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Great isn't it?
So today I pose the question, what does your home office look like?
Here is mine:
I have 2 Toshiba Satellite Laptops bought at Best Buy for $500 each thanksgiving day.
One is my fiances because I'm on the computer so much she had to get her own.
One is what I run my site on.
My home office is actually the dinning room of my apartment with all the furniture up against the wall and the dinning room table with all the computer stuff.
I had to buy a book shelf to hold all my computer/reserach books, thats the only piece of furniture I bought.
On one wall I have a whiteboard for brainstorming (I admit however that I commonly come up with my best ideas using the whiteboard pens while in the shower) and a tacky board for all my to do list.
All my hard copy record are kept in a $10 plastic file box.. although I never really use it.
Your turn...
I sit upon a steel lab stool, circa 1955, no cushion. After 4 or 5 hours my but hurts and I know it is time to take a walk. I have a 2002 Herman Miller Aeron chair to my left, unused. It is too low for the desk at which I have been working since I threw up this shop some 4 months ago. I bought the Aeron for $850 after hitting 16 straight weeks at # 1 for a client, and getting a bonus for that performance (that, and a gold bracelet, which I still wear every day). In those days, I didn't know anything about SEO and got the #1 through a lot of quality work - no gimmicks.
It's a great chair. One of thes days I will move and when I do, I'll get a real desk for the chair to enjoy.
The current "desk" is the wooden top of a Stacor drafting table, purchased at auction from Grumman corporation when they switched over to Autocad for drafting in the early 1980s. Paid $35 back then for a full-sized wood drafting table, whose legs have since dried and split -- all that remains is the top. Large and wide, and wonderfully marked up with a history. Grumman designed the F series fighter jets on this table and it's peers. I have it propped up by two plastic saw horses from Home Depot.
My feet rest upon a 13lb "medicine ball" on the floor. My feet roll it around as I work. Don't ask me why.
Desktop looks like someone is moving, and using it to pack.
Three desktop systems:
A. PII-450 Linux box (SuSe unless I am experimenting, then it's either Knoppix or Gentoo live CDs)
B. white-box P4 2.8GHz, 2GB RAM, dual SATA 160s on sofwtare RAID, Matrox Parhelia card (allows up to 4 simultaneous displays), 15" LCD, 21" CRT, 19"CRT. Obviously this is my HAL.
C. Dell workstation, 2GB/300GB drive, Invidia 9800. Siwtched onto the 21" CRT. This is the photoshop workstation.
Lots of related stuff... but that's the basics. As long as we're at it, what's in the CD tray? "underworld 1992-2002". Perhaps I will start a thread for that ;-)
It seems to be the trend, people losing money in this great hobby of ours. But hey--this hobby has more chance of getting me some cash in return than playing counter-strike and the Grand Theft Auto Double Pack for the Xbox. Now I just need to get out my guitar and play it on the street corner, and it'll be another hobby to make money with. Think about it, if I make $4.00 a month from "buskering" (being a guitar-playing street hobo) then I can make $4.008 from both hobbies put together! ;)
Well, my rambling's gone too far already...
That's what you think, buster.
As for my home office ... two desktops, one laptop, two printers in use (one in the closet), and baskets and baskets of office STUFF ... pens, pencils, a zillion post-it note pads, a stapler that my boyfriend covets, and a few other odds-and-ends. Very sparse, actually, considering.
Oh! Forgot to mention books. Books, industry journals, notebooks, and more books ... everywhere.
I live by the stack system. Each stack has an importance level and worked on accordingly. I just bought a new L-Shaped Desk so I have more room for all the stacks. Seems like Stacks 1 & 2 get all the attention and the others just get taller!
- AMD 1.7 + all the RAM that would fit
- AMD 1.2 serves as Network backup and the MP3 server.
- 2 low-end Dells (in another room!) so the kids stay off mine
- Toshiba laptop, wireless NIC for deck & sofa surfing
- HP All-in-one print/fax/copy/scan is the network printer for all
- Photo printer for Mom's/GrandMa's Refrigerator pics
- Whiteboard on the wall to capture thoughts in motion, though the kids think it's their doodle board.
- Big Book case that's starting to get filled up so I might need to purge the old and in with the new
- Filing cabinet. This helped cleanup alot.
Last and definitely not least a comfortable chair. "steel lab stool, circa 1955, no cushion", how do you do it. Guess your back is younger than mine!
The other piece of **** is a Patriot Booksize desktop jobby - that also hums - except louder!
I have a very big BIG desk that could handle the weight of a small horse and a 3 drawer cabinet, for papers and stuff.
Oh and a HP deskjet printer. Nice - but eats a lot of colour ink lol.
And not forgetting my trusty phone (most important).
I am toying with getting a laptop - but unsure of what make to get. Maybe a HP.......
I work in the conservatory, and have 3 workstations - one for me one for my PA and one for my Dad to dock when he comes to do some work on his website.
My summer office is green, has fly screens and is in the garden as I have wireless lan ;+) (my tan is comming on great)
Why does my office not look look a bomb has hit is now I hear you ask?
Well I am getting ready to move it - OUT OF THE HOUSE.
I am not very good at finishing anything and have got about 60 or so projects on the go that need some serious attention - so I have taken someone on who starts next week. I am frantically looking for an office, but as I am going to be in London all this week at web and property events, I doubt I will find anywhere before he starts - so needed to have some room for him to sit.
So for a limited time only - he has a space and will work in my house.
I have worked from home for a few years now and I want out of it - I have had enough with answering my home phone "Hello -company name-" only for it to be my sister or at the weekend answer it "Hello" for it to be a business call from someone who thought that they would get an answerpphone!
So not knowing how to draw a line between work and home - I am kicking work out!
I plan on having one tiny workstation in a deep dark hole of the house, and if I have to do work - GO OUT and do it.
Most of us doing web work - get so wrapped up in it, it takes over our lives and we forget to live. Having an office at home is probably one of the biggest reasons for that in my case.
GIVE ME MY HOUSE BACK >>>>>>>
My "real" office upstairs has a press-wood computer desk from one of the many now-defunct office supply stores. My wife got me a killer leather office chair for my birthday one year, so that rocks. I have 7 or 8 hard-drives littered about the desk, I have a couple different nix distros - all missing one of the disk set, I have about 20 burned CD's that I failed to label, but I'm too lazy to look at them and too fearful to pitch em. I have a book shelf behind my desk that has more kids books than technical books - the ratio grows in the kids books favor by the year..which I find to be a good thing. I have a nice window that looks out to a big tree in our front yard, which is really pretty in the summer. My wife has a desk on the other side of the office as she too works from home doing travel. I kid you not, sometimes we IM each other while in the same room - it's spooky.
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