ehowton ◾ Personal Workspaces

As directed by

1982 Dallas, TX - Home

My first "workstation" was in 1982; long before there were multiple color televisions in every room of the house. Ergo, I had to place my TI 99/4A adjacent my 13" B&W. I remember putting it all on a black trunk I created a desk from. My little brother hated watching television on it, but there was really no other choice. I think later my parents actually moved in a folding table for everything to go on.

1989 Rhome, TX - Home

By the time we moved into our second house in Rhome, I had a proper desk and spent most of my formative years writing apple basic programs. I was still very active on the computer as a Senior in 1988, doing most of my projects on it, while my classmates had moved on to things such as the IBM, Jr. *shiver* You can see the corner of the fancy color-monitor I hooked up as a dual-screen back in 1989 I got on sale at Dillard's for $200. What. A. Geek.

1991 Germany - Dorm

Yes, I brought the Apple IIe to Germany with me. A couple of things: There was no real room for it in the dormitory, and I discovered German bier. I don't recall ever using the computer during my tenure in Germany.

1992 England - Dorm

The computer got a lot more use in the UK as I was there quite a bit longer. I wrote volumes of letters to everyone I knew, running that old Okidata dot matrix ribbon dry. This was the beginning of the end, however, for the old Apple IIe. I moved it to Virginia and set it up in my bedroom, but I was roommates with

photogoot and he had other ideas how to spend our time. When I wasn't deployed (and I was TDY a lot in Virginia) we were playing games on our Super Nintendo, or partying with hordes of lesbians.

1997 Maple Shade, NJ - Home

I purchased a new computer right before I left the Air Force, and used it to secure a job. When I arrived in New Jersey, I purchased what I was sure was The Ultimate Desk. We had a small one-room apartment at Fox Meadow and Feng shui be damned - there was a lot of thought and creativity that went into crafting a usable and livable space. It appears here that a rear-speaker is placed above the coffee mugs adjacent the couch.

1998 Irving, TX - Home

Turns out that desk didn't like being picked up and moved, even if you disassembled it first. Nonetheless, I must've done that three times or so before she finally just disintegrated. Here is the reassembled monster in the living room of our first house. Later, it was (disassembled, moved & reassembled) relocated to the "office" we made from the spare bedroom once we found we were going to have a baby.

1999 Irving, TX - Home Servers

1999 also marks the first year I got a unix server. My first was the behemoth HP9000/755. It was much heavier than it looks. And because they required their own keyboard mouse, monitor and external disks...I had to rethink the role of the workspace.

2000 Andover, MA - Hotel Stay

drax0r and I were sent to Massachusetts for six and three months respectively. There, we chose to simulate best we could, a working environment. Most of the furniture in my room we moved under the cover of darkness to his room, and set up a rudimentary network, complete with a fileserver, shared printer and scanner, and connected A/V equipment to rip and burn movies from VHS. It was a sight to behold. In fact, unbeknownst to us at the time, two managers were staying in the hotel as well, and had walked by the room when the maid was cleaning it. One said to the other, "See that? That's what we need!"

2001 Boyd, TX - Home + Servers

At my most expansive. Too many monitors, too many discrete boxes requiring their own peripherals. You can see "The Ultimate Desk." It finally gave up the ghost after I pulled all those heavy monitors off it. I traded in the IPX & Rack-mount SPARCstation-2 for my dual-proc SPARCstation-10 and that helped cut down some clutter.

2002 Wichita, KS - Home Server

I took a job in Kansas while living in Texas and commuted for 14-months. During this time I was in used-unix Mecca and finished building out my SPARCstation-10. A buddy in Kansas hung it off his broadband, and

unixwolf hosted my DNS. This box was everything to me during this time, keeping me sane during an insane year that also coincided with the birth of my daughter. My Kansas workspace at work was the best ever! I had a Dell XP box, an Ultra-60, and an HP/UX box. I called

danzigfried last night to try and scrape up something for this entry, alas, no pictures of that exist.

2004 Boyd, TX - Home Servers

Then I hosted the MUD for about a year when I returned from Kansas. The MUD server had lost its home and was on its way to New Mexico with a 400% increase in hosting fees so I traded in my ADSL for SDSL and with a partnership with

dentin and

drax0r built-out its new home.

2004 Boyd, TX - Home + Servers

Hanging a head off the back of a rack is something I would turn to again in 2007 for simplicities sake.

2005 Boyd, TX - Home Servers & PC

We moved everything into the formal dining room for awhile. I don't remember why. I think my wife was re-doing the den. As this location had the greatest visibility in the house, she worked double-time on the den project. She hated that the house looked like a data center when you walked in.

2004 Allen, TX - Startup Business

Then

drax0r and I became partners in the startup company Wild Damn Texan. Here's a shot where I spent six full months working instead of sleeping or being with my family. It was a hectic time. We later found out we had it easy...

2005 Arlington, TX - Startup Business

...as we later relocated to much tighter quarters! Here's a shot of

squackle working some voo-doo for us in a rare Texas visit capture.

2005 Fort Worth, TX - Work PC & Workstation

One of my client sites. This is where I learned of the hell which is knows as Sun Blade 100/150. I heavily modified everything I could in that box to give something even close to performance.

2005 Fort Worth, TX - Temp Home setup at celtmanx's.

Then I sold my house and lived at the Arlington Data Center and with

celtmanx as I awaited my new job in STL. Many, many hours playing Star Trek Elite Force here.

2005 Saint Louis, MO - Hotel Stay

I was in this hotel for six months. Thankfully, little mini there is a fully-functioning unix box and the hotel provided me an externally accessible private-IP. I still had my server quark in Dallas at WDT for everything else until that venture dissolved.

2005 Saint Louis, MO - Work

At work, I required a unix box for projects which never came to fruition outside my XP laptop. This was the "office" when I arrived.

2006 Saint Louis, MO - Work

Later, they moved

galinda822 and I into our own hard-walled office during a reconfiguration move. Those who used to poke fun of me for running linux (like

bigdog_etc) stopped doing so when my blocking tar solution was able to perform >2GB file feats their cut & paste could not.

2006 Saint Louis, MO - Home

My home computer in STL was set up, at one time or another, in every room of the house (or so it seemed). I have those examples, but they're all as equally boring as this, where it ended up: In a basement office my wife &

galinda822 created for me while I was away on a business trip.

2007 Anna, TX - Temp Home + Servers at drax0r's.

Moving from STL back into the DFW metroplex three months ahead of my wife required that I travel with all the computers I would need. Here they are set up in

drax0r's house, where he graciously hosted us until our house sold and we closed on ours.

2007 Anna, TX - Home Servers

My office today is painted Sun Microsystems colors, and I've culled my collection down to the basics.

2007 Anna, TX - Home Workspace

Simplicity. No visible boxes. Just keyboard, mouse, and speakers. The small size of my office led me to hang everything off the back of the rack, out of sight.

2008 Anna, TX - Home Workspace

Moved my wife in, replaced CRT's with widescreen LCD's, and zip tied all cables to the desk. Moved into the nook to free up wallspace and better utilize the small space in the turret.