When I was a young teen (in reality because I am still a young teen in my mind), the number of keys you had said something about your status.  Because of that, we kids wore big key chains with all kinds of keys.  I think for many of us and certainly for me, the keys turned into computers.  For me that meant,  seven computers (or eight if you count my wife’s iMac Pro).  Why would I need seven computers you ask?  One for each home office in my two homes, one my music set up in each home (that two more), one for the media room in my home in Sonoma, one to run the AV and lighting system in the same house and a ultra light notebook.  In addition I have four broadband networks, two local area networks with homeplug and wireless capabilities that have to communicate with each other.  Then there are the backup disks that have to be synchronized across the networks. In addition to this, I have two home theater set ups, Sonos, sling boxes (yes more than one).   And guess who is the IT and AV tech?  You got it. It is me!  I have had to reduce my working hours (should I say hour) so that I dedicate myself to supporting all this. But I have been working my way down in the computer industry for a while and probably have more marketable skills as an IT tech than as a computer industry executive.

 Every once in a while, Microsoft (yes I am on both Windows XP and now Vista) updates my computers which often creates major problems which I have to debug.  So I am now on a complain to reduce the technical complexity.  Of course most of my friends say get a MAC (as if Mac’s do not have problems…which is a great fantasy although they are better than Window machines) but I use a lot of software that does not run on the MAC and it would be hard to make this transition (not only that but I am still pissed off at Steve Jobs but if going to a MAC would make my life better, I could find forgiveness in my heart).  I did not want to run software that would make it possible to run the MAC OS and Windows since all the complexity is in the software and running two operating systems on one computer is like having two computers.  My long term plan is to move everything to be net centric and have no applications or data running on my desk top.  While I am making progress on that, I think it is a few years away.   So today is a big day.  I bought a new notebook and a docking station.  The notebook will now also function as my desktop at my place in San Francisco.  If that works, I will see if I am happy using it as my music computer for my two homes.