When the pandemic hit in 2020, at first it wasn’t obvious that Columbia College was going to do teaching from home, so I grabbed the only desk in the house: upstairs, in the bedroom. Then we set Tammy up with a desk in the basement. It stayed that way until May 2021, when she and I swapped positions. Our setups have been tweaked here and there, with new chairs, monitors, the Synology, etc., but we’ve stayed in our respective positions.
Then when I was away in Palm Springs, Tammy took advantage and worked downstairs for the week. I guess she enjoyed it, especially the Studio Display with its better camera and the ability to raise the desk for standing.
We discussed whether or not we wanted to switch again. I was for it, except for the size of the upstairs desk. The upstairs desk was purchased soon after moving to Calgary. The flood of 2013 happened, closing the Esri Calgary office. I hadn’t moved my desk from Victoria, thinking I was done with working from home. I sat at Miranda’s desk for a few days before it became clear we needed at least a temporary desk. We purchased one and it was fine for working from time to time. We chose something small because it was going to fit in the corner of our bedroom.
But I found in the first year of the pandemic that it just wasn’t big enough. Or to be precise, not deep enough. The front of the desk is scooped, moving the user forward. The problem is with a laptop on a stand, a decent monitor on the desk and an external keyboard, there just wasn’t much room.
And as my eyes have gotten worse, I’ve needed more distance between myself and the screen to be comfortable. The desk downstairs is bigger, and that’s been the main argument for me staying downstairs.
As an experiment, I wondered if I couldn’t resolve this. Witness the wonder of a plank and a couple of clamps:
Just positioning a shelf across the scoop gives an extra foot of depth, and makes the size of the desk much better. It looks terrible, but it works. When the weather improves and the garage isn’t freezing, I might do a bit of woodworking to make this a more aesthetically pleasing setup. In the meantime, it’s working.
And I’ve inherited her collection of Murphy silhouettes.
A new out look!!