Fear the Crab

I know I said that I would focus on completing the Grey Knights miniatures in my possession, but that was after I spent two weeks painting this figure:

Sisters of Battle - HQ

Continued ~

So far that I’m aware, this is a real product sold by a real company:
Petite Computer Desk from ComputerDesks.com

Seems pretty awesome, don’t you think? Or, you don’t see what’s so special? Let me enlarge it a bit, using the ComputerDesks.com’s in-house zoom feature:

No? Still don’t see it? Or maybe you do, but you just want some validation. Well, let’s have the knowledgeable little scamp in red “point” it out to you:

Cue music.

* * *

EDIT: One day after the discovery of this glorious find, ComputerDesks.com has updated the product picture. Clicking on the direct link above will show a tame version that I am sure many prepubescent boys are disappointed about. The pictures here, however, were screenshots of the product before the modification.

Inevitably in the US, and I’m sure it occurs with as much frequency in other countries, people want to know where you work. What do you do, how much do you get paid? Oh wow that’s very interesting.

Less well-discussed is whether or not you enjoy your work. The common thread is that people in the US aren’t supposed to enjoy work. We’re not supposed to like what we do, it can’t be fun. And if, by some sick twist of fate it does happen to be fun, we’re not supposed to admit it.

Even LESS well-discussed is what your workplace looks like. Which is what I’m going to do now.

My desk

This is my little hidey-hole. It’s tucked away in the corner of a large communal work area, a place where consultants and students sit and work behind me and to my left. Note the door to the right; its placement is not accidental.

My backpack and sunglasses rest on a portable 3-drawer locking file cabinet, but I don’t typically put things of importance inside because it’s really light and someone could walk out of the office with it. Now it just serves as a shelf. My lunchbox sits on the floor because there’s no room on the shelf. You can’t see my umbrella, though.

On the desk are my tools of the trade: headphones, coffee mug, notepads, and photographic reminder of why I work. Dual monitors for a Windows machine, keyboard and optical mouse, and telephone are used less-often (I’m a State worker, after all). A mirror, to see who is behind me.

I have two calendars, one given by the university, another purchased personally. Mine has a wolf on it. The shelf above me holds meaningless materials, spare parts, and school newspapers full of coupons.

Back to the door. It leads to the snack room, refrigerator, and coffee machine.

The snack room

The Silicon Valley poster on the door is horribly out of the date.  Someone made little post-it stickers with “GONE” written on them, and now it is a daily puzzle-solving activity to try and find out which businesses are no longer in business.

You would think that with the amount of traffic in and out of the snack area, or community printer, that I would be constantly bothered. However, note that the door is open, it is continually left open, and if you reference its position relative to my workstation, you will notice that it helps to cover my back and secrete me away from the hustle and bustle. Yea, often the secretaries forget I’m at work and don’t bring me my paychecks.

Despite the non-usage of my file cabinet, I am not without storage. To my left, past an empty station, is my overhead compartment.

Overhead storage

A closed version is to the left; it’s not mine. The computers below aren’t mine, either, because their main purpose is to collect dust. Truly an aspiration for all State employees.

Inside my storage bin are books I no longer read, a box of envelopes I hardly need, a multitude of pens, rulers, and office supplies I never use, and some business cards I don’t hand out. I also have a few paper plates for the occasional snack, and a glass plate for re-usability. Whatever else is in there, I probably put in a couple of years ago and never touched again.

Back to work, I guess.

The desk was delivered and assembled today. Set up was quick because there were only two tables and a connector. The long table had plastic casters so that it wouldn’t scratch the floor, but the short table did not; I adhered some felt casters to compensate. While construction of the desk space was quick, moving all the components onto the desk and setting it all up took forever.

Before

This is what the area looked like before the desk arrived. As I said before, the file cabinet was already in place; the boxes are the various components awaiting a place to settle. The time was approximately 1500 when this picture was taken.

I first put Maile’s computer on the short table, arranged so that she could face the TV. Her color inkjet would sit between her monitor and the tower, which itself would perch on the edge of the long table. All of the cables and wires would tie up along the desk edge, interrupted by the surge protector.

The router came next. I needed to make sure I had the proper cables ready for two computers and a printer. But that was easy.

I unpacked my iMac and set it up on the long table. Despite having so few components, it took me a while to become familiar with where things were and how they should be arranged. I also had my RAID hard drives to unpack, and put that on the desk near the file cabinet.

