Monday Madness #1 - fun with computers

Ok, I'll start this one off by saying that Ron is a genuine, 100% computer geek. And yes, I knew this when I married him, LOL. Actually, at the time I was more 'geeky' than I am now since I was working on a graduate degree in computers myself (no, I never finished the degree). When we got married, we had one main computer - mine. Plus a laptop that I'd bought for school. Somehow Ron ended up in charge of our computer issues and all I can say is thank goodness he's got his own 'computer room' in this house. It's not as bad as it used to be - I finally made him get rid of every piece of equipment that did not work - as much as he thought he could maybe fix things if he had time (the time issue being key here since I have this little pet peeve about him actually spending time with me and the kids instead of holed up downstairs in the computer room). So the piles of 'junk' are much smaller down there than they used to be.

To get to today's questions...

1. How many desktop computers in your home? That work? Two. Both are downstairs in the computer room. Our main PC, which is basically the 'hub' for our home network - it's one that Ron built. And an old Mac that Ron used when he was working in graphic design. Oh and there's the one sitting in the garage that he got from friends, put a new hard drive in and we need to get sold (we're splitting the money with them). I think he may have a spare tower case or two left downstairs, not to mention all of the assorted drives of various sorts, memory and other components that people have given to Ron and are floating around in that computer room. I tend to avoid going in there if at all possible. Ron badly wants to upgrade our main PC, but it's just not in the budget right now. He also wants to set up a PC for the girls to use, but every time he gets one that would work, he finds someone who needs a new computer and sells it to them.

2. How many laptops? Two, kind of. The Dell that we bought a few years ago is now mine to use. We also have my dad's old one that he gave Ron - the screen doesn't work so Ron's got it hooked up to a monitor. He's not really using it for anything right now that I know of - he's been hoping he can fix (replace?) the screen so it can be used as an actual laptop again.

3. What kind of internet service do you have? (i.e. phone modem, dsl, etc.) We have cable internet through Comcast. And I'll say this - even though Ron does installations for them (he doesn't work directly for Comcast) - the actual internet service is great but Comcast's customer service STINKS! We switched our tv over to them almost a year ago and they still have never gotten our bill right. We would've switched to DSL when we moved here but they didn't quite reach far enough. I'm pretty tempted to see if AT&T finally has DSL in our area though.

4. Do you tend to use more than one email account regularly? Yes. I have my gmail account that I use with family and friends. And a Comcast account that I use to sign up for things over the internet. And the Comcast account for my blog. And my account at work.

5. Do you use email as a main source for communicating to your family and friends? Only some of them. My mom doesn't have a computer. My dad has one but pretty much only checks his e-mail when my brother or I are there to show him how to do it (which we've both done many, many times). My friend Mary doesn't currently have internet access (her husband keeps turning it off and on depending on his moods, apparently). And my friend Kristi and I see each other enough that we usually just catch up in person or by phone. We've been e-mailing more lately though since we're both busier. I do have several people that I communicate with mostly by e-mail - my brother, my friend Cheryl, and our friends Chris and Jean.

6. What kind of computer monitor do you own (flatscreen, or other)? We don't have any flatscreen monitors - although Ron would love it if we did. I generally use only the laptop so it doesn't matter to me. I don't even have a flatscreen at work, although since I work in an IT department, I suppose I need to go do some scrounging. The programmers all have them and many even have dual monitors. *drool, drool*

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