Office space…

Because inquiring minds (well, at least one or two of them) want to know….

Here is a snapshot of my home office setup. Some know that when I am not traveling, I have the opportunity to work from my basement at home. In the year and a half of that arrangement, I have put some effort into optimizing the environment to maximize my productivity. Some annotations:

•  Yes, there are three PC’s. From left to right, the personal netbook (Asus), the work-supplied notebook (HP) tucked behind the keyboard, and the personal mini-tower (Dell) on the floor. The last two run through a KVM switch (the box below the monitor with the red and green LED’s) which handles a single Matias TactilePro keyboard, 24-inch monitor, laser mouse, webcam with microphone, and 5.1 surround sound speaker system.
• The shelf below the Canon MP620 printer/copier/scanner holds network gear – Time Warner cable modem, wireless router, and work-supplied Cisco security appliance which keeps me on the CHP secure network anywhere in the house. Also on that shelf is a 1 TB external hard drive, which I use for on-site backup of my personal PC’s. (I also use Mozy for remote online backup, as well as Offline Files so the data are actually on all three computers.)
• Yes, in the background to the right is a good old-fashioned stereo system, with turntable, receiver, cassette deck, and one of Sony’s very first CD players. No, I do not use it much anymore. With streaming satellite radio, Pandora, Internet radio stations, and close to 15 GB of my favorite works on MP3, my computers serve up the music.
• There is another external hard drive at the upper left, just behind Dilbert, for on-site backup of the HP notebook.
• The cordless phone partially visible at far left is the home line (VOIP from Time Warner). The Cisco IP phone is connected to the CHP network.
• On the floor, to the right of the subwoofer, is a UPS with surge protection. I got it a year ago when we experienced power outages that totally mucked up my ability to work. It has saved my bacon more than once since then. Everything electric that you see in the picture, save the netbook, runs through it.
•  I rarely watch TV, never before 5 on weekdays, and then just news and the odd sporting event. (OK, now you know what I watch at 5 ET.) No need for a dedicated set, though, thanks to the Windows 7 Media Center and a TV tuner card in the Dell.
• There’s not much of note elsewhere in the room. Coffee maker, Pioneer Inno with boom box, shredder, an old HP multi-function device that gets donated when the current ink cartridges run out, file folders in the red cabinet and several milk carton-style stackables. And books. Plenty of books, manuals, conference proceedings, etc.

Well, there you go. It’s probably TMI, but if you have read this far, maybe not. What would you do better???