The rack in the basement.

I’ve always wanted to have a rack of equipment in my house. I don’t know why, but I’ve always had a fairly strong IT-oriented bent to my geekery (networks, servers, and things) and having my own rack just seemed like a natural thing.

So, when I finished my basement, I made a special point to finally achieve my rackish goal.

And here it is!

I have 15 ports of Cat5e running through to the various rooms in my town house all terminated into a patch panel and then into the ProCurve 1800 at the top. I also broke out and terminated my phone lines onto that patch panel; so now I have 4 and 4 (incoming lines from Qwest, outgoing lines to my wall jacks) that can be patched together however I want. I did the same thing to the 12 runs of coax I had; they all terminate into a coax patch panel (inputs from Comcast, Dish Network, and DTV Antenna — outputs to all the jacks around the house).

All the media center equipment and servers are also in this room (out of picture, except avifors – the Dell at the bottom right).

All in all, I’m pretty happy with this setup and pretty eager to show it off. So, here it is

(also in picture: Cisco 2950 and 2600 for testing/learning purposes, APC by Schneider Electric¹ UPS, and shelf with the cable modem, VoIP adapter, and WAP).

^{1 – I just couldn’t help myself.}

Firstly, I’m finally (with Myles and Kim!) making the trip to Ireland I’ve wanted to take for the last few years. The dates are firm, the plane tickets are booked, and the bike trip is scheduled. May 16th and “goodbye, Denver.” (at least for 2 weeks).

Secondly,my house (and the topic of this post), is getting a facelift. Actually, it’s more like a boob job. I’ve settled on and hired a contractor to finish my basement into a recreation/family room. I’ll move my TV down there and install a 7.1 system for movie watching. I may even get a ping pong table if finances allow (combine this with Ireland and I’m stretched pretty thin).

Thirdly, we’ve released Sarix at work! Finally! Three cheers!

In other news, the aforementioned Bostwicks (that would be Myles and Kim) have put a house under contract here in Fort Collins. Yay for them!

That’s all for now.