By: Rupa Dachere, President and Founder, Thrive-WiSE

 

Akkana liked to fiddle with all sorts of embedded devices.  Things I’d never seen/known – so much for a computer science degree – maybe, I should have got an EE degree instead.  I was forced to read up on signal processing, fourier transforms, faraday sheilds etc.  

 

I already had my setup at home with 2 desktops running a variety of distros and 2 laptops – one running linux, the other running windows.  I didn’t know about VM’s at that time.

I had configured a dual-router system (DLink) connected to my very flaky DSL line (remember those connectors that plugged into the old phone lines in the wall?) which had a mind of its own regarding uptime.  

 

And AT&T really didn’t care about serviceability either and charged an arm and a leg each month for something like 5MB (I don’t quite recall what the bandwidth was back then – it might have been less than that).  My house was built in 1955 and the even with me crawling around in the crawl space to strategically place rat traps, spider traps etc., there was still the distinct possibility of the phone wires being chewed up in places.

 

A tangential anecdote on the crawlspace – when I bought my single family house in San Jose (a feat that surprised even me – how many single women could do that in Silicon Valley at that time?), I had to have a termite inspection done.  That’s pretty standard.  The inspector showed up in the morning at the designated time and looked me up/down.  I was dressed in my rattiest sweats, headgear, gloves, shoes, mask and safety goggles.  I think the only thing he could see was a bit of my forehead.  I’m only 5’2”.  I must have looked super weird.  He didn’t say anything – I guess he’s used to seeing weird people?  

Anyway, he asked me to show him the access panel for the crawlspace. I took him to the access panel which I had already removed so that we could dive into the crawlspace.  He got into his overalls and said “I’ll be going down to take a look.  It shouldn’t take too long.”  I said – “Oh good.  I’m coming with you.”  At which point, he stopped and looked hard at me.  “Really?  It’s not a pleasant place – there might be insects and things like rats and spiders.”  I responded – “Yup. I know.  Let’s go.”  So, down we went, crawling around and yes, there were some rats and a few black widows (I knew how to detect these – another story for another time) and I discovered that one part of the plumbing under the kitchen was corroding.  I knew enough to know about dielectric unions and the majority of the plumbing was galvanized steel.  Clearly, the previous owner had screwed something up – so that went on my mental list of things to fix sooner rather than later.  

After about 20 min of crawling around, we emerged dusty and cobweby from the crawlspace.  The inspector said “I’ve never had any owner join me in the crawlspace, let alone a woman.  I’m going to give you a 10% discount.”  I was a bit surprised and quite pleased. As a S. Asian, I love discounts.  And, if you’ve ever bought property, you know how “house poor” one can get after buying a house.