ODDREE.COM

The Audrey Legacy

Long ago my wife and I each took $100 to buy ourselves something. She bought herself ... shit I forget. But I went right onto eBay and bought myself a 3-COM Audrey. I had a lot of fun with that damned thing. I would sit up in bed with it with the kick-stand down, and the tiny little keyboard on my belly chatting with a Jabber client that I had compiled to run on it, and irc-ii. Good times. I called it "Audrey".

After a while I got bored with my little network appliance, and I needed a meaner toy. I was in the market for something that had wireless capability so that I could explore this phenomenon known as "war-driving". I bought myself a Mac off of eBay. It was a toilet-seat iBook model. In fact, it was the original iBook. I drug it *EVERYWHERE* and I still use it every other day or so to check e-mail or surf the web from bed. It became my new best friend, and I nick-named it "Audrey II" (a play on the broadway show and film, Little Shop of Horrors).

Many years have passed, and I have not since had an electronic gadget great enough to carry the Audrey nickname. But that is about to change.

Today my boss called me from her office, which she does often. It's a little strange, because she sits about 10 feet away from me. But she doesn't like people bothering her, so she often locks herself into her office to get work done. When she calls one of us, we all hear both sides of the conversation. This is humorous, but not relevant to this story. My boss says "I need to order two laptops, but I have no Windows XP option ... so I may have to get them with Vista". I said "that's fine, but get me one too would ya?". She laughed and hung up.

Then I drafted an e-mail to her. I told her that I desperately needed a highly portable laptop which I could take on runs with me around the hospital. It would have to have a decent battery life, a small display, and if possible a non-mechanical hard drive. I chose the Asus EEE PC with a 4GB flash drive. I sent her a link with all the purchasing information she would need to buy it for me. I have sent her requests like these before and she usually just deletes them. But today - she called me into her office. Then she called my cohort into the office and had him look at it. She asked my cohort, "does he need this?". He took a look and replied, "oh yeah ... absolutely ... that would be perfect for what he needs". And with that, she processed the quote and ordered me one.

I really need a small laptop for making small network changes, and for remotely connecting to servers while standing inside wiring closets. But I also need a new toy which I can take on war-driving expeditions.

Don't tell my boss, but she may have just bought me Audrey III.

Ray might be back in the game. Stand by for details.

Historic Comments
We had someone bring one of these over to the office a month or two ago and it was a lot of fun. The display is a little crowded by the flash memory is fast. Just be careful when traveling with one because the TSA get nervous when they cannot hear the hard drives!
Rich | 05.29.08 - 11:11 am | #

I don't think anything could make the TSA more nervous than Audrey II.

http://www.oddree.com/rayhaque/a...que/ audrey1.jpg

I just got word today that my unit was ordered, and it should arrive by *next* Friday.
Ray Dios Haque | 05.29.08 - 4:37 pm | #