Short update this time, for a reason that will become apparent at the end.
Adventures in hi-tech… continued.
In my last ramble, I described my experience of finding a dead pixil, which led to an exchange of flat-screen TVs with a local electronics store.
Well, this go ‘round, I’ve been vaulted way beyond that into the heady rarefied air of transferring my workspace from the small city-sized four-tower complex in which I have been labouring to a home office, circumstances I expect to be in effect for several months. Population: three. (Five if you count the cats and an unspecified census if you throw in the occasional field mouse in search of a shelter against the coming winter who hasn’t yet read the Attention All Mice! memo about a resident pair of cats who are by no means hunters, but who will play a terrified mouse to death.)
This could easily be a 25,000 word essay, but it won’t. Let’s just say that, based on my experiences over the past few days:
- I think you can have too big a monitor. The 22 ½ inch Samsung the department’s IT people gave me to take home is like having a CinePlex movie screen sitting on my modest desk.
- The makers of monitors, in company with the makers of all other electronic devices, have decided that leaving well enough alone is not in their business plan and have now begun to produce monitors in a format called DVI (vs the previous standard VGA). A DVI (which I understand means “Digital Video Interface”) monitor is completely incompatible with VGA (“Video Graphics Array”) plugs and link cables. Right off the bat, this requires that one go out and buy the necessary adapters. (See the item immediately below for why I wanted to do this.)
- You can add Best Buy to my short list of companies who are really good about accepting returns. This much-coveted Baby Duck rating was earned after one such adapter / splitter I purchased – a device that promised “No problem!” in enabling a user to take two PCs and link them through just one monitor, mouse and keyboard – proved that their promise carries about as much weight as a Party candidate’s pledge made during an election campaign. (In theory, it was supposed to enable me to “drive” the PC of my choice simply toggling back and forth at the push of a button on the link device. But the “KVM” (for “Keyboard / Video / Mouse”) switch that I tried to install – made by Belkin and called a “Flip” – simply refused to pass data through itself to either of the PCs I hooked into it. Of course. So now I have two complete computer systems in my home office. It’s a manageable arrangement – I have already slung the second PC onto a homemade shelf mounted under the desk surface and elevated the massive monitor to eye level by positioning it on the desk’s raised shelf, rather than on its main surface.
But the multi-part moral of the story is this: “user friendly” won’t be; “easy to install” will be difficult, if not impossible, to install without searching out at least one other device to connect the disparate formats between what you had previously and what you’ve just introduced into your home; a device that “works for all PCs” won’t; and finally, “No problem!” will become a problem the moment you connect its first cable plug to anything else.
- Keyboards and mice are much easier to shuffle around one’s desk if they are in cordless configuration.
- Working from home, when combined with a minor shift in my core duty hours, will eliminate commuting time and give me an extra 60 minutes to sleep, every single morning of the work week. This may be a good thing. I can also scoff when any chirpy radio “meteorologist” or “climatologist” says, “And bundle up, because it’s a chilly minus 34 out there!”
- Even given that one’s “office” is only a cubicle, it is possible to accumulate an astonishing pile of… stuff over a period of a few years at work. Near the end of my last week in the Place du Portage complex, I moved three large boxes of stuff to my car and brought them home. At this writing, they’re in the garage.
= =
So why the short entry? Because at the moment, I’m less than 24 hours away from being airborne en route to France for a three-week break that will see us (Leslie and me) in Normandy, Arras, Alsace / Lorraine and Paris. The upside (or down, depending on how enthusiastically you view the prospect) is a wide-ranging, sure-to-be-multi-post forthcoming ramble about the trip. We haven’t actually done a lot of scheduling, except for where we’ll be staying and for how long. We each have a couple of “must-see”s – mine involve mostly places where words like “withering defensive battery fire” and “where Canada came of age” are sure to be on the descriptive plaques; Leslie’s with nearby nameplates sourcing the work to people named “Degas”, “Lautrec”, “da Vinci” and the like – but mostly we’re planning largely just to discover places.
À la prochaine, mes petis parapluies de Cherbourg. La vie en rose! (Or riesling, as the case may be).
