Random musings, requests, etc, etc.

[Glenn]

What's your preferences for work areas? Desks, tables, chairs, etc, etc? Trying to find a good one I like but can never find the right kind for the right price - why do these folks who design these things always assume you'll never want access to the case itself and make it hard to get access for swapping disks, or hooking and unhooking things? Just looking for something simple with enough space for the computer within easy reach and workspace...support a good sized monitor, room for keyboard & mouse, cds/disks, and enough room to write w/o problems....any ideas on where to look, since all the places I've looked (office stores, walmart and the like) have things that don't seem to fit my preferences?

Also, has anyone ever played a video game called "Beer The Game". I remember playing that thing back in the DOS days and was quite fun. It's a vertical scroll shooter.. you're this beer bottle that fights all these things like shooters and beer cans and then it progresses to aspirin bottles, coffee tins, toilets, and brains...

humorous in it's own little way and fun....but my copy got corrupted and I couldn't find it anywhere on the net...any ideas of where to look?

[IT Len]

At the offices, I don't have much choice in workstation furniture...although I did get to pick out one of those real nice ergonomic chairs, and that's a big plus...

I was in the same boat as you concerning my home office, though. Being a "hobby" carpenter I decided to build my own. [Started by picking up a generic "how to" book on building modular stuff, and found out it was very easy to do...]

Basic parameters? The tabletop is 5x11 feet, double thickness of high density particle board [weighs a ton] with a real nice laminate over the whole thing, and trimmed in oak. It's built for two seats, but I ususually have one dual-monitor desktop and two laptops on it. There's a slot running the whole way along the back to run all the cords through. All the lights are on dimmer switches, making them adjustable for monitor viewing. Double level, 11 foot, extra deep bookcase over the whole thing for all the PC/office supplies.

One of the best things I did was to make sure all the cables, i.e., network, USB, printer, monitor were as long as possible, and/or had a hub/splice/connector that reached to a cable box on top of the desk and behind the monitors...They're all coded with color tape as needed, so to hook/unhook stuff, I don't have to crawl around under the desk to find them. [Next time, I'm seriously thinking about adding even more space to put the case up on top, too, making all the surgery I do on it even easier!]

Time to build...two full days. Cost?...just under four hundred bucks.

The key is space. Get more than you think you'll ever need, and in six months, you'll have it filled up!

The game you mention...I haven't seen that in a while...reminds me of that "Gorilla Game" where you throw bananas at each other from the tops of buildings...played that one for hours while I was...errrrr....working on stuff....