Hi. I'm jon.404, a Unix/Linux/Database/Openstack/Kubernetes Administrator, AWS/GCP/Azure Engineer, mathematics enthusiast, and amateur philosopher. This is where I rant about that which upsets me, laugh about that which amuses me, and jabber about that which holds my interest most: *nix.
The loss of an office
Posted 12-14-2008 at 04:16 PM by rocket357
Some time ago, I made a bold request to my employer. It seemed they had two server cabinets sitting unused in a storage room, and I couldn't help but wonder what was wrong with them. I asked the IT Director, and his response was "there's nothing wrong with them...they simply have the wrong shape mounting holes for all new servers we'd be purchasing from now on".
An idea brewed. An e-mail was sent. Some paperwork was filled out. And I had to find a trailer...soon. Turns out, the company was willing to let me haul these cabinets off for free (as opposed to paying someone else to haul them off). I brought them home, called a friend and arranged to get a few 24 port switches in trade for the cabinet that lacked doors. As I have a young child, I can't have a server cabinet without doors, and my friend (as of yet) does not have children.
I immediately rearranged my home office to make room for the cabinet and switches. I had to disassemble the entire cabinet to get it through the doorway, but soon I had the switches mounted in there and was busy wiring up all of the low end machines I'd set aside because our 8 port router just didn't have room for them (hehe). Perhaps I'd finally be able to build a distcc cluster like I'd been wanting to for the past three years...
Then, just days later, quite possibly the best news I'd ever received came my way. My wife told me she was pregnant! I was going to be a father again!
Between clearing out my office and dragging down baby stuff from the attic, I realized I had a bit of an issue on my hands...where would I put this server cabinet? So far it only has a few switches, a router, a modem, and an old Pentium box (not rackmount haha) running OpenBSD 4.3 serving as our main firewall. But the point still stood, our house only has three bedrooms and I couldn't stand the idea of putting my five year old in the same room as a newborn for fear of how little sleep we'd all get. So I did the only logical thing...
I'm sitting at my "desk" in the living room, looking over at my server cabinet. Sure, people who've never seen a server cabinet ask strange questions about the "torture chamber" we keep in the living room, but it's functional and most importantly, it keeps the electronics out of reach of my five year old and (in the upcoming summer), our newborn.
And soon, I'll be looking at some refurbished Sun v100's in this cabinet =)
An idea brewed. An e-mail was sent. Some paperwork was filled out. And I had to find a trailer...soon. Turns out, the company was willing to let me haul these cabinets off for free (as opposed to paying someone else to haul them off). I brought them home, called a friend and arranged to get a few 24 port switches in trade for the cabinet that lacked doors. As I have a young child, I can't have a server cabinet without doors, and my friend (as of yet) does not have children.
I immediately rearranged my home office to make room for the cabinet and switches. I had to disassemble the entire cabinet to get it through the doorway, but soon I had the switches mounted in there and was busy wiring up all of the low end machines I'd set aside because our 8 port router just didn't have room for them (hehe). Perhaps I'd finally be able to build a distcc cluster like I'd been wanting to for the past three years...
Then, just days later, quite possibly the best news I'd ever received came my way. My wife told me she was pregnant! I was going to be a father again!
Between clearing out my office and dragging down baby stuff from the attic, I realized I had a bit of an issue on my hands...where would I put this server cabinet? So far it only has a few switches, a router, a modem, and an old Pentium box (not rackmount haha) running OpenBSD 4.3 serving as our main firewall. But the point still stood, our house only has three bedrooms and I couldn't stand the idea of putting my five year old in the same room as a newborn for fear of how little sleep we'd all get. So I did the only logical thing...
I'm sitting at my "desk" in the living room, looking over at my server cabinet. Sure, people who've never seen a server cabinet ask strange questions about the "torture chamber" we keep in the living room, but it's functional and most importantly, it keeps the electronics out of reach of my five year old and (in the upcoming summer), our newborn.
And soon, I'll be looking at some refurbished Sun v100's in this cabinet =)
Total Comments 2
Comments
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That's awesome. I like the ingenuity and the fact that your wife let you put a server cabinet in the living room. You sound like someone after my own heart.Posted 11-04-2009 at 08:42 PM by ofaring 
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Fast forward uhh, 13 years? We've moved away, unable to sell this house, so we rented it out for a few years while my career took me through San Antonio, Seattle, etc... and now I'm 100% full remote work, aaaaaaaand...back in this house. My 5 year old is almost an adult, and my son (whose arrival prompted the loss of my office) is now 12. Ironically, I'm *back* in my original office as I type this. I did end up having to get rid of the server cabs, but they went to a former co-worker who put them to good use. =)
Life...it's strange.Posted 02-05-2021 at 09:06 AM by rocket357
