October 25, 2013

Ugly Cables Around My Office

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

Supposedly life is becoming more wireless. Not so! Granted, I’m more high tech than most, but looking around my office, I see things like the disasters shown on this page.

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Figure 1 shows a new USB hub I just purchased, which immediately sucked up four USB connections. Please tell me how I can make this look less ugly? Fortunately, like all the images on this page, the knotted ganglia of cables are out of eyesight.

Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Figure 2 is kind of a cheat. It’s my networking “closet.” That’s where all the wired networking from the office, as well as the rest of the house, come into a single location. Everything gets patched together and then sent up to the router and eventually the modem. Figure 2 shows the cabinet open. Normally it’s closed. Thank goodness.

Figure 3.

Figure 3.

The great thing about the cables shown in Figure 3 is that they’re hidden behind a cabinet I built. I have no idea where the cables go or which cable is which. Only a few of them are color-coded. It’s this kind of monstrosity that I have nightmares about having to reconnect. If I ever move, I’m just going to slice through that Gordian knot with a meat clever.

Figure 4.

Figure 4.

Figure 4 illustrates how poorly I planned my wired networking. There are so many computers in this one branch that I needed a hub to connect them all to the wired networking. As long as the computer is shoved gently against the wall, I don’t need to see the mess.

Figure 5.

Figure 5.

Figure 5 is a bit embarrassing. As I went hunting for cables, I looked under my son’s computer station. That’s cat hair plus probably whatever the lad wore in from outside. I generally vacuum under the computer stations once a month or whenever I see something as atrocious as what you’re looking at in Figure 5. Ick.

Figure 6.

Figure 6.

Figure 6 shows that even when you have a wireless keyboard and mouse, plus a small footprint PC, you can still get an ugly knot of cables. The printer’s power brick (lower right in Figure 6) doesn’t help any.

I realize that my wire exposé may not rise to the terror-inducing levels of some computers, but still: Is the 21st Century the wireless century? I dare think not.

4 Comments

  1. “No shampoo conditioner on earth can clean up those tangles.”
    PCs For Dummies, 5th Edition

    Well, it seemed appropriate 😛

    Comment by linuxlove — October 25, 2013 @ 5:59 am

  2. It is! And I’ve tried Dr. Dobb’s Cable Conditioner. Never worked!

    Comment by admin — October 25, 2013 @ 7:36 am

  3. Dan, speaking off wireless, I saw the most awesome documentary about the history of BBS (ok, this might be stretching it as far as being an on-topic comment, but I had to bring this up). Just enter “BBS Documentary” in a YouTube search. Its about 6 hours long, but I think it will bring back a lot of memories to you. And I sure learned a lot from it.

    Comment by BradC — October 25, 2013 @ 8:56 am

  4. Six hours? Okay, I’ll check it out. Thanks!

    Comment by admin — October 25, 2013 @ 9:16 am

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