11.14.2005

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Don says

We finally finished building our new computer desk.   We couldn't really afford a desk that would hold two (eventually to be three) computers, even if we'd been able to find one, but we have a pile of used lumber so it made sense to build our own.   The desk top is a sheet of quarter inch plywood bonded to a supporting framework.   Each of the three support sections holds four plastic milk crates. (which we already had).

All glued together with dowel pins.
Unfinished and unassembled.

Here it is, after a couple of coats of water
based polyurethane, with our computers on it.

Desk completed, both computers set up and running, end of problem, right?   Ahem, well, not exactly.   You see, we just got DSL (which I love) and the guys at the computer club assured me we'd be able to use both computers on the same DSL line if I bought a router so I went to Pricewatch, found a router I could afford, and ordered it.   It was here several days before the desk was finished and, despite my trepidations about yet another learning curve, it worked just fine with my Windows 2000 PRO computer.   The problems started when I tried to connect her Windows XP computer.   After hours of help-file reading and web searching I managed to make her computer recognise the high speed connection half the time.   Literally half the time in fact because every few seconds her computer flashed the message:

Local Area Connection
  Network cable unplugged

then, a few seconds later it flashed the message:

Local Area Connection
  Speed: 100.0 Mbps

Have you ever heard the joke about the truck driver who picked up an aggie hitchhiker then asked him if the truck's right front turn signal was working?   The aggie leaned out the window and said "Yes (pause), no (pause), yes (pause), no (pause), (et cetera)"   As a joke it's funny but in the real world, when it's a computer instead of a turn signal, it's not nearly so funny.   I've been fighting this for days now.   So far I've managed to competely crash my computer (don't ask, but I got Windows reinstalled with a minimum of data losses) and she was online for almost a whole day.   At the moment, her computer is playing "turn signal" again and I'm not any closer to knowing why but I will whip this monster eventually.   Anyway, if this keeps up, I'll have a much better answer the next time someone asks me why I dislike XP so much.

Lisa says

It was a lot of fun making the desk, though I mostly just watched and played gofer.   Hopefully we can make or restore whatever we need for future projects, we get a kick out of recycling for what we need. While Don was fighting with the computer, I was rummaging around the house for stuff to decorate the wall above the desk.   We needed a bulletin board for photos so he made a frame ripped from cedar pickets, I covered an old Celotex board with burlap and triangles of old jeans fabric and glued it all together. He's a musician and had neat things around the house so our theme here is obvious.

Our decorating style is...
ummm....   eclectic.

P.S. Don wanted me to mention that the panoramic image, above, was made with the free version of the Panorama Factory.