Controlling the Cable Congestion?

JaytheMover asks: "I've just moved, and my wife won't allow me to set up my desk as I had before. I had a gaggle of cables under my desk which only NOW seems to bother her in the new house. How do you guys keep this mess under control? I Googled 'Cable Organizer' and found this thing called the cable organizer at cable-safe.com which hangs the cords like in a closet or this cable snake thing which binds them all together. What do Slashdot readers use to keep their cable clean and their wives happy?"

Comments

prenuptial agreement

[Froze]

Well, almost. Before we bought our new house I bargained with her. I get the garage and the nerd room (home office), she gets the rest of the house.

Re:prenuptial agreement

[i.r.id10t]

I did that... then we had 2 kids.

At least the mother in law went to live elsewhere before I lost the office.

Avoid straight lines at all costs

[MarkusQ]

What do Slashdot readers use to keep their cable clean and their wives happy?

First off, I avoid straight lines like that at all costs.

-- MaruksQ

Zip or Twist Ties

[cgenman]

I've seen too many accidents with staple guns to recommend going that route...

Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper...

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

Just to find a different wife? One that would go into the kitchen and make you some pie instead of bitching about cables?

Re:Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper...

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

I think the person that modded me down should go in the kitchen and make some pie.

Just to be clear...

[TheSHAD0W]

I do *NOT* staplegun the wires to my desk. I staplegun the TWIST TIES to the desk, then hang the wires on them.

For heavy wires, doubling up the staples and doubling or tripling up on the twist ties is a good idea.

keep her out

[yorgasor]

I just keep my wife out of the office. It's worked so far.

Give her the requirements

[MerlynEmrys67]

And have her arrange the cables anyway she wants. All you care about is your stuff is connected - who cares what it looks like, so tell her what needs to run to what - and have her do it

Boy, are you asking the wrong crowd

[elsilver]

What do Slashdot readers use to keep ... their wives happy?

A. Most slashdot readers are sadly (?) not constrained by this requirement. Perhaps you could explain to the majority of the readership here, what a wife is, and how you get one.

B. Most slashdot wifes probably accept the cable mess as "one of those things I love about him." Anyhow, I suspect slashdot wives in general have a fairly high tolerance of cable messes.

C. Which those married readers with wives who aren't particularly tolerant of the mess.

I've found buying shiny things are helpful for generating tolerance.

Wire Management

[linuxwrangler]

Probably the cheapest is wire-ties. Simply bundling similarly routed cables (say keyboard, monitor and mouse for a given machine) helps a lot. Then coil and tie excess wire at the end. Use flush-cutting diagonal cutters to trim the ends of the wire ties so there are no scratchy points and you will have a reasonably tidy setup. Unfortunately, this is a PITA if you frequently move things since it requires cutting/replacing lots of wire ties and pretty soon you will be back to a mess.

You can try wire duct of the type that Panduit sells. Run a long channel or two along the back of your desk and you can pop the top and stuff all your extra cable inside the channel and route the wire neatly out the slots where they are needed. More expensive but easier to reconfigure.

Now, as to part two - keeping my wife happy:
I try to hit the toilet when urinating and wipe up if I don't. I do my share of the dishes, cooking, laundry, etc. I take out the trash. I surprise her with flowers when she isn't expecting any. I help fix problems at her mother's house. I stop what I'm doing and give her a hug and kiss when she gets home from work. Somehow, the issue of a couple of stray cables hidden under the back of the desk hasn't concerned her at all.

Velcro straps

[nmnilsson]

Firstly, my s/o always complained about cables, until I got her her own computer.
Only then did she realize that cables aren't just there to annoy her.
I'm not meaning she's dull either; we're often annoyed by stuff we experience the point with it
(think road work: "What the hell are they digging up the road for. Can't they see I'm trying to drive here?..." etc).

Second, velcro straps are good for getting the cables off the floor.
Our cables are now basically hanging rat's nests, but without the monstrous dust bunnies, and it's easier to vacuum.

My method:

[sakusha]

I use gravity to keep my cables in place. It's effective and free, the cables just stay there on the floor with no additional power or hardware necessary. I shove my subwoofer in front of the pile of cables so nobody sees it.

This neat crap bugs me, it reminds me of an incident many many years ago, on the first PC network I ever used. I was a developer and we had an early Corvus OmniNet. It used flat cable, and we bought only 100ft cables, that was the max length and we figured better too much cable than too little, and we planned to move to bigger offices where we would need longer runs. But some of us were within 20 feet of the server, so we had huge piles of ribbon cable bunching up behind our desks. So one day the office manager came in on a weekend and decided to clean up, and coiled the extra 80 feet into a nice coil, put a wire tie around it, and put it back behind our desks. Then on monday we came to work and the network was shot to hell, we couldn't get decent speed or reliable file transfers. I checked cabling and found the coiled cable behind my desk. I uncoiled it and instantly got back to reliable net use. I went to the manager and informed her that you can't coil 80 ft of ribbon cable in a nice neat cylinder, you're just making an induction coil, signals can't pass through it. He didn't believe me, so we had to call Corvus, and they confirmed. They said that if you wanted to neaten up your cable, you had to make a loosely bundled accordion fold about 3 ft long. So he made us all rebundle the cables. Total loss of productive time, about 1 business day. Neatness can be destructive, never let neatness interfere with productivity.

Re:Mine

[x00101010x]

I combine that with the use of zip-ties and brackets.

I have a nice corner desk, but the box is on the left and the keyboard and mouse cords come from the right, I also have a ton of periphirals. I got tired of kicking the mouse out of my hand and wanted to be able to streach out my feet without fear of unplugging stuff, so...

First, I decided to group things by device, so i zip-tied the mouse and keyboard together, leaving enough slack to pull out the keyboard tray and get full range on the mouse. I then ziptied my right joystick to that bundle (i also have a left joystick).

Next I grouped all my coax cable together (Video and Data) in nice runs along the wall using some cheap nail in brakets. I then realized i could also use those to nail the bundle of keyboard/mouse/joystick cables to the underside of my desk. So I did.

Then I nailed my powerstrips to the wall and found the best routes the cables and attached them to the wall and bundled multiple cords going to the same destination from the wall runs.

I continued with all the other cables, bundling and nailing as needed.

Any excess slack was taken up and zip-tied into nice loops.

Where possible, I ran the cables at levels where they would be out of site by somebody standing around the office.

Took about 2 and a half hours, but well worth it. now i can see all my cables, and a flick of a knife is much better than the time it used to take to untangle things to extract a single cable.
It looks nice and organized. I can streach out without fear of unplugging things. and my cats have a new place to play (a little bitter apple spray keeps them from even thinking about biting the cords, and since they don't dangle they're not tempted to bat at them).

A Possible Scenario

[DynaSoar]

Disconnect the main cable from the car's battery. Get a handful of likely looking wires which could have come from the car. Wait.

"Sweetheart? The car won't start."

"I know. I thought about what you said about the wires on the computers and decided you were right. They're an eyesore. So when I was working on the car, I decided all those ugly wires under the hood had to go. See?" [Hold up handful of wires].

"But the car won't run without those!"

"I know. Neither will the computers."

If she's not fully convinced yet, walk over to the TV and start fiddling around with the coax cable.

Old Stage Hand Trick

[Marillion]

Stage hands have needed to deal with cable management for years. Granted 50amp power cables are much heavier than cat5 cable, but the problem remains. And theatres with rotating productions need to reconfigure the lighting and the cabling with each new production.

The most common technique is to use good old fashioned string. Most hands refer to it as Tie Line. Run a wire where you need it, tie it up. Tie line is usually cut to about half a yard (or metre), tied in a clove knot, and finished with the same knot you tie your shoes with. After a year or two, they wear out, but it's cheap and easy.

Many rental shops will put Velcro ties on their cables. I think it's silly given that's it's 50x more exprensive, but it's their money.

draw the line

[frAme57]

It has been said above, but I am going to emphasize it. This is not a problem of cable storage; this is a problem of territory. You're the guy and she's the wife. In most cases that means it is her house and you are effectively a long term guest there.

You don't believe me? Look at the living room, the kitchen and your bedroom, for example. Are they arranged and decorated as they would be if you lived there alone, or as they would be if she lived there alone? I thought so.

But as you are a long term guest, and because of your various useful functions (getting things off high shelves, opening jars, killing icky things and changing fluids) you should be alloted some small parcels of guy space.

Traditionally, guy space is found in the garage, the basement, the attic or sometimes in a room in the house that the wife can find no other use for. They are filled with things; guy things; things that the wife will not tolerate anywhere else in the house but cannot outright ban. Your power tools, your games , your books , your semi-abandoned projects, your things that are too close to working again to throw away,

This is where your computers should be.

Once you establish that your computers are in your space - where everything is as it should be - let your cables be as they should be. The general condition of the guy space must constantly remind her that here, she is the guest A rat's nest of computer cables on the floor sends that message subtly but strongly.

simple, and cheap/free

[megabyte405]

I must co-habitate as well, and this is what I did. I have a very long (3 monitors fit on the top shelf) desk, which used to have a whole mess of cables behind it. I managed to procure some surplus large-diameter PVC (3-4 inch or so) piping, which I cut in half. Lay cables carefully along baseboard of wall, set piping covering cables, thread cables through gaps between segments, and suddenly, no more cable mess. Sure, you have to move the PVC to rewire stuff, but it's as simple as tilting it back. It also keeps the dust off the cables, and keeps other junk, like wrappers, off the cables too.

Worked for me, could work for you!