The Techie Wife

Have you ever had nothing to do for a whole afternoon, for a whole day, for a whole week or for a whole month even? Well, that's me right there, in the first two options. What do you do then when there is nothing to do?

The moment we got to know that N had been admitted to the Master Degree education,  I knew that was it for me when it came to my the-two-of-us-doing-something evening plans. Not for the next two years will I have N coming home early. This change meant the earliest I'd see him in the evenings would be at nine ó clock. 

Our Feng Shui specialist, whom I had contacted only years after I read her book ( Fengshui-Aapinen, Gummerus ), paid us a visit, and after foreseeing somehow that N would get accepted to the school, she told me I'd better enroll for some evening classes , like knitting or a language class, for she knew my evenings would otherwise be monotonous and I'd be missing N. 

Not only I forgot to check and enroll for any evening classes, but I also had not special hobbies whatsoever. So next I had to figure out something to do in my spare time and the first thing that came to my mind was to turn this home into a wireless Media one. Yes, a paradise-like media room where you can access media files like songs and videos from one place, all wirelessly.

I've always had this project in my mind but I never really sat down and started to plan for it. You see, you have files everywhere, you have a TV, two computers; In each there are different things you want to view from another computer or even better, straight from the TV. You need storage space, you want to listen to songs from a particular place and you want to do that without having to plug cables here and there. What would then a home wireless media system feel like? 

In order to find out, the first thing I figured out we needed, was a printer. But not just a regular printer that, in order to print from it, you have connect the computer to it. Oh no, it had to be a printer that can do the job from whichever room we were sitting at. So a wireless printer it was. After a long research on brands and prices and, most important of all, reviews from customers, I ended up picking an HP wireless Photosmart printer. Believe me, it was pretty, sure, but carrying it itself was not so much a pretty task. 'Never again', I use to say, after carrying heavy stuff from the center to home in a bus. Just the walk from the store to the bus station is painfully slow. But I forget that 'Never again' as soon as I am at home.

From my research I also learned that installing media devices nowadays is a piece of cake. Moments after laying down on the floor to rest my arms and observe the heavy and pretty looking box in the corner, I decided to get my hands into it. 'I can do it', I kept telling myself, 'I can do it',' I don't have to wait for N to do it', ' I can do it!'.  So my job as techie wife had started with the first successful media device installation. We can now print from any room at home!

The second thing I came up with was to get a NAS device ( Network Attached Storage). It's like an external back-up hard drive, the only difference being you can transfer your files into it wirelessly! Finding out that these devices even existed made me feel like Bill Gates for a while. I thought that was an amazing personal discovery. For this device too I had to spend hours researching, for I wanted a good device that can do the job and would last for ages. So our home got a Buffalo Link Station II storage device that is doing what it promises! This too was a simple installation. step by step followed from a computer screen. In just minutes the installation was ready! and now I can store all my old and new pictures there without occupying space in my computer, and you can even access your files remotely over the internet! Like if we are in India I can go to my server and pick up a few pictures here and there or upload my trip pictures directly there as well!

Also a scanner that had been sleeping in a box but which does amazing quality scanning of really old pics found its new place in N's desk.

I've also set up a hard-drive for our TV for recording channels, but it needs to be formatted each time you want to record something so this doesn't  really count.

So, this is how I became a techie wife one day. It took me two weeks to do what I consider an amazing job in our new media home.  We can now view pictures and videos on our TV screen, connected wirelessly to our NAS device and, if that wasn't enough, I started to repair, install and use old electronic devices that had been hidden in our new techie home.