Suddenly I realized that I didn’t really have any room for the laser printer. If I put it on the desk, it would force the computers closer together, which in turn would force the users closer together, until the chairs got in the way. I didn’t want to put anything on the floor because I wanted a clear space to easily vacuum, I wanted more leg room, and I didn’t want to run the risk of a chair knocking a dent into anything delicate.

So I put the laser printer on top of the file cabinet. It’s not pretty, there are a ton of cables all stretched hither and yon, but it’s all set up and ready for use.

After!

After after!

The fact remains that we still have enough room for the two of us to operate simultaneously, and we each have access to the printers and cordless phone. The physical setup was quick and painless (though there was a close call involving a desk and my toe); it was the electronic setup that was a long and drawn-out process.

Maile’s computer setup was easy, because there was really nothing to do. The only trick was reconfiguring her system to recognize and communicate with the router, but once that was done it just took an installation of the laser printer drivers and she could see it over the network.

The iMac was trickier. In addition to being a very new machine (as new as a refurbished model can be, that is), I am not very familiar with the Mac operating system. I had a few tidbits of start-up advice from friends and co-workers, but I still had to navigate the strange mirage of menus and icons. The RAID drives were set up as well as I thought I could, but it remains to be seen whether or not I set them up correctly.

From addressing iMac security concerns, to figuring out how to tell the printer I want duplex, I plodded through without nourishment, determined to conquer this hypnotic land. Test pages were printed, web pages were visited, and I may have blinded myself on the glossy widescreen brilliance that is 24 inches.

I don’t know if I’ve succeeded, but time will only tell.

The new office space in the house is coming together. Conceptually, at least. See, the only physical manifestation of the office is in the form of a 4-drawer legal size locking file cabinet. But check it!

Bought a desk, the Nouveau by Ligna Furniture, which was available at Home World. It’s a bit different than what I am used to, as far as office desks go. It’s more like two tables hooked together with an L-connector. However, that’s precisely what Maile and I wanted for our workspace, so that we could have both of our computers in the same area and be able to use them at the same time. Conveniently, this concept was available in a reasonably-priced package, and the color fits well with the rest of the house. We did not get a hutch nor any attached drawers, giving us plenty of desk space and leg room to work comfortably.

Bought an iMac. 24″ widescreen, 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 500GB hard disk drive, 2GB memory. It’s a pretty big machine for me to just work on office files, but I like to compensate for my deficiencies with big toys. It’s a refurbished computer bought through the university’s Apple Store, so I paid significantly less than regular retail.

Bought a LaCie external hard drive for data storage and backup. It’s a RAID system that I will configure for mirroring any data I save, because I’m paranoid about losing precious files and pictures. One of the 500GB hard drives will mirror the files stored in the other, so if either of them breaks, I can easily swap in a new one and restore the exact same data (if both fail… well, I might be SOL).

Bought a Brother monochrome laser printer for every-day or bulk printing jobs. I figure most of what Maile and I print doesn’t need to be in color, and whenever we do have to print a photo or something colorful, we can fall back to her multifunction color inkjet. I normally don’t like multifunction printers, preferring instead to get a standalone scanner, but I’m not going to throw away a perfectly good printer just to satisfy my preference. When that printer breaks, though, I’ll hope to get a standalone color inkjet instead and a separate scanner.

Bought a 4-drawer legal size locking file cabinet from the Office Depot. I probably could have gotten a cheaper one with the same specifications elsewhere, but I was feeling lazy and didn’t want to hunt around for it. I still like getting paper statements from my banks and other institutions, but I’ll need a reasonably secure place to store them.

The only parts remaining are some comfortable chairs and floor mats. I may also buy more LaCie external hard drives (non RAID), complete with rack, for archives. I have a feeling if more pictures and videos get made or stored, I’ll need a lot more than 500GBs.

The entire office setup will be in the northwest corner of the living room. A closet barriers the north wall, with the window in the west. File cabinet is right in the corner, drawers opening inward. The desk abuts next to the cabinet, longer table against the window, bending left for the shorter table to complete the spatial boundaries.

My iMac will be on the long table facing the window, so that the sun doesn’t reflect against the glossy display. Maile’s computer will, of course, be on the short table, keeping her well within arm’s reach so that she can smack me upside the head if I start to digress. I figure the laser printer will be on the connector, provided it can support the 28+ lbs, otherwise I can put it on my side of the desk, or the floor underneath.

Pictures forthcoming once everything is in place!

What we have here is the “first” posting in the new location for the termite droppings of my mind. It’s a new location for the caffeinated headaches of my imagination. It’s a new look, a new codebase (Word the Press, y’all!), and a new reflection of the changes going on in my life.

In the archives are the older postings from my days at LiveJournal. They have been lovingly exported here and given non-relevant titles so they don’t feel left out.

I’m still trudging through the newness, and it’s very likely that things will change again. I just figured I ought to begin with something.

Many thanks to Galbraith for leading me by the hand. This awesomeness could not have sauced forth without.

Photo session was a blast. Had quite a lot of fun. At times I felt stiff, like I didn’t know what to do with my arms. I think it was partly because some of the poses were a bit unnatural; the two of us don’t normally stand cheek-to-cheek and stare at each other. However, I think a good reason was the fact that for a Sunday, the university is pretty crowded. I’m sure we gave all the international students staying at the dorms a nice pleasant distraction.

I might have to cave with the videographer, and settle for the standard package of a slideshow, pre-bridal reenactment, and wedding ceremony highlight. The cost to do what I wanted is prohibitive, and the work to finangle an alternative is too much. My last resort is to ask the video guy if he can just focus on Maile, and don’t make me look all sappy-fied and romantical.

The reason for this is because the reaction people will have to seeing me in soft focus, looking like a Hallmark movie actor showering the woman with love, is NOT going to have people think, “Aww, how romantic.” Rather, everyone will be, “Pshaw, okay, if you say so.”

Not too worried about that right now. There are more pressing matters at hand, namely the fact that my USB jump drive has failed and I’ve lost all the work I’ve done for the wedding. The drive contained my wedding spreadsheet, full of addresses and vendors and the total budget. I managed to save some files with a utility called PhotoRec (free), but unfortunately, the big wedding file couldn’t be recovered.

Maile has an older copy. Actually, she had the most recent work, but she accidentally overwrote it with an older email attachment before sending it to me. It’s not a loss, since it still has a lot of the work I put into it. Most importantly, it has all the costs!

Hopefully there won’t be any actual work today, so I can get some recovery tasks in.

I was at work, but my station was on top of a large server, where I had to lie down and tap the metal roof to input any commands. The screen was a small LED panel barely able to fit two lines of 10 characters each, and I had to read it UPSIDE DOWN! Aside from my non-ergonomic work conditions, everything seemed normal as we tried to figure out what to eat for lunch.

After one panda decided to stick itself into the driftwood and die, another panda got fin rot. I bought some medicine that specifically treats fin rot, but after three days it (the fish) was gone. Its tail fin was completely missing. I’ve lost two fish, one to unfortunate circumstances, another to high stress and disease. It makes me sad.

I had just gotten through a super happy fun time, too, on inklink, where me and the staffers from CheesyMUD played pictionary. Pictionary online is uber fun, especially when we all play for sheer amusement. Kyrol managed to get a few answers correct on luck, because he was being sarcastic and it just so happened to be the word the game was looking for. I mean, how can you guess “derringer” when someone draws a walther-ppk? He even got “africa” because he was making fun of my crappy drawing of that continent. Too bad I can’t play when I’m at work; I’d laugh too loud.

I write from Nat & Big Mark’s house. I am housesitting, and by association I am also dogsitting, because the dog came with the house. Maile has been here for the past two days, whilst I have only been here one.

One of the first things I did when I got here was establish my territory. That meant turning on Nat’s computer and putting my name into her Minesweeper. Considering how no one in this house seems to play Minesweeper, my name(s) have a good chance of lasting for a long time.

The second thing I did was figure out where the bathroom was. The house is in a state of remodeling, which means that floorspace is a premium, which means that normal walkways are now filled with stooff. And it’s hard to tell what’s been temporarily placed there, or just what is actually supposed to be there. Not only did I have to figure out where the bathroom was, but I also had to figure out where the dog’s bathroom was, and I really wanted to avoid that area.

Still, after a while I couldn’t shake the Cheesy withdrawals. I tried the client that runs via cheesymud.com, but that kept disconnecting after 15 minutes. I tried the telnet client, but having no local echo gets tiring fast. What to do? I couldn’t take it, I HAD to get onto Cheesy! So I brought out my laptop, disconnected the cable from Nat’s computer and slammed in the sweet sweet connective delights.

Turned out nobody else was on.

I ate the pizza for dinner, thanks to Galbraith. It was a good option because there’s not much of a stove left, and Maile and I weren’t in the mood for anything microwaved. We also didn’t want to leave the house alone for long by eating out, especially with nothing but a plywood board for a door. Actually, that’s not entirely true, but my paranoid tendencies sometimes kick in.

I have no idea where I’m going to sleep. That should have been the third thing I did. Meanwhile, I’ll take pride in using the three common font formatting tags in this post.