Day 1 of 2016 – Painfully moving home office on a public holiday? Argh!

Well, according to science fiction (fantasy) movies, 2016 is supposed to be a year of all sorts of technological marvels.  Well, it certainly is that, but no technology marvel that anyone made a movie about.  WiFi man, anyone?  

Today I officially started my new role as Lecturer (BIS) at University of Queensland.  I’ve had just over two years as a post-doctoral research fellow, and now I have a lecturer role at UQ.  Mainly, I think, because I’ve managed to teach MBA students pretty well – certainly not because of my research at this stage, though I do have four papers in the pipeline.

Officially, today is a public holiday in Australia – not sure if it ever wasn’t a holiday and people just gave up pretending to work after New Year’s Eve.  Unfortunately, today was a day my daughter insisted on recalling a conversation we had three years ago.  The one I said that, when she started Grade 5, she could have the bigger room downstairs that I am using as an office for her bedroom – we would do ‘swapsies’ on the room.  Well, after an itinerant tenant (my sister-in-law who has been completing her nursing degree), my daughter insisted on remembering the conversation and it’s time to up stumps and rationalise my office into the smaller room.  It’s working out OK though I’m taking the chance to get a standing desk sorted and, frankly, I miss having a place to sit.  

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Maybe I’ll be able to scam a tub chair in here, or a standing chair.  It’s generally working out OK I think – though as this room is upstairs I think I’ll be organising air conditioning in this room for those hotter days – it faces west and is near a very thin roof.  Pleasant enough tonight though and I can isolate myself and write – hopefully, with a cup of coffee.  Though I’ll have to go up and down my 23 step staircase to do that.  Ah well, that’s what a standing arrangement is all about, right?

Oh yes, the standing part of the desk is clearly an Ikea hack – the longer coffee table and shelf with brackets so I can have two monitors going at once from my Macbook Pro.  I just need to clear up the junk on my desk now and the office is semi-sorted.  

Here’s the stuff for my Ikea Hack standing desk (inspired by posts made online by many others):

  • Lack Coffee table at $A29.99
  • Ekby Tryggve shelf – well, that’s what I bought but that’s no longer available at Ikea.  Essentially, it’s a wide pine shelf 30cm x 120cm.  A fine replacement would be the Ekby Hemnes shelf, same dimensions (119cm x 28cm) for $A29.99.  Though myTryggve shelf was less than that – I paid $9 and only $20 for the coffee table.  Ikea Inflation?    
  • Two Ekby Valter brackets with screws – $5 each.  

Nothing too amazing, it was really easy to put together and cheap enough that if it doesn’t work out I give it all to St Vinnie’s.  Or take the coffee table off and put it in the wardrobe, never to be seen again.  

Anyway I’m really sore from lugging that desk upstairs, and her room downstairs, and still have a metric crapload to do – so I’m just gonna see if I can get Elite Dangerous to work…

P.S. yes that’s a typewriter holding up my second monitor.

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