[geeks] What desk toy or "tchotchke" says "geek" to you?

[Joshua Boyd]

On Sat, Mar 25, 2006 at 09:09:23AM -0500, James Fogg wrote:

> And you must have a non-PC system, MAC at minimum, SUN is better, SGI
> rules, Alpha wins. Your PC should be a docked laptop (IBM preferably)
> and your screen should be LCD (not as geeky as they were when I got mine
> in 2000). If anything says Dell, hide it under the desk.

I keep an O2 in running condition in my office.  I don't see why alpha
should win, unless it is running VMS. But just having the machine
doesn't get the bonus points that using it as your main machine does. 

I'm not sure a LCD is inherantly geekier than a CRT.  CRTs might be
better for the job for some people.  I got a pair of LCD video monitors
in a few months ago and they really sucked.  I'll stick with CRTs for
that purpose as long as I can.  

> And some artifact of past technology, better if it's non-computer. My
> choice is a cutaway display model (salesman's sample?) of a Solex
> side-draft carburetor.

> More than one monitor, unless we're talking multiheaded.

I disagree.  I don't like excessive KVMing.  If I leave something on the
screen on system A, I want to be able to see it while working on system
B rather than having to toggle back and forth.

In my office, I usually have two displays on my desk, 3 on my work
bench[0], and one in the rack.  I used to have a KVM, but I gave it to
the new IT guy so that he could have a linux machine in his office.

At home I have a KVM, but I still wish for two more monitors.  One so
that I could see the display of both the Mac and Linux machine at once,
and the other for a video display.  Multihead would be nice, but I need
a lot more space first so that I can have that and seperate monitors for
a few workstations. Not all workstations need a seperate head, some
could be KVM'd together.   It just depends on how likely I'd want to be
able to glance back and forth between the two displays.

[0] Yes, there is a display on the server.  There are three pathetic
reasons for that.  First, I don't feel like finding a serial cable to
run the length of the room.  Second, I had been testing running DirectFB
on it.  Third, I occasionally allow it to be used as a guest
workstation. 

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd
jdboyd at jdboyd.net
http://www.jdboyd.net/
http://www.joshuaboyd.org/