It’s A Boy!

But only because I named it Baldrick….

WARNING!
The following post contains material of a geeky nature.
It is specifically designed to be viewed by computer geeks and therefore may be unsuitable for children under 17.
This post may contain mature themes, profane language, graphic violence and explicit sexual content. But, more likely, it will bore its viewers into a comatose state…leaving them prone to buy Britney Spears artifacts on eBay.

If someone had told me even as recently as last year that I would be adding the fourth PC to my home network (or that I would even have a home network), I would have looked at them with an expression of pity. For I would have known at that point that they were, indeed, clinically insane.

But, through a combination of hand-me-downs and cheap-ass computer fair buys, I now have a four-station LAN, including two WiFi-enabled PC’s.

Beavis was the first. He’s a P-III 600MHz, with a 40GB hard drive, 256MB RAM, CD-R, CD-RW, 3dfx Voodoo III video, SB Live! sound, and Altec Lansing speakers (w/subwoofer). He’s about three years old. He was my replacement for the old Tandy Sensation that I bought from Ric the Schmuck in 1994. I bought him on credit through my employer’s cool program (since abandoned) to allow you an interest-free loan to buy a PC, as long as you paid it off in 18 months.

Butthead came next. He’s a P-III 500MHz, with a 20GB hard drive, 128MB RAM, DVD, 3dfx Voodoo III. He showed up as an abandoned baby when a friend of my father’s gave up on him. I slapped a new hard drive in him from a Frankenstein PC Cableman had helped me put together at some point, cleaned out the accumulated Microsoft and AOL-acquired gunk, and he’s been right as rain.

This spring, I got snookered into buying Daria for Pepperkat. How? Well, her notoriously messy room and her equally notorious whining for money led me to offhandedly remark, “I’m going to the computer show this weekend. If you clean your room spotless by then, I will see if they have a $300 computer for you.” She did. They did. Daria (a 1.2GHz with a 40GB hard drive, 256MB RAM) came home with me that Saturday.

At this point, I decided to enable these monsters of modern technology by hooking them together. Plus, I wanted to share the cable modem! But I did not want to crawl through our six-inch-high attic space to run cables to the other rooms.

Enter WiFi.

I got an SMC Barricade router and a Linksys Wireless USB adapter, and voila! Welcome to the 21st century.

This weekend, much to the chagrin of Pepperkat (“It’s not fair! I had to clean my room for a new computer!”), I purchased Baldrick, so I could give Beavis to Whiny the Elder and stop having to share it. (Butthead having been adopted by the Mrs, by the way.)

Baldrick has an AMD Athlon 1800 processor (my first foray outside of Intel-dom), with a 40GB hard drive, 256MB RAM, 64MB 3D video, integrated Ethernet, sound, yadda yadda yadda. And he cost the same as Daria! All I have to do is slap another WiFi adapter on Beavis and move him into Whiny’s room.

Now, each member of the family can go to his/her own little world and surf the Web or do whatever pleases them within the bounds of human decency and applicalbe state and Federal law. Ah, togetherness!

Solonor.com: Promoting family unity…one PC at a time.