Participating in The Old Computer Challenge (v2)!

I’ve decided to participate in the The Old Computer Challenge v2. In this challenge, we pretend we’re on a 1990s-style modem (metered) connection, so we’re only allowed to be online for one hour a day (except for work).

My partner Alida has decided to join as well.

Check out all posts in this series.

Last year we’ve both had a wonderful time spending a week during our vacation almost completely offline. I think it’s something worth doing more regularly.

We’ve decided on the following “house rules”:

• Phones, tablets, smartwatches, laptops, and all such gizmos, are all going into airplane mode. We can disable airplane mode as a part of the 1h/day Internet allowance, or for work.

• Devices that have both an Ethernet port, and WiFi, must connect over wired Ethernet and keep WiFi disabled. In the 1990s, home WiFi was not a thing yet.

• We’ve agreed that LAN-based games are OK (maybe we will disconnect the whole LAN from the Internet while playing); however we’ve moved our Minecraft server from our LAN to a host on the Internet a while ago, and still trying to decide whether it’s fair to use it. Maybe we will play more board games instead!

I expect the hardest part will be staying away from random distractions (such as Reddit or Hacker News) while at work. Waiting for another build, or a deployment? Perhaps play with the kitty instead.