What's in a Typical Geek Home Network?

Mike D asks: "I have several machines on my home network (A Mac OS X server, a few Windows XP desktops, a G4 workstation, etc.) as well as various devices (wireless base stations, VPN/firewall) and always have spare machines around that I'm torn on what to do with. So, I wonder -- what do 'typical geeks' have on their home networks? What items do you feel are a requirement, what are luxuries, and what is just cool stuff that I should integrate into my own network? Of course, suggestions should be cheap/free/use existing hardware I can find around the house."

Comments

Re:Geek street...

[jskline]

I'm not quite that mean and desparate. I can rest securely on the knowledge that this kid will ultimately get it in the end.

Besides, all the boards, drives, ect, all have my name and such scribed into them. The police are watching and if any of it shows up on various markets, it can be traced back.

Additionally, my suspicions are that my 16 year old step-daughter was probably partly culpable in this. I'm letting the police figure it out.

In the mean time, once I can get my income stablized, I'll probably order a new Dell Dimension or something such, and populate the thing again with dual TV cards again. I also have a spare IR Emitter device for the Dish box. And I still own my licenses to Snapstream/BeyondTV, so I can reload it again.

Re:Geek street...

[jskline]

All I'll say is to sit down and think about it a while. Think about the laws of reciprocity. I might mention that I'm a believer in faith and God, and one of the things we're taught is to let this kind of thing go as the perp will get theirs in the end 10 fold, and I; the victim will get mine 10 fold in the end.

I bet that probably means a whopper of an even better machine or.. machine(s)... :-)

I'm not teaching anyone anything. Thefts go on all the time. The kid(s) that did this will ultimately get caught and have to do some time. Remember that this kind of thing only escalates. They figure hay I got away with this; how much more can I do and get away with. So; like I said, it will eventually catch up to them.

Re:Geek street...

[jskline]

In a nutshell;

I had to leave town for two weeks and go to Indiana. I was getting some "training" for a temp job that I was doing. I had not programmed anything on the unit so it was shut down while I was gone. This way if any thunderstorms came through, my wife wouldn't have to race through the house unplugging everything. I left up only what was used and she knew how to turn off or on.

Sometime while my wife was out of the house; probably at church on one of the Sunday's, is when we suspect the machine developed legs and left. My 16 year old stepdaughter has an 18 year old boyfriend that comes around every so often. This all against my better wishes, but I'm only step-dad.

The boyfriend is unemployed, and didn't finish high school and everyone is thinking he's the prime suspect. Fortunately we don't have issue with drugs in the house, nor with the boyfriend... (I know, I've looked and I've researched. They're clean). The boy is not allowed in the house, however when nobody's home, and the step-daughter is in the rebellion period, she doesn't go to church... so... you can kind of put the pieces of the puzzle together here.

We all suspect that they've canabalized the box, and gotten rid of the case. Routine checks of pawn shops, and small-build shops turned up nothing. The boyfriend is a hard-core gamer, and probably has no use for the special cards in the machine. We think they only wanted a fast game machine. They're currently trying to find where he is staying since he has no "official" address so they can serve a search warrant. He's suspect in some other trivial crimes in the community.

I am watching Ebay looking for any telltale signs of my Hauppauge's from it, or the twin Midiman Delta 1010's that were in the machine as well. Don't think they'd know what to do with those as they left the breakout boxes behind when they took the machine.

Re:Geek street...

[jskline]

I guess the root question got lost in the mess.

From a law enforcement perspective, unless you have physical and tangible proof, you cannot "bust". You must first prove your case before you arrest.

Its a slow cog, but it's a cog that will turn a full 360 eventually.

Cheers