Irene is going in for her second hip surgery next week. I’ll be working from home for a while as she recovers and gets mobile. In preparation for this, I’m taking *this* week off to re-organize my office and take care of a few other things around the house to make things ready for Robo-Irene.
I’ve let my office go, basically stacking junk on top of junk for over a year. To get things under control is a major project, and starts with (incredibly) making things even messier. First I need to sort and discard things in order to make space to achieve some organization. One of my objectives is to clear a space for a new “game console desk” I want to set up. I have this idea it would be neat to have a monitor and an Xbox 360 in my office for gaming. Another objective is to make my work space a bit more functional: the layout of a couple pieces of furniture (the filing cabinet and a “trunk” I have) are less than ideal.
Stage one is complete- I’ve emptied the trunk, cleared out the cabinet, and shifted them around. In the process, I’ve created one full curb-side bag of garbage, a similarly full bag of cardboard, and a half full bag of recyclable paper. I have also displaced about 30 miscellaneous computer game and software boxes, and collected another box full of various cordless and cellular phone parts. And I generated a discard pile of antiquated technology: joyless joysticks, hopeless hard drives, pathetic processors, crappy CD ROMs, cantankerous keyboards, and moribund mice. I also have a bunch of 35 mm film and a decent but very old Canon 35 mm film camera that I’ll likely never use again. And as a real blast from the past- a Polaroid “instant” film camera, I’m guessing one of the last ones they made. And an unopened package of film for it.
One interesting and unexpected “collection”: I seem to have about half a dozen of those little clip-on “wrist wrest” attachments. Apparently every keyboard I’ve ever bought has one, and I never use them- if I want a wrist wrest, I use one of those gel pad rests. I wonder how many discarded keyboard wrist wrests exist in various landfills?
I managed to cut a trail back to my computer keyboard to write this post. I’m going to have some lunch now and then see if I can cut through some of the software boxes and organize the CDs/DVDs they contain. Stage 2, hopefully starting tomorrow, will be to shut down my computers and “re-do” all the wiring. With two kittens in the house we’ve had a couple of “unexpected power shutdowns” as they’ve discovered various ways to turn off the powerbars…and the wires themselves are very vulnerable. I’d like to keep as much of that stuff out away from inquisitive little paws and teeth as I can.