Imagine two hackers living in the same house. Man, I bet that house is futuristic. Perhaps it's not even a house at all, but a biodome. Instead of saying "rooms," they probably call them "sectors."

Kevin Rose and Dan Huard are two hackers living in one house. The "sector" they live in is the garage. There are no retina-scanning devices. There isn't a huge wall that doubles as a light-up map of the world. They don't get from sector to sector by a futuristic cart/shuttle, either. Just plain old, boring-ass walking.

Indeed, Dan and Kevin's place looks just like a standard-issue bachelor pad. Except if you enter Dan's room without shoes on, there's an 80 percent to 90 percent chance you'll get tetanus.

Beyond that grubby exterior, however, is a pad that's wired to the hilt.

Kevin's setup

Kevin has two PCs: one that he uses as his normal workstation, and another that he uses as a testing machine. He likes to keep the testing isolated to the test machine so that if it crashes, it won't harm all his work stuff.

He has both machines connected to just one monitor, one keyboard, one mouse, and one set of speakers. The two machines are connected to a Belkin KVM switch, which lets him toggle between machines on the fly.

Kevin also has a scanner and a laser-jet printer on his local network. Dan can access both of these peripherals via the home network, and the two of them trade MP3s and other files via shared folders on their machines. Kevin often whiles away the hours reading Dan's diary and letters to Mommy on the shared drive.

Kevin's Xbox and Dan's Xbox are also connected, which makes for a lot of one-on-one battles and smack-talking. An old-school Nintendo, a bookshelf full of tech reference books, and some fetching flowered curtains round out Kevin's room.

Dan's setup

Dan hates Macs, so of course he has one in his room, as well as a desktop PC and a laptop PC. He's the network administrator of the household, so it's his job to make sure everything on the home network is connected through the dynamic switch/router duo.

There's far too many cables connecting everything to everything else, so Dan decided to cut out the wires completely when it comes to Internet access. He's set up for wireless access throughout the house.

Dan has a heapin' helpin' of game consoles. One thing he doesn't have is an Intellivision, but we hear it's on his Christmas list this year. His room is stocked with a Dreamcast, a PlayStation, a Game Boy Advance, and an Xbox.

Dan's pride and joy is his stereo setup. It's hooked up to a multisource receiver that can handle more than one input or output source. He can watch a DVD with surround sound while Kevin's listening to music in the next room, and it all runs through the same receiver. Dan plans to add time-travel capabilities to the receiver sometime in the next few months. He says it's for the ladies.

Dan's George Foreman grill isn't networked to anything, but an inch-thick layer of grease affixes it to his VCR.

Chef Dan's famous hand-burgers

Dan's computer isn't the only thing in his room that's hot as hell and smells like beef. You can often find him taking a break from his duties as resident network administrator to cook up one of his marvelous, world-famous hand-burgers.

The burger recipe was a closely guarded family secret until Kevin found it in one of Dan's shared folders and ripped it off. Read on for the scoop.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 pound ground beef (or ostrich)
• George Foreman's Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine
• A dirty T-shirt

Directions:

1. Cleanliness is an important ingredient for every meal. Use the dirty T-shirt to wipe your hands before handling raw meat.
   
2. Lose to Kevin in an Xbox game. Following the game, use your pent-up anger to flatten the ground beef into a patty.
   
3. Plug in your George Foreman Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine. Make sure the fat-drip tray is in the proper position and that your keys and credit card(s) are not in the tray. Also make sure the grilling surface is clear of glass shards and/or poison.
   
4. Place the ground-beef patty on the hot surface. Make sure not to fall asleep at this stage, as you may mistakenly fall face-first onto the grilling surface.
   
5. While your burger is grilling, finish your 40-ounce bottle of King Cobra malt liquor (or sody-pop if you're not of drinking age). Margarine may be used as a low-fat substitute for King Cobra or sody-pop.
   
6. Wipe your hands on the T-shirt again. Then use your hand to flip over the burger. It's really not necessary to flip the burger because the George Foreman machine grills things on both sides, but it makes you feel like a master chef.
   
7. Once the burger appears delicious, grab it with your hand and eat it. Keep the fat drippings. You can chill them for a delicious after-dinner treat or use them as hair pomade.
   
8. For a fancier burger, simply add saffron.