This is not interesting or difficult at all, but I also downplay the work I do so this tag of the week made sense to work on that.
This is a classroom I manage at the university I work for. I have five of them directly under me, but this one is the one I built entirely.
-The computers you see are Dell 7010's, which I was pissed to get at first because we're on the new hardware cycle and those are already slightly outdated. We should have gone for more, but fuck it. I got 210 of those that I received, moved, unpackaged, separated, labeled, and logged in inventory. That was a pain in the ass that took around 24 hours.
-I then replaced all the hard drives with better ones because Io had better ones that I personally DBAN'd four at a time to convince the directors that no, really, they're fucking wiped, and have twice the capacity of the stock ones, and I fucking need more space if they're going to run ArcGIS, Mathematica, ConsumerPoint, SPSS, and Stata.
-I then built the image for all these computers from the ground up, because this is the first time the university had used 7010s, so I was going to do it right. As we use Active Directory for logging students in and keeping their profiles, I was proud to built a default that was as small as 100 MB. They were usually around a gig when built by others.
-I picked out the paint color (it's actually a deeper green than the photo lets on) and furniture and helped put it together six months and two months ago, respectively. The office in charge of the contractors wouldn't let us have more than accent walls in color no matter how much I fought them. Cheap bastards. We put the desks together over one night, finishing around 1 AM.
-Side note: the furniture took months to pick out the exactly right ones. Small profile, large desk space, good system for cable management, looks good, etc. These were the eventual choices, mostly because hiding cables and accessing them with these are so easy. Anyone want to guess what two rooms with these tables cost? Nope. You're wrong. Forty thousand dollars.
-I received the monitors a month ago. That seemed like it would be so easy, just take 'em out the box and set them up. I was so giddy about getting the first new monitors we've had in a decade, I did it all in one shot. There was so much cardboard that I had no fucking idea what the purpose of it served. The one room took me two and a half hours and my poor hands were cut to shit and bleeding everyone. I had band aids everywhere for a week. Then I did the next room the day after they healed.
-The new white boards were put in on a Monday completely to my surprise. It was a good deed by my director and jesus christ I can't tell you how nice that was of him.
-I decided the easiest way to do everything, since things were sitting in storage until other things came in, and we needed the room to keep running for classes, I built it all up the day the monitors came in (except the tables. We had to remove everything (the only hardware) and put it back in the next day). I was so in the fucking zone I did the unboxing in two and half hours, set up everything else, ran the cables in the best way our fucked up network and outlets would allow, clearly, with velcro instead of the fucking zip ties I had to cut off the old stuff, and added each one to the domain to be functioning in around 5 hours. And you know what I was thinking as soon as I finished?
Fuck. This wasn't good enough. I couldn't secure the funding for the new interactive projectors yet. Goddammit.
And that's what I always do. Focus on that thing I couldn't do, or look at how much down time I have in job and think I'm slacking and not doing as much as I can, or feel generally like I'm not doing much in my job. So here I am, forcing myself to boost my ego because I built a whole fucking lab in 5 hours and had it running on my own doing shit I know after a year of coordinating everything to come together. You know the last time our department got fucking upgrades that weren't cycle computers. We don't know. My boss has been the manager here for 8 years and there was never an upgrade in that time. New paint, new computers, new furniture, new white boards, new monitors, new software, and, somehow, we pulled it off with our funding being cut. We got other departments on board willingly. And then we upgraded four other rooms. And then we got a new Scantron machine and a new software for that (if you don't know, that shit is expensive. Fuck monopolies.) And now I'm working on expanding the computer science department with dedicated laptops I'm building and making our department a haven for programming and net sec. Alone. That's a personal project. My directors and managers are at the point of "yeah you have free reign to do whatever you like with access to anything you like and we'll fund you with whatever we can for it." And that's an amazing feeling. Because I always tell myself I'm the monkey drone doing what I'm supposed to, but they trust me and respect my ideas that much, I'm clearly being hard on myself.
So, fuck yeah, here's my show and tell. Fuck yeah, I earn the time I have left over. Fuck yeah, I'm going to keep using that time to play Counter Strike at work if I want.
Okay. You would know this.
I have always had phenomenal chairs at work because I always worked late and when no one was around I would steal the nice ones from the empty offices that are for remote sales reps when they come to LA.
I've always had ikea chairs at home because they work, they have a small footprint, and I usually sat in them for no more than an hour at a time.
Now that I'm working at home, I need to upgrade but I don't even know where to start. I'm ready to spend a couple hundred (probably not $700, I need a new mattress too). What should I get?
I don't know if it makes a difference but I find I sit in a lot of different positions. I'll crouch or sit cross legged or have my feet up on the shelf under my desk.
Aeron. 100% Aeron. My sister's company bought one of every fancy-pants chair on the market two years ago and had everyone in the office try everything for two months. They bought Aeron.
Buy used, refurbish. You're probably an A or a B. Size matters.
You know any reputable national dealers or refurbished ones? Just googling gives an impressive array of sellers, many of whom have tons of negative reviews that I have no idea are real of fake. Also, I'm 5'8", so I'd think a B, but no basis on which to judge.
Edit: also I just realized this is a really old thread. I Hubski searched "Aeron" to pick up a conversation from the other day, and just clicked the first link!
When this thread was new, the answer was "Sit4Less" which then became "Sit4life" which has since gone under. Here's the thing, though: the parts are readily available. The repairs are eminently accomplishable. The hardest thing you can do is replace the hydraulic ram, which I've done, which involves a big badass pair of vice grips and a hammer.
I will bet there's a healthy secondary market in aeron chairs wherever you are. Check craigslist.
Imagine if a Saturn station wagon had 55 parts, none of which were in motion with any regularity. How long would they last? And how much of an aftermarket would there be in keeping them functional, especially if Saturn freely sold replacement parts to anyone who wanted them?
The part that wears out is the pellicle. Used to be you could buy the fabric and redo it but now you just buy replacement seat pans.
There was a tenant one floor above us that moved into our building to expand and were there for not even 6 months before they were acquired by Yahoo. I remember reading the announcement and then they were gone almost overnight. Left everything behind. I know the building owners and they usually sell the furnishings left behind if the old tenant leaves them, and there were a ton of brand new Aerons. All I had to do was ask and he would have let me just nab one, but I didn't manage to run into him while somehow his management team found a new tenant quicker than I've ever seen them do so in our building...and they bought all the furnishings. Sooo close....
1) They last forever.
2) Spare parts are readily available.
3) They're easy to work on.
4) They're 100% recyclable.
5) They're 100% made in the USA.
You can literally buy a beat-to-shit aeron on Craigslist, spend $120 on spare parts, and have a good-as-new aeron. I own two - one of which was bought new (scratch'n'dent) from Sit4less and the other which was I shit you not plucked out of the alley behind a restaurant (with the RAND Corporation inventory control sticker still on it). A pipe wrench and $50 in parts later and they're nearly indistinguishable.
Incredible work, Meriadoc! You've done amazing job. The rewarding sense of fulfillment should never be underestimated. Remember how it feels now, and the next time you have a large or demanding job ahead of you just remember at the end of it you'll experience the same feeling.
Impressively well done.
On my own experience as a former flooring sort of guy, I can say the satisfaction of helping build a place is really not well known by people at large.
It was hard work, but going around a city thinking "Hey, I built a chunk of that building, y'know", is really satisfying.
I finished a career as an architectural consultant with an airport, two court buildings, a prison, three or four college campuses, a couple stadiums and a billion dollar wastewater treatment plant to my credit. And now I don't have to do any of that shit ever again.
feels good man.