Am I growing up or is Moore’s law hiding my obsession?
I’ve been interested in technology and computing for a very long time. I built my first full time Linux server on Jun 13 1998 which I used to do what a $50 Linksys router does today, only for a 14,400kbps dial-up Internet link (which I assure you was impressive at the time).
Over the next several years I endeavored to have more and more computers running for various reasons. Back before laptops became accessable for the average person I solved the portability problem by having computers all over the house so that wherever I went I had a terminal on the network that could access whatever it was I wanted. I think back in the day before AIM allowed multiple sessions I had 5 or 6 AIM names which I left logged in at each workstation. It sure made finding me, even at home, a fun logistical problem.
Sometime around 2003 I received surplus from a company that was moving an enclosed network equipment rack. Part of the problem of having something like this is the desire to stuff more and more computers into it until it is full to bursting.
Part of this desire is augmented by the fact that I tend to do various complex things with computers and sometimes you just need a number of them to get these jobs done. Thankfully computers have been getting better and better and you can cram a lot more things into them. Also since I started working with technology for a living I have started to get more and more interested in being a user while I’m at home as opposed to being a Systems Engineer 24×7. So I guess the answer to the question in this post’s title is this: I am both growing up and at the same time the faster better stronger computers are making it easier and easier to hide from the rest of the world my raging computer problem.
To help illustrate that a quick comparason: in 1998 my very first Linux server was a 486 DX4-100 with about 320MB of hard drive space, and a whopping 48MB of RAM. In 2011 my sole home server is a dual-core Athlon II X250 with 4TB (6TB raw) of disk and 2GB of RAM.
So, for your concideration, the last few years in pictures of my home network, ‘internal.ub3rgeek.net’:
2011
2010
Late 2007
Early 2007
2005
Tags: technology