Beaker

Introducing Venus

Posted by on April 13, 2015 at 5:40 pm

I recently was able to enact a long-planned and far-reaching change to my technology environment at home. The main change to talk about is that I bought Venus — a late 2013, 13-inch MacBook Pro. Prior to Venus, I had always had a desktop as a primary computer, with a low-powered laptop to use if […]

Newly added computers

Posted by on November 14, 2013 at 8:02 pm

After an excessively long contemplation period, I’ve decided to add two new machines to my family of computers.  One in particular I’ve had for a while, but the issue at hand was whether to consider them truly part of my family of computers, or just simply consumer electronics devices.  I’ve decided they’re part of my […]

Networking upgrades

Posted by on September 30, 2013 at 11:54 am

I recently completed the final steps of my multi-step plan to transition to 802.11n for my home network.  I previously had upgraded Clementine to have a 802.11n adapter.  The next step was to upgrade my router.  Previously I had a standard Actiontec 802.11g router that was issued with my Verizon FiOS service.  Since Verizon now […]

Finally, more memory for Beaker

Posted by on August 6, 2010 at 8:17 pm

I bought my laptop, Beaker, in 2008, and haven’t done upgrades to him at all in that time.  So, finally, I increased the amount of memory.  Beaker came with two 1GB modules, so I replaced one of them with a 2GB Crucial module, bringing the total to 3GB.  Interestingly, this means that Beaker has the […]

New addition: Beaker

Posted by on December 5, 2008 at 9:56 pm

New laptop! My existing laptop, Camilla, is going on five years old soon, and is starting to show her age, so it was time for her to be replaced. The new laptop — named Beaker — is a Dell Inspiron 1420. As a 14-inch laptop, it’s slightly smaller and lighter than Camilla, but also significantly […]