I had taken a wider picture, which took in my wife's computer area as well as my own, with my wife in the picture. She very much objected to me posting that picture. Women are funny that way, it seems. Just a corner of my wife's desk shows at the right edge of this picture. That's her computer, a bit farther back, mostly obscured, with the telephone on top of it. Behind that, is our HP DeskJet 890c printer, which is connected to my wife's computer, but which I use via our home LAN.
In the background, behind that, is a birdcage, where
Avery, our pet dove, happened to be at the time. (The cage is usually open when we're both home, and awake, so Avery could have been anywhere, but at that moment, he chose to be in his cage.) Avery adopted my wife and me near the end of last year. You can read about it at <
http://www.dovepage.com/cgi-dovepage/mb/306.shtml>.
My ??desk? is a 6' folding banquet table. At the far left is my computer, a 300 MHz beige Power Macintosh G3. Next, of course, are the monitor, speakers, keyboard, and mouse that go with it. Propped against the right speaker is an external Zip drive. This particular model of Macintosh came with an internal Zip drive, but I already had the other Zip drive before I got this machine, so now I have two Zip drives, not that I ever use them. I got the computer for about $200 on eBay. (I think my winning bid was something like $179, then I accepted a few options that the seller offered, such as a USB card and a video RAM upgrade.)
Farther right is my scanner, a very old HP ScanJet IIcx. There are no drivers to support this scanner under MacOS X, so I have to boot into MacOS 9 to use it. I also have to temporarily relocate my R/C submarine, which normally lives on top of the scanner, and which was the subject of
this thread.
At the left edge of the table is our WebRamp M3t router, and propped between that and the scanner, is a Best Data 56K modem. The WebRamp uses the modem to connect to our ISP, and then shares the internet connection with both my computer and my wife's; that way, we can both be online at once, using only one dialup account and one phone line.
My wife's computer is a Compaq DeskPro, with a 550 MHz Pentium III. We got it at a local surplus liquidator for $200. It's actually not as fast, according to the one benchmark I've tried (calculating Pi to 10,000 digits), as my 300 Mhz G3. In fact, my G3 is almost exactly twice as fast, at least according to that one benchmark. I'm going to have to try some other benchmarks some time, to see if thiis result holds up under broader tests. More detail about this benchmarking at <
http://www.macworld.com/forums/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Board=UBB3&Number=155036#Post155036>.
Uhhh, yeah, the basement is still a work in progress, hense why the basement and our desks are so messy!
... more like my entertainment center.
