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Living the Computer Geek Lifestyle w/ a Significant Other?
Edward Almos asks: "I live with my girlfriend in a small apartment (about 65 sq yards) and over the last six months I've installed a significant amount of computer and network gear. The count at the moment stands at two servers, a firewall, two workstations, an ADSL line and an apartment-wide network with at least two CAT5 points in every room. There's also two laptops and a load of HiFi gear. Last night she finally cracked when I installed a network point in the bathroom and told me that either the connection went or she did. After a romantic evening for two everything is patched up and all is OK but this got me wondering. I can't be the only Slashdotter living with a significant other so how do the rest of you pursuade them that all the cables, cupboards full of servers and sky-high comms costs are really essential to the geek lifestyle. This also ties in nicely with the latest poll, ain't love grand!!"
Yea... so my girlfriend is moving in with me into my 1 BR new york city apt. and she's not a techy (she calls me her geek)
;)
1. wireless LAN and a laptop. that way you can leave the room so she doesn't have to hear you typing away at all hours.
2. hide your servers. you got a lan, you got a firewall, do you really need them attached to a keyboard or monitor?
3. ok... i understand the typing on the shitter thing, but do you need an access point in there? see #1
4. use your equipment to do something nice for her... like burning music mixes (trust me, they go far)
Just my advice. Mine moves in tomorrow so I've spent time getting things ready
Well, for one, I have a little more restraint than you.
My wife and I have an extra bedroom for our computers, books, etc. So that cuts down on the crampage.
You don't need a port in the bathroom. The reason why your girlfriend is pissed is probably not because you shouldn't have a port in the bathroom, but because the port in the bathroom is showing her what a nutcase she's going out with. Plus, it gets damn humid there when you take a shower. A moisture-short across the line is not going to do wonders for network performance. Just use wireless ethernet and be happy. Do you have a phone in every room? Of course not, you probably have a cordless phone. Same thing here.
For another, try to be organized about things. With a nice telecom rack, you can stick your 2 servers, the firewall, your UPS, your switch, etc. etc. etc. in a small 2'x3' area in the corner somewhere and have room for expansion. I've met very few geeks who really needed more than 1 server + firewall unless they were trying to compensate fo a small penis.
I mean, look at this from her prespective. She's going to like it if you have a nice network connection for her internet usage, an e-mail account for her to use, a nice home-movie experience so you can watch movies together, etc. She's not going to mind it if your computing gear is humming away neatly in a corner somewhere. She's going to hate it if you spend all of your time tinkering with all of your crap and not spending quality time with her. She's going to hate it if you have a messy piles of computing crap in every room that she has to watch out or she'll trip over, that keeps her up all night because the fans are obnoxiously loud, etc.
I mean, look at Alan Cox. His wife isn't filling her weblog with stories about how obnoxious and self-centered he is. She mentions about how he's fixing one problem or another with her laptop and seems to be more amused than anything else with his geekishness.
Gentoo Sucks
I duno. I'm in much the same situation as the guy in the story, and I seem to be keeping from getting too much flak from the SO with a couple of little mindgames. First, what seems to be oddly important is only having one monitor on my desk. I went for a thoroughly geeky multimonitor setup, and it drove her nuts. Mind you, I do have a fairly large tower system, an Indy, a Sparc 20, and a beige g3 next to the desk (a KVM switch is a miracle) - which brings up another point: one tower system. She got irritated when I had a tower on both sides of the desk for some reason. Whatever, now I only have one. If I really really need two monitors on my desk, out comes my laptop. Next rule: no wires running everywhere. Really. They are hidden behind my desk, and I'm not going to wire the bathroom, for chrissakes. There's an 802.11b access point hidden behind the desk, in case I feel that it's *really that important* to post on slashdot while I'm crapping. Which, by the way, it isn't.
Let's see, what else... oh, the second laptop attached to the stereo and TV bugged her, but only until she noticed how slick it is to queue up some stuff from her computer and have it play in the living room. Oh, of course I have to have my ridiculous amounts of random crap - but the magic part here is if it's out of view, it doesn't exist. I've got a nice big box filled with cables, ethernet cards, sound cards, video cards, etc etc etc etc etc, but 99% of it is not sitting around on the desk/floor/bed/every other horizontal surface. That seems important.
Naturally the whole spending-time-doing-other-things-than-computing thing is a factor, but he seems to have figured that one out. There's also certain activities I just don't avoid when she wants to... aside from the obvious one, which doesn't bear mentioning *g*, those include: Cooking. If she wants help with something she is making, she gets it, and *now*. That way when I fuck up whatever it is I'm trying to make in the kitchen, I get some sympathy. :-)
I suppose I could go on and on and on... but you get the idea. Figure out what things (objects, activities, etc) are trigger items. Change accordingly - it makes a big difference. YMMV, obviously.