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Saturday, April 3, 2010

life as an involuntary system administrator

working from home, one sometimes wonder where his time is spent, as the end of the day comes, and his daily task list has not shortened as expected, but actually, went the other way...

so, sitting and searching for a solution for my dearly beloved spouse's iPhone troubles, i started wondering about the number of computers and smart gadgets i'm catering for, as an ad-hoc administrator, and was quite stunned at the revelation that i'm the proud manager of a small network:
  • two desktops (one for wife's wordprocessing, internet, research and leisure, the other for myself, filling the same needs, but also my workstation for development, writing, and legal work, covering my different personalities);
  • two laptops (one for wife's needs as a student, lecturer and teacher, the other for my multi-personalities needs as described above, but its hardware profile was mainly analysed following my need for a second computer for my development environment that could proudly run virtual computers);
  • one net-computer: eee-pc.  it was purchased when my wife, at a happy but difficult period of pregnancy, just couldn't handle carrying her laptop anymore. nowadays it is not really needed (until some future day when the need will hopefully reiterate... knock wood), so it was turned to be the music-center of the living room for our toddler's happiness, and it also servers as the only true XP of the house, an access point for an internet website that can be accessed only from IE7);
  • and the last but not least - the latest member of the family - my wife's iPhone, which turns out to be a really bothersome fellow and requires a lot of attention...
the list intentionally omits the home router, virutal machines, the home's combined printer/scanner/fax and other equipment which is far less smart.

at least now i have it on record (: