21 July 2000

Reading:  The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav

Callie and I are computer geeks.  It is now official.

Callie recently bought herself a nice Compaq Presario computer bundle at Compaqworks, the Compaq outlet store north of town, and she has slowly been getting everything set up over here.  Initially, she had been using the included 56k modem for dialup access.  Until tonight.

Tonight, I found out that the gawdawful, not to mentioned misnamed, Fun Country Band is playing at the Icehouse (they're not fun, and they're only barely country), and decided I could do the project I was planning on for Saturday:  networking the two computers.  I know hardly anything about the intricacies of networking, just a little I've learned by watching Angel and Harv work on my machine at work when they were still with the company.  But I shopped online a little to get a feel for prices, then went off to Microcenter in search of various network starter kits, which include everything one needs for a two-computer network.

I found a Sohoware Ethernet Fast network starter kit for 80 bucks, a really exceptional price.  The physical installation of the cards was painless -- I've put a million cards in computers.  Getting the drivers set up was painless.  Setting up file, printer, cd-rw, and zip drive sharing was painless.  And setting up the free Sygate internet sharing/security software was fairly painless (I had to install a TCP/IP protocol that was not mentioned anywhere in the instructions).  End of the evening, and VOILA!  I now have two computers on my network, and Callie and I can share all of our resources between the two computers.

I was amused as I was setting all of this up, however.  Everyone knows that I jealously guard my time; I don't like it wasted.  So it's a pretty strong statement that I have inextricably tied these two computers together on a network in my apartment.  In the past -- and even in the present when people are not computer geeks -- I think signs of commitment have been jewelry, or formal decisions to "live together" or something along those lines.  Tonight, my computer networking effort served as that kind of symbol of commitment, but it was more than symbolic, because it involved my time. 

It's a sign of the times.  And we are geeks.

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It's also funny that I spent my evening doing techie things, because that's essentially all I did in the office today.  I am paid to do political risk analysis of 112 countries.  Instead, I installed PEPS updates on people's machines, I optimized people's machines, I educated people on how to use Front Page and on the file structures I've created for political risk reports on the network.  Basically, I did stuff that tech support or other folks ought to be doing, but for whatever reason I have wound up doing.  It's okay.  It's kind of fun even.  It's just not my job.  Which leads me to think, maybe it should be in the future.

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To conclude with one final bit of techie/geek stuff, for those who have DSL (or probably other broadband access), the DSL Reports site is a must.  It includes comprehensive speed and security testing as well as a tweaks page that upped my internet throughput by 50% (turns out there is a registry entry little known to most ISP's that can make a BIG difference in speed).  There is so much to know!