself, and give them away to charity.
Re:Be careful... Computers are a deadly fire hazar (Score:5, Insightful)
ahh, todays society. If your computer gets fried by lightning - you get sued. If your house gets fried, the insurance company say "It's an act of god".
Why must people sue at every possible thing? It ends up with everyone suing everyone, and the only winners are lawyers.
Hang on, my S.O. is a lawyer - well will be in august. Forget that, sue everyone!
Re:Be careful... Computers are a deadly fire hazar (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, that's what I'd do if I was a lawyer. I'm shaking my head at the whole thing -- lawsuits are getting to be too much these days.
MIT Swapfest (Score:3, Informative)
the mit flea ("Swapfest"). [mit.edu]
third sunday of every non-winter month at Albany street.
your post says you're in franklin, so get another uhaul and don't drop so many this time! tons of people in your position have offloaded all their shit (working and not) there. only costs $17 (plus $12 for each additional space, you'll probably need ~3 spaces). you set up at 7:15-9am and buyers swarm in at 9am (most sales are done in that hour, the good stuff goes in the first ten minutes). most sellers leave before noon, but (i think) it lasts till about 1:30.
there's lots of cool stuff there, all related to computers, wireless/radio, or 'cool gadgets.' stuff i've bought there include: door sensor, computer remote control, TONS of cables and connectors, cdrs, ropelights, my palm pilot, floppy drives, led's, movies, and tons of stuff the i have forgotten about. it's all dirt cheap too
one seller once told me "swapfest! get yesterday's technology today!"
Re:Amatures - A total fraud - not his basement (Score:3, Informative)
Fire Insurance (Score:5, Funny)
They should really release those things with a Slashdot warning. -_^
My room? (Score:2)
Mine Grammers Slightly Impared (Score:5, Funny)
How Looks Your Geekroom?
How correct is Slashdot editor?
Oops... This is Slashdot. Move along, move along.
Re:Mine Grammers Slightly Impared (Score:3, Informative)
(Methinks Michael and I spent too much time reading The Mighty Thor in days agone...)
Garg
Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Actually... (Score:5, Funny)
Since the move, I can hear myself think, and the whole level of the house is comfortably heated thanks to my server "farm" in the hall.
I consider it a interior decorating success story of the geeky kind!
Re:Actually... (Score:3, Interesting)
p133 - Slackware 8.0 - adsl router/dhcpd/irc server (irc. l uddite s. ca)
pII 450 - Win2kserver - mp3 server
celery 1.2 Slack 8.1 - Desktop #1
celery 1.2 Win2kpro - Desktop #2 (yes, I have two of these, no dual-boot)
p74 - slack 8.1 - ISDN gateway & print server
pIII 750 - slack8.0 (& bleeding kernel) - Laptop (& wlan finder)
I can't hear a damn thing. My room's right next to the kitchen and I have 5 non-geek roomates. They're allways walking past my room and hearing a "hhhHHHHUUUUUUUUUMMMMMmmmm" coming from inside the door, but to tell you the truth, I don't really notice it any more.
need a kleenex? (Score:5, Funny)
dislcaimer: the preceding is the expression of opinion based on observations as a life long member.
Apparently I'm not a true geek... (Score:3, Interesting)
damn.
Re:Apparently I'm not a true geek... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Apparently I'm not a true geek... (Score:5, Funny)
-- iCEBaLM
dust is essential (Score:5, Funny)
Re:dust is essential (Score:4, Funny)
BTW, good thing your dog seems to rather largish: small pets and 10" AC case fans don't mix well. Actually they do mix, but in a rather unexpected and unpleasant (for the pet) way.
non-geek rooms (Score:5, Funny)
Re:non-geek rooms (Score:2, Insightful)
There are females out there whose rooms look nearly so bad. Until recently, my bedroom was done in bright red with Mario border--the relic of my younger brother's childhood, I swear to god--and LotR posters. And usually a lot of soda cans, the assorted wires that go with my laptop, etc. Plus I have another room with my currently nonfunctional desktop.
It's all in disarray because I'm remodeling, but... geek rooms are completely okay, in my book!
Beam me up! (Score:5, Funny)
I always wanted a Trek motif. Doors that slide open automatically when you walk near, a big-screen TV that turns on when I shout "Engage!", a captains chair, a young female Volcan communications officer in a short skirt. No, make that Klingon.
Then again, such tends to conflict with empty Domino pizza containers and Mtn. Dew cans.
Re:Beam me up! (Score:2)
And by cool I mean not cool at all, but nerdy, but nerdy in a good way.
Re:Beam me up! (Score:3, Interesting)
Want to see a Star Trek motif? Try and arrange a tour of Ensemble Studios in Dallas, Texas. (Ensemble Studios are the developers of the Age of Empires series and Age of Mythology.) I hear one of the presidents is a huge Trekkie, and that's why the both of the floors for the offices are decorated and designed Star Trek-style. Not just decorated and lit but the entire office spaces were built to those specifications. I mean, they even have a Holodeck! (which, sadly, wasn't fully functional when I visited.)
Seriously though, totally awesome place, incredible offices. They even have their own futuristic elevator and all this awesome mood lighting in these super-cool futuristic little light fixtures. Great big arches, huge circular swooping desks, TV walls, etc. Walking in the first time felt like I stepped onto a spaceship. Totally outstanding atmosphere.
I don't really know how to get in other than either knowing someone there (which I did) or going on a tour of there with the Art Institute of Dallas as a prospective student (which I did again three days later). Awesome bunch of people, great offices, great games, worth checking out if you can. :)
Re:Beam me up! (Score:5, Funny)
Don't leave the computer!! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Beam me up! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:non-geek rooms (Score:5, Funny)
nope ... (Score:3, Funny)
Wrong. That's developers, developers, developers.
Webserver (Score:2, Funny)
inebriated webserver. (Score:2)
I used to have a geek room... (Score:5, Interesting)
My new wife wanted me to make something blinky that would go around a license plate frame. I started getting nervous... that would be a Real World design! Then, we needed the table for dinner (what was wrong with sitting on the bed, I wondered?). And within a couple of weeks, I realized that having more than one room is a Good Thing... when we moved to a one-bedroom apartment, the Geek Room was no more.
But there's hope for the next generation... my 12-year-old daughter just wrote her first Visual Basic program today. You click the button and a MsgBox pops up that says "THIS IS BORING".
Re:I used to have a geek room... (Score:2)
Mine sounds a lot worse than it looks... (Score:2, Informative)
Two desks. The main one has my tower sitting next to it with a 19" monitor on top. On top of the monitor is my Ximian monkey.. next to the monitor on either side are speakers. A sub sits under the desk. Phone, printer and a pair of lamps also take up space on the desk.. oh, keyboard, optical mouse and calculator as well as too many papers and other shit are on the desk. Next to this desk is another desk with pretty much the same setup. That tower is black, mine is blue. Next to that desk (that's my lady's desk) is a third desk that has been converted into a bookshelf. Bunch of programming/tech books sit on that. Then the rest of the room is occupied by various parts that I haven't found a use for yet. Several zip drives, cd-rom drives, a couple of dvd drives, sound cards, modems, God knows what else... yea maybe I should clean up this dump.
This is depressing... I think I show go get some food and quit thinking about what a freakin pig pen my office is.
my room? (Score:5, Funny)
You have to speak up to be heard over the blower noise. :P
there are burn marks on the walls from electrical fires.
When people ask about heating in the winter, I just laugh.
six printers
two cisco switches
four routers
six servers
two racks
11 monitors
three workstations
two kvm switches
toeknring
and all the cables to with them
30 amps and not one mA available
carpet? I have a carpet?
girlfriend? no such luck
Re:my room? (Score:5, Funny)
Now imagine a gorgeous woman having sex with you every night in your new, socially acceptable domicile. See what I'm talking about? That could be you. Just something to think about.
I know living in a geek-o-rama pigsty is cool and everything when you wanna have a Counter-Strike LAN party on your bare concrete floor, but you can be a geek and still have hygiene and a relatively normal residence, and those girlfriends will start banging down on your door. Then you won't need the 11 monitors and surround-sound pr0n.
Re:my room? (Score:5, Funny)
Heating... (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to laugh at this one because I have the same situation (luxery?). With 11 computers in my extra "server" room and a nice PC with two monitors in my own bedroom, it's always nice and toasty.
I'm just glad to know I'm not the only one with a server farm in their house. And you know what, despite what everyone may say about being a geek or having a life, I love it!
Let's do the math... (Score:5, Insightful)
OK I'll check back on this one in a week.
slashcache
slashcache
slashcache
come ON you guys.......!!!
Geeks grow up... (Score:5, Interesting)
(When did I get a sense of "taste"? I don't know it just happened to me - I didn't mean for it to... honest.)
So last year, when we bought a new house, I claimed the large upstairs bedroom and turned it into my study/library/computer room. I put up shelves to neatly store all my books - not just the computer manuals, but also the sci-fi novels, the old textbooks, the old albums, the artsy-fartsy books, the Edward Gorey books, and all the other books in my "collection".
I put a black leather couch by the windows, with a nice wood-and-glass coffee table set in front. I bought a bunch of Ikea bookshelf modules with internal lighting, some glass doors, some opaque doors, and built a wall of cubbies to hold the stuff I need near me. I set out a bunch of knick-knacks, plants, vases, even a couple of antique radios. I painted the walls a warm brown color. I bought and set out a couple of nice lamps. I even bought an on-stage stand for my Ibanez six-string.
Best of all: the room has a big walk-in closet. In there I put the nasty old bookshelves that used to sit out in the room. On them are all the computer manuals, the archive CDs, the stuff I don't need on a daily basis. On the other shelves are all the office supplies: printer paper, spare ink cartridges, backup tapes, and all that kind of stuff. In there I keep the crappy old stuff I don't use any more, but can't bring myself to throw away: old video cards, old disk drives, old cables, wires, etc., etc. The closet contains the ancient 233-MHz pentium system that serves as my Internet gateway. It also has the two filing cabinets that keep all the family papers. In short: all the ugly stuff is hidden away in the closet.
I still have some computer stuff in the room, but it's just what I need and as neatly arranged as I can get it. The full tower PC sits pretty much hidden behind the antique library table that serves as my desk. My trusty old HP 5L printer sits by it on the Ikea modules. On the desk are just the monitor, mouse, keyboard, and telephone. I have enough room to open up a couple of books without having to move a bunch of computer crap out of the way.
The clutter and crap that I do need on a daily basis is hidden behind the opaque doors of the Ikea modules, so I can close the doors and hide it most of the time. I have to make an effort not to let the Dr Pepper cans stack up, but aside from that it's pretty easy to keep my room neat and clutter-free. I know this is the opposite of the geek ideal, but I like it much better than piles of computer crap and clutter. My study is a pleasant, even peaceful, place to sit and hack, watch TV, listen to music, strum the guitar, or just sit and read. Highly recommended, if you've got the room for it.
--Jim
Re:Geeks grow up... (Score:3, Funny)
Real Men Have Racks (Score:5, Funny)
Real geeks don't brag about how much of a mess their Geek Room is -- Real Men Have Racks(tm).
I got tired having 10 PCs lying around on the floor. For real MIPS per square foot, you need a rack. I now have 4 dual P3 servers, 2 Cobalt servers, 2 480Gb NAS servers, and another 720Gb of RAID drives (along with the obligatory UPS, network routers/switches, KVM switch, etc) in 6 sq. ft. of floor space in a closet.
So there. See it here [gomi-no-sensei.com].
gnetwerker
Re:Real Men Have Racks (Score:5, Insightful)
here's my room in QTVR (Score:4, Interesting)
pics of another geek room (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.mikerosoft.net/~leftyfb/computers/
Why do we do this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Computing is pretty central to my life, so it's reasonable that it's front and center in my space. BUT, it doesn't overwhelm everything else in life, so it doesn't overwhelm my space.
I had the 10 monitors, 20 cases, 286 in the corner life. Eventually, I said "WHY??". Couldn't quite throw it out, but I stuck the approx 100 kilos of crap in the basement of my office building with a note saying "FREE. TAKE.".
Down to one desktop PC (dual-boots) and a BSD nat and filestorehouse server. That's it. Not keeping and buying crud means I can have good components. I don't need 5 keyboards "just in case". I have a Kinesis, and it's bulletproof. I don't have a parallel printer. Don't think I'll ever have another. Well then, I don't need to keep parallel cables, do I?
I think a lot of people, geeks and non geeks, could learn a lot from backpacking or bicycle touring. 25 pounds of stuff is usually enough. Really. Buy less junk, live smaller, and be happier, guaranteed!
Re:Why do we do this? (Score:3, Informative)
Personally, whenever I get a new PC, I throw out an old one, so I only have 3 at a time (incidently only running one right now). I don't need anymore than that, so I don't keep em. And as for spare parts, I just have a plastic tub filled with em - if the tub fills up, I go through it and throw out the stuff I don't need.
Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
In my Uni dorm room.
And I get laid occasionally. I win!
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
Me? What am I doing... I'm just, well... I'm... err, ummm.... fuck
You know you're a geek when... (Score:5, Funny)
Where do I begin? (Score:2)
Two cardboard boxes full of stuff that my wife and I haven't looked at since we moved here. (Yeah, I got a geek wife... geophysics major, woohoo!)
Next, a SparcStation 10 with external 4-drive SCSI box and a 20" monitor.
A CD rack with an assortment of blanks, burns, and originals, no music here.
A Calcomp digitizer pad.
This spot is the first corner we come to...
My computer desk, which currently has my homebuild K6-III/450 system (which runs great, thank you) and a 17" monitor. External modem, zip drive, and tons of cables, running Linux.
A bookshelf with some cardboard boxes in front of them. These are piled with things like floppy drives and I think there's a Macintosh in there somewhere...
In the next corner is an old coffee table with some actual living plants on it, and two windows that you can see out of. Underneath is a UPS, a power strip, several ethernet cables and a couple pairs of military boots that I haven't used since I was in the Army.
Next in line is a wooden cabinet with a Cisco ethernet switch and an HP DeskJet on top. The DeskJet is plugged into the network via a Lantronix print server.
Then comes my wife's K6-II/350 system running Win98SE, on a desk. To the left is a flatbed scanner.
Next is a bookshelf with technical manuals and a shelf full of SCSI cases.
The next wall contains a closet that is inaccessabled, but is full of things ranging from spare circuit boards to rifles.
The closet is inaccessable due to a pile of stuff that I need to get rid of before my wife complains too much, but consists of
+ Several Apple IIgs's
+ More apple stuff
+ Tons of 5 1/4 inch floppies
+ All kinds of crap...
Wow. (Score:2)
Well.... (Score:2)
It actually has a Cisco 2924 in it now though...
- A.P.
Mein Geekroom (Score:2, Funny)
5 towers
3 portables
3 trinitrons
655gb combined hard drive space
160 unopened cans of pepsi
my room (Score:2)
Notice the really heavy UPS's on TOP of the racks! (Score:2)
I almost forgot the retro geek-room... (Score:2)
This has everyone beat! (Score:2, Interesting)
Inside my geekroom... (Score:4, Interesting)
The geekroom has two desks, two bookcases (tech stuff only - other bookcases in the house handle "real" books), and a big old metal shelving unit that holds a 16-port switch, three UPS units, a monitor, my Epson Stylus Photo, my current server (a little FlexATX box running e-Smith), a monitor, and a second PC that runs Mandrake and usually sits open because I'm always swapping stuff in and out of it. There's also a third PC on the rack that I just got - a Mini-ITX box that I'm going to run my server on because it's even smaller and quieter than the existing server. They're all on a 4-port KVM switch.
Then on the first desk, next to the rack, I keep my PowerBook G4, along with all it's gadgets (Palm cradle, Griffin powerMate, CF/Smartmedia reader, Keyspan serial port, iPod). I've got a Newton 2100 on the desk, too - I'm turning it into a web server soon and when I do it goes on the rack. My HP laser is on a stand next to the desk.
The next desk over holds my P4 system - I run XP on it and use it for gaming. I built this one over the summer. Wedged between the two desks are about 200 CD's that contain either software or backups of some sort or another.
In the corner of the room is an Athlon 700 that's currently semi-disassembled (I had to grab a couple of parts out of it for the P4), but used to be my gaming rig. Finally, the geekroom has some space allocated for short-term comic book storage. My workbench is in the cellar, along with virtually all my tools and the bulk of my comics (I built a moisture-controlled storage closet down there).
Geeky, but non-tech items in the geekroom include all my photo gear and slides, a small collection of stuffed toys, a 30-year-old (but still working) shortwave receiver, and a bass guitar.
Currently out on loan to my office is my Athlon 650 that I run Solaris X86 on. I'm testing some stuff for work on it, and it was handy to grab. We also have two other computers in the house - my wife has an iMac widescreen that she keeps on a small desk in our bedroom, and I have a hacked iOpener that we keep in the basement. Also in the basement are the DSL modem and my router.
This sounds worse than it is, though - my one geekroom is a disaster, admittedly, but the rest of the house looks like Martha freaking Stewart had her way with it. It's a good arrangement. I don't interfere with the rest of the house, and I'm allowed my one room to do as I see fit.
Unless, of course, we have another child, in which case my butt is banished to the basement. Good thing we had it finished this past winter...
List of my stuff & gratuitous link to bikini p (Score:3, Interesting)
Beige Power Mac G3, upgraded to G4/400, with 17" and 14" CRT monitors.
iBook 500MHz
Home-built Duron 850 tower dual-booting XP Pro
Apple LaserWriter Select 360.
MicroTek ScanMaker IISP.
Series 1 TiVo with 120GB HDD upgrade.
My server room:
Two Power Mac 7600s, both with G3/400 upgrades-- one handles routing/firewall/mail/file/web/DNS/print, and the other runs the house via all those wonderful X10 modules and other things. They're named "Guardian" and "Colossus," respectively.
Cobalt Qube2, hosting the site of my friend the aspiring model [tiffanyschmid.com] (you might have seen her on Blind Date the other night).
NeXTStation Turbo with 17" black & white display.
AirPort Base Station.
Also in the server room, all functional but not part of the LAN:
Macintosh 128K.
IBM PCjr.
Macintosh Color Classic.
TRS-80 Model 102 laptop.
Newton Original MessagePad.
Newton MessagePad 2000.
Basement:
Power Mac G4/733/1.12GB RAM/40GB & 120GB HDD/SuperDrive (being prepped to replace the old G3 in my bedroom in January, when my bonus check buys the two huge LCDs to go with it).
Power Mac 6360, being prepped to be the backup server for everything in the server room.
Sony external SCSI AIT2 drive, to be hooked up to the backup server.
Homebuilt Athlon 750, used to test various equipment.
Two whiteboxes in slightly less than operational condition.
Two PowerBook 170s (one for my collection, and one to sell as a collectible).
PowerBook G3 Lombard, semi-operable, soon to be sold on eBay as a parts machine.
PowerBook Duo 270c, for my collection.
Two 'platinum' Commodore 64s with 1541 floppy drives & 1 1702 RGB monitor.
Two 3Com Audreys destined to become the control panels for the web interface of my home-automation setup.
Coleco ADAM.
Vectrex + shitload of games.
Sega Genesis + shitload of games.
Sega Saturn + shitload of games.
Atari 5200 + shitload of games.
Atari 2600 + shitload of games.
ColecoVision + shitload of games.
NES + shitload of games.
Panasonic 3DO + shitload of games.
GE DVD/CD/MP3CD/VCD player with region-selection mod.
Arkanoid II: Revenge of Doh coin-op.
Zookeeper coin-op.
On loan to aspiring model friend until she can afford a computer:
Netpliance i-Opener hacked to run Win98SE with an internal 20GB HD and cooling fan.
~Philly
Re:List of my stuff & gratuitous link to bikin (Score:2)
Re:List of my stuff & gratuitous link to bikin (Score:5, Funny)
It's midnight on a Friday and you have a modded up post that has the words "aspiring model" in it.
I will send a priest over to give your server the last rites. And you can bring your "friend" over I'll let her cry on my shoulder about the death of her website.
Geeks in action (Score:5, Funny)
Linked to before... (Score:5, Interesting)
Harware in the bedroom:
G4/933 hooked up to a 17" Studio Display, a 15" NEC LCD, and a 14" VGA CRT.
Apple PowerBook Duo 2300c with DuoDock II. Headless at the moment.
These two are hooked into a 5 port 100Base-T switch. The G4 is hooked (via another port) to a 100Base-T Internet connection.
Also hooked up to the G4:
CompactFlash drive, MemoryStick drive, Cambridge Soundworks speaker system, a Sony Clie T665c, a Canon S200 digital camera, and a Keyspan Digital Remote Control.
In the closet, I have an Apple
I am looking to add a Athlon-based PC to the mix (via KVM switch to the keyboard and the NEC monitor) to learn FreeBSD on. I am also looking at buying one of the new iBooks to replace the very aging PowerBook Duo.
Yet another picture, as if you really care... (Score:3)
I know everyone here has been anxiously awaiting a picture of my computer setup, so here you go [mttlg.net].
Yeah, I know, it's not much, but I don't consider myself a true geek anyway. I just have enough computing equipment to get by.
Hiding this stuff -- real-world solutions (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, here in the real (i.e., married with non-geek friends) world, we have to hide this stuff. We do this because:
Here are the mantras in our house:
Shure enough: German geek rooms. (Score:3, Funny)
Wooden paneling, old walls, square 9cm pine beams from the "Baumarkt", 230 Volt powerconectors, suse stickers, 'Kaltgeräteanschlußkabel' (sorry, don't know the english word for that
Just then I noticed the '.de' in the URL.
Bingo.
Re:Typical (Score:2)
You don't need to go out to get laid, as long as you have a phone line and the Yellow Pages.
Got rid of it all, as well (Score:2)
The BiOFHsphere [tank-grrl.com].
I'm moving out of the country so all I have left is the Cube, but this used to be my world.
Re:Just what do the /. editors do? (Score:2)
Except for the smell. I bet a coma ward smells MUCH better.
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Re:Just what do the /. editors do? (Score:2)
i should hope that they don't edit letters to the editor. if they do, they have to send them back to the writer and get their approval before publishing those letters. what if they mis-interpret what the original writer was trying to say? that would be libel, and they'd get sued left and right.
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Re:It's hard to imagine the scale.... (Score:2)