Into the basement we go...

Spent yesterday making probably the most significant eco-change I'm going to make all summer: I moved my "office" down into the family room.

Originally, I'd set up in the living room. That's natural -- msmemory and I do *everything* in the living room. Indeed, one of the main reasons we bought a house with a modest great room was because we figured on spending most of our time there. But while we love the living room dearly, it has one notable problem: it's the hottest room in the house. The house has central A/C, and it is zoned quite badly: the entire upstairs is a single zone, with the thermostat in the darkest and coolest part of the upstairs. There's no way to just cool the great room.

Traditionally, this hasn't been a huge problem -- after all, when you're away during the heat of the day, you can let that room get hot. But the past few days have demonstrated to me that it's a problem when it gets warm during the day. I'd really like to be able to let the upstairs go up to 80ish during the warm parts of the day. But computers do *not* like that kind of heat, so I've been spending way too much time fretting about both machines, especially the server. And truth to tell, programming while sweating isn't a lot of fun either.

Yesterday's project was really mainly about reworking the Internet connections, so that I could move the server downstairs. Most of the machines can simply run on wireless, but I prefer the server to have a hard-wired connection, and as we had things set up that wasn't an option. So I spent the morning rethinking the network layout, lunchtime buying a new wireless card (so that the desktop machine in the great room can switch to a wireless connection), and the afternoon moving everything around.

Knock on wood, I think I have all the kinks worked out. I may wind up buying a wireless repeater this afternoon (the signal upstairs is kind of weak), but everything's functioning again. So now the server is in the basement family room, where the temperature pretty much never tops 70 degrees. And I've set up my workstation down there for the summer. It means working in relative dimness, which is unfortunate, but it's a heck of a lot more comfortable...

Into the basement we go...

Spent yesterday making probably the most significant eco-change I'm going to make all summer: I moved my "office" down into the family room.

Originally, I'd set up in the living room. That's natural -- msmemory and I do *everything* in the living room. Indeed, one of the main reasons we bought a house with a modest great room was because we figured on spending most of our time there. But while we love the living room dearly, it has one notable problem: it's the hottest room in the house. The house has central A/C, and it is zoned quite badly: the entire upstairs is a single zone, with the thermostat in the darkest and coolest part of the upstairs. There's no way to just cool the great room.

Traditionally, this hasn't been a huge problem -- after all, when you're away during the heat of the day, you can let that room get hot. But the past few days have demonstrated to me that it's a problem when it gets warm during the day. I'd really like to be able to let the upstairs go up to 80ish during the warm parts of the day. But computers do *not* like that kind of heat, so I've been spending way too much time fretting about both machines, especially the server. And truth to tell, programming while sweating isn't a lot of fun either.

Yesterday's project was really mainly about reworking the Internet connections, so that I could move the server downstairs. Most of the machines can simply run on wireless, but I prefer the server to have a hard-wired connection, and as we had things set up that wasn't an option. So I spent the morning rethinking the network layout, lunchtime buying a new wireless card (so that the desktop machine in the great room can switch to a wireless connection), and the afternoon moving everything around.

Knock on wood, I think I have all the kinks worked out. I may wind up buying a wireless repeater this afternoon (the signal upstairs is kind of weak), but everything's functioning again. So now the server is in the basement family room, where the temperature pretty much never tops 70 degrees. And I've set up my workstation down there for the summer. It means working in relative dimness, which is unfortunate, but it's a heck of a lot more comfortable...