"Office" has Moved to the Main Floor

Neither Brianna nor I have been working from home for a while now. We moved the computer desk and filing cabinet to the main floor, where they should be used more often.

Great Thrift Store Find plus Computer Update

I was checking thrift stores for a coffee table or something that I could use as a sturdier stand for my 3D printer. While I was browsing, I came across a 24-inch Dell monitor for just $24!!! Whoever donated it actually put it back in the original packaging, complete with user manuals and the original packing list.

I snagged it and set it up in the upstairs office/guest room. Here's a comparison shot with the old 19-inch monitor (which later got moved to storage):

It's pretty huge.

Since I was up there anyway, I got the new scooter computer ($180 fan-less mini-desktop with a Broadwell i3 CPU from Aliexpress) configured to work with our all-in-one printer (also located in the office) as the default scanner destination, and installed a full copy of Office 365 (free while I work with my current employer). Next steps are to migrate the media server and the home automation software from my giant workstation in the basement to this little guy.

The power savings from replacing the old office mini-desktop with this new one, and moving the always-on server duties from the big workstation to this little guy should save us around $200/year. At our electrical rate of $0.113/kWh, every continuous watt of power use costs almost exactly $1/year (technically $0.9898/year) and the power difference between the two old computers and the new one is right around 200 watts, according to my kill-a-watt.

I really need to wrap this up and make the switch.

Fourth Monitor in Workshop

This year for National Engineers' Week, my company raffled off old computer equipment again. This year, I won a monitor. Today I added it to my workstation in the basement.

(I don't have any justification for this beyond "because I can").

New Computer Command Center is Up and Running

Oh, I'm going to enjoy this:

Still need to get the fourth monitor hung, but the SSD is running with a legitimate copy of Windows 7 Pro, dual graphics cards are pumping out pixels, and I have 20 Gigs of RAM.

And I've spent about $150 on this!!

:-D

Brian's Fledgling Computer Repair and Reselling Business

All the revenues (not profits) are plowed into home automation products. Sigh.

Honestly, I just poke at things until they break in interesting ways